Mac Mini Troubles

Argh. My mac mini bit the dust. Remember when I posted a while back about problems with the superdrive? Well, maybe I forgot to post about it. Anyway. They got worse and then the hard disk failed. I think there's something wrong with its IDE bus.

I took it into the apple store in Bellevue and they showed me a repair estimate that was greater than the price I paid for the thing 13.5 months ago.

So now I'm faced with cracking the thing open and trying to fix it myself. Anyone have any tips or links?

Two thin putty knives. Also, it'll boot off a firewire drive, perhaps in the worst case scenario you can abandon the IDE bus completely.

Matthew

Hey, didn't know about the firewire option. Excellent idea. Hope it doesn't come to that, but if it does, I've got a firewire enclosure I'm not using, and some extra 3.5" disks.

Found some video of the putty knife thing, so yeah, she's all opened up.

I just happened to have a 40-gig laptop hard disk lying around that I was saving as a backup for the Empeg. I'm seeing if it'll work in this thing. I'm on disk two of the installation. We'll see how it goes.

I really want to scream to the rafters and post in my LJ about how terrible Apple is, how their hardware is crap, they don't stand by their products, don't honor their warranties, and their sanctimonious holier-than-thou TV ads are a cover-up for a truly black, evil, core.

But I decided not to.

1. I have a good friend who works at Apple... he might stop giving me tech support for Logic Audio if I did.

2. My web site gets googled by prospective employers, and I don't want them to see that kind of negativity.

I also restrained myself from making a scene in the Apple Store tonight. It was pretty crowded, I could have scared off a handful of potential buyers. But again, didn't.

SIGH.

Anyway, wish me luck with the new hard disk.

Yeah, it sucks when hardware fails, but it can happen to any hardware by any vendor. Hopefully it is just something simple like the hard drive causing problems across the bus, and not the actual controller. Remember to keep an eye on the system logs, as they can be a great indicator to problems like a hard drive issue. You can do this via dmesg to see the kernel log in memory, or look at /var/log/system.log for the one written on the disk.

Are you sure you weren't carrying the Mac around in your pocket with something sharp near it? *ducks*

Well, the 40-gig hard disk seems to be working OK in the thing.

I don't know how the optical drive is going to fare. I'm going to have to see whether it gives me any of the same troubles as it did before.

SIGH. Why can't things just WORK?

Does the fan in the mini still work? Just wondering if they were slow heat-related failures.

Good question. The fan sounds like it's running right now as I type this.

I am not sure if it is important to you, but if you are going to replace the optical drive, use a Pioneer product (DVR-K05 I think), not a Matshita one, and apparently you will be able to be 'region free' for DVDs.
FWIW

Thanks, I'll keep that in mind if I decide to replace it.

Did you take the mini in to Apple for problems with the Superdrive? If it's the same problem, isn't it their responsibility to make sure that their repair actually repaired the problem?

No, when I was having problems with the superdrive, they were intermittent and didn't get in the way of daily operation. At least, not enough to make me get off my lazy ass and take it to the apple store at the time. So the first time I walked back into that apple store was 13.5 months after purchase.

PS: After replacing the faulty hard disk, I am now still having the same problems with the superdrive. It burns DVD+R media just fine, but when I feed it blank CD-Rs to burn, it spins at a billion RPM, makes awful noises, and locks up the system.

Is this a G4 mini or an Intel mini? I've got one of the latest Core Duo mini's on order, probably arriving next week. Based on other experiences I've heard comparable to yours, I decided to get the three year warranty. Hopefully, I won't need it...

It's one of the older minis, before they switched to the intel CPU.

I'm glad you got the extended warranty. They looked at me askance when I told them I hadn't gotten one.