taking apart apple macbook pro a1286 mid 2012

Unscrewing the bottom cover revealed what horrors the computer had experienced. With this functionality test being unsuccessful, I decided to open up the computer to see what else was wrong… Troubleshooting & Diagnosis As previously noted, the computer had a laundry list of issues that were certainly the reason the original owner decided to discard their computer – a laptop that doesn’t boot nor have a display isn’t a particularly useful one.Ĭonnecting a MagSafe AC adapter to the computer revealed even more issues: even though the unit was already noted that it wouldn’t charge, I noticed there was no LED indicator on the power adapter’s plug, and the computer wouldn’t power on, even with external power connected the only sign of life was one of the LED level indicators rapidly flashing when I pressed the button. The computer I picked up is a mid-2012 MacBook Pro by Apple it is the A1278 model with a logic board number of 820-3115-B, and it comes with an i7-3520M CPU and 8 GB of DDR3 RAM – however, the hard drive was taken out of the computer by the time I received it.

It certainly didn’t look particularly promising, but I felt it would be a good way to test my skills in component-level repair – with a pretty nice prize if I succeeded.

It had a note attached to it citing several issues with the computer: the display doesn’t work, the battery doesn’t charge, one of the USB ports doesn’t work, and it won’t load an operating system.

A couple weeks ago, I picked up a dead MacBook Pro that was on its way to the recycle bin, and was curious as to whether I would be able to fix it.

Taking apart apple macbook pro a1286 mid 2012