Hey

Got a problem with a Macbook Pro showing firstly the blue then the white screen of death (spinning wheel on power on though no start up). Diagnosis is the motherboard is gone. The case is a bit battered, so could do with replacing and for some reason the battery expanded on power up. The repair price quoted far exeeded the cost of a new machine, though I want to access the content. Any ideas how I go about a DIY job to get it to a condition where I can do that?

Thanks

Not an expert on these, but can't you just whip the drive out, stick it in a caddy and mount it on a new machine?

Buy a PC. Simple.

Ah this is the sort of thing I am looking for - thanks. How difficult is this for a novice and how big is the potential to balls it up beyond the chance (or increasing the cost) of repair by a professional?

Ah, sorry, I meant 'mount' in the sense of 'mount -t fstype device', not 'build into'!

Hmmmm......could you elaborate on that a bit for me in laymans terms please?

If I know apple there will be a handful of well hidden screws to get the outer bottom casing off (although this may be the exeption to the rule which has a couple of obviously removable panels, one for physical access to the RAM and one for the hard disc). When you see the hard drive, after a bit of examination you should be able to work out if there are any more screws to undo to remove it from the unit, then you simply pop it into the 2.5" USB caddy of your choice (maplins do some reasonable ones). If it were a PC hard drive you could then just plug it into the usb port on another PC and it would simply appear as another hard drive letter on your system with no further messing about, as it is a Mac, plugging it into another Mac may work like that (they are, after all, supposed to be simple and idiot proof), however I suspect, as Ian said in the previous post, that you may have to logically 'mount' the drive on to the other Mac before it will work (I suspect there will be a control panel which will simplify this process for you if that is the case).
NB If you go down this route but try to connect the drive to a PC and it asks you if you want to 'FORMAT' the drive - DON'T - this will remove all the data from it (which is the stuff you wanted to save) the last bit was added 'just in case' you didn't know.

EDIT: Armed with the above knowledge, you should now be able to google for the finer details of the sentient points...

wow blast from the past! you well spin?

I'm good thanks hun, how about yourself? :)

all well ta chick! living the dream

Nice, glad to hear it. Where in the world are you residing these days?

Ta by the way Alex, I'll have a go at deciphering this.