So I decided to sell in my Mac Mini and get a MacBook instead. I intended to buy a 17" MacBook Pro on my visit to Florida later this year. However about a week ago $2,500 + tax seemed steep for a machine I just wanted to use to browse the web and use iTunes on.... now I think I should have just bought a new one in Florida. Ah well, it's too late.
Anyway so I bought a second hand 17" MacBook Pro, model A1212 or MA611*/A. It's the one with a 2.33 GHz CPU, 2 GB RAM and a 160 GB HDD. It was in really good condition so I thought it was a good deal until I realised the iSight camera didn't work. At this point, I probably should have just given it back to the seller, but for various reasons I decided to keep hold of it.
I checked out the How to Troubleshoot iSight page on Apple's website to no avail. I thought it could be the connection between the iSight camera and the computer itself and so searching around the Internet brought me to a blog reporting a fix to my suspicion and a how-to on opening a MacBook Pro screen. They were both for different MacBooks, but gave me the inclining to have a go myself.
In the end it worked, so here's what I did. Essentially it involves the following three 'simple' steps:
- Unscrew MacBook Pro and remove screen.
- Open screen and re-connect iSight cable.
- Put everything back together and hope for the best.
Overall it took me about an hour.
Step 1
Basically unscrew every screw you can see. That includes all screws around the sides and underneath including the two screws that require a Torx T6 screwdriver under the memory compartment. So not to scratch my laptop I did this all on my bed. I would recommend doing this on an anti-static surface.
Once all the screws are out, the part with the keyboard and trackpad just pops off. Do it slowly though. The ribbon cable connecting the two pieces is easily removed by lifting the connector vertically off the motherboard. For better instructions on how to get this far, check-out the numerous hard disk upgrade how-tos elsewhere.
Second part of this step is removing the screen. For me, this is when my heart rate increased like I was disarming a bomb. Carefully unclip the cables between the motherboard and the screen by removing the tape holding them in place and using common sense on how these cables come out of the connectors. You may want to take the tape off in a way that you can re-use it later. Using the Torx screwdriver, remove the screws on each pair of hinge holds. On one of the pairs of hinge holds, remark the different screw used--i.e. the left most screw on the right pair of hinges is different, vice versa on the left pair of hinges, the right most screw is different.
Once you're complete you'll end up with a disaster like this:
Step 2
Opening the screen or actually the shell of the screen was the hardest part. I thought it couldn't be done at first and was ready for giving up until I really used to brute force. Check out the how-to I mentioned before on removing the shell. To quote them:
Once you get the two screws removed from the front of the bezel, you must remove the back plastic bezel. To do this, start from one of the bottom corners and slowly pry the back of the bezel off.
Once you get one corner free, move the other bottom corner and free that side from the laptop as well. Using your fingers, carefully pry the remaining bezel from the laptop.
The back plastic bezel is the aluminium backing plus the what seems to be plastic inner lip. Check out what part is coming away from what here:
Once you've got the bezel off, turn the screen so that it is face down and remove the black plastic cover over the PCB of the iSight camera.
I simply removed the cable the and re-inserted it and then held it into position with a little bit of tape. It really needs to be tidy as the bezel needs to fit well.
See that little black bit in the top circle to the the left of the connector? That simply dropped off so it couldn't have been important!
Step 3
Once ye done, sew 'er back up. Remember what I said about the two different screws on one of the the two pairs of hinges and make sure that all cables are connected and are tidy like they were before--you don't want to trap any wires!
Insert the battery/connect up the mains and switch her on. I'm not joking but the Apple start up chime was great to hear. Before trying PhotoBooth, I went to System Profiler and under USB High-Speed Bus, there it was, Built-in iSight!