Smoking Motherboards
It was Tuesday, almost midnight and time for Wednesday to appear.
I am beavering away on the machine I call gentium, a wonderful piece of engineering that is the MacBook Air, when all of a sudden it powers down; my aural senses are hit with the sound of electrical arcing; my nasal membranes twinge to the sudden aroma of burning motherboard; my brain screams oh crap; my hand jumps to the power cord and pulls the MagSafe connector out; my heart paces towards tachycardia as the adrenaline kicks in.
Wednesday.
As I’m currently travelling in a part of the world without an Apple Store, the day starts with a trudge to the local Apple Premium Reseller instead. Its raining, and by the time I walk the short distance the weather has turned even worse and I’m literally soaked to the skin. On the positive side, the bad weather means there are no other customers at the repair shop, so the technical dude was able to get started immediately. I handed over poor gentium and he soon had it to bits. We had a quick look but no obvious damage. However, when it was connected to a power supply, one of the chips started to smoke. Its pretty impressive as you dont see that too often. New motherboard ordered so, if all goes well, by the end of Friday I should have it fixed. Until then I’m using my iPad as a temporary workhorse.
Thursday: Lunchtime.
iPhone bongs to let me know I have email. I’m astonished. The repair shop say come get your computer its fixed (a day earlier than expected!). I then spent two hours waiting for the horrendous rain to stop before I step outside and dash to the repair shop. Oh joy. All fixed. Normality is restored.
Sunday.
New motherboard still going strong. Let’s hope it lasts longer than the previous one, which itself was also a replacement. Average lifespan 12 weeks.
