johnsawyercjs

Any idea why the thermal paste on the iMac video card's two RAM chips is the white spongy type, instead of something like...

My niece's iMac 7,1 (Mid 2007, 20 Inch, 2.0 GHz) is crashing and freezing, usually soon or immediately after startup....

I've already asked this in the http://meta.ifixit.com/ section, but in case more, or other, people check in here at the...

Remove the battery, then squirt some rubbing alcohol underneath the dial (wet a cotton ball with the alcohol, then squeeze it out inbetween the dial and the camera body, or use a syringe), or use a spray can of electronic contact cleaner. To make sure the rubbing alcohol gets in there, you can widen the gap between the dial and the camera body by inserting a fingernail inbetween, but don’t overdo it or else something might break. Once you’ve got the rubbing alcohol in there, rotate the dial a bunch of times to work the alcohol inbetween the metal contacts inside the dial mechanism to clean off what seems to be oxidation on those contacts. Apparently the contacts oxidize quickly—maybe the manufacturer “forgot” to apply a gold surface layer to them. After you squirt in the rubbing alcohol, wait about fifteen minutes before you reinstall the battery, to let the water in the rubbing alcohol evaporate, or else it might short out some electronics inside the camera and fry it. Preferably use 91% rubbing alcohol...

If the symptom is that the screen goes dark shortly after the desktop appears, press the 'increase display brightness' key to see if the issue is simply that the software that controls the backlight has gotten scrambled and is setting brightness to minimum. If this brings back the display brightness, it will probably be OK through subsequent reboots.

Another thing that can cause this is if the air filters haven't been cleaned in a long time. If they're clogged, the engine might not be getting enough air. Either clean or replace them.

Check the air filters. If they're clogged, the engine might not be getting enough air. Either clean or replace them.

The term "Penryn" refers to the processor/CPU chip, and the term "Santa Rosa" refers to the logic board chipset (several other chips besides the CPU). The Everymac website won't tell you what logic board chipset a Macbook contains, and it also doesn't use the references Penryn, Santa Rosa, etc. A better source for some of these terms is the utility "Mactracker", which can be downloaded from most Mac software websites. The processor in the Early 2009 Macbook is a Penryn (P7350), but the logic board chipset is not the Santa Rosa, which supports only an 800 MHz system bus--since the system bus in the Early 2009 Macbook is 1066 MHz, the logic board chipset is the Montevina.

Fooled me. I panicked and downloaded the whole site with SiteSucker and DeepVacuum, with only partial success.

Carlos, in case you see this, I'm curious how this CPU swap went. My thinking is that if the heatsinks aren't dramatically different in size, you're probably fine with the heatsink that came with your slower CPU, and if/when the faster CPU gets hotter, the iMac's fans will just run longer. Of course, hearing the fans more often might get annoying, if you're the type that's bothered by that.

Thomas, I don't know if you got this problem resolved yet, but in case you haven't, maybe this will help: I'm currently trying to diagnose an Intel-based iMac, Mid-2007 2.0 GHz model, which is currently playing the same symptoms as yours is/was--the same error beep sequence, kernel panics, runs sometimes, etc. I managed to get the Mac to run long enough to allow me to install a thorough memory testing utility called Memtest onto its hard drive, which you run in single-user mode at startup. It kept displaying RAM errors, even with known-good RAM boards, so I felt it was likely there was a problem with the RAM-controlling circuitry on the logic board. So, I ordered a replacement logic board. That didn't help. Swapping logic boards with the supplier requires that you first remove the CPU and GPU chips before sending the supposedly bad logic board to them, and installing these chips onto the replacement logic board, so the only remaining part from the Mac I'm working on, that's likely to be the cause of the...

Good point. No, the Non-Energy Star and Energy Star cables aren’t interchangeable, due to the different pinout you describe.

DaR: this is usually a 2.5mm hex screw

Glenn: you might get some extra speed from those SATA drives if you install a SATA card into one of the PCI slots (if you can still find one), and connect the drives to it. I ran a couple SATA drives in my MDD this way for years, before the MDD’s power supply burned out.

LTG: The jumper settings on the internal drives make no difference for any external drives. The jumper settings are to distinguish between Master and Slave drives when there are two drives connected to one ATA/IDE ribbon cable. Since the ATA/IDE drive ribbon cables are purely internal to the Mac, they have no connection to any external drives.

Jeanne Chabot posted a link above, to a video of a fix: remove the battery, then squirt some rubbing alcohol underneath the dial (wet a cotton ball with the alcohol, then squeeze it out inbetween the dial and the camera body, or use a syringe), or use a spray can of electronic contact cleaner. Then rotate the dial a bunch of times to work the alcohol inbetween the metal contacts inside the dial mechanism to clean off what seems to be oxidation on those contacts. Apparently the contacts oxidize quickly—maybe the manufacturer “forgot” to apply a gold surface layer. After you squirt in the rubbing alcohol, wait about fifteen minutes before you reinstall the battery, to let the water in the rubbing alcohol evaporate, or else it might short out some electronics inside the camera and fry it. Preferably use 91% rubbing alcohol instead of 70%, since 91% will introduce less water into the camera. This process works for many people, but not everyone; when it does work, it might be only temporary for some people.

Thanks. It took me a while to figure that out.

So it seems that the second speaker is a beefier version of the ear speaker at the top of the phone, shown above the display in step 5. If so, since this speaker is front-facing, and the speaker at the bottom is downward/side-facing, this might not give a normal stereo image, but it has the advantage of delivering sound along two planes instead of one, so that whether you're facing the front of the phone or its lower end, you'll still have one speaker pointed towards you, which should deliver better clarity than having neither speaker pointed towards you. Of course, if you have the phone sitting on a table and you're facing one of the two sides or the top end of the phone, you won't have a speaker pointed towards you, but you'll still have the front-facing speaker emitting sound up and out, and sound reflecting upward off the table from the bottom-facing speaker, so there will still be good diffusion of sound, and some stereo separation.

How does Apple get stereo from only one speaker? Or does the photo of the speaker in step 19 show a divider in the middle that "separates" two small speakers? If so, how does one call this "stereo" when the two speakers are so close together? And why do the diagrams on Apple's website show lines pointing to the two grilles on the bottom of the phone, with the legend describing them as "Stereo speakers", when the iFixit teardown shows that the left-hand grille doesn't actually have a speaker behind it, contrary to Apple's diagram? And why do some of Apple's own diagrams point to a supposed second speaker towards the top of the phone, though the iFixit teardown found no such speaker there?

Fast battery drain problems might be due to a corrupted power manager circuit on the logic board. To reset it, remove the battery, press the power button for about 5-10 seconds, then reinstall the battery. I know the problem might have been partly due to removing the battery in the first place, but this is the procedure for resetting what might have gone wrong. It might also help to do a PRAM reset, by holding down Command-Option-P-R at power (not just from a restart), and let the Macbook chime twice after its initial powerup chime.