Mac Forum / General / Hardware / March 2008

I'm about to embark on an adventure and was wondering if anyone has had
any experience with this.

I bought one of the original G5 iMacs back in November 2004. It has had
the power supply replaced and the mid plane replaced twice due to
faulty capacitors. The bad capacitors were easy to identify due to the
marking on the top surface and, when I got the second replacement back,
I looked inside and found three suspicious capacitors. Now, a year
later, those three capacitors are bulging and leaking. A call to Apple
confirmed what I had suspected: the Extended Repair Program for this
failure ended last November (for me at least, being three years) and
there was simply nothing they could do for me. I'm not sure what
"extended" means as it is no lengthier than the Apple Care warranty.

So, since my original warranty, Apple Care, and the Extended Repair
Program have all lapsed, my only choices are to have someone install a
new midplane board or try to replace the capacitors myself. I noticed
that the price for the midplane board was $780 the last time I had it
replaced, so I'm not really considering that option. I suppose I could
pay the repair shop to replace the capacitors (Alpha Computer in
Richland WA, if you're out there reading this, Mindy), but I expect the
bill would also be pretty hefty.

Being an electrical engineer, I have no qualms about pulling the board
and replacing the capacitors. I assume that they are commonly available
electrolytics and shouldn't be hard to find. I also have the 45-page
document from Apple describing the board replacement process (from when
this was considered to be a fix-it-yourself machine).

Has anyone performed this procedure? Any hints or tips to pass along?

Also, I know that the inverter is not 100% (bright bar along the bottom
of the screen and buzzing since day one) but it was never bad enough to
get covered by the repair program. Does anyone know of a source for a
661-3623?

Wish me luck...