G'day all,

I'll keep it short: iMac DV 450, over the past 12 hours goes from being
rock solid screen to jittery, tall/squat (like someone's twisting the
horizontal and vertical height buttons back and forth), and freezing
very shortly after boot.

From 'Google'ing, I figure some cables are lose, or a component on the
video/powerboard (the 'flyback transformer'?) has dry or otherwise heat
affected soldering.

Is this someting I can attempt to repair myself? I cannot afford a new
mac (unless the god of lotto is kind to my family this weekend) ... I've
done some crude soldering in my life in the past,

(I hope) I only need a virtual hand to guide me (and warn me of the
millions of ways I could kill the iMac or myself from playing with the
back of the CRT ...)

There's valuable data on this iMac compiled by my wife for my son's
disability (a transparent but true attempt to tug at your heartstrings
;), so I would like to thank you in advance for any help, assistance or
advice you can give ...

Mikey in Gippsland

No 1, back up your data.

Our iMac DV 400 had a similar problem a few months back. I took it to
the repair shop, after $75, no problems were found. The tech suggested
that it was the graphic card or related component. Then it happened
again and I opened the RAM slot and pushed and shoved the slot a bit
and everything went back to normal. Who knows where the exact problem
was.

In any case, the second hand unit on eBay is around $200. It really is
not worth repairing any more.


In article <me-7F9643.20564225052005@news.bigpond.com>, Me <me@me.com>
wrote:

> G'day all,
>
> I'll keep it short: iMac DV 450, over the past 12 hours goes from being
> rock solid screen to jittery, tall/squat (like someone's twisting the
> horizontal and vertical height buttons back and forth), and freezing
> very shortly after boot.
>
> From 'Google'ing, I figure some cables are lose, or a component on the
> video/powerboard (the 'flyback transformer'?) has dry or otherwise heat
> affected soldering.
>
> Is this someting I can attempt to repair myself? I cannot afford a new
> mac (unless the god of lotto is kind to my family this weekend) ... I've
> done some crude soldering in my life in the past,
>
> (I hope) I only need a virtual hand to guide me (and warn me of the
> millions of ways I could kill the iMac or myself from playing with the
> back of the CRT ...)
>
> There's valuable data on this iMac compiled by my wife for my son's
> disability (a transparent but true attempt to tug at your heartstrings
> ;), so I would like to thank you in advance for any help, assistance or
> advice you can give ...
>
> Mikey in Gippsland

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