Apple Cinema Displays and MacBook Pro
Today I picked up a 5 year old Macbook Pro and a 23inch Mac Cinema Display from a customer. The hard drive in the Mac was giving them trouble so I pulled it and recovered the files off it for them. They told me the Cinema Display had been hit by lightning and that it was trash and they were just going to buy a new macbook so this one was trash or to be used for parts.
I decided before I did anything with it to actually take a look at what was going on with both of the pieces. The error message on the MacBook actually turned out to only need a reload of the Mac Operating system and it is functioning perfectly right now. They also said the CD Drive on the Mac was broken and wouldn't eject the discs. When i took a look at that I saw that from someone resting their hands on the area below the keyboard it has made the small aluminum top piece sag down and the CD was hitting it when I would attempt to eject it. I have already bent that back up and the CD is ejecting fine.
The Cinema Display was the most interesting one and something I wanted to pass along in case anyone sees this. When I tested it it would power on but the light would blink short-long-short. I got to looking on the Internet and found that I could purchase a higher wattage power supply for the 30 inch display and it would work again, but I kept reading. I didn't want to have to spend ~$150 bucks. It turns out the middle pin in the power connector I have is a ground. When it read an incorrect voltage it makes the displays inverter turn off to protect the unit. There is nothing wrong with the power adapter and turns out to be a flaw in the apple hardware. You can buy a brand new one and it still wont work. One way to circumvent this is to cover the middle pin in the cord going from the monitor to the power brick. I took a small piece of tape and cut it just wide enough to cover the pin, folded it in half to cover both the top and bottom, and then inserted it into the power adapter. Next I plugged it in and it came on just fine.
So with a little google-fu and a piece of tape I figure I can sell the macbook pro for $400 and the display for $400 too. So if you end up picking up a Cinema Display that blinks the same way dont scrap it for the aluminum case grab some tape and you can make way more than scrap off of it.
