E30 Zone

I’m more than happy taking things apart and fixing them. My old Mac has spent a bit of time in pieces but I love it and I’ve never had a laptop last this long (going on 8 years now), a bit like a classic car I like to keep it going.

Anyway to the point. A chap I do some work for has an iMac with the famous black screen issue. Searching google it seems there is no one fix for this issue. Solutions range from power units failing to people with dodgy keyboards adjusting the brightness??

So my question is can anyone shed light on the best way to start diagnosis of the fault and what the potential costs of the components are to buy? Ultimately I want to bung him a fiver for it, fix it and have it on my office.

Depends which imac it is, ive repaired one I had a few years ago by replacing all the capacitors, wasnt very difficult.

My current macbook pro is a 2011 17" version which had a common problem with the graphics card, I paid someone to do this as its a lot more tricky

Ah cheers Dan. It’s a 24inch A1225 iMac which I believe is 2008.

Has he tried resetting the NVRAM?

Also

My wife has a 2009 27" imac - they're easier to work on than you might think - a couple of suction cups and the screen comes out quite easily. HD failed last year and replaced with SSD - it works really well now so definitely worth a little investment in research and time if you can.

SSD and RAM upgrade is like changing your 316 M10 donk for an S54

Thing is the guy that owns it can't quite get his head around that really, working ones are cheap so I'm no about to pay what he 'thinks' it's worth lol.