Just got myself a real nice condition PowerBook G3 Lombard, that listing said it just powers on to the question mark.
Of course I thought, perhaps it is a problem with the HDD as usual. So I decided and bought it.
The HDD was actually not the problem, it was the previous owner that replaced the HDD with SSD, but plugged the IDE connector wrong - missed the whole row of pins.
After that, it booted into MacOS 9, but it sometimes crashed, sometimes it didn't even boot and just stood at black screen, requiring to do a hard reset via a reset button on the back. But when it dit boot into OS 9, the error came up of a problem being detected in L2 cache. And, the L2 cache was not present in the System Profiler.
Reading about the similar problems, the main reason was the cracked solder joints on the BGA chips. On the CPU card, there are two chips, one main G3 CPU, and the other being MPC - the cache controller, etc. The solder balls on the both chips looked dull and not uniform.
I removed the plastic heat transfer pad from the CPU (comes off in two parts, first the rounded part that snaps out, then the plastic retainer clip that is stuck around the CPU itself - I used Jimmy tool from iFixit and one black stick. I covered the connector and
Then I used my heatgun, and very slowly increased the temperature, till the chip begun do dance a bit on its melted balls. I did use flux and I used it a lot, and it did its job. I reflowed both chips. Since this is a leaded solder that melts at 183 deg. C, you need to use a bit lower temperature, compared to normal lead-free stuff we do nowadays.
Now I tested it, and it works! L2 cache detected!
Just put it into ultrasonic to clean the flux residue, and put everything back together.
Of course I thought, perhaps it is a problem with the HDD as usual. So I decided and bought it.
The HDD was actually not the problem, it was the previous owner that replaced the HDD with SSD, but plugged the IDE connector wrong - missed the whole row of pins.
After that, it booted into MacOS 9, but it sometimes crashed, sometimes it didn't even boot and just stood at black screen, requiring to do a hard reset via a reset button on the back. But when it dit boot into OS 9, the error came up of a problem being detected in L2 cache. And, the L2 cache was not present in the System Profiler.
Reading about the similar problems, the main reason was the cracked solder joints on the BGA chips. On the CPU card, there are two chips, one main G3 CPU, and the other being MPC - the cache controller, etc. The solder balls on the both chips looked dull and not uniform.
I removed the plastic heat transfer pad from the CPU (comes off in two parts, first the rounded part that snaps out, then the plastic retainer clip that is stuck around the CPU itself - I used Jimmy tool from iFixit and one black stick. I covered the connector and
Then I used my heatgun, and very slowly increased the temperature, till the chip begun do dance a bit on its melted balls. I did use flux and I used it a lot, and it did its job. I reflowed both chips. Since this is a leaded solder that melts at 183 deg. C, you need to use a bit lower temperature, compared to normal lead-free stuff we do nowadays.
Now I tested it, and it works! L2 cache detected!
Just put it into ultrasonic to clean the flux residue, and put everything back together.
