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How does a logic

board power up?
1. An always-on PP3V42_G3H 3.42V power rail is created directly from internal battery or a
charger. This power rail powers the System Management Controller (SMC). The Mac is in “off
mode” (G3) but the SMC keeps scanning the keyboard power-on button and Magsafe
connector for further inputs.
2. If you connect Magsafe to the Mac, the SMC will read code from the chip on the Magsafe
connector to identify the type of charger connected. The charger outputs a pre-set voltage
(14.5/16.5/18.5/20) 1 second after the connection is stabilized and the charger type is
identified. The green light then turns on. The charging circuit will receive power from Magsafe.
A power management chip will create a PPBUS_G3H power rail, operating at 12.6V for MBP
and 8.4V for MBA and Retina. The SMC reads the chip on the battery to check the battery
status and therefore determine the required charging current. If the battery is empty then a
high current will be applied (fast charging mode).The current will be gradually reduced when
the battery is near full. The orange light turns on while battery is being charged. Once the
battery is fully charged, the green light will turn on again and no current will be sent to the
battery.
3. When you press the power-on button then release it, a high-low-high pulse will be sent to
SMC. SMC will enable a power management chip to create a 3.3V power rail from
the PPBUS_G3H rail. This rail powers up Intel’s Platform Controller Hub’s (PCH) real-time clock
circuit, deep sleep power well, and suspend power well. PCH will enable the remaining power
management chips to create different voltage rails (5.0V, 1.8V, 1.5V, 1.35V, 1.2V, 1.05V, 0.9V, etc.
depending on hardware design) for different devices. All these power rails can be measured
on the inductors (coil). Since more than 50% of faulty logic boards are related to one or more
 missing power rails, this information will be helpful if you decide to get it fixed by a component
level repairer.
4. The memory module (RAM) will receive power first followed by the CPU, hard drive, optical
drive, graphics chip, screen, sound chip, and WiFi card. DDR3 RAM will receive the 1.5V power
rail (1.35V for low voltage DDR3). Mechanical hard drives and optical drives will receive the
3.3V and 5V rails. SSD drives will receive the 3.3V rail only. CPU and GPU core power rails are
dynamic depending on load.
5. All power rails report to the SMC by sending PG (power good) signals. If any one of these rails
fail to send a PG signal within a pre-set time, the SMC would shut down all power rails except
the always-on PP3V42_G3H 3.42V rail and PPBUS_G3H 12.8V/8.4V rail. Multiple voltage
and current sensing circuits, in addition to other protective circuits are implemented in the
MacBook logic board as safety measures. Malfunction of any one of these circuits can shut
down all power rails to protect the MacBook. This is the reason why MacBooks are much
harder to repair than other laptop brands. If all the power rails are fine, SMC will report to PCH
and it will send a “reset” signal to the CPU.
6. Upon receiving the reset signal, the CPU will load BIOS/EFI codes (hardware specific codes
stored in the ROM chip) to the memory module and execute POST (Power-On-Self-Test). After
POST, all devices including the hard drive, optical drive, USB, sound card, WiFi and GPU will
be initialized and ready to go.
7. The GPU will read the code chip on the LVDS (Low Voltage Differential Signalling) or eDP
(Embedded Display Port) screen circuits for resolution setting and switches on the screen
image processing logic circuit and back-light circuit. The Mac will chime at the same time as
screen back-light turns on. If you hear a chime but no image on the screen, shine a touch
from the back of the screen through the Apple logo and if you can see the image, then the
Mac has back-light problem. You may have a faulty screen (LED light or cable fault) or faulty
back-light circuit on the logic board. Apple puts the back-light circuit on the logic board
instead of on the screen as other brand names do. This is the major reason why other screen
brands cannot be used on MacBook. This design also makes MacBook particularly vulnerable
to water damage. Water can kill the 28V-50V back-light circuit instantly.
8. The CPU starts and executes BIOS/EFI’s PnP (Plug and Play) codes to allocate resources such
as DMA channels, I/O port address and IRQs.
9. The CPU then executes BIOS/EFI’s input/output codes to access
bootable devices such as hard drives, optical drives or USB drives, searching for an operating
system loader. If no bootable drive is found or the bootable drive does not have a loader, a
question mark will be displayed. If a loader is found, the Apple logo will be displayed.
The CPU then executes the loader and loads the rest of Apple’s OSX software into your Mac.
You will see a loading progress bar while OSX loads (older OS X uses a rotating gear image).
10. The loader loads the core OSX first followed by application and hardware drivers. MacBooks
with graphics issues usually start going wrong at 2/3rds of the loading progress bar,
corresponding to the moment the graphics driver is being loaded and executed.
 11. Upon finishing loading, control is passed to OSX.

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