- Dec 31, 2005
- 9,865
- 105
- 106
My mid-2010 MBP had a busted trackpad (it was acting up horribly and in a fit of anger I clicked REALLY hard and cracked the corner). Still worked and it wouldn't cut me or anything but it was unseemly, not to mention the touchpad still had a tendency to act up.
I've been wary of cracking open this thing to do anything, mainly because I didn't feel like buying the tri-wing screwdriver to remove the battery, among other things. But I finally decided to bite the bullet and do it and I'm glad I did. It wasn't bad at all.
A few things I learned:
I paid $30 for a used touchpad from Command Mac Parts. Came very fast, packaged beautifully, component looks like new. Very great.
Attaching the ribbon cable is a royal pain. It's super thin and you have to shove it into a tiny slot below the touchpad and the super-thin plastic clip thing at the bottom can easily break off. I destroyed my old touchpad just to figure out how the mechanism worked. And as you're inserting it into the plug on the bottom of the touchpad, the cable can fold and bend. This is a big problem since there are chips and circuits on the ribbon cable itself and I actually destroyed the part that was shipped to me.
Be wary of "brand new" replacements being sold online. Some appear to be copies of original Apple parts and not original. Some people report finding the quality not to be on par with the hardware that Apple ships with new machines. A knowledgeable person I spoke with at Command Mac said that the reality is that there is no real source for real 'new' apple parts out there and anyone claiming to be selling new is lying or selling a copy. In some cases, the copy is literally the exact same product being spit out for Apple in the same factory. In some cases, it's not. That's why if you really want original Apple stuff, many people prefer to go with quality used parts instead of risking buying some knockoff part that won't be as good as the original.
In the PC world, I have no problem diagnosing a problem but when I put in the new parts and put it all back together, I was greeted with a white screen. No boot, nothing.
Found a thread where someone solved the problem. In his case he said it was caused by a dead HD and uplugging the HD allowed him to force the machine to boot to an external USB drive -- pop in new HD and he was good to go.
In my case, it would be rather coincidental if the HD managed to die during the process of replacing the trackpad. Still, I disconnected the HD. Same white screen. But, I was able to get it to prompt me for a network connect after booting while holding down the option key..progress. Only problem was that the cursor was NOT moving. Uh oh. This suggested the touchpad was borked?
I ended up swapping the ribbon cable/connector from my old broken touchpad to the new one. I must have severed a connection or broken a pin or lead or something on the cable that came with the new touchpad while trying mightily to shove it into its hair-width slot.
Once I delicately swapped ribbon cables (frustrating task since you have to weave the cable through a narrow slot and the clip that connects to the mainboard is longer than the gap between the laptop frame and the board, so you have twist and bend and use a lever to guide the dang thing up, through and around) I booted through the white screen holding option and got to the choose network option and the CURSOR WORKED! woohoo.
I reconnected the HD, screwed it all back together and it booted fine, no problems at all. Apparently a busted trackpad ribbon cable can cause a complete white screen of death. This is not the kind of behavior you experience when working on PC desktops as I have over the years but simple troubleshooting was enough to get around the problem.
In the end I spent $30 for the trackpad, about $15 for the three different screwdrivers I needed for the assorted screws plus I threw in new feet for $5 and I'm as good as new.
I have more memory on the way and an SSD coming and I'll at least get some more use out of these screwdrivers.
Do not attempt this job if you don't have the right screwdrivers. They are essential. iFixit has them all and their prices are actually reasonable once you realize the $1 one on amazon ships from china and takes 3 weeks to arrive and all the reviews indicate it strips screws and deforms after a couple uses. Worth spending the $5 for a real one. Another plus is that I can easily upgrade memory, swap SSDs and batteries for family and friends with my tools now, saving everyone a boatload of cash. I can't even fathom how much this would have cost me if I went to the Apple store.
The design and internals of this 5-year-old laptop is still pretty impressive to this day, which speaks to how impressive they were when they first came out. Can't wait for the memory and SSD to breathe new life into this old machine.
I've been wary of cracking open this thing to do anything, mainly because I didn't feel like buying the tri-wing screwdriver to remove the battery, among other things. But I finally decided to bite the bullet and do it and I'm glad I did. It wasn't bad at all.
A few things I learned:
I paid $30 for a used touchpad from Command Mac Parts. Came very fast, packaged beautifully, component looks like new. Very great.
Attaching the ribbon cable is a royal pain. It's super thin and you have to shove it into a tiny slot below the touchpad and the super-thin plastic clip thing at the bottom can easily break off. I destroyed my old touchpad just to figure out how the mechanism worked. And as you're inserting it into the plug on the bottom of the touchpad, the cable can fold and bend. This is a big problem since there are chips and circuits on the ribbon cable itself and I actually destroyed the part that was shipped to me.
Be wary of "brand new" replacements being sold online. Some appear to be copies of original Apple parts and not original. Some people report finding the quality not to be on par with the hardware that Apple ships with new machines. A knowledgeable person I spoke with at Command Mac said that the reality is that there is no real source for real 'new' apple parts out there and anyone claiming to be selling new is lying or selling a copy. In some cases, the copy is literally the exact same product being spit out for Apple in the same factory. In some cases, it's not. That's why if you really want original Apple stuff, many people prefer to go with quality used parts instead of risking buying some knockoff part that won't be as good as the original.
In the PC world, I have no problem diagnosing a problem but when I put in the new parts and put it all back together, I was greeted with a white screen. No boot, nothing.
Found a thread where someone solved the problem. In his case he said it was caused by a dead HD and uplugging the HD allowed him to force the machine to boot to an external USB drive -- pop in new HD and he was good to go.
In my case, it would be rather coincidental if the HD managed to die during the process of replacing the trackpad. Still, I disconnected the HD. Same white screen. But, I was able to get it to prompt me for a network connect after booting while holding down the option key..progress. Only problem was that the cursor was NOT moving. Uh oh. This suggested the touchpad was borked?
I ended up swapping the ribbon cable/connector from my old broken touchpad to the new one. I must have severed a connection or broken a pin or lead or something on the cable that came with the new touchpad while trying mightily to shove it into its hair-width slot.
Once I delicately swapped ribbon cables (frustrating task since you have to weave the cable through a narrow slot and the clip that connects to the mainboard is longer than the gap between the laptop frame and the board, so you have twist and bend and use a lever to guide the dang thing up, through and around) I booted through the white screen holding option and got to the choose network option and the CURSOR WORKED! woohoo.
I reconnected the HD, screwed it all back together and it booted fine, no problems at all. Apparently a busted trackpad ribbon cable can cause a complete white screen of death. This is not the kind of behavior you experience when working on PC desktops as I have over the years but simple troubleshooting was enough to get around the problem.
In the end I spent $30 for the trackpad, about $15 for the three different screwdrivers I needed for the assorted screws plus I threw in new feet for $5 and I'm as good as new.
I have more memory on the way and an SSD coming and I'll at least get some more use out of these screwdrivers.
Do not attempt this job if you don't have the right screwdrivers. They are essential. iFixit has them all and their prices are actually reasonable once you realize the $1 one on amazon ships from china and takes 3 weeks to arrive and all the reviews indicate it strips screws and deforms after a couple uses. Worth spending the $5 for a real one. Another plus is that I can easily upgrade memory, swap SSDs and batteries for family and friends with my tools now, saving everyone a boatload of cash. I can't even fathom how much this would have cost me if I went to the Apple store.
The design and internals of this 5-year-old laptop is still pretty impressive to this day, which speaks to how impressive they were when they first came out. Can't wait for the memory and SSD to breathe new life into this old machine.
Last edited:
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