Macbook 7'1 reporting wrong, changing manufacture date...??

[c4pt1n54n0]

So I pulled my old mid 2010, off-lease, amazon special out of storage a few days ago to set up for some younger family members to do school work, watch youtube videos etc. without risking their parents breakable glass and bendable aluminum-filled Pro of almost the same age.
I took the bottom cover off and proceeded to service it as I would any other 10 year old laptop that will most likely be sitting in less than optimal position for cooling; gutted it, removed all dust and reapplied fresh thermal compound, gave 'er an SSD cloned with the old 250gb 5400. During this procedure I noticed my two RAM modules, while both the same capacity were A)very small capacity, and B) from different manufacturers with totally different PCB layouts, so obviously not making use of any dual-channel goodness. I found some RAM I had in storage that should be supported given the latest EFI was installed on the machine as it's an 8gb kit.

After reassembly I downloaded the Apple EFI update tool for this model and ran it, and it said "This software is not supported on your system." In parallel, I had downloaded and ran the latest Coconut Battery, which reported over 75% original capacity( on a ten year old battery!!!) but also that my mid-2010 macbook was apparently manufactured on 2002-01-07. It's no secret that Apple and Apple specific (endorsed) developers like to end support for their software on older hardware even before it's physically unsupported, so no surprise I can't download or update a single app through the Store, nor will the EFI Update .pkg recognize mine as a system made in their predefined allowable date range. I thought this might be something to do with having a 10 year old CMOS battery and not being powered on for several years, but what I realized next was kind of strange, to me.
Over the past few days of using it to make sure it's stable otherwise, the manufacture date is actively rolling back further. Now it's back to 2001-12-24. That's ~2 days regression for each day I've recently had it running.

I gave up personal use of Apple stuff about the same time this machine went in a closet so I don't have the media created for a fresh install at the moment, however I'm not convinced that would solve the problem since I'd think this would be data that is stored on some ROM chip on the board... why would they want it to be ABLE to be changed in the first place, right..?

As you can probably tell I'm a bit lost here, as any OS I frequent doesn't care when the thing was made, just that there's hardware that can support it, if you know what I mean. With that in mind I do apologize if this is in the wrong area or wrong forum entirely. I wouldn't think the "official" apple forums would have much to say, if anything at all to me.

Thanks for reading, as well as any insight you can lend here.
-C

 

[macintoshmac]

So I pulled my old mid 2010, off-lease, amazon special out of storage a few days ago to set up for some younger family members to do school work, watch youtube videos etc. without risking their parents breakable glass and bendable aluminum-filled Pro of almost the same age.
I took the bottom cover off and proceeded to service it as I would any other 10 year old laptop that will most likely be sitting in less than optimal position for cooling; gutted it, removed all dust and reapplied fresh thermal compound, gave 'er an SSD cloned with the old 250gb 5400. During this procedure I noticed my two RAM modules, while both the same capacity were A)very small capacity, and B) from different manufacturers with totally different PCB layouts, so obviously not making use of any dual-channel goodness. I found some RAM I had in storage that should be supported given the latest EFI was installed on the machine as it's an 8gb kit.

After reassembly I downloaded the Apple EFI update tool for this model and ran it, and it said "This software is not supported on your system." In parallel, I had downloaded and ran the latest Coconut Battery, which reported over 75% original capacity( on a ten year old battery!!!) but also that my mid-2010 macbook was apparently manufactured on 2002-01-07. It's no secret that Apple and Apple specific (endorsed) developers like to end support for their software on older hardware even before it's physically unsupported, so no surprise I can't download or update a single app through the Store, nor will the EFI Update .pkg recognize mine as a system made in their predefined allowable date range. I thought this might be something to do with having a 10 year old CMOS battery and not being powered on for several years, but what I realized next was kind of strange, to me.
Over the past few days of using it to make sure it's stable otherwise, the manufacture date is actively rolling back further. Now it's back to 2001-12-24. That's ~2 days regression for each day I've recently had it running.

I gave up personal use of Apple stuff about the same time this machine went in a closet so I don't have the media created for a fresh install at the moment, however I'm not convinced that would solve the problem since I'd think this would be data that is stored on some ROM chip on the board... why would they want it to be ABLE to be changed in the first place, right..?

As you can probably tell I'm a bit lost here, as any OS I frequent doesn't care when the thing was made, just that there's hardware that can support it, if you know what I mean. With that in mind I do apologize if this is in the wrong area or wrong forum entirely. I wouldn't think the "official" apple forums would have much to say, if anything at all to me.

Thanks for reading, as well as any insight you can lend here.
-C

This is most likely a bug with Coconut Battery, talk to the developer if this bothers you. How does the machine function otherwise? Also, try another program and see what date they report.

 

[chrfr]

Over the past few days of using it to make sure it's stable otherwise, the manufacture date is actively rolling back further. Now it's back to 2001-12-24. That's ~2 days regression for each day I've recently had it running.

The manufacturing date you see in Coconut Battery is not something that's saved in the computer itself– it's just the app itself that's doing the reporting based on a guess derived from the serial number.

 

[c4pt1n54n0]

This is most likely a bug with Coconut Battery, talk to the developer if this bothers you. How does the machine function otherwise? Also, try another program and see what date they report.

Coconut has been the go-to for this kind of info afaik since I had an iBook g4. It's usually right, and was right back when I frequently used this system. I don't have the original date memorized, it's been a while, but it was definitely around the same as the battery (march 2010-ish) macOS system report shows the battery info and date as well, but I can't find anything about the logic board/system itself. Function wise, nothing that talks to apple servers works anymore. App store asks for my ID and says i need to review terms, then freezes on a blank screen. FaceTime does the same thing more or less. System updates say they're downloading but have made no progress over the past week on our 150mbps service, so obviously they're hanging too. And like I mentioned, the EFI update package that was downloaded from Apple for this exact model says it's not supported on this hardware, so I'm stuck with 2gb of RAM. less than ideal, even for basic kid tasks in 2020.
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The manufacturing date you see in Coconut Battery is not something that's saved in the computer itself– it's just the app itself that's doing the reporting based on a guess derived from the serial number.

I just mention Coconut because it's what made immediate sense as being related. My real issue is not being able to run the EFI update package for macbook 7,1... on my macbook 7,1

 

[chrfr]

I just mention Coconut because it's what made immediate sense as being related. My real issue is not being able to run the EFI update package for macbook 7,1... on my macbook 7,1

The EFI is updated now in system software updates. The latest High Sierra security update will have installed the latest possible firmware version for that computer, so the update you're trying to install has probably been made obsolete. What operating system is on that computer now?

 

[c4pt1n54n0]

The EFI is updated now in system software updates. The latest High Sierra security update will have installed the latest possible firmware version for that computer, so the update you're trying to install has probably been made obsolete. What operating system is on that computer now?

Just Sierra 10.12.6.
And like I said, I'm pretty sure system updates are hanging as well. I only see Catalina advertised in the store, where could one find a high sierra image these days?

 

[chrfr]

Just Sierra 10.12.6.
And like I said, I'm pretty sure system updates are hanging as well. I only see Catalina advertised in the store, where could one find a high sierra image these days?

10.12.6 will have updated the firmware beyond that of the standalone updater. I googled for “high Sierra download” and this was the link that came up: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208969

 

[c4pt1n54n0]

10.12.6 will have updated the firmware beyond that of the standalone updater. I googled for “high Sierra download” and this was the link that came up: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208969

Okay, I should have figured no matter what it would be through the currently inaccessible App Store. Thanks for the help though. I'm going to attempt an install of 10.6 and try to upgrade to 10.13, and dig around for some different SODIMMs. But to be clear, assuming Coconut isn't going Coco-nuts, there's no way the changing manufacture date would be related to these issues, or would that be an issue? Last I knew many programs depended on it as far as updating, almost like a Windows build version.

 

[chrfr]

Okay, I should have figured no matter what it would be through the currently inaccessible App Store. Thanks for the help though. I'm going to attempt an install of 10.6 and try to upgrade to 10.13, and dig around for some different SODIMMs. But to be clear, assuming Coconut isn't going Coco-nuts, there's no way the changing manufacture date would be related to these issues, or would that be an issue? Last I knew many programs depended on it as far as updating, almost like a Windows build version.

No, the build date as reported in Coconut Battery has no function with regard to the computer's operation. That's purely a function of hardware model/firmware and operating system version.
You won't be able to go directly from 10.6 to 10.13, but with the computer having had 10.12.6 on it, you can use internet recovery to get 10.13.6. Just start up holding command-option-r.

 

[MultiFinder17]

I've had issues with the manufacture date of my 7,1 using CoconutBattery since the latest update. It's always shown as 1/24/2011, which jives with when I purchased it, but in the latest update it switched to sometime in 2001. The patch notes mention that they changed how the manufacture date is found. I just rolled back to an older version for now.