KC Micro Tronix
Member
I got in a 13" 820-00165-A Macbook Air.
discovered a SMC short. Keep in mind I am a total newbie at SMC re-balling. I have only been working on MacBooks for about two months now.
A few weeks back I encountered my first SMC short and literally spent all day trying to re-ball a chip I harvested from a donor. Needless to say it did not go well. Spent all day and pounded my head on my bench over and over! So... I purchased pre-balled chips on eBay from a vendor that said they were programmed. I also purchased a new stencil and a special holder for it. The stencil I was using had the holes cut too big and in a few spots the balls would jump over to their next door neighbor! Make sure your stencil is properly built. I ordered two exact same stencils from the same vendor and one was good one was not! Hard to tell at first glance. Holes not perfectly aligned, holes too big all mean you will fail! AT 0.3mm lots of room for manufacturing errors on these. Be careful or you will be in HELL!!!!!
When the eBay SMC came in I flowed it on the board and everything worked! "almost"! The battery did not detect. I did not think it was a SMC issue. The company I work with uses another MacBook repair vendor so I had it sent in to that vendor and they replaced the board. I was totally bummed that after all that work I did not have a viable repair. Welcome to self education!
Now to present time.......
I had another SMC short. This time I was armed with my new stencil and holder. (one out of three stencils I had purchased was accurate) I reached into my eBay SMC stash and didn't like the balls on my replacement so I wicked, and re-balled it. With my new stencil and holder it was quick work. Spent like 10 minutes on it. Perfect the first time! I put the chip on the board and..... everything worked except it did not detect the battery. Just like the last board. So I went to my donor stash, Stole a chip, from the exact same board part number, re-balled it (Aced it first try) and threw it on. (Problem fixed) detected the battery. "having a well built stencil and that special holder made all the difference in re-balling" I wouldn't say I am good as Paul Daniels and do it free hand but it does not take much time and i'm not afraid of doing them.
so... obviously the eBay SMC chips were from some other model that created a battery problem for me. Even-though the chips were the exact same part number! I understand they are programmed for various machines. In this case the wrong one!
My question.......
Is there Interoperability list for these chips? What boards can I harvest from to fix what boards. What works with what?
If anyone has this list i sure would love to get my hands on it.
discovered a SMC short. Keep in mind I am a total newbie at SMC re-balling. I have only been working on MacBooks for about two months now.
A few weeks back I encountered my first SMC short and literally spent all day trying to re-ball a chip I harvested from a donor. Needless to say it did not go well. Spent all day and pounded my head on my bench over and over! So... I purchased pre-balled chips on eBay from a vendor that said they were programmed. I also purchased a new stencil and a special holder for it. The stencil I was using had the holes cut too big and in a few spots the balls would jump over to their next door neighbor! Make sure your stencil is properly built. I ordered two exact same stencils from the same vendor and one was good one was not! Hard to tell at first glance. Holes not perfectly aligned, holes too big all mean you will fail! AT 0.3mm lots of room for manufacturing errors on these. Be careful or you will be in HELL!!!!!
When the eBay SMC came in I flowed it on the board and everything worked! "almost"! The battery did not detect. I did not think it was a SMC issue. The company I work with uses another MacBook repair vendor so I had it sent in to that vendor and they replaced the board. I was totally bummed that after all that work I did not have a viable repair. Welcome to self education!
Now to present time.......
I had another SMC short. This time I was armed with my new stencil and holder. (one out of three stencils I had purchased was accurate) I reached into my eBay SMC stash and didn't like the balls on my replacement so I wicked, and re-balled it. With my new stencil and holder it was quick work. Spent like 10 minutes on it. Perfect the first time! I put the chip on the board and..... everything worked except it did not detect the battery. Just like the last board. So I went to my donor stash, Stole a chip, from the exact same board part number, re-balled it (Aced it first try) and threw it on. (Problem fixed) detected the battery. "having a well built stencil and that special holder made all the difference in re-balling" I wouldn't say I am good as Paul Daniels and do it free hand but it does not take much time and i'm not afraid of doing them.
so... obviously the eBay SMC chips were from some other model that created a battery problem for me. Even-though the chips were the exact same part number! I understand they are programmed for various machines. In this case the wrong one!
My question.......
Is there Interoperability list for these chips? What boards can I harvest from to fix what boards. What works with what?
If anyone has this list i sure would love to get my hands on it.
Last edited:
