Dear BADCAPS Forum,
I am happy to have found this place and would love to get some input on my issues with a MacBook Air M1 (A2337).
A couple of days ago, I was using the MacBook on a low battery, and while running VS Code it shut down due to low battery. I rarely let it reach the point where it turns itself off, and if it does, I usually charge it immediately. This time, however, I left it uncharged until the next evening, and when I plugged it in, nothing happened. I waited until the following day, and still nothing.
I followed all the recommended troubleshooting steps for this situation and eventually tested how much voltage the device was drawing from the charger. It turned out to be only about 5 volts and a small amount of current.
After finding out that a professional repair would likely cost around 350€, I decided to learn more about the issue myself. This is how far I got:
I did some online research, obtained a board view, and followed several videos. It appeared that I had a short on PPBUS_AON. I removed a fuse (FP800) using a borrowed hot-air rework station and measured again. Everything seemed to go as planned, and I thought that if I injected a small current, I might be able to locate the faulty component and replace it, like the professionals in the videos.
When I injected a small current, it drew some amps, but I couldn’t find any component heating up. I only had alcohol available to look for evaporation. Then I did something that was probably stupid: I kept increasing the current in hopes of identifying the faulty part. At a bit over 2 volts, I finally managed to fry something in the area with the perforated metal shielding—on the opposite side of the USB-C controller chips, I believe, possibly around UF100 or UF000. I saw a small amount of smoke coming out of the holes in the metal shield and immediately stopped my reckless experiment, assuming I had permanently destroyed the MacBook.
After that, when I measured PPBUS_AON again, the short appeared to be gone. After reassembling everything, the MacBook actually starts up with a full battery. Charging works on both USB-C ports, and everything else seems to be functioning—except for the backlight.
I know this was probably a very bad way to go about it, but for me it was still somewhat of a success, because with the help of an external light I was able to recover all of my locally stored data.
Now I am wondering whether it might still be possible to save the machine and repair the backlight issue with your help. I couldn’t find any videos explaining how to deal with this issue on this specific machine, and I had no prior knowledge of logic boards or microsoldering, so I probably shouldn’t have touched it at all.
I have never attempted anything like this before and have almost no understanding of what I am doing, so please excuse me for possibly destroying a device that a professional might have been able to fix. I am willing to learn, though, and I would be extremely grateful for help of any kind.
Thank you all in advance!
Erwin
Berlin, Germany
I am happy to have found this place and would love to get some input on my issues with a MacBook Air M1 (A2337).
A couple of days ago, I was using the MacBook on a low battery, and while running VS Code it shut down due to low battery. I rarely let it reach the point where it turns itself off, and if it does, I usually charge it immediately. This time, however, I left it uncharged until the next evening, and when I plugged it in, nothing happened. I waited until the following day, and still nothing.
I followed all the recommended troubleshooting steps for this situation and eventually tested how much voltage the device was drawing from the charger. It turned out to be only about 5 volts and a small amount of current.
After finding out that a professional repair would likely cost around 350€, I decided to learn more about the issue myself. This is how far I got:
I did some online research, obtained a board view, and followed several videos. It appeared that I had a short on PPBUS_AON. I removed a fuse (FP800) using a borrowed hot-air rework station and measured again. Everything seemed to go as planned, and I thought that if I injected a small current, I might be able to locate the faulty component and replace it, like the professionals in the videos.
When I injected a small current, it drew some amps, but I couldn’t find any component heating up. I only had alcohol available to look for evaporation. Then I did something that was probably stupid: I kept increasing the current in hopes of identifying the faulty part. At a bit over 2 volts, I finally managed to fry something in the area with the perforated metal shielding—on the opposite side of the USB-C controller chips, I believe, possibly around UF100 or UF000. I saw a small amount of smoke coming out of the holes in the metal shield and immediately stopped my reckless experiment, assuming I had permanently destroyed the MacBook.
After that, when I measured PPBUS_AON again, the short appeared to be gone. After reassembling everything, the MacBook actually starts up with a full battery. Charging works on both USB-C ports, and everything else seems to be functioning—except for the backlight.
I know this was probably a very bad way to go about it, but for me it was still somewhat of a success, because with the help of an external light I was able to recover all of my locally stored data.
Now I am wondering whether it might still be possible to save the machine and repair the backlight issue with your help. I couldn’t find any videos explaining how to deal with this issue on this specific machine, and I had no prior knowledge of logic boards or microsoldering, so I probably shouldn’t have touched it at all.
I have never attempted anything like this before and have almost no understanding of what I am doing, so please excuse me for possibly destroying a device that a professional might have been able to fix. I am willing to learn, though, and I would be extremely grateful for help of any kind.
Thank you all in advance!
Erwin
Berlin, Germany
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