A MacMini Gets Roasted

 A MacMini Gets Roasted

// Do not flip, Roast at 375F

    Not every computer has to be vintage here right? Well, whatever. Here is one of my latest acquisitions. From a lot of computers I received from someone on the 68KMLA forums for a trade of a PowerBook Duo 230 and PowerBook G4, I received 2 Two Page Displays, The video cards for said displays, 2 Quicksilver G4s, a Mac SE,

a Mac Classic, a Studio display, a projector, and this 2011 MacMini. Yes, I understand it's not vintage, however I still had to repair this. Whenever I tried booting the mini, it would hit a white screen and stop. This is actually a common point of failure on this generation of MacMini.

    The MacMini was built with poor quality solder on the Radeon Models. When the device heated up the chip would crack the solder right off of the board. The reason why the one I got as given away free. However I am stubborn and was already looking for one to replace my aging 2007 iMac. It also just so happened my PSU in my windows machine blew out. 

    

    To start, disassembly was necessary. You can't stick plastic into an oven ( if only my mother knew that one Thanksgiving, when she accidentally melted a serving tray not realizing it wasn't a cookie sheet). Anyway after about an hour and some cursing the MacMini was out of it's case with all the melty bits removed. I was kinda worried about what I was going to do, however I have done worse to fix a computer, soooooo. I went through with the solution

    

    Yes, You are seeing that right. The board went into the oven. I spent hours of research to come to this conclusion. The common failure on these is cracked solder on the BGA of the video chip. So there are two options, remove and reball the video chip. A feat I m not ready to do nor have the money to afford the equipment for SMD work. Option 2, reflow the existing solder. This was the easier and affordable route. After scouring forums and the deepest corners of the internet, I found the common time for baking being 7 mins @ 370F.   

    After some reassembly, the device went through a couple boot loops, but that quickly went away and finally I saw a screen! So baking the MacMini worked! I quickly loaded macOS High Sierra, the latest version this one can run. I know I could use a patcher to update higher, however Metal support breaks compatibility with the AMD GPU and greatly affects the performance. So it's working, for now...

    So, why for now? Well the solder used to construct this generation of MacMini is of poor quality. Well that and the chip generates so much heat it cracks that cheap solder, breaking connections on the board, causing no picture. Most people report about 3 months of use before the device fails again. The only way to be sure is to remove the solder and reball the chip and I personally don't have the money, experience, or time to do so. In the mean time I am going to use this Mac as much as I can before it inevitably breaks again. To hopefully extend it's life I have Mac Fan Control cooling the system based on the GPU die sensor and have my room air conditioned. My fingers are crossed!

    On to the next project, till next time,

~Ian L.

A Flea Market Toshiba Satellite 1605CDS

Flea Market Find: Toshiba Satellite

// I don't have a problem right?

    Back in June I was walking around the local flea market since it had opened back up during NJ's first wave of reopenings for the Pandemic. While browsing I saw this lonely Toshiba Satellite sitting on the edge of a table. I asked the seller about it and managed to talk him down to 15 dollars. Since it came with a charger I plugged it in and to my surprise it turned right on! Sadly though it was a passive matrix display. Oh well, I had already had much luck with the Macs so I was due for a set back. Like how the Hard Drive in this laptop was completely dead.

    All was not lost though! With the laptop fully disassembled I could easily get access

 to the sour drive and replace it bringing the system back to life. 

    With the old failed HDD out, all that was left to do was to install the OS onto a spare

drive I had lying around just for a system find like this. And what better choice than

Windows 98SE of course! Finally I got a little picture of it next to it's older brother. 

Hopefully I'll get around to a proper review....

    I'm going to be totally honest here. I didn't take many picture or notes of this project. It was just some, low effort, quickly thrown together article from back in June just after the Mac SE. I meant to update it, but life just happened. I figured I want top put all content I create out regardless of time or success. I managed to get a 9-5 job at a Managed Service Provider and that has taken up a majority of my free time. I will try to get another post out in August hopefully. I do have a couple projects that I have to get done! Like a Mac Plus that I just picked up and recapped!

Or maybe this Mac Mini I stuck in the the oven to get working again!

'Till next time,

Ian L.