MacBook Pro (A1990) dead - How to diagnose if battery or mainboard issue?

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Level 1

22 points

MacBook Pro (A1990) dead - How to diagnose if battery or mainboard issue?

Hi everyone & thanks for your help in advance!

My MacBook Pro (A1990) won‘t start (no reaction at all) after I haven‘t used it for a couple of weeks.

Is there any possibility to check via multimeter or other tools if the reason is the battery (repairable) or the motherboard (financially not reasonable to repair)?

Things I have tried to narrow down the cause of error to either battery or motherboard:

I tried all the keyboard combinations for different types of reset. I also tried different chargers.

Open it up and disconnected & reconnected the battery (one „block“ looks a little bloated“).

Also bought a USB-C diagnosis tool and it doesn’t charge at all (no current, voltage ok), no matter which port is connected (and same thing when I had the battery disconnected).

Thanks a again and looking forward to your replies :)

Posted on Oct 4, 2021 2:36 AM

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Answer 1

azeem196

Level 1

12 points

Oct 4, 2021 4:07 AM in response to mariadaivd16

Is there a specific reason why the motherboard might be broken?

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Answer 2

Oct 4, 2021 9:26 AM in response to mariadaivd16

It appears you have a MBPro 15" (2018) model (note: you should always reference the model this way since the Axxxx numbers can span many models over years). If the USB-C diagnostic tool fits between the laptop & charger and you don't have any current, then you have a hardware issue with the laptop assuming the charger & charging cable are Ok. Since there is no difference between the four ports, then I would suspect a bad Logic Board at the very least unless the I/O Boards on both sides are bad/damaged. There is no way to tell about any of the other parts until you can power on the laptop.

These USB-C Apple laptops are no where near as robust as the older non-USB-C models. Plus it is very easy to damage the Logic Board by using cheap low quality accessories and peripherals especially including non-Apple chargers. In fact the Logic Board is designed in such a way that if one of the protective chips on just one USB-C port goes bad or is damaged, then it will prevent any of the other USB-C ports from working even though each port has their own chip.

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MacBook Pro (A1990) dead - How to diagnose if battery or mainboard issue?

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