HOWTO: fix a G3 iBook with a “bad logic board” for 26 cents
I’ve had a 12″ G3 iBook since ~2002, and I’ve really liked it. Of course me being me, I’ve run Linux on it for almost the whole time, even running a dual boot of OS X and Gentoo Linux back when I used this puppy on the job. The only thing I (and likely millions of other customers) didn’t like is the systemic “logic board” failure. Yes, the logic board, which is just Apple’s name for the motherboard, would fail, prompting a call to Apple, followed by about a one week turnaround on the repair, which was all covered under warranty. The only thing is, this only reset your iBook back to the original state, after using the iBook for so long, this issue would occur again, leaving you with a shinny door stop. Mine had come and gone 3 times, so this final failure fell far outside of even the extended program to cover the fix. Fast forward to last week, I had resigned from my gig at Mastercard, thus turning in my work laptop, leaving with no convent way (I can go downstairs to my desktop, but…) to work on a system and check my email. I got the iBook out of the drawer and started looking around for info online to solve this from a DIY angle. One interesting way was to burn a tea light directly on the video chip, eventually making it hot enough to resolder itself to the board! I was going to do this, when I found a lower tech, less risky, fix, with perhaps even more permanent results. You open the iBook, put some sort of shim just underneath the video chip forcing it to stay in contact with the logic board; that’s it! There are plenty of sites out there now talking about this, but this one seemed the most direct. So I opened the iBook, found that little square you see in the pictures, duct taped a penny topped by a quarter to the metal, and all of a sudden had a revived laptop. It’s fun when things are so easy. Oh, and Ubuntu Linux Feisty (7.04) for the PowerPC runs very, nicely on the iBook! So much more power saving features, and the promise of Gnash to cover all the flash sites makes it a great laptop.
I've been blogging since November 2001, with topics covering politics, geek interests, music, and the overall meaning of life. If there ever was an entry for me I would want it to say, "Mostly harmless". Thanks for stopping by, feel free to ask a question, start a conversation or 
June 28th, 2007 at 9:07 pm
[...] las indicaciones de ifixit. La segunda operación la hice después de que encontrará un post de un bato que reparó su ibook con dos monedas gringas. Fue entonces que me animé y le coloqué las monedas pegadas con tape negro. Explicación del [...]
July 2nd, 2007 at 1:07 pm
The 26 cents repair works!!
Thank you for the tip.
July 2nd, 2007 at 1:17 pm
Fantastic - very glad it worked for you as well. It seems like such a waste to have all these iBook’s out there with ‘broken’ logic boards just gathering dust, they’re still fine machines. I’ve been trolling eBay, but I haven’t seen any of them going for < $100 - would love to pick one up on the cheap and then go looking in my sofa for some spare change to shove in it!
October 10th, 2007 at 1:14 pm
[...] time for a new laptop, as I’ve detailed, I’ve ripped apart, inserted coins and duct-taped the old iBook back together again enough times, and it’s no longer viable. It’ll work [...]
April 24th, 2008 at 7:07 am
[...] http://fak3r.com/2007/05/29/howto-fix-a-g3-ibook-with-a-bad-logic-board-for-26-cents/ [...]
May 13th, 2008 at 2:11 pm
Think I’ll give this a try too…. Thanks for the idea.
May 15th, 2008 at 5:02 am
[...] latest failure left it dead for 6 months - until now. After some research online, I’ve revived it whttp://fak3r.com/2007/05/29/howto-fix-a-g3-ibook-with-a-bad-logic-board-for-26-cents/EnviroAire?? Duct Board - Air Handling SystemsEnviroAire?? Formaldehyde-free?? Fiber Glass duct [...]
August 7th, 2008 at 1:34 pm
You can also re flow the solider with a hot air gun. Usually refereed to as a Re-Work Gun. This is the tool that the service referb tech will do to fix the board again after that they mark it as a referb (and sell it as such).
This is not the only product that has this exact same problem. Red Ring of death and the ps3 failure is directly related to this exact same problem.
I have a bunch of “broken” routers that I have purchased off ebay that have this problem. A quick pass with the rework gun fixes it.
What you need to do is move the heat from the chip. This will fix the problem…permanent. Rigging a heat sink fixes it every time. Pay attention to airflow in your rigging. I had to do this with a IBM T30 to prevent the bad memory slot problem.
note: I have used heat shrink guns to do the same thing.. but I had to make a tip so I wouldn’t heat things I didn’t want to melt. (900-2300 degrees will ruin anything)
I have heard of people using toster ovens to reflow solider but I have never attempted doing this… but if you do a search on red ring of death you will find a fix by wrapping it with a towl…. that would make it hot enough for sure. .. but what else are you going to break in that process.
Hope this helps… Of course doing this is at your own risk.
August 15th, 2008 at 5:42 am
Ciekawa strona, trafilem tu przypadkowo, ale od dzis bede wpadal czesciej, pozdro