My 1st Attempt at Fixing an Apple MacBook Pro A1278 from eBay

[@Mymatevince]

Spoiler Saver & Riddle Q: 2 women called Wanda and Whoppi catch 2 fish in 2 minutes. At this rate, how many women could catch 500 fish in 500 minutes?

[@StezStixFix]

I reckon Wanda and Whoppi can catch those 500 fish themselves in 500 minutes. If Wendy or Wynona helped them, it wouldn't take as long 😉

[@paulfox89]

Just one, Whoppi Goldfish used a massive net while a fish called Wanda went off to make some sandwiches.

[@AcornElectron]

Still 2?

[@BuGGzLoVeRsTech]

Thank you👍👍

[@badhabitz93]

I have a working board for that if you're interested?

[@SamzAsylum]

The capacitor the blew off (13:48) had the positive side closest to the burned chip. If you look at 18:14 the pad isn't bridged until you added the solder to remove the rest of the burned chip. At 19:13 you can see there are a lot of spots bridged together. Not sure how detrimental that may or may not have been, but it's worth noting.

[@LaitinenVeeti]

That! I HOPE Vince will see this comment!!!

[@luke6040]

This!

[@paulyb_tech]

Hi Vince, I have a 2012 motherboard that has water damage. It was removed from a chassis and I replaced it with a working one. If you want the water damaged motherboard for spares or to try and make one good board from 2 non working ones, then let me know. I think a revisit on this would be interesting as I try to keep old Macs running as long as they can, just not to component level repair any more, but I love watching you work your way through the problems.

[@StezStixFix]

Loving the Ashens style sofa shot towards the end! 😁 This one was really interesting. I'm sure we'll see that board again in a few months time, once you've mastered them! 👍

[@TechGorilla1987]

I vote to send the old board to Louis Rossmann for a colab video. You've earned it.

[@nasreddinemassib8091]

i confirm that luis could tell him exactly where the fault is.

[@sumplais]

I think it would be more entertaining to do a collaboration with Sorin. It may be 1000 times more dodgy, but it would also be educational.

[@khanv1ct244]

Just about the only channel I will watch 30min+ videos that isn't a podcast.

[@kiphakes]

Wowza - that's grim! When you said 'I'm gonna take it outside..' I immediately thought you'd follow it up with 'and put it in the bin'

[@shevshep]

Great Joke about the sponsor. For a moment I thought you had reached the level of TronicsFix. Love your Trying to Fix videos please keep them coming.

[@user-sv7cb6so1d]

I Applaud your attempts to repair it sir, you have more balls than most.

[@martinda7446]

Glad you mentioned the (also) wonderful Louis Rossmann. Right to repair. 😺 I love watching these... Your daughter will love that. Any old i7 with 8gigs and a whopping 1Tbyte drive will be excellent.

[@stevenhoneyman]

I’d love to see Louis Rossmann do a reaction vid for this! And I’m only 15 mins in so far

[@ReeceM-he4he]

That would be so good

[@GenBumbleBee]

@Isabel Peralta no, just buy used. or get it free like i did with my crapbook with the crapkeybored

[@TheDavidskinner]

I think Rossmann would be happy he's giving it a go.

[@Mashamazzi]

@@TheDavidskinner wouldn't he know it's worthless to try once Vince mentioned motherboard failure?

[@TechUniversity1]

@Louis Rossmann

[@Thealienbreed]

Still running my macbook pro A1278, 10 years later, great with an SSD. These still go for £300-£400 for a mint one! Great video Vince. One of the last fully upgradable macbooks :(

[@arghjayem]

A MacBook from the days when you could relatively easily get inside them and upgrade parts. I have a MacBook from the same year that is still going strong thanks to being able to get in and replace the battery/hard drive/ram etc...

[@aittam2851]

34:15 the fan spins like that because it doesn't have the temperature sensor wich is located on the trackpad cable!

[@jdriver2308]

wrong. its because hes running it without a battery

[@kaydenbloomfield7388]

@@jdriver2308 wrong

[@chronic_hemphog]

@@jdriver2308 wrong lmao, im watching this on my 15" 2012 MBP with no battery (pulled it out as it was pretty dead and barely lasted 10 mins at over 2000 cycles when i had to reflow the gpu)

[@AngaarUriakhil]

Vince , congrats on the fix. that first board was beyond saving. You should consider getting 2x4gb sticks instead of the single 8gb as it will let you use dual channel mode which is much better.

[@jasedobson2793]

I was going to comment on this to Vince also.I guess he was just using what he had available, But you are correct any computer will run faster in dual channel mode-makes a lot more improvement when pc has onboard gpu or apu beacause that shares the memory too.

[@1up_Gaming]

I've had / have an A1286, the amount of times I have pulled the PCB out, heated it and stuck new thermal paste in must be in double digits by now, it works for a month or so, then it needs doing again. It's the GPU that causes the problems on these older ones.

[@joshualockett6912]

I think dosdude1 made a program which disables the GPU and uses the standard intel integrated graphics, could be worth checking out.

[@1up_Gaming]

@@joshualockett6912 I’ve heated it one too many times I think, it won’t even power on anymore, got a feeling it’ll be heading to Vince in my next care package ;)

[@GB.Gaming66]

Havent watched you in ages, still going strong and growing, incredible

[@abirbose3101]

Dear Vince ..my 8 years old son , Anish is a big fan of your vlogs ...he imitates and tries to vlog like you ...he wishes to meet you some day

[@antiquetelephones]

I am hooked on your videos. I like the fact that you don’t have the 20 minutes that everyone else does. You go from start to finish and they are great. I did some research on the MacBook Pro 2011 and according to Luke Miani this models graphics was terrible and always fails. He said Apple would replace them over and over for up to 4 years after purchase. The same crappy graphics were re fitted. They always die apparently. He recons the mid 2012 ones were bulletproof and are one of the best ever made. So maybe head for them on the next project. Thanks for fantastic viewing.

[@linedancer111]

Great Vince, yes let’s have more Apple repair products, please.

[@Box223]

As soon as I saw the title, I knew that this was showing as a good video. That could mean that it's terrible though, but I need to watch to find out. Generally, your videos are great.

[@keithwhisman]

The problem with that MacBook Pro was a burnt out main board so by replacing an unrepairable main board is a repair. You kept that machine from becoming complete ewaste. Great job!

[@daggihohlweg7540]

Love this video!!!! Immediately when I saw the fan full of dust 2 min into your video plus you feeling the heat manually over the motherboard i knew what to do. Open it all up and undust!!!! Which i regularly do on my DELL XPS 1700 PC. On a large PC tower it is easier to do. I use carefully my 1700 watt hoover on suction cup with an ordinary 1cm broad stiff art brush. Usually i undust regularly all 6-12 months as my home too is very dusty, the air fans sucks the dust in from the room. I notice that then too the PC slows down in the RAM memory which i take for a clinical symptom. So it really pays off to here'n there to undust the item inside as dust clogging up memory cards + fan(s) leads to overheating + slowing down which is then no joy on a gamer's PC. You made a good price here, imho. 🕵💖💖💖 apols 7 min in you may want to get a new motherboard!!!! Darn, so not a good bargain. That'll be me. Hence I prefer (Dell) tower PCs which are easier to maintain, upgrade or replacing burnt out components which is cheaper than on a notepad. Sorry for your losses.😭😭😭

[@TrueBrit1]

48 minutes long?? I haven't got 48 minutes to waste sitting here watching this. And yet I've just made a coffee, got some chocolate teacakes and just about to press play. Cheers Vince, cheers very much.........................

[@artbylou5838]

Vince you are right with the CPU being fulty because the device whould not show anything on the screen but the fan whould still kick in 👍

[@povilasstaniulis9484]

Congrats on your fix. When I saw what that blown component was connected to in boardview (CPU VCCIO power rail), I pretty much knew the CPU would be toast. I suspect that all the dust and liquid damage did indeed play their part somehow. You got lucky again, this time finding a "donor" board which was actually fine, that system likely just had a bad screen.

[@cambike]

You should run Opencore Legacy Patcher and upgrade OS. These MacBooks like dual ram so always use both slots.

[@EpicBunty]

whats that?

[@cambike]

@@EpicBunty it’s a program which allows you to boot non native OS to a Mac system. Macs also like to use both slots of ram at same time, makes them quicker

[@EpicBunty]

non-native OS ? like an OS which is not MacOS on a macbook ? hmm.... didn't know that was possible with macs...@@cambike thx.

[@Dawid_The_Man]

sadly... i hve the same one but it is a 2009 one? idk what it is but mine is a core 2 duo not i7

[@skonkfactory]

Vcc is the "voltage for the collector" in TTL circuits, it should really be called Vdd ("voltage for the drain") in CMOS circuits like modern computers. It's a power rail. Modern CPUs run on several voltages, VCCIO will be the voltage for the IO circuits in the CPU and there's usually a different (variable voltage) one called Vcore that drives the actual CPU core.

[@skonkfactory]

Injecting power into a board with a complicated processor/southbridge like this is very questionable as a tactic- you'll be violating the power sequencing requirements of the system and moreover, Vcore can easily draw fifty or sixty amps at 1.1 or 1.0 volts.

[@skonkfactory]

That's just how these Intel processors roll, I'm afraid.

[@skonkfactory]

I'd really recommend that you keep that board for spares, those boards are eight or ten layers and if the top layer is carbonized there's probably carbon further inside too.

[@philmorton4590]

Yeah as soon as i saw the board was bubbled I knew it was probably dead, unless it's thunder bolt or one of the usb ports you can bypass and still get the laptop to post.

[@tabbycat406]

MacBooks have always been a mess. They’re frequently damaged past repair while sold. I worked with Apple Macs for about 2-3 years and iPhones for 3.5 years so far, try to get these devices from recycling centers, or independent sellers. All business sellers know what they’re doing with Apple products. Been subscribed to you since 2017 since the how tos, thanks for the entertainment.

[@MichaelBritt23]

I know you wanted to fix the board, but to have a nice working Macbook Pro for a few hundred dollars is still impressive. Your daughter will be happy for sure.

[@doginbuns849]

MineSweeper stfu

[@DanPottas]

Can't wait to see more macs on this channel vince can't wait

[@josephgittos3787]

I gave my wife my older 2012 MacBook Pro when she bought me the new MacBook Pro and she loves it for her craft work. Felt guilty due to the MacBook kept shutting down or the screen would go blank. The omitting blank screen was a loose lcd connection had to use some tape(no not wrapping tape lol) to hold it in place and the shut down was due to poor thermal paste, and thats the beauty of these old laptops, easy to clean inside fan and do other work on.

[@nickwhite4632]

You don't mind a challenge do you Vince? Great stuff as always.

[@Jdbye]

You don't have to repair traces on the inside layers, schematics are available so you can actually see exactly which traces go over that burnt area and test the continuity between the 2 most easily accessible points for either side of each trace. and repair them externally with wire. The hard part is just making sense of the schematics and figuring out what you're looking at. Louis Rossmann repairs a lot of water damage and maybe he has videos where he has dealt with similar damage. Very useful information on that channel.

[@paincreatesfame]

My brother still uses his early 2012 MacBook Pro. Yeah, it’s a little slow, but it’s never had any faults and still does everything he wants it to do! Wish their modern MacBooks were more like these ones.

[@ingog.8424]

"That's it for today and as always, I hope you've learned something!"

[@DamdamF]

Bye now!

[@joshm264]

"see you all in the next video, bye now" *pets blackberry or clinton*

[@stanhristov]

That’s Louis Rossmann video ending line 🤣 he is the MacBook expert no one is as good as Louis.

[@cheapasstech]

Definitely a mosfet!

[@cheapasstech]

You have a short to ground, possibly somewhere in the capacitor banks - probably blew the mosfet in the process - power injection and FLIR or louis’s auwie test is a fault finding solution - be careful around CPU vcore- you don’t want to push 5v into the cpu - those lines that appear on your boardview are the traces connecting the components - you can see where everything goes

[@FennecTECH]

You should ask ifxit for a sponsor. Your content is **EXACTLY** the type of content ifixit would love to sponsor. Its clear you love the product.

[@squallneko5004]

Great job in getting the Mac Book to work again even though it was a motherboard swap.

[@thomasesr]

At 20:22 that flacking off is the fiberglass from the pcb substrate. You should have tried to do a continuity test on the exposed layer copper pour to see if it is a power or ground plane that you can use.

[@Fifury161]

44:15 - reminds me of the Ship of Theseus, great video all the same!

[@blagzster6255]

When your measuring coils that connect to cpus, Vram and such you should switch your meter off beep mode and measure the value in ohms. Sometimes it can be as low as 10-30 ohms which is perfectly normal but this will beep your meter.

[@Mecano.r]

Agree with you, around cpus you may read very low resistance and that's kind of normal.

[@j.lietka9406]

I found an A1502 that someone tossed out. Looks like it had some water damage. Still want to troubleshoot & repair it if I can. Thanks for the good video. I think you paid a good, fair price for it. Dang, that's some serious dirt on the logic board!

[@Dejan357]

"I can smell smoke..." as you open it, and something that sounds an awful like a fire alarm in the background :D

[@vbogoev]

I was waiting for the cap to explode for the whole time. My eyes was focused there... :D Lesson learned.

[@AcornElectron]

Invading Louis Rossmann? 🤣 Keep up the good work fella and keep fighting the good fight for repairs!

[@sdjmchattie]

The schematic said the shorted pin was CPUVCC. VCC is voltage supply and CPU is the processor. So I’m pretty confident in your original assessment that the CPU will have received 12v and that is definitely going to cook the CPU in a split second. The die on a CPU is using only a few nanometres for the traces and that much voltage will destroy them like a mini firework display.

[@chrisd5016]

I have the 2011 MacBook Pro still in use, upgraded with SSD and 16 Gig of RAM. When I remember right I also changed the WiFi module to a better one. Even the battery holds up after 10 years, my previous Acer Notebook had three batteries in only 5 years. Sad that the newer Apple Laptops can not be upgraded….

[@DaveRepairs]

A perfect example why the #rightforrepair movement is important. Fixing (with or without schematics) and getting your stuff working again.

[@djscratchmasterdee]

You should compare the mesurements to both boards in ohms, you will find that vcio in many boards have low reading as this goes to the CPU, cpu have low readings in ohms in all its supply, meters will show as a short but its not, its low resistance not a dead 0 ohm short, replace that fet and see if it turns on, fan spins cos trackpad was unplugged on the other board, speaker and mic was trapped becouse you not removed the cable holders on the hinge. These boards are very complex and enable signals very much rely on other signals. My first time I was lost in repairing macbooks, theres a hell of a lot to learn and all models are different in some way, some are tricky and some even look the same but they are not. If you are thinking of going into this direction, then there is a hell of a lot to catch up on and some issues cannot be fixed by just looking at components, knowledge of how each model motherboard works is neeeded in macbooks, taken me years and still learning new stuff all the time, and seeming its not worth it as there's a lot doing this from home now watching Loiuse Ross and I started back in 2010, prices of re-selling these macbooks are going down all the time on ebay and im struggling to be competive, way to many for sale now and ive spent a fortune on equipment and a BGA machine. Electronics is seeming to be less and less profitable and they are getting cheaper to buy new anyway, for fun its all good, but for a living, NOPE!!. Been watching your channel for a while now, very interesting and fun on showing items ive never opened before, nice work. :)

[@FawkesUniverse]

Good for you, its any interesting jump into DYI fixing it your self, MACs are a mix of easy and nerve wrecking to work on because of some of those cables and connections but tend to get boring to work on quite fast because of lack of innovation.

[@giron19611]

I love how you post about every day

[@FlavioCasimiro.dancer1983]

Today I had a blown component that burned through the layers. I had to excavate the layers until the short is gone. Your didn't excavate enough. Regards from Portugal

[@wsketchy]

In fairness, 12V to the CPU is 12V to the CPU. Clearing up the short won't fix the fact that it's already dead.

[@FlavioCasimiro.dancer1983]

@@wsketchy i understand. My short was on the main power rail. That seems to be in a secondary power rail.

[@ianditch]

The top ram slot is the bottom slot once the lappy has been turned the right way around

[@shyhrk]

You really get me there with the iFixit sponsorship lol

[@novakayne9373]

dunno if you'll read this but a nice trick i learnt from an aussie repair guy on tik tok is spray the board with IPA (isopropyl) for "Hot-Failed" components and look at where it evaporates from first. he did it on the motherboard of an Iphone x max.... good for locating hot spots if you dont have an Infared heat camera

[@-PS5IsCool-]

Hey, you can replace the optical drive with a 2nd Hard Drive/SSD if your Daughter needs it, and you can use DosDude1 Mac OS Catalina patcher to bring you up to Mac OS Catalina, which is the 2nd recent Mac OS which should do the Macbook just fine.

[@petersakal582]

Hello, you don't need unplug whole speaker, easiest way is disassemble microphone from the body of the laptop. Speake stays on the motherboard pluged in. Much easier to take out board.

[@adamkehoe7405]

I've got one of these, and love seeing different people repair / fix them, so I know how to fix mine. *EDIT* - Worth looking on Louis Rossmann's site for blueprints to MacBook Pro A1278 models.

[@keithwhisman]

You have many options such as parallels to install Windows to run Windows apps in MacOS or you can use the bootcamp app to install Windows and dual boot. Great work on the MacBook.

[@CooChewGames]

Is still my day-to-day laptop with an SSD and 16GB of memory. Great machine.

[@Shundi12]

Vince has obviously been watching a lot of Louis Rossmann in lockdown :)

[@pols92]

That cap explode was a jump scare🤣🤣🤣

[@j.lietka9406]

The exploding Cap is probably something that would happen to me, too! There's a kind of putty (you may have a different name for it), green in color, that can be used to cover other components for heat protection. Thank you for the great video. The putty is called thermo gel. Try micro repairs ltd here on Y/T. Great fix!

[@caprisnowhill8663]

i have seen a few wideos when he change the main chip but he use a maching to heat and suck it right up

[@mjuhasz]

nice video as always. btw, you can also create bootable usb sticks for macOS and install macOS from there. Just hit CMD while booting up to get into the boot menu.

[@Kofi_Mensahs_BurnerAccount]

I've got Catalina on my 2012 MacBook Pro. Great little machine.

[@DJKaYLaR]

I think your right that its 12 volts gone to cpu because in the boardview its showed cpu vcc which to me sounds like cpu V core controller

[@donniehdea9281]

One last think, think multi layer trace damage started happening frequently on later models, seems more likely that a component on that is responsible for the short rather than a bad trace

[@PenguinYayOne]

I think you should add some kapton tape while using the hot-air gun to seal the other component from the heat.

[@bobnot.]

Before i even watch this. good luck these things are not designed to be repaired the pain and sorrow awaits but i will watch now with eagerness.

[@bobnot.]

Nothing but 808s and heartbreaks to be found inside those things even removing a faulty chip is likely to destroy the boards layers. Look forward to seeing you try another though.

[@donniehdea9281]

Also not sure if this is still the case but you might need to enable trim else you will slowly ware down the SSD

[@SolomonSword]

can you fix the faulty spacebar? that wiggles on sides and doesn't count as space on sides

[@johanlaurasia]

Bet the best part of this fix was giving that MacBook Pro to your daughter, and despite being a 9 yr old Mac, Macs hold up really well with age. With the SSD upgrade and the extra RAM (and running the newest software that will load on that machine, High Sierra, it's only 3 version behind what's current, and as you could see, it runs like a top, and will for several more years until the software becomes too outdated. Would have like to see the look on your daughter's face when you gave it to her though :)

[@JoeyDoesTech]

Really enjoyed watching this one Vince! Even though you purchased another board and an SSD, still a great price for the specs you get 😁😁

[@Emm1tt]

Hi vince my husband loves to watch your videos and keeps on saying that he needs this and that when watching your videos so would it be possible to get links to the equipment that you use so I can get them for him for his birthday thank you.

[@constantinjitariu1439]

I think water got under the CPU or the hub controller and mixed with the dust and become conductive try to reflow both the cpu and the hub controller and see if the problem disapeares

[@VintageSpeedwerks]

My fav MacBook and ssd it works great. Louis Rossman has great vids on motherboard repair.

[@itsmesb4399]

I use one of these every day for work. I haven;t watched the video at the time of writing this video but I feel like it is going to have a bad sata cable. I had to replace mine last week. EDIT I was clearly very wrong. I have never seen such a badly damaged board in such a good shell. The shell of mine is destroyed but the logic board has never died.

[@tammi8808]

I guess its the missing capasitor and the missing mosfet. I dont know how much it will compare but i had the same issue with a 780ti. Blown mosfet and had a full short and the gpu. Took it off (way rougher than you lol) and the short was still there. I took an other mosfet from an other dead card and the short was gone. But the card died again in minutes at the same point. Keep it for spares. Connectors etc.

[@rsuryase]

Thanks for filling the void Louis left behind since he doesn't do much repair videos anymore due to lack of views.

[@borisarchby2]

Wow, can’t miss this, just started and 48 mins to go and possible reflows :)

[@SourdoughDan]

I love these long videos they are the most interesting ones

[@andrewmiller2868]

I've only got to 5m 22sec into the video and I'm wondering if the Processor and GPU heat sink need taking off, cleaning up and thermal paste reapplied plus cleaning the vents and removing dust build up? I'm fully prepared to be wrong but that's my thought at this point.

[@thomasesr]

At 26:20 VCC is a power rail, stands for Voltage at the Common Collector. CPU_VCC is the CPU power rail.

[@Random_4400]

I really enjoy these!

[@Plan-C]

Vince. However it works out, you are awesome and keep it up.

[@philmorton4590]

You need Louis rossmann, he says to check the major power rails one at a time using the board view software to isolate the problem in a down flow way from primary power to secondary signal circuits, the continuity test won't work it's too complex a machine

[@benNdaKen]

the fan ramped up on fullspeed because the SMC couldn't talk to some sensors (Trackpad) and then the smc throttles the cpu and gpu down and ramps up the fan to full speed

[@andrasszabo7386]

I have the same laptop. I have put an SSD into it and it is super fast with 8 GB RAM.And it plays KZbin on max resolution like a charm.

[@borisdg]

I knew from the very beginning that cap will go BOOM. NorthridgeFIx showed such some weeks ago on videocard.

[@DaMu24]

Why did the cap explode? Was it Vince's fault, residual power still in the board? I don't think he discharged the board after he disconnected the power.

[@borisdg]

@@DaMu24 From the heat of the heatgun.

[@LoveToGameOfCourse]

Vince is my hero

[@ianetalbot]

PPBUS G3 HOT. That's the only thing I remember from The Louis Rossmann repair vids.

[@NorthCamZ]

Same haha, cant forget that

[@FazeWrite114]

oh wow your first MacBook Repair that awesome you can get good experiences.

[@retrotech11]

What would be awesome is a colab with Louis to see if he can work his magic on this board.

[@0prisonpriest0]

The schematic said vcc (voltage) and CPU. This would suggest that said component provides voltage to the CPU

[@Logicalx]

Omg........ This is so strange. I generally was going to ask you to look in to my spare A1278 due to the misses spilling a drink on hers! I stripped it down but have no tools or knowledge to do motherboard stuff. I wish I asked last week now!!!!

[@luffymile]

I think you can make it work, if you check your solder connections where the the little blown chip is. You have solder that bridges the sixth and fifth pin of that chip and one pad of the capacitor that gone BUM Try that and maybe it will work. All in all great video, keep up the good work.Sorry for bad english

[@vaualbus]

The board is fucked and the short is in the internal layers as you can see in the baord virew there was a via under the chip and that goes directly where Vince have reached the inner layer.

[@keithwhisman]

Glad to see you taking on Apple products. I still like Windows but I love my apple echo system and in the last ten years have spent so little time in Windows compared to my Mac use. You should give the apple ecosystem a try you won’t want to go back to Windows and Android.

[@BloodAsp]

Linux gang here, join the FOSS ethos!

[@simonupton-millard]

Just as long as he keeps away from moden apple rubish the early 2010's is when the started going down hill fast

[@keithwhisman]

@@simonupton-millard it’s hardly rubbish though my 2019 MBP runs Windows really good.

[@keithwhisman]

@@BloodAsp I used to play around with Red Hat Linux and Suse and then fell in love with Fedora Linux and then married Ubuntu Linux. Haven’t played with it in a while I screwed around and met a woman that married me and had kids that act like stalkers they follow me all ever the place and always want money. So I really haven’t had time to play around with anything in 16 years now outside of tinkering with Android phones amd then sold my soul to the devil and went all in to the apple echo system.

[@simonupton-millard]

@@keithwhisman from a fixing point of view they are, solderd SSD and ram, bad keyboards just see Lewis Rossmann's channel on them

[@mattrichardson4351]

Heads up when you use a toothbrush on MacBooks .. they can pop little resistors and even other little ICs .. so grab a ultrasonic cleaner if you can if not a lighter non static brush