Mountain Lion supports the MacBook Pro (Mid/Late 2007) or later. These machines are on the very trailing edge of Mountain Lion's supported specifications.
There's a little piece of information I want to share with everyone. When repairing these MacBook Pros, I found myself treating the process much like a restaurant kitchen, with very minimal time to spare. I removed one logic board in preparation for the reflow. Into the oven it went for precisely 7 minutes, 30 seconds at 190 degrees Celsius. With overheads, this left me 6 minutes to disassemble the second system, remove the logic board, remove any plastic trims and clean the board of any adhesives and thermal material in preparation for the oven. I had the board removed and prepared in 5 minutes.
That's cutting it down to the wire. Thankfully the changeover went smoothly.
The boards are washed wherever necessary in the methylated spirit solution - the lightly purple coloured liquid in the above image - to remove any contaminants from the baking process, particularly around electrical connections such as memory slots. Sometimes it's necessary to submerge the board entirely but I find it's quite rarely that I have to do this.
Reassembly does take considerably more time as you do have to apply fresh thermal interface material and renew the adhesive on the gaskets above the ports. This machine, despite lacking a hard disk drive, did boot into Mountain Lion without issue from an external drive a few moments after this picture was taken.
I'm pleased that it's done and functional. Reflows take a lot of time, effort and precision. You want to prepare the parts well and heat them correctly. Any leftover material on the board can burn off or bake in. Plastic components that aren't heat resistant need to be removed, otherwise they'll melt down and be rendered useless. Too much heat, or applied for too long, can ruin the BGA. Too little heat or too little time and you don't get an effective or reliable reflow. I don't even bother attempting a reflow with a heat gun these days as the heat distribution is not even enough for my liking, although it may work for some.
There's a little piece of information I want to share with everyone. When repairing these MacBook Pros, I found myself treating the process much like a restaurant kitchen, with very minimal time to spare. I removed one logic board in preparation for the reflow. Into the oven it went for precisely 7 minutes, 30 seconds at 190 degrees Celsius. With overheads, this left me 6 minutes to disassemble the second system, remove the logic board, remove any plastic trims and clean the board of any adhesives and thermal material in preparation for the oven. I had the board removed and prepared in 5 minutes.
That's cutting it down to the wire. Thankfully the changeover went smoothly.
The boards are washed wherever necessary in the methylated spirit solution - the lightly purple coloured liquid in the above image - to remove any contaminants from the baking process, particularly around electrical connections such as memory slots. Sometimes it's necessary to submerge the board entirely but I find it's quite rarely that I have to do this.
Reassembly does take considerably more time as you do have to apply fresh thermal interface material and renew the adhesive on the gaskets above the ports. This machine, despite lacking a hard disk drive, did boot into Mountain Lion without issue from an external drive a few moments after this picture was taken.
I'm pleased that it's done and functional. Reflows take a lot of time, effort and precision. You want to prepare the parts well and heat them correctly. Any leftover material on the board can burn off or bake in. Plastic components that aren't heat resistant need to be removed, otherwise they'll melt down and be rendered useless. Too much heat, or applied for too long, can ruin the BGA. Too little heat or too little time and you don't get an effective or reliable reflow. I don't even bother attempting a reflow with a heat gun these days as the heat distribution is not even enough for my liking, although it may work for some.