05-16-2007, 05:46 AM
You know, in this situation it would be all good if he had AppleCare. They'd even come to your home/work to fix it for you, make a service call and repair it on the spot. It just happened to me yesterday with my new refurb'd Intel Mac Mini 1.66GHz that I bought on May 1. I started a "trouble ticket" on the Mini (I have AppleCare on it) because the IR sensor appeared to not be functioning, ie the Remote didn't work since Day No. 1. Since I have AppleCare, I asked for a home service call on the problem, and my Apple CS Rep quickly set it up with "QualX-Serve", Apple's home/business/schools service company.
They had to order some parts, namely a logic board, and the IR unit, which took from last Wednesday until yesterday, the 14th, when I got a phone call from a nice gentleman yesterday morning, saying the parts were in, and he was in LA, but could he come up later and fix the Mini? Of course I said yes, please do come over and fix the Mini, and Presto! He was at my place in a couple of hours (Ventura County). Sure enough, he brought a brand new logic board, and the IR assembly, and we moved on into our dining room where he could work on our large table there, with power, and he liked that a lot. He took apart the Mini, with my help (of course!), as we used my two 2" steel paint scrapers to pop the case open when his "credit card" method failed.(
)
Lo and behold, first thing we notice is that the Mini's IR receiver is split in half, broken off its little mounting pins...there's no way that thing was going to work. "Somebody took this Mini apart the wrong way, from the front with something hard, and broke the IR unit," he said. (td) I agreed, and he then proceeded to take the Mini virtually completely apart, removing the SATA HD, the optical drive, to get to the IR unit's plug-in port, as its wire threads all the way across the chassis underneath everything. Replaced the IR unit, put it back together, but before putting the case back on he fired it up, making sure that the IR unit was now functioning, and Voila!(tu) The Apple Remote worked like a champ after that, so he carefully put the case and the Mini back together, cleaned up everything with some Mother's Plastic Polish (I thought that was a nice thing to do) and rubbing alcohol, and Bamo! He was done. Mission accomplished.
Did I tell him that I already knew what the problem was? Nope, what for? He was only interested in fixing the IR unit, and the logic board, if necessary, and was pleased that I had the 2 small paint scrapers so he could crack the case easily, and helped him with the work a little bit, and provided him with some quality conversation to boot!>
< He was very, very nice, a Greek gentleman it turned out as we talked about this, and that, and there was no reason for me to tell him that I saw the problem when I popped in 1GB of new RAM. In fact, he didn't even look at the RAM situation. He was there to fix the IR unit, that's all he cared about.
If tahoedrew has AppleCare on the Mini, all he has to do is tell Apple that there's a RAM issue going on, that one of the RAM DIMMs is not being recognized, and would they like to come out to his place and repair it please? He's not breaking the warranty by adding RAM to his Mini any more than I was...problem is, the RAM isn't being recognized in :"slot X" and that's an AppleCare problem, if he has it, and they will come out and fix it for him.
That's how I see what is happening with his Intel Mac Mini, from an AppleCare point of view. If he's only got the regular Apple Warranty, then unfortunately, Apple may look at things a little differently. They really do love you when you've got AppleCare, plain and simple, and will just about jump about and do flips for you to make you happy with your Apple product, at least that's been my experience. If he doesn't have AppleCare on the Mini, buy it (at the Educational Price of $99) and then tell them about the trouble with the DIMM not being recognized, and I guarantee they'll make a house call and come out and fix it. That's how the present system at Apple Computer/AppleCare works.
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They had to order some parts, namely a logic board, and the IR unit, which took from last Wednesday until yesterday, the 14th, when I got a phone call from a nice gentleman yesterday morning, saying the parts were in, and he was in LA, but could he come up later and fix the Mini? Of course I said yes, please do come over and fix the Mini, and Presto! He was at my place in a couple of hours (Ventura County). Sure enough, he brought a brand new logic board, and the IR assembly, and we moved on into our dining room where he could work on our large table there, with power, and he liked that a lot. He took apart the Mini, with my help (of course!), as we used my two 2" steel paint scrapers to pop the case open when his "credit card" method failed.(
)Lo and behold, first thing we notice is that the Mini's IR receiver is split in half, broken off its little mounting pins...there's no way that thing was going to work. "Somebody took this Mini apart the wrong way, from the front with something hard, and broke the IR unit," he said. (td) I agreed, and he then proceeded to take the Mini virtually completely apart, removing the SATA HD, the optical drive, to get to the IR unit's plug-in port, as its wire threads all the way across the chassis underneath everything. Replaced the IR unit, put it back together, but before putting the case back on he fired it up, making sure that the IR unit was now functioning, and Voila!(tu) The Apple Remote worked like a champ after that, so he carefully put the case and the Mini back together, cleaned up everything with some Mother's Plastic Polish (I thought that was a nice thing to do) and rubbing alcohol, and Bamo! He was done. Mission accomplished.
Did I tell him that I already knew what the problem was? Nope, what for? He was only interested in fixing the IR unit, and the logic board, if necessary, and was pleased that I had the 2 small paint scrapers so he could crack the case easily, and helped him with the work a little bit, and provided him with some quality conversation to boot!>
< He was very, very nice, a Greek gentleman it turned out as we talked about this, and that, and there was no reason for me to tell him that I saw the problem when I popped in 1GB of new RAM. In fact, he didn't even look at the RAM situation. He was there to fix the IR unit, that's all he cared about.If tahoedrew has AppleCare on the Mini, all he has to do is tell Apple that there's a RAM issue going on, that one of the RAM DIMMs is not being recognized, and would they like to come out to his place and repair it please? He's not breaking the warranty by adding RAM to his Mini any more than I was...problem is, the RAM isn't being recognized in :"slot X" and that's an AppleCare problem, if he has it, and they will come out and fix it for him.
That's how I see what is happening with his Intel Mac Mini, from an AppleCare point of view. If he's only got the regular Apple Warranty, then unfortunately, Apple may look at things a little differently. They really do love you when you've got AppleCare, plain and simple, and will just about jump about and do flips for you to make you happy with your Apple product, at least that's been my experience. If he doesn't have AppleCare on the Mini, buy it (at the Educational Price of $99) and then tell them about the trouble with the DIMM not being recognized, and I guarantee they'll make a house call and come out and fix it.
That's how the present system at Apple Computer/AppleCare works._________________________