SMC Issue on MBP 13 - Hardware Troubleshooting Guide

[Cynic]

Does anybody have an idea what this error code is from apple hardware test?

4SNS/1/40000000:IBOR-9.166

Symptoms : laptop is fine, CPU does not clock above 800mhz.

Late 2011 MBP.

Fixed from water damage using info in this thread! Many thanks to all who have participated so far.

My assumption is this is a sensor. I've looked and temps are all okay. Battery is fine.

 

[Wickeido]

Hello,

can someone tell me what is the smd component with a dot in the middle? It's located near the LVDS connector. I've two logic boards, in one it reads continuity and in the other one 0.715nf. What's the correct value?

It's a 1278 2009 logic board, unibody.

Thank you very much!

 

[Dadioh]

Hello,

can someone tell me what is the smd component with a dot in the middle? It's located near the LVDS connector. I've two logic boards, in one it reads continuity and in the other one 0.715nf. What's the correct value?

It's a 1278 2009 logic board, unibody.

Thank you very much!

That is the fuse for the backlight. It should read zero ohms (or as close as your meter can read to zero ohms).

----------

Does anybody have an idea what this error code is from apple hardware test?

4SNS/1/40000000:IBOR-9.166

Symptoms : laptop is fine, CPU does not clock above 800mhz.

Late 2011 MBP.

Fixed from water damage using info in this thread! Many thanks to all who have participated so far.

My assumption is this is a sensor. I've looked and temps are all okay. Battery is fine.

I would suggest installing iStat menus and checking all the sensors. There are a LOT of sensors on the Macs and iStat should show you what they are reading. You could then compare to a known working system to see if any of them are out of spec.

 

[Cynic]

Thanks for the tip. I've installed istat. Unfortunately I don't have any good MacBooks to compare against! I've got the following values that look suspicious.

Battery Amperage is showing a negative value. Is this correct? -933mA under the battery section. It shows as 0.98A under the 'current' section though. It has another 'battery' entry under current that says 9.18A..?

CPU Vcore is showing 0.00A!!

Otherwise the values looks sensible. Clearly 0amps on Vcore is incorrect (I'm typing from the machine now!).

Anybody have any ideas? I'm at a loss with this one!

if Vcore sensor is poorly - anybody know where to find this?

Thanks

 

[Wickeido]

Thank you Dadioh for your answer.

I'm facing the following problem:

a1278 logic board, 820-2530 that won't start.

When the battery is not plugged in, when I connect the MagSafe the green light starts to blink. If the battery is connected, the Magasafe stays dark.

Without the battery, I get fluctuations all around the board, up to 16v, going up and down. The power gets beside the battery fuse, to the battery pins.

If I connect the battery, the power suddenly goes down on all the board, and the maximum I get is 10,6v everywhere. It stops fluctuating, the 10,6 are stable.

Could the battery block the power input if it's faulty? The logic board is able to power up without the battery connected?

I've bridged the 2 g3hot pads, but the computers never powers up.

I've the schematiocs of my board, but I'm having trouble following the components on the board. Are there any tips to do that?

Any help will be apretiated.

Thank you very much.

 

[vrodion]

Thank you Dadioh for your answer.

I'm facing the following problem:

a1278 logic board, 820-2530 that won't start.

When the battery is not plugged in, when I connect the MagSafe the green light starts to blink. If the battery is connected, the Magasafe stays dark.

Without the battery, I get fluctuations all around the board, up to 16v, going up and down. The power gets beside the battery fuse, to the battery pins.

If I connect the battery, the power suddenly goes down on all the board, and the maximum I get is 10,6v everywhere. It stops fluctuating, the 10,6 are stable.

Could the battery block the power input if it's faulty? The logic board is able to power up without the battery connected?

I've bridged the 2 g3hot pads, but the computers never powers up.

I've the schematiocs of my board, but I'm having trouble following the components on the board. Are there any tips to do that?

Any help will be apretiated.

Thank you very much.

Hi, my boars have the same problems after spill. Same voltage fluctuating,
but never get stable. I did Magsafe board swap- the same fluctuating.
Previously cleaned board from spill. MAgsafe blinking green for couple
minutes than blinking orange(dim).

 

[Dadioh]

Thank you Dadioh for your answer.

I'm facing the following problem:

a1278 logic board, 820-2530 that won't start.

When the battery is not plugged in, when I connect the MagSafe the green light starts to blink. If the battery is connected, the Magasafe stays dark.

Without the battery, I get fluctuations all around the board, up to 16v, going up and down. The power gets beside the battery fuse, to the battery pins.

If I connect the battery, the power suddenly goes down on all the board, and the maximum I get is 10,6v everywhere. It stops fluctuating, the 10,6 are stable.

Could the battery block the power input if it's faulty? The logic board is able to power up without the battery connected?

I've bridged the 2 g3hot pads, but the computers never powers up.

I've the schematiocs of my board, but I'm having trouble following the components on the board. Are there any tips to do that?

Any help will be apretiated.

Thank you very much.

When you say you bridged the pads you mean just a temporary connection right? You don't permanently connect those together.

From what you are describing the charger circuit has an issue. Pin 14 on the charger device is the Charger AC OK 3.4V signal that it sends back to the SMC if it is happy. If the green light on the magsafe is flashing on and off you will find that pin 14 is changing 0v to 3.4V to 0V in the same cycle.

It should not oscillate like that with no battery installed. You can boot a Macbook without the battery. When you add the battery it stabilizes the oscillation from what you are describing but the charger should be able to put out 12.5V to charge the battery.

Definitely something wrong with the charger circuit but the troubleshooting will be complex and require some detailed electronics knowledge.

----------

Hi, my boars have the same problems after spill. Same voltage fluctuating,
but never get stable. I did Magsafe board swap- the same fluctuating.
Previously cleaned board from spill. MAgsafe blinking green for couple
minutes than blinking orange(dim).

Issue with the charging circuit. See my recent reply on similar issue above.

 

[hwads]

Hi i just bought a faulty mbp 2010 13'' will not boot no signs of water!
when i plug in the magsafe nothing but a faint green light, left it overnight still no change, so i tried a battery with 50% charge nothing again.
now i put in the original battery (flat i think) and tried a different magsafe i got a green light and after about 20 seconds it begins to fade so no light, if i take the magsafe and put it back into my working mbp then back to the faulty one the same thing happens (fades after a few seconds).

I tried the same thing with the half charged battery and the magsafe flashes one green flash then off, same thing happens when swapping magsafes between mbp's.

If no battery is connected i get the fading green light senario.

At the G3 i have
magsafe + no battery = 0.29
magsafe + bad battery = 0.30
magsafe + good battery = 1.05
good battery = 1.05
bad battery 0.18---->0.13

Any ideas thanks

 

[backnefct]

LCD Backlight

Hello all! I have a problem. My MBP Unibody backlight doesn't work until I unplug the battery for 15 seconds and then reconnect it. It continues to work with a restart but doesn't work when only on battery and is powered off for a few minutes. If I leave the laptop plugged in I can shut the laptop down and leave it powered off over night and it still works when powered back up. I only experience no backlight when I power it down while only on the battery. Can anyone help? Thanks in advance!

 

[rickAC]

Hello,

This thread is really fanatastic.

I have an Apple Macbook PRO A1286 (Late 2008-Early 2009) which couldn't start until I found this thread. There is no water damage. Previous owner has told me that he by mistake shorted something. SMC bypass worked but unfortunatelly the laptop is not usable in this condition. It will not charge the battery and some other functions are off. I have measured some points around 1-wire over voltage protection. I had my thoughts that adapter sense line is wrong. But it is very hard for me to find out which component is responsible for that there is no communication between SMC and Adapter sense in Magsafe.
i would be very thankfull for help.
0 (S) means it is grounded.

 

[cmdrdata]

Hello,

This thread is really fanatastic.

I have an Apple Macbook PRO A1286 (Late 2008-Early 2009) which couldn't start until I found this thread. There is no water damage. Previous owner has told me that he by mistake shorted something. SMC bypass worked but unfortunatelly the laptop is not usable in this condition. It will not charge the battery and some other functions are off. I have measured some points around 1-wire over voltage protection. I had my thoughts that adapter sense line is wrong. But it is very hard for me to find out which component is responsible for that there is no communication between SMC and Adapter sense in Magsafe.
i would be very thankfull for help.
0 (S) means it is grounded.

U6920 pin 4 should be 0v (the inputs to this IC are correct). The junction of R617 and R6918 should be around 8v. The FETs Q6920 should be on thus allowing ADAPTER_SENSE serial data to flow to the SMC. This is a single line (center pin) of the magsafe connector.


It is fantastic that you were able to measure these voltages as most of us DO NOT know where these components are located physically on the logicboard. Perhaps you should also post the the high resolution logic board photo annotated with the component locations (where is U6910, Q6915, Q6920, the R69xx, etc.)

 

[rickAC]

Thank you for your replay. I am still not sure what is causing 0v (ground) on pin 3 of Q6915 . Can it be Q6915 itself or LM397 (U6915)? What do you think if I remove R6913 & R6915? Will it shut off Q6915 allowing 8v from R6917?

I use boardview file with block diagram. Otherwise it would be impossible to trace components. In board view one can search for a component. I will try to attach both schematics and boardview files.

with kind regards

View attachment Macbook Pro A1286 schematics.zip

 

[ME2K]

Hi, im an electronic engineering student and im kinda new to component level repair after doing loads of laptop part repairs in the past.

I've had a small problem with my 15" 2011 i7 macbook pro where a can of drink exploded in my bag, the laptop it's self was fine to use (after drying out thoroughly even thought logic board didn't have any liquid damage) although plugging the magsafe charger in gives a quick fan spin with 5 flashes of the SIL before it tries to boot again. However the battery was ruined! since then I've bought a replacement (off ebay and appears to be genuine apart from a small blue and white sticker with chinese on it).

The system refuses to use it or charge off it! I think the issue may be down to the power switching MOSFETs although there is power getting to the battery charging circuit (without the magsafe plugged in)
The two large white fuses near the battery plug register 0.39V with the battery plugged in and no mag safe.

Does anyone have any idea what might be preventing use of the battery? or know where the G3HOT pads are on this model?

I also recently purchased a 15" 2008-2009 macbook pro with water damage off ebay, i believe this would be simple to get running again. The logic board has had a good clean with Isopropyl Alcohol and there were a few small signs of corrosion but not anymore. The laptop refuses to boot or show any sign of life other than the occasional kick of the fans as they try to start. The magsafe turns green ater a short pause and with the battery in it turns orange. And im able to read 3.4V across the logic board.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Cheers

Myles

 

[cmdrdata]

Thank you for your replay. I am still not sure what is causing 0v (ground) on pin 3 of Q6915 . Can it be Q6915 itself or LM397 (U6915)? What do you think if I remove R6913 & R6915? Will it shut off Q6915 allowing 8v from R6917?

I use boardview file with block diagram. Otherwise it would be impossible to trace components. In board view one can search for a component. I will try to attach both schematics and boardview files.

with kind regards

View attachment 340108

I think LM397/U6915 is bad/defective. This IC has an open collector transistor output, so when the output is supposed to be OFF, the internal output transistor is enabled, thus connecting its pin 4 to ground. When that happened, R6916 is effectively shorted to ground causing that point to be zero volt. In your MB, this IC is not "grounding" pin 4, causing the junction of R6915 and R6916 to float to 7.6v (This is classic voltage divider circuit voltage of (R2)/(R1 + R2) x Vin = 270K / 540K x 17.5 = 8.7 (close to the 7.6v you measured). The reason it is a little different is caused by R6915 and R6916 not exactly 270KOhm.

 

[rickAC]

Thanks cmdrdata .

I am going to buy LM397MF at RS components http://uk.rs-online.com/web/p/comparator/5359515/?searchTerm=lm397&relevancy-data=636F3D3226696E3D4931384E4B6E6F776E41734D504E266C753D656E266D6D3D6D61746368616C6C7061727469616C26706D3D5E5C772B2426706F3D313326736E3D592673743D4D414E5F504152545F4E554D424552267573743D6C6D3339372677633D424F544826

Do you think it is the right one?

 

[torontomac]

macbook pro 13

hey guys
i have 2 macbook pro 13inch logic boards
both had very little liquid damage
i cleaned both boards
one is 2.4
other is 2.53
both will boot off a charged battery and function 100%
but neither will actually charge or turn on directly off of an ac
both logic boards have dim green light on magsafe charger when plugged in
any ideas on where to start?

 

[cmdrdata]

Thanks cmdrdata .

I am going to buy LM397MF at RS components

Do you think it is the right one?

That looked correct. Make sure it is installed with the correct orientation. Most IC chips has a pin 1 marking, dot or clipped corner.

 

[cmdrdata]

The system refuses to use it or charge off it! I think the issue may be down to the power switching MOSFETs although there is power getting to the battery charging circuit (without the magsafe plugged in)
The two large white fuses near the battery plug register 0.39V with the battery plugged in and no mag safe.

Does anyone have any idea what might be preventing use of the battery? or know where the G3HOT pads are on this model?

Myles

Myles, in an earlier post there is a chinese website that sells Apple logic board schematic. Without one, it will be almost impossible to give you specific information. In other older MBPs, there is only one fuse near the battery connector and on a working board this fuse should show 12v on either side with the magsafe OR the battery by itself OR both connected. If you don't get 12v there, then the problem will need much more fault isolation.

----------

hey guys
i have 2 macbook pro 13inch logic boards
both had very little liquid damage
i cleaned both boards
one is 2.4
other is 2.53
both will boot off a charged battery and function 100%
but neither will actually charge or turn on directly off of an ac
both logic boards have dim green light on magsafe charger when plugged in
any ideas on where to start?

1. Will the magsafe worked in a known good MBP?
3. Do you see G3HOT with just the magsafe connected? Nothing will work work without it.
3. If so, do you see 12v on the "fuse near the battery" with battery disconnected? If yes, perhaps the battery charging FET or current monitor resistor is damaged.

 

[ME2K]

Hi cmdrdata,

Here are a couple of photos of the Logic board, this is the early 2011 i7 Macbook Pro part no: 820-2915-B, ill go hunting for the schematic again on that site.

http://vhols.bluejuice.co.uk/MacBook/820-2915-B-Bottom.png

http://vhols.bluejuice.co.uk/MacBook/820-2915-B-Top.png

Im able to read 12.48V across both of the fuses (circled red in the picture of the bottom) with the magsafe plugged in however with only the battery there is no voltage, on the other side of the board im able to read 15.6V (Indicated by the yellow arrow) which drops slowly as the capacitors discharge.

When the system is loaded its able to read all the information off the battery apart from current draw, and then the system will turn off without warning and restart.

http://vhols.bluejuice.co.uk/MacBook/laptobattery.JPG

The depleted capacity has remained the same so i believe the battery is not making any connection to the logic board atall.

 

[torontomac]

Myles, in an earlier post there is a chinese website that sells Apple logic board schematic. Without one, it will be almost impossible to give you specific information. In other older MBPs, there is only one fuse near the battery connector and on a working board this fuse should show 12v on either side with the magsafe OR the battery by itself OR both connected. If you don't get 12v there, then the problem will need much more fault isolation.

----------


1. Will the magsafe worked in a known good MBP?
3. Do you see G3HOT with just the magsafe connected? Nothing will work work without it.
3. If so, do you see 12v on the "fuse near the battery" with battery disconnected? If yes, perhaps the battery charging FET or current monitor resistor is damaged.

1.yes its a known good magsafe
2. ill test out both fuses and get back to you

I just ordered the newark probes mentioned earlier in this thread, can you recommend a good multimeter to use with them?

thanks!

 

[cmdrdata]

Hi cmdrdata,
Im able to read 12.48V across both of the fuses (circled red in the picture of the bottom) with the magsafe plugged in however with only the battery there is no voltage, on the other side of the board im able to read 15.6V (Indicated by the yellow arrow) which drops slowly as the capacitors discharge.

When the system is loaded its able to read all the information off the battery apart from current draw, and then the system will turn off without warning and restart.

Attached is a battery power controller from a mid 2010 MBP. If you see 12v on both side of F7040, then all the FETs that control power to the system, including charging FETs from the magsafe are functioning properly. But notice that FET Q7055 is the only ONE that control current from flowing to/from the battery. So, if the system is working from magsafe but not from battery, then Q7055 is perhaps damaged or not enabled by the SMC, or R7050 is also bad. For your MBP the schematic may be slightly different. Also since yours has an internal battery, I suspect the battery connection will be similar to older 9-pin battery connector that has 1/2/3 pins = V+, 7/8/9 pins = GND, and 4/7 pins for serial data, and pin 5 for system detect.

 

[Mikf]

Hi all!

Last week i bought a MBP early 2011 with a fruit juice spill. According to the previous owner the MBP didnt work at all.

After receiving the MBP i didn't turn it on, because that could cause more damage. I took it apart and the dried up juice was everywhere! I cleaned it with 99% alcohol and a toothbrush, after a lot of minutes cleaning there was still a lot of juice left, but decided to turn it on anyway and TADAAA the MBP worked like a charm.

I still wanted the logic board to be clean and since the Alcohol wasn't helping with cleaning all the sticky stuff i decided to buy some clean water (I don't know how to call it in English, but it's pure water and it shouldn't conduct electricity). I made the water hot and than cleaned the logic board with a toothbrush and all the sticky stuff came off easily. After that I let the Logic board dry and even used a hairdryer for a while. Reassembled the MBP and turned it on, but there is no picture

Here are the symptoms:

It turns on. leds on the front of the MBP are stable. Fan goes to full speed in a few seconds and stays at full speed. The battery is charging. No picture, backlight or chime..

I tried several things like, replacing the ram, trying to boot only with adapter and LCD screen, reset SMC, SMC bypass. All no luck. When I do the SMC bypass the fan goed immediately to full speed instead of slowly going to full speed. So there is a difference, but still no picture, backlight or chime.

So it was a bad idea to use that water, I know now Is there anything I can check? And I'm sorry for the long post, but maybe it's fot the best so you all know the background of the MBP. I hope you guys can help me out. Thanks in advance

 

[Astroboy907]

Attached is a battery power controller from a mid 2010 MBP. If you see 12v on both side of F7040, then all the FETs that control power to the system, including charging FETs from the magsafe are functioning properly. But notice that FET Q7055 is the only ONE that control current from flowing to/from the battery. So, if the system is working from magsafe but not from battery, then Q7055 is perhaps damaged or not enabled by the SMC, or R7050 is also bad. For your MBP the schematic may be slightly different. Also since yours has an internal battery, I suspect the battery connection will be similar to older 9-pin battery connector that has 1/2/3 pins = V+, 7/8/9 pins = GND, and 4/7 pins for serial data, and pin 5 for system detect.

Hey, CmdrData (love the name, btw)...

Where can I find schematics of a late 2008-early 2009 MBP (15")? I am trying to troubleshoot the backlight circuit. I found one PDF of the schematic, but want a verified source. Also, a board layout would be wonderful too!!

Thanks in advance,
Thomas

 

[cmdrdata]

Hey, CmdrData (love the name, btw)...

Where can I find schematics of a late 2008-early 2009 MBP (15")? I am trying to troubleshoot the backlight circuit. I found one PDF of the schematic, but want a verified source. Also, a board layout would be wonderful too!!

Thanks in advance,
Thomas

Thomas, look back through the older postings. There is one fella that gave a link to chinese website that sells Apple and other manufacturers laptop schematic. Oh, Dadioh is the expert on backlights. I have no experience on that subject as I never had to fix one.

 

[ceperez]

hey guys
i have 2 macbook pro 13inch logic boards
both had very little liquid damage
i cleaned both boards
one is 2.4
other is 2.53
both will boot off a charged battery and function 100%
but neither will actually charge or turn on directly off of an ac
both logic boards have dim green light on magsafe charger when plugged in
any ideas on where to start?

I have 2 macbook pro 13" a1278 2.26GHz all with the same problem.

Will boot with a charged battery, but can't take any charge.