Recently my 9 year old #apple 15" Macbook Pro screen died, which really sucks because as a full time community volunteer to educate underserved communities, everything I do is free, this is the only tool I have and I can't afford to replace it. Now it only displayed white line across the center of the screen.
I connected an external screen to it and was able to view my desktop which meant the graphics card is still operational. I found a thread in one of the online forums stating that #apple previously issued a recall for mac's that were experiencing this issue, unfortunately it had expired 3 years ago. I called support and made an appointment to see a Geniusbar technician and confirm the problem was the display.
A week later I had my appointment at the #applestore, they confirmed it was the display and that they no longer carried parts for this model. My only options were to contact an authorized vendor, which would probably pretty expensive considering the age of this machine.
I decided to visit my friend Michael who owns a small electronics commodity store, basically people donate their existing unwanted electronics to him, he extracts working components for resale and scraps the rest. Turns out he just happened to have 3 exact macbook pro's to the one I have, 1 of which appeared to have a screen that was intact.
I told him about one of my new startups (www.Trade-off.co) and ended up bartering the screen in exchange for doing an advertising campaign for him through my OC Hackerz community. Sweeet!
So I went over to see my friend Steve who owns The Urban Workshop, a local #makerspace they have these giant build tables for all kinds of projects, which was perfect!
Next I pulled out my brand new ifixit kit toolkit which was especially designed for these type of electronic repair projects. The really cool thing is they have manuals on their website www.ifixit.com for all types of projects and each instruction details corresponding part numbers for each tool bit needed, really takes all the guesswork out of it.
A couple hours later once everything was connected, I tested it out and it works!!! Woot! that gratifying feeling when you take something apart, reassemble it and see the lights go on making the whole mission worthwhile and saving $200. :o)