SOUR|SIN|KING

Jun. 27, 2008
Tim Horton
Sorry for the blogspam, but it’s really the only place the whole issue is written up. In short, as you can see in the Apple Support forums thread, there are at least 50 people all affected by dying MBPs (reasons are listed in the blog post) which Apple is trying, but failing, to fix. If you guys could run at least a short blurb, we’re trying to get this story out there so we can find the actual extent of the problem before we start bugging Apple any more.
MacBook Pro Santa Rosa: A Fatal Flaw
Recently, an unknown number of first-revision Santa Rosa MacBook Pros began exhibiting issues with their onboard video cards. After a reboot, or on wake from sleep, the machine refuses to acknowledge the presence of a display, either internal or external. From that point on, the computer never regains its displays - not after a reboot, etc. Subsequent debugging indicates that the machine is misidentifying its NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT card as the MacBook’s Intel X3100 card. This issue is known to affect at least 50 people - a group of affected users has formed a Google Spreadsheet in order to document and organize cases.
AppleCare is recommending replacing the logic board, which some have gone through with, only to have the machine return to an unusable state shortly afterwards. Compounding the issue is the fact that this problem has arisen only shortly after the expiration of the default warrantee on these machines (this issue seems to only affect machines shipped around June, 2007), thus causing the logic board replacement to cost upwards of 400$ for those who did not purchase extended warranties. If you are experiencing the issues detailed below, please add yourself to the spreadsheet and visit our thread on the Apple Support forums, so we can get a reasonably accurate count of affected users.