Macbook Pro so dead it's not even a Sad Mac

[kylos]

Wait, they don't do that any more, do they?

There is a happy ending, but I've not seen the particular situation before and
wanted to see if anybody had any input on this.

Anyway, I have a Rev. A 1.83 Ghz Macbook Pro that went belly up tonight. After suffering a deep coma where it wouldn't come out of sleep (though the sleep light would change state when opened or closed), I forced it to shut down. When I tried to start it up, it only got as far as running the cd loading mechanism, no screen, no chime, with the sleep light very dimly lit.

I'd only ever had it fail to even attempt booting once before when it was brand new, but all that had been necessary that time was to reset the SMC. But tonight, neither ⌘-⌥ p-r, nor that technique had any effect.

Then I tried pulling the ram. After restarting it with no ram, the sleep indicator flashed rapidly and brightly, which I seem to recall having been the no-ram indicator, though I didn't find any indication on Apple's site about this. Once I reinserted the ram, it booted up.

So I'm wondering if anybody has experienced such a scenario, or if you might know what reseating the ram does that is not handled by an SMC reset. Thanks.

 

[QuarterSwede]

Could it be a bad RAM module? I had one once that would do that, work sometimes and others not. RMA'd it and the new RAM works perfectly.

 

[kylos]

That's been in the back of my mind, but I've not noticed any problems with the ram before (other than potentially the last time I performed an SMC reset 1 1/2 years ago). It's two 1GB sticks of Kingston ram. Also, the ram was securely seated when I opened it up tonight.

It could be the ram, but I've had occasional sleep issues where it won't wake from sleep before, so past history makes me think pmu.

It comes to mind that this machine has also had occasions where the wireless card would not be detected. Resetting the pram usually resolved that. I'm wondering if the logic board isn't to blame.

 

[QuarterSwede]

That's been in the back of my mind, but I've not noticed any problems with the ram before (other than potentially the last time I performed an SMC reset 1 1/2 years ago). It's two 1GB sticks of Kingston ram. Also, the ram was securely seated when I opened it up tonight.

It could be the ram, but I've had occasional sleep issues where it won't wake from sleep before, so past history makes me think pmu.

It comes to mind that this machine has also had occasions where the wireless card would not be detected. Resetting the pram usually resolved that. I'm wondering if the logic board isn't to blame.

Maybe it's time to take it to an Genius?

 

[kylos]

Maybe it's time to take it to an Genius?

Rev. A Intel Mac? Yeah, I should have gotten the extended applecare, but I'm a cheap college student, so no luck there. Overall, it hasn't been a bad machine, just a few things that make me nervous for the future.

 

[MACDRIVE]

Being that it's a Rev. A, I'm surprised you still have it.