On Jan 26, 2010, at 12:54 AM, John Hobbs wrote:
I did some reading online last night after posting that message on the G5 logic board problems and it said bulging capacitors is a dead giveaway of the syndrome. Sure enough-- I have plenty that are bulging, some have even burst out the top. I guess it's safe to assume this is probably the cause of my problems. So.... three logic boards down in less than 5 years. Is this a typical track record for these machines? I may attempt to fix this one rather than seeking another replacement though, I've done my share of soldering on old compact Macs in past years..
It's the track record of these machines only insofar as they were manufactured at the height of the 'capacitor plague'. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague > (gee, it sounds like something out of a William Gibson novel...) (in other words, it's not bad design on Apple's part)
Virtually all brands of computer made during this time are affected by this problem, as well as a wide range of other electronic devices. I've got one lab here that bought 4 new computers at once, sequential serial numbers, and 3 of them have failed in this exact fashion...thee were Gateways made with Intel-supplied logic boards.
I suspect that if the defective caps were not on the market at the time, the G5 iMac would have been a fairly decent machine.
It would still had a greater failure rate than the subsequent Intel- based iMacs, simply as a result of having to use a furnace of a processor, but the failures wouldn't be nearly as pervasive.
-- Bruce Johnson University of Arizona College of Pharmacy Information Technology Group Institutions do not have opinions, merely customs -- You received this message because you are a member of the iMac Group, a group for those using Apple iMacs and eMacs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/imac/list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to imaclist@googlegroups.com To leave this group, send email to imaclist+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/imaclist
