[SOLVED]820-2915 Color Bar on startup - Normal behaviour?

[dr. moast]

Hi,

we replace lots of GPUs on the 820-2915 boards.

Replacements go absoluteley smooth without any major problems. When checking the devices after the repair, we often see a colored bar while booting, as shown in the attached image. This bar only appears for one or two seconds while switching the GPUs and then disappears. Also the progress bar sometimes changes to a rectangular shape for a short time.

We are sure that this is absolutely normal behaviour and only appears on certain OSX/GPU combinations. However, our customers regularly start discussion because they believe this is another GPU problem and that the issue wasn't fixed properly by us.

We keep telling them that this also appears on MacBooks which were never touched before. We then boot from 10.9 to show them that this doesn't happen on other OSX versions but mostly they are not satisfied with the outcome and believe we did a bad job replacing the GPU.

So: Can anybody give me some deeper technical explanation on this "issue" or how do you explain this behaviour to your customers? Or are we really doing something wrong?!

Cheers!

 

[dukefawks]

Yes normal for 10.10 and up. They can complain to Apple for crappy GFX driver coding.

 

[larossmann]

Tell people that this will happen before you do it from now on and settle it there. People are much easier to work with when they know what to expect.

 

[dukefawks]

Why tell them before, it was there when the machine still worked. They are just looking for something to moan about.

 

[larossmann]

Why tell them before, it was there when the machine still worked. They are just looking for something to moan about.

Telling people upfront is great for two things.

1) They can't moan after, since you did already tell them.
2) It repels moaners before they become customers. Moaners will become chargebacks, so best they go away before that happens. I'd rather make $0 without giving someone a $30 chip and an hour of my time!

 

[dr. moast]

Thanks to the two of you.

I think both of you are right. But in my opinion telling people upfront about an error which is none is too much of a hassle. Because if you point them to something, they will always think there must be something wrong, as otherwise they wouldn't have been warned about it. At least the Germans are like that

Bad thing is also that Apple feeds their fears by telling them this color bar is a GPU issue.

However, we put up a info sheet for the customers to read which explains the origin of that color bar. We hand that out to customers who complain afterwards and it seems to work quite well now.