Macbook Pro A1278 intermittent orange charge light

[tccyo22]

Hi there, I've got a Macbook Pro A1278 board code 820-2936-B in which I have a very strange charging issue.

Backstory is when I plugged the charger in, it would give a green light and swap to orange like normal but after a few seconds would go off to no light, laptop still powered on and functioned fine.

So naturally I replaced the ISL chip first which made no difference so I also removed and reballed the SMC. This seemed to fix the issue for about an hour until I was back to square one again.

Decided to then take an SMC from another board, reball that and give that go. This time it was fine again but after 2 or 3 hours the same issue re-appeared.

Has anyone had this issue before or has any idea why the issue seems to be fine for a while after a reball but then proceed to revert back to the original issue?

Have also tried a brand new charger which made no difference.

[mon2]

Re: Macbook Pro A1278 intermittent orange charge light

Review the voltage to ground measurements for:

SMBUS_SMC_BSA_SCL
SMBUS_SMC_BSA_SDA

Post each reading.

[reformatt]

Re: Macbook Pro A1278 intermittent orange charge light

Sorry I don't understand the logic. Why would you need to replace the ISL chip for a one-wire circuit issue? They are completely unrelated. One wire comes off PP3V42_G3H, and from the SMC which runs off that.

Why would you not try another Magsafe connector? It's the most obvious suspect for intermittency.

[tccyo22]

Re: Macbook Pro A1278 intermittent orange charge light

Sorry I don't understand the logic. Why would you need to replace the ISL chip for a one-wire circuit issue? They are completely unrelated. One wire comes off PP3V42_G3H, and from the SMC which runs off that.

Why would you not try another Magsafe connector? It's the most obvious suspect for intermittency.

I just noticed the way I wrote the original post. Apologies as I was super tired after a long day and someone had distracted me during writing. Originally it started off with a dead ISL chip.

I'll try another magsafe connector and hope that it is just me trying to over complicate things if that doesn't work I'll grab a reading from the measurements in the post above

[Elric]

Re: Macbook Pro A1278 intermittent orange charge light

Hey tccyo22,

Do you have a follow up on what the issue was with this board?