Subject: Re: PC's with lumps (rant) Date: Fri, 5 Mar 1999 23:16:57 -0500 Newsgroups: alt.tech-support.recovery
The latest issue of MacAddict has a bunch of top ten-type lists in it. (Many of them are actually informative and/or amusing.) For instance, there's the "Top 10 Tips of All Time", which includes rebuilding the desktop, zapping the pram, etc. Then there's a list of the "5 Dumbest Things You Can Do":
Understand that in my previous job most of my user support was over the phone, and at that point I still didn't own a computer--I had never opened a Mac case in my life.
One of our designers wanted more RAM. It was duly ordered and it was left to me, as the resident Mac expert, to install it.
So OK, how hard could it be? Armed with some vague instructions, I went for it.
Unscrew the six screws that connect the cover from the back of the case. Done.
Swing the plastic hinge on one side of the machine out. Done.
Remove the motherboard and its distinctive heat sink from the main circuitboard. OK.
Turn the Mac around and disconnect the wires from the circuit board.
Attempt to remove the circuit board from the case. Oh, you can't unless you remove the power button. Figure out how to do that. Hm, circuit board still doesn't come out. Fiddle with it until all the slots in the board are lined up properlay and remove it.
Install the RAM. Piece of cake.
Reinstall circuit board. Tricky. Reinstall the power button. Also tricky. Reconnect all the wires. OK. Put the motherboard back in and snap the platic hinge that holds it in place back up. No problem.
Plug it in and start it up. Nothing happens.
Repeat the above steps several times. Swap out RAM. Remove all RAM except a couple of known good pieces. Try to make sure everything's connected tightly without breaking anything.
Still, nothing happens.
Start to panic. It's about 10 pm; at this point I had been working on the bastard for about five and a half hours.
Force self to be calm. Write up report of what happened, mail it to bos, and explain the next step, to whit, take the sucker to the shop and see what they make of it.
A day or so later the shop calls to say that all is well; they reseated everything and it all worked. They may or may not have mentioned that you have to push really hard to make sure that the things are seated properly.
Months later, long after my then boss had left the company, he mentioned that he (himself an incredible Mac expert) and another guy in his department had previously installed RAM in the hellbeast and had exactly the same problem. I believe that at that point he had to take it to the shop, too, with the same outcome.
Having installed RAM in a PM8500/120, which has a similar design (though apparently not as bad), I can verify that when you put the motherboard back in you have to press down on it as hard as you can. When you hear something crack, you've either broken the Mac or correctly reseated the motherboard.
Later on it turned out that some of the RAM in the 9500 was bad. No fucking way was I going to go back in the guts of that sucker; off to the shop it went again.
-jwgh