Black MacBook Running El Capitan

[Mason Dulemba]

Ok so I thought I would take a minute to show off my latest project, and tell a story ...

Backstory:​

It's My 14th birthday and a friend of mine gives me a mid 2009 MacBook. This is my first upto date MacBook. (before I had bought 5 PowerBook G4s ) I used that MacBook for everything and ultimately it's one of the main reasons i got into OS X and iOS development. It lasted until this past July and died out of the blue. It was totally dead, I tore it apart and looked for a cause of death and came up with nothing. A friend who heard about what happened bought me something I'd wanted since I was like 8, a Black MacBook ! Was it outdated ? Yes of course but it was one of the most beautiful Macs I'd ever seen ! I decided I would improve on it a bit and invert the keyboard using the keyboard from my dead mid 2009 white MacBook (pictures below). After adding 6gbs of ram and a 128gb ssd the thing was very quick, but it was still limited by the old hardware inside to lion, unofficially I got upto mountain lion any further I got into major lag or other issues.

What I did:
I bought a mid 2009 MacBook for about $80 and tore out the logic board and DVD drive connector. Then I ripped the heatsync nuts from the frame of the white MacBook shell added thermal paste, attached the heatsync to the logicboard and held the nut under the logic board and screwed the heatsync on. Then I filed down the two nuts that were in the way on the black MacBook shell, and then installed the motherboard and then installed a DVD harddrive chassi and added a second ssd. Then I put the keyboard back on and voila !

 

[iParis]

Indefinitely jelly. So it thinks it's a 2009 MacBook?

 

[Mason Dulemba]

Indefinitely jelly. So it thinks it's a 2009 MacBook?

No it is technically a MacBook mid 2009 with a mid 2007 black shell
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[soanis]

Hello, jelly Black Macbook owner and operator (current OS is Lion) for the past 9 years here...I have a few questions

I have a hybrid SSD (Momentus XT 750GB) inside and I was thinking of swapping the Optical Drive with a caddy and another drive, perhaps put my old 5400rpm HDD there...Do you think it'd be better if I got an actual SSD in there or in the place of the hybrid? Would there be any improvement in performance/speed or is it just going to be bottlenecked? What do you think?

I'm also thinking of finding a 2009 white macbook and doing the whole process but I'm not sure I wanna go that far yet, but also don't have the 00s needed for a decent new machine...Must also upgrade RAM from the current 4GB to 6GB.

Now you mentioned that you got up to Mountain Lion, how did it handle that? Is it actually worth it?

Thanks!

 

[Mason Dulemba]

Hello, jelly Black Macbook owner and operator (current OS is Lion) for the past 9 years here...I have a few questions

I have a hybrid SSD (Momentus XT 750GB) inside and I was thinking of swapping the Optical Drive with a caddy and another drive, perhaps put my old 5400rpm HDD there...Do you think it'd be better if I got an actual SSD in there or in the place of the hybrid? Would there be any improvement in performance/speed or is it just going to be bottlenecked? What do you think?

I'm also thinking of finding a 2009 white macbook and doing the whole process but I'm not sure I wanna go that far yet, but also don't have the 00s needed for a decent new machine...Must also upgrade RAM from the current 4GB to 6GB.

Now you mentioned that you got up to Mountain Lion, how did it handle that? Is it actually worth it?

Thanks!

Yeah ive had a few mid 2009 macbooks, both have been able to hold 8gb, not saying it can use all 8gb ram but, it does seem to make the computer a bit faster, maybe its just in my head . Definitely go with a full ssd instead of a hybrid, ive not had much luck with hybrids, plus if they fail just as easily as mechanical drives (Probably because they are partially mechanical). Since building this, i did upgrade to a 2012 MacBook Pro, but gave my black macbook to my dad so he could have a macbook for him self He seems to love it, and has even ordered it a new battery if you need any help, dm me on twitter (@shmadul) i respond alot faster there
[doublepost=1496346961][/doublepost]

Hello, jelly Black Macbook owner and operator (current OS is Lion) for the past 9 years here...I have a few questions

I have a hybrid SSD (Momentus XT 750GB) inside and I was thinking of swapping the Optical Drive with a caddy and another drive, perhaps put my old 5400rpm HDD there...Do you think it'd be better if I got an actual SSD in there or in the place of the hybrid? Would there be any improvement in performance/speed or is it just going to be bottlenecked? What do you think?

I'm also thinking of finding a 2009 white macbook and doing the whole process but I'm not sure I wanna go that far yet, but also don't have the 00s needed for a decent new machine...Must also upgrade RAM from the current 4GB to 6GB.

Now you mentioned that you got up to Mountain Lion, how did it handle that? Is it actually worth it?

Thanks!

It ran ML ok, but i couldnt join any protected wifi network (Yes I had Right Password), but open networks were no problem, very odd problem i know....