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Prototype MacBook Pro

J

jacob.vanorder

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Apr 15, 2009
15
0
Hey, so I bought a MacBook Pro last night on Craigs List here in Philadelphia-area so that I could eventually fix it up and give it to my girlfriend. It's a 2.16 Core 2 Duo MBP with 1 GB of Ram and 120 GB of HD.

The listing had said that it had recently been diagnosed with logic board problems at the apple store but I know that is apple store language for "I don't know what's wrong with it." I decided to give it a shot.

The guy had bought it off ebay and it came with Tiger. It stopped working for him after his buddy tried to install Leopard. It currently goes through a funny loop of verbose text and then starts over in an endless loop.

When I came to look at it, I saw that it had an Apple Development Team sticker on the bottom. With my interest piqued, I decided to give it a shot at fixing it and bought it from him.

When I got it home, it wouldn't take the leopard disk. It just hangs at a blue screen after the gray apple screen. Same goes with booting off another
drive with a leopard install.

I then took it apart to see if the hard drive was bad and to swap it out. While doing that, I noticed a couple weird things. Namely:

  • The motherboard is green instead of blue.
  • The airport card is a "M35B Dusty Client DVT Wireless Client" and not production

While inspecting the stickers underneath, it seems that the wireless card is a "dusty atheros" and the antenna is a "Tyco". I'm not sure if the unit was for testing the wireless card or not but it's definitely a development unit. Still, it'd be interesting to see it run.

To do that, I remembered that I have a tiger restore disk for my Santa Rosa MBP and popped it in. Surprisingly, it boots up and runs but won't restore as it's not the same computer... The diagnostic software says nothing is wrong though...

I'm in the process of tracking down an intel version of Tiger to see if that boot but Leopard is a no go for sure.

Have you seen something like this? Is it weird that the motherboard is green and in the configuration it is? Anything else weird?

Here are some pics to prove what I'm saying and to see if anyone else notices anything weird:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/83248197@N00/sets/72157616810537356/

Thanks!
 
I thought prototypes had red boards?

A green one is still a bit odd, so maybe that would indicate to me it was nearer going into production and, like you guessed, was built to test the wireless card.

Good luck on the Tiger hunt. You may end up having to resort to more 'gray' areas to find one though, since it's been off the shelf a good two years now.
 
Just out of curiosity, how much did you pay for it? I was thinking of investing in a broken Mac (pay no more than $100) and just try and bring it back to life.
 
I paid more than that...

The ultimate purpose of getting it was a function laptop to replace the girlfriend's macbook. I asked her if she wanted a very rare apple laptop that only runs tiger and she surprisingly said no...

:D
 
jacob.vanorder said:
I paid more than that...

The ultimate purpose of getting it was a function laptop to replace the girlfriend's macbook. I asked her if she wanted a very rare apple laptop that only runs tiger and she surprisingly said no...

:D
Click to expand...

pff. You need a girlfriend that respects the geekyness of getting a prototype laptop.
 
I'll let her know that spaces is no match for the awesome power of obscure hardware.

By the way, she was able to find a copy of tiger for this hardware... That's pretty great.
 
Win

Just as a note, I got it install Tiger by installing through Target Disk Mode. I am typing this from the computer! Now I have to determine why it's not taking Leopard or just let it be...

I do wonder where this laptop came from though...

:)
 

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Congratulation! You just made yourself a few hundreds of bucks! Now you just need to find someone interested in buying yourself this prototype and you might be able to buy yourself a fresh new unibody MacBook!
 
Someone posted on here previous bought a real prototype since it had a Pentium M. ;)
 
That's totally crazy!! Do you know what they did with it?

I am wondering what I should do with mine, though. Any ideas on how/where to sell it?
 
jacob.vanorder said:
That's totally crazy!! Do you know what they did with it?

I am wondering what I should do with mine, though. Any ideas on how/where to sell it?
Click to expand...

To be fair, that machine looks like crap and people don't want computer that look like crap.
 
ceezy3000 said:
haha thats so cool. i guess apple was already planning its transition to intel even before the core duos
Click to expand...

Of course, they had OS X running on Intel for a long time. Check out the transition to Intel Keynote speech on YouTube.

Steve said, "OS X has been living a double life for the past 5 years" and called it the "just in case" scenario.
 
Any ideas as to why a leopard install wouldn't work? Even an upgrade of Tiger caused the same hanging blue screen after it starts. I managed to reinstall to 10.4.6 but what a strange problem.

I have a feeling that the hardware is unsupported and thus the OS won't load but I'm not sure.

Any thoughts on this?
 
jacob.vanorder said:
Any ideas as to why a leopard install wouldn't work? Even an upgrade of Tiger caused the same hanging blue screen after it starts. I managed to reinstall to 10.4.6 but what a strange problem.

I have a feeling that the hardware is unsupported and thus the OS won't load but I'm not sure.

Any thoughts on this?
Click to expand...

Because it's prototype hardware? That maybe, just maybe, isn't supported, because, dun dun dunnnn, it's a prototype?
 
Haha. I probably checked that same CL ad out! I'm in Philly and troll the computer listings for apple stuff all the time. I probably would have jumped at the chance to grab a prototype! You hit a great deal!

Now all that's left is uncovering the history of that model of prototype, which is what would interest me most!
 
Schtumple said:
Because it's prototype hardware? That maybe, just maybe, isn't supported, because, dun dun dunnnn, it's a prototype?
Click to expand...

Circular logic it seems, right? I am just trying to figure out what is particularly not supported and stopping Leopard from running. I've taken out the wireless card and tried booting leopard to no success so that might not just be the only weird component.

And besides, would the wireless card stop it from booting? The motherboard looks pretty stock except for it's color but I can't see anything else different...

Any other thoughts?
 
It's probably just where it is a prototype board, it's not directly the same as the production model, therefore, that logic board is un-supported.

That's my estimation.
 
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