I have a dead RAM slot on my 2004 15" PowerBook G4. How would I fix it?

[notabitail]

Hi,

I was given a PowerBook G4 15" 2004 last year, and I found out one of the RAM slots seems to be dead? How would I fix it?

I have a heat gun, though I'm not certain that it will be enough to fix the slot.

 

[phunguss]

How did you determine it was bad (swapped sodimms to opposite sides)?
Are both sodimms identical (speed, size, etc)?
Did you check for damage or bent pins in the socket?
Dust in the socket?

Your heat gun will likely not get hot enough to reflow the socket.

 

[notabitail]

How did you determine it was bad (swapped sodimms to opposite sides)?
Are both sodimms identical (speed, size, etc)?

As far as I could tell they are identical, yes. They look to be the ones that came with the machine (two 512MB ones).

Did you check for damage or bent pins in the socket?

I looked and as far as I can tell there wasn't any damage to it.

Dust in the socket?

There could be, I should check and see.

Your heat gun will likely not get hot enough to reflow the socket.

 

[Zingerpop]

So. I also have a PowerBook G4 with a dead ram slot, the lower one quit working on mine. I dug into this a little bit awhile back and found that this was a super common problem. Apple had a replacement program in place to swap out the logic boards.

As I recall, I found a bunch of folks suggesting to reflow the solder and that should address it, but I have yet to find someone who had actually tried it (or fixed it some other way). Not saying it's not possible, but I didn't want to chance it on mine at the time. If I get some time this weekend I'll dig into it a bit more and if it looks feasible, I'll give it a shot.