New top case, No Boot

Question

New top case, No Boot

Just replaced the top case on my daughters black MacBook A1181 machine with a new one and get only a brief flash on the screen but will not boot. Screen is dark as if the machine is not on. Took off the new top case and made sure the connection to mother board was secure (it was) then reattached top case. Same result when I tried to boot up. Memory and hard drive seem to be seated well.
Any ideas on why the thing won't boot?

iMac 24", Mac OS X (10.5.4), G4 dual 450

Posted on Jul 10, 2010 7:28 AM

Reply

Answer 1

Jul 10, 2010 8:04 AM in response to Marcus Merritt

Where did you get the replacement top case? Are you sure that it's good?

And just to make sure you didn't do any damage to the rest of the system, if you take the top cover off, and look kind of closely over by the CPU fan, you should see a couple of metal "pads" with the power symbol printed on the motherboard. Take a flathead screwdriver (preferably with a rubber handle) and bridge the gap between those. That'll short the system and cause it to start booting. If that works, your new top cover is bad. If it doesn't work, then you left out some details about the OTHER things you did.

Reply

Answer 2

Jul 11, 2010 6:12 AM in response to Scott Billings

Turns out that the drink my daughter spilled on the keyboard got thru to the ram. I had removed the ram per an instruction video. Apparently the ram chips were just barely connected before I took them out and lost connection - because of corrosion - when I put them back in so the machine saw no memory. I gave the machine and new top case to a tech friend and he noticed the corrosion on the ram, cleaned the chips, reinstalled ram and everything worked. He gave it back to me to put on the new top. I did and all is well now. He said my daughter was very lucky that she didn't fry the machine with her spilled drink.

Reply