PowerBook G4 Aluminum 12" 867 MHz Heat Sink & Fan Replacement

Schritt 1

Use a coin to turn the battery locking screw 90 degrees to the right.
Lift the battery out of the computer.

Schritt 2

Remove the four Phillips screws from the memory door.
Slide the memory door away from the memory compartment.

Schritt 3

Remove the long black Phillips screw next to the memory card.
Remove the small EMI finger beneath the black screw.

Schritt 4

On the keyboard, remove the F1, F2, F11, and F12 keys.
This is scary - take a deep breath before continuing. Place your index finger under the upper left corner of the key and lift up until you hear a click. Then, transfer your finger to the left edge of the key and lift up to pull the key off.
You're freeing the two tabs on the left of the key from the two small holes in the plastic scissors mechanism.
When replacing the keys in the keyboard, place the key directly over the slot where it will go and press down until you hear the key click into place.

Whenever I’ve had to remove a key cover, I’ve used a chip extraction tool. It’s ‘u’ shaped with two tabs facing inwards. It will allow the tabs to fit under the lip of the key covers and a gentle motion will allow you to pull up.

James Walker - 18/01/21

Schritt 5

Use your fingernail or a small flathead screwdriver to peel up the gray stickers covering each of the screws.

Schritt 6

Remove the two short Phillips screws.

Schritt 7

Lift the keyboard by the 'esc' and 'eject' keys and gently lift up until the keyboard is vertical.

Schritt 8

Grasp the keyboard connector ribbon near the connector and disconnect it from the logic board.

Pull straight up, not sideways. I used tweezers on the connector, rather than pulling on the ribbon cable.

vmile -

mine had foil tape over the connector

Avi Fagan -

Carefully lift edges of foil tape across logic board connector end of keyboard cable (foil is present if unit

has not been apart before).

Grasp cable near the connector and gently pull straight up (perpendicular to logic board).

John Haruguchi -

Schritt 9

Remove the three small Phillips screws from within the battery compartment.

Schritt 10

Turn the computer 90 degrees clockwise and remove the two medium-length Phillips screws from the casing.

Schritt 11

Turn the computer 90 degrees clockwise again, and remove only the bottom screw on either side of the hinge.

By bottom screw, it means the screw nearer the lid, not the screw nearer the bottom of the computer

cantoi -

Schritt 12

Turn the computer 90 degrees clockwise just one more time, and remove the two Phillips screws on the exterior wall of the battery compartment.
Remember these two screws are longer and have shoulders.

Schritt 13

Turn the computer over and open it up.
Remove the following 14 screws:
Six 2.5 mm Phillips on either side of the keyboard area.
Five 4.5 mm Phillips on the left half of the keyboard area.
One 7 mm hex in the upper left corner of the upper case (a T6 Torx driver will do the job nicely).
One 15 mm Phillips in the upper middle of the keyboard area.
One 16.5 mm hex in the upper right of the upper case (again, a T6 Torx driver will work well).

Schritt 14

Peel up the two pieces of foil tape on the left side of the keyboard area.
The connectors at the ends of the cables are attached very firmly to the sockets on the logic board. Pulling directly on the cable will either separate the cable from its connector or the socket from the logic board.
Carefully disconnect the microphone and power cables from the logic board. Using your fingernails or a dental pick, carefully pry the connectors from their sockets. Make sure you're pulling only on the connector and not on the socket.

At least on my own PowerBook G4 12” 867MHz, the microphone and power cables are long enough that I was able to do the hard drive replacement without disconnecting those connections. I basically had to flip the top case over to the left rather than removing it straight upward. I guess that makes some of the subsequent steps slightly tricky, but at least for me, the tradeoff was worth it.

Barry Nathan - 18/10/17

I was not able to unplug these cables in this step - there was not enough room in the rectangular cutouts to get my nails on the connectors. I was able to perform step 16 (remove upper case) carefully with these cables still connected. Then, after the upper case was removed, it was fairly easy to safely unplug these two connectors.

feinberj - 25/04/21

Schritt 15

Use the orange plastic loop to disconnect the trackpad cable.

Schritt 16

Starting at one of the upper corners near the screen, work around the frame, separating the upper case from the lower case.

Schritt 17

Lift the upper case off the computer.

can't lift upper case off. upper case.. it anchored on display side !!!

Fernando -

Schritt 18

Remove the two Phillips screws from the corners of the modem.

Schritt 19

Pry the modem up from the trackpad side.

Schritt 20

Disconnect the modem cable from the modem.

Schritt 21

Remove the single Phillips screw fastening the inverter cable.

Schritt 22

Disconnect the Bluetooth cable and deroute it.

Schritt 23

Peeling up yellow tape as necessary, remove the following 8 screws:
One 4.5 mm Phillips on the right side of the heat sink.
Three 6 mm Phillips near the display.
Two large 7.5 mm Phillips with springs (don't forget to remove the springs). If the springs are not releasing, needle nose pliers can help get this done.
Two 13 mm screws from the left side of the heat sink and the right side of the fan.

For step 31 I had a problem where the screws with the springs just kept turning. While I did not have this problem the first time I disassembled the board, it was because I did not tighten the screws on the board (the studs on the actual logic board, not the ones you use to fasten the heat sink to the board) before reassembling. If you encounter the same problem, the screws aren't necessarily stripped but the actual piece attached to the board has become loose and just keeps turning. To get them off I used Vise grips and pulled up while turning until i got them off and it took a while. Moral of the story: tighten the pieces actually attached to the board before reassembling. Sorry, I don't know how else to describe the types of screws used but the stud is attached to the board and that is what came loose.

zerokool -

Schritt 24

Remove the yellow tape to free the cable from the left side of the heat sink.

Schritt 25

Disconnect the fan cable from the logic board.

Schritt 26

Remove the orange tape on the trackpad side of the fan to free the fan cable.

Remove the silver plate that was under the modem. Gives better access to the orange tape.

kwackman -

Schritt 27

Grasp the heat sink near the copper conductor and lift it out of the computer, freeing it from tape and cables as necessary.
If you need to mount the heat sink back into the laptop, we have a thermal paste guide that makes replacing the thermal compound easy.