MiKa

Thanks for this! I have trouble with the rotary selector at the back of my E-PL5 but I have been too afraid to peek into any photographic camera since my teens in mid-eighties when I sneezed and lost two miniature parts of my mother's '50s Agfa camera (though I doubt I could ever reassemble that camera with all that super miniature gears, springs, levers and stuff even if had not sneezed away those tiny parts :-)

Ashley's simple solution works! ===== I guess that the complex metal sandwich of the connector assembly can become permanently distorted or misaligned under proper direction force and this means the pins are not making good contact any more so by adding slack to the socket housing the cable plug aligns it properly upon insertion ===== My opinion is that this is another (understandable in the long term) design shortcoming by Apple but I guess that many people must have paid good $$ out of warranty for such repairs because Apple is not as perfect as it wants as to believe (and pay) or admit themselves. ===== Anybody knows what an Apple Genius does on this occasion? Says "pay $$ for repair" or "wait 10 mins for the tech guy to fix it"? I guess the "proper" solution is a not cheap whole integrated ribbon/socket replacement.

Indeed there seems to be a tiny battery on the logic board as Gabe says above. Update: Ok, went ahead and desoldered this tiny "battery" from the Macbook Aluminum 5,1 logic board (it can be seen here) as it was not obvious what the heck it really is as it has metal soldering tabs attached to its body and I had to remove them to see its enscripted part number data. Before the "operation" I measured 2.8V on it and it is too low for the usual and similarly looking lithium button battery so I had to check it on my quest to solve my random unexpected shutdown problems. So..... [Drum Roll] it is this one: XH414HG and you can see in the SII data sheet that it is not a battery but a 80 000microFarad / 3.3 Volts capacitor. SO, DEFINETELY NO PRAM BATTERY - it is a SUPER CAPACITOR in the Macbook 5,1 model for sure! BEWARE: With the capacitor detached the macbook does not power up with the AC adaptor only - it needs to have its removable main battery inserted! (I believe that is the reason they removed this PRAM...

(*moving year old answer to proper place): If no bother, I am curious if you could peek around the disk's PCB and report back when you receive it back (of course after double-coping the retrieved data!).

me I am already feeling the need to replace my '08 Alu and I am already considering going the Linux way all the way and be done with this new ultra thin and shiny Dark Empire with the rest of iStuff to get out of the picture along my core Alu machine

however, the basic reason to buy an Apple machine is to NOT have to mess with its hardware/software that much particularly when you have to pay north of 1,857.87€

So each time you trip over the USB-C charging cable you pocket out good $$ for a new motherboard? Way to go, Apple!

Somebody should tell the Apple guys at the wheelhouse that an iLaptop is not an iPhone before it is too late and most of us have jumped the iShip before some new Jobs guy has emerged to save it after all the latest course these guys have set.

Thanks, saved time figuring out exactly how to do it - though you need a couple of more pictures in the guide. I had to deform the case a bit in order to clear over the fan otherwise it cannot slip over the fan - people be careful not to stress the fan assembly: you should slide the case without touching the fan.

In my case, the security screws *just* got unscrewed by a not-security screwdriver bit so I just replaced them with normal philips ones on reassembly.

:-) ... super simple isn't it? Just have in mind that over time, this can happen again in the future requiring another pass of hi-tech ... scraping

My late 2008 Macbook 5,1 2.4GHz also had the tiny ribbon plug besides the keyboard ribbon plug polpulated as well (keyboard backlight?) - I missed it blindly following the guide but it made its presence clear when I lifted up the PCB - lucky I was not moving hastily severing the tiny ribbon!

So I added a comment at step 15 as in the guide this tiny plug is clearly not populated in contrast to my Macbook.

Kudos to the author - this guide clearly helped me a lot saving me a lot of time and head scratching.

By the way, minimal thermal paste was found on both CPU and GPU (the original reason I dissasembled my old Macbook) and after I put enough of this thermal transfering stuff on them the Macbook started working much-much cooler after years of hot operation that I thought were due to heavier OSX versions - should have done it 4-5 years ago!

My ribbon cable plug socket #3 is semi-torn apart from a previous endeavor so I forced the ribbon in (locking action not strong enough any more to keep the ribbon from being pushed in) and I put sliced ESD foam pads above it and between the other overlapping ribbon cables and a thicker ESD foam pad on top of them all the cable ribbons in order to have permanent pressure applied by the front cover assembly to the #3 messed-up ribbon-plug connection. It seems to be holding up properly and everything works ok!