No Response to my Inherited A1176

[trueskew]

I got this from someone who thought it was a power supply issue. He had 2 supplies, and one was defintely dead, but the other had 18.5 volts coming out of pins 2 and 4 and seemed fine.

- Plugging in the supply resulted in the same response I would get if I didn't plug in the supply: no power light, no signs of negotiation with the monitor, no fan operation
- It came with 2 512MB sticks, I tried powering up with each one and with them swapped, but that didn't have an effect.
- I never plugged in a mouse or keyboard, I would have thought I'd at least see a light turn on without them present
- I tried testing power to the board. I found a 1.2V presence off some transistors and some 6.45V measurements off some diodes near the connector. I didn't find 18.5V anywhere, but it's tough without a schematic or etched test point.
- I tried the SMC reset procedure, it didn't make a difference
- All connectors appear to be seated correctly
=> There's no hard drive installed. With the mini play dead if no drive is present?

Except for that last point, I'm almost ready to give up. If anyone has some words of wisdom or tips, I would greatly appreciate hearing from you.

Thanks.
- skew

[mooblie]

Even without a hard drive, I would expect a video signal/grey desktop with a question mark flashing. Sounds like maybe a dead motherboard? or processor?
_________________
Martin at HeadSpin HD now on Blu-ray

[trueskew]

Yes, that's what I was thinking, it would show some kind of feedback before mounting the hard disk, unless there were some physical switch checking for presence... and even if there were, "no drive found" is a good message.

It's easy to believe the board is dead. The nice thing about the old, larger boards was that you could spot dead capacitors and possibly revive the board. With this one, I'm not seeing too many opportunities for repair.

The only other question I had, what's the iSense line for on the power supply? It either had no voltage measurement or very little, I don't know what I should expect from it.

[macmanmacman]

see it's weird on macbook pro's they do the weirdest thing the cd drive and the hard drive still power up but nothing else where the mini doesnt do that just nothing