My first work computer!

[dandeco]

I mentioned in another thread that last week I started a new job, my first computer tech job with my I.T. Associate's Degree! I am working for a data recycling and reselling company, located in a warehouse FULL of electronic devices. They recycle and resell electronics, and they've had me go through a bunch of computers and either wipe the hard drives (PCs and Chromebooks) or wipe and re-install MacOS (Macs). What I do will vary each day; for a while they had me go through three barrels of power cords and adapters, and I can tell you there were a TON of Apple power cords, mostly 60W MagSafe 1 power adapters for older MacBooks and 13" MacBook Pros, along with some 85W adapters for 15" and 17" MacBook Pros, 45W adapters for MacBook Airs, a few MagSafe 2 adapters (but only one of them works so far), even a few iBook and PowerBook G4 power adapters, and a lot of iMac power cords and several older Mac Mini power adapters!
Just recently on the job they set me up with a work computer for my workstation that I can use to look up information and disassembly instructions, and for printing labels using a DYMO LabelWriter 450...

Yep, a late 2009 21" Core 2 Duo iMac! It doesn't have the bezel, but it's still pretty neat. They had me disassemble it a bit this morning to put in a 500 GB 3.5" SATA hard drive, and then I installed Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard onto it using my install disk. But upgrading it to a newer operating system was difficult at first, installing OS X 10.11 El Capitan (and I may upgrade it to High Sierra later) to make sure I could use DYMO's labeling software on it. The installer would fail, but then I remembered having a similar problem when making my El Capitan boot drive for my 2012 Mac Mini at home, and so I looked it up and I changed the date on the iMac to mid-2017 before performing the upgrade, and it did the trick!
For Internet connection, the iMac is linked to the warehouse's Wi-Fi network, with a decent signal. And yes, I am using an older Apple Pro Keyboard with it, but that's because there are a LOT of older Apple keyboards and mice around the warehouse anyways, and whatever works just works!

The About This Mac screen. I may upgrade the RAM to 8 GB or something, just to be on the safe side.

Yep, I've only been working two weeks at this job and they've already considered me the Mac expert! Just how I wanted it. And hey, by the end of this year I should be able to afford getting a new MacBook Pro for myself!

 

[ezugaru]

Damn, My dream job, enjoy it bro.
I would Buy lots of stuff from that place hahahahahaha, starting by a Dell M6800 with Nvidia K4100M for a hackintosh xD

 

[dandeco]

Just some more pics from on the job...

Last week they had me take a bunch of these late-2009 unibody polycarbonate MacBooks and swap out the hard drives in them with blank ones for resell, along with testing to see if they power on and then install a Mac OS on them (High Sierra). I also worked on some unibody MacBook Pros as well (mostly 13" and a couple of 15" models as well). Ahh, I miss the easy user serviceability of those unibody MacBooks and Pros...

A while after setting up my work iMac, I was able to upgrade it from 6 to 8 GB of RAM, just to be safe, and I also upgraded the Mac OS to High Sierra, the highest it'd support.

During the day this photo was taken, I had four MagSafe power adapters plugged in (two 60W and two 85W) so I could work on installing Mac OS High Sierra on four Mac laptops at once. (We stocked up on USB thumb drives and so I made four bootable High Sierra installers, along with an El Capitan installer for if need be.)

Yesterday I was assigned to reset these Airport Extreme base stations to factory settings for resell, and it was pretty easy to do. I also reset a couple of Time Capsule stations as well, in the same way. A shame Apple doesn't make anything like this anymore...
And for those wondering, behind the AirPort bases are piles of HP Chromebook 11s that I worked on, powerwashing any that could be done so (many of them had bad batteries that could prevent them from booting up all the way.)

 

[GewOne]

Wow, really neat to see how a computer looks on the inside. Especially love your photos, keep 'em coming please!

 

[dandeco]

I've been pretty busy with this job and have taken several photos, but haven't shared them here yet. But here we go...

Back in January, they had me work on a LOT of MacBook Airs, mostly 2012-2015 11" and 13" models that were used at schools (as the MacBook Air is popular with educational institutions, just as the iBook and polycarbonate MacBook were). Removing/replacing the SSD in them was pretty simple (some of them had bad SSDs and I'd need to replace them), and they would have me wipe the SSDs on them (using a MacOS Installer USB stick) so they could be re-sold online without an operating system installed. It took me I think three to four weeks to get through all of them, as there were a LOT, but each one took me around five minutes to wipe the SSD on.)

Testing an older Mac Mini and Apple Cinema Display for resell. The display had a cracked screen, so it was no good (any broken electronics we recycle, as we ARE an electronics recycling/reselling company.)

Last month they also had me test and reset a bunch of Apple TVs. A couple were the 1st-generation version like this, while the rest were later generations in the little black case. For all of them I'd use that same Apple Remote that I am keeping with my tools and supplies (for if I need to test more in the future.)

 

[dandeco]

Last Friday, I brought my new M1 MacBook Air into work, to show it off to my supervisor and coworkers. When bringing it out I even announced to them, "Behold... the future of Mac laptops!" (This is because in addition to Chromebooks, as I mentioned we also often get Macs from educational institutions, usually flat-panel iMacs or MacBook Airs or white polycarbonate MacBooks.) They sure were impressed! Since on such Macs they may have me replace the hard drive (usually on white MacBooks or pre-2012 iMacs) or wipe the hard drive/SSD, I mentioned that since the new MacBook Airs use M1 processors, the KillDisk DOS-based software we use to wipe hard drives on most PCs and Intel Macs will not work, so to wipe the drive on such a computer I'd use a MacOS installer on a USB thumb drive, like I typically would for the MacBook Airs I've wiped (though on some, they'd also have me install a MacOS version onto them.)

Comparing an original early-2008 MacBook Air I've yet to service with my new M1 MacBook Air. It's amazing how back then, the MacBook Air was meant to be Apple's premium ultraportable laptop and was the thinnest for its' time, while nowadays the MacBook Air is Apple's more affordable entry-level laptop line (and is thus popular with educational institutions as a result, like the iBook and the polycarbonate MacBook were) and is even thinner and lighter! Also note that the original MacBook Air generation had a separate button for their multi-touch trackpad, even after the unibody MacBook Pros came out and then the polycarbonate white MacBook was redesigned. And of course the M1 MacBook Air has less mass than the original one (like that smaller bezel.

The original early 2008 MacBook Air offered just a headphone out port, a single USB 2.0 port, and that proprietary Micro-DVI port (later replaced with the usual MiniDisplay port on the late 2008 revision). Whereas the M1 MacBook Air gives you two Thunderbolt 4/USB-C ports that offer several hub/dongle expansion possibilities, along with an audio-out port on the other side (not pictured.) We sure have come a long way!

 

[dandeco]

Last week they had me test a bunch of camcorders, mostly older tape-based ones...

In testing the MiniDV and Digital8 camcorders (like the Sony Digital8 here; I loaded one of my own Hi-8 tapes into the camcorder to test it) I'd also bring my 4-pin to 9-pin FireWire cable so I could test the DV port on them by hooking it up to my work iMac and its' FireWire 800 port. I figured this would be a good idea because we plan to resell them on our eBay store, and nowadays people would probably buy MiniDV or Digital8 camcorders so they can import their old compatible tapes into their computers. Certainly not the only brilliant idea I've had at this job...

There were also several Video8 and Hi-8 camcorders I tested, an HDD camcorder (since it was internal I needed to delete all the video files stored on it so we could resell it) and even a couple of OLD Panasonic VHS-C camcorders and a Sony Mini-DVD camcorder!

I have read how these thing were generally a hassle to work with, what with the mediocre image quality, small storage amount (15 to 30 minutes of footage), the long "initializing" and "finalizing" of discs and how it was hard to import the footage into a computer for editing (especially with Macs.) Indeed, it took a while for the mini-DVD to "finalize" so I could remove it during my testing.

 

[dandeco]

More work pics from this past month relating to Macs...

Earlier in the month my supervisor's sister wanted me to get this 24" iMac from 2007 set up so their father (who owns the company) can use it, largely for web browsing and such. So I formatted the drive in Mac OS Journaled and installed Mac OS X El Capitan on it, as that's the highest it'll support.

At my job they've had me test Apple keyboards at times, mostly the 2007-present wired keyboards, as they get a LOT of them and found that they're more prone to failure and such. I test them using KeyboardTester.com on my 21" iMac, but since the webpage doesn't recognize some of the Mac keys, I find other ways to test them, particularly the function keys. The older 2003-2007 -style keyboards they don't really have me test, as my supervisor finds them to be built much better (this is one reason why I use one with the iMac as my main keyboard!)

In testing a batch of Canon ZR200 MiniDV camcorders, we got a FireWire 4-pin to 9-pin cable for me to use so I can test the DV ports on these types of camcorders. I even installed iMovie HD 6 onto my work iMac, as I find it somewhat easier to work with importing DV footage. (After all, the original iMovie from 1999 was designed to only import DV footage anyways!)

We also recently got a batch of 13" MacBook Pros from 2010-2012 from a school district. Unfortunately the schools put a firmware lock on them, so that complicates things somewhat. At least they all already had the hard drives removed! A few didn't have RAM installed, so I'd put 4 GB of the stuff in to make sure they boot properly, and so we're going to sell them on our eBay store as "For Parts," as people will still buy such computers. (They've had me pull the motherboard out of quite a few physically-damaged PCs for resell.) It's also too bad, because I was looking to maybe get one of those 2012 MacBook Pros for my growing collection of older Macs (I do at least want a better "older" Intel Mac laptop with USB 3.0, Thunderbolt and a working SuperDrive for the collection.)

 

[nieks]

went through the topic a bit, and what I thought was: "Bring back the white MacBook design! 😍 "

 

[dandeco]

went through the topic a bit, and what I thought was: "Bring back the white MacBook design! 😍 "

Oh yes, they were a good line. Not only was my first Intel Mac a white polycarbonate MacBook (mid-2009 version with NVIDIA graphics), but they were also a good compromise back at that time between the ultrathin premium portability (and thus underpowered) MacBook Air and the hefty and more powerful (and expensive) MacBook Pro. Plus, the white MacBook was a great replacement for the iBook G4 in utilizing a similar polycarbonate design and being ideal for education; not just for college students who want a good affordable Mac laptop but also for educational institutions to let students use. This is why in 2011, Apple made the white MacBook only available to educational markets before ultimately discontinuing them the following year. Since then, the MacBook Air has evolved into Apple's affordable entry-level Mac laptop line that's ideal for educational institutions and have also gotten more powerful than their earlier incarnations (especially the M1 model, being almost as powerful as the M1 13" MacBook Pro!) And as you have seen, at my job we do tend to get a lot of MacBook Airs from school districts, and I imagine with this Intel-to-Apple Silicon transition we'll be getting a LOT of older Intel Macs from schools for the next few years. (I'm thinking of also getting a mid-2009 white MacBook like I had and a 13" 2012 pre-unibody MacBook Pro for my collection of older Macs.)

 

[Danoc]

Very cyberpunk. I love it.

 

[dandeco]

Yesterday after I finished with the piles of Asus Chromebooks we finally had enterprise enrollment removed from, we got an Apple 24" LED Cinema Display and they had me test it!

I just hooked it up to my M1 MacBook Air using the USB-C to MiniDisplay adapter I have as part of my testing kit, and I also tested the USB and the built-in iSight webcam and they all worked like they were supposed to! Now we'll just label it as "TESTED" and get ready to list it online.

I always liked the look of those Apple LED displays, and the fact that they also included built-in USB, speakers and a built-in webcam and microphone made them pretty keen. But because they are all discontinued, and I've decided I like to have a matte display for my quad-core i7 Mac Mini desktop in my room, I'm going to just replace my failing Dell 2408WFP with a new Dell P2419H display, so I can at least have a 24" HD monitor that's thinner and has USB 3.0 ports (the Apple Thunderbolt Display only gives you USB 2.0 ports.)

 

[TwoH]

Reading this is cute. Good job OP

 

[miss.manson]

This is too cool! Following for more.

 

[dandeco]

Haven't worked on many Apple devices lately, but these may be on my queue...

Apple Xserves! They're all Intel models, including two from 2006 and one from either 2008 or 2009. They already don't have hard drives in them, so I guess I'd just test them by powering them on and hooking them up to an external display to see if they boot to the flashing question mark folder.

This is at our satellite location a few towns over; a bunch of Intel iMacs set up with the KillDisk DOS-based software on USB thumb drives for wiping the Macs' internal hard drives. Being DOS-based, KillDisk will only work on Intel Macs, and it's what I typically use to wipe the hard drives on the Slim Unibody iMacs we get.

Among a huge lot of audiovisual stuff we got is this box for the original Final Cut Studio from 2005! Unfortunately the discs are not included; it only contains the user manuals.

 

[DanTSX]

Neat thread.

Folks doing what you do for work are what allowed me to originally access Apple computers when new would had been financially impossible for me. (20” G4 iMac back in 2007, followed by a 17” TiBook in 2009). Now I am fortunate enough to be able to just order new optioned-up macs without hesitation. But back then, it was either buy an old iMac from local recycler, or settle for cheapest PC in the big box store. Thanks to folks like you, I made the right choice (and became an Apple zealot)


also, wait until you start working with the absolute industrial art that the Mac Pros represents. They really don’t make things like they used to…..

 

[dandeco]

Well, we recently got a huge load from school districts that includes lots of Chromebooks and Mac laptops and iPads and older iPhones! And of course, they're having me work on the Chromebooks and the Macs...

I finally got around to removing the hard drive from that first-generation MacBook Air! (The screen on it was bad; it just showed white with several vertical lines.) It wasn't that much different from installing that SSD in my PowerBook G4 in terms of difficulty.

Remember when I mentioned how I was able to replace the battery in my mid-2012 13" MacBook Pro? As I said, I've often had to remove bad batteries from unibody Mac laptops, and of course this lot included a bunch of unibody MacBook Pros, several of them like this that I had to remove bad batteries from to prevent further damage or the possibility of an explosion or a fire. Then we list/resell them without a battery installed.

A pile of 13" unibody MacBook Pros I worked on yesterday, all of them 2010-2012 models, along with a 15" model. Today I worked on a lot more 15" unibody MacBook Pros, along with a few 17" models. For this job, they want to sell the MacBooks without internal hard drives or anything, and this was easy because most of these MacBooks already came with the hard drives removed! Several of those 13" Pros did have a firmware lock, and I made a note of that, since you can't really remove it on the 2010-2012 unibody MacBook Pros due to the internal battery. (I suppose one way to work around it is to use another Mac and install a Mac OS version onto an external hard drive/SSD, and then install that drive into the Mac with the firmware lock.)

Some of the MacBook Pros had this Numark label on them. Numark is right in Rhode Island, not that far from Berkley, MA (where I work.) My current record player at home is a Numark PT-01 Scratch turntable!

A couple of the 15" unibody MacBook Pros had matte displays like this. I like how they even gave them a silver bezel like the aluminum PowerBook G4s and early MacBook Pros had. This one had a screen issue, so I made a note of that on the label I printed for it.

A 15" Retina MacBook Pro from 2015! I didn't get to working on this one much today, because the battery was too depleted in order to be booted up, even when hooked up to an AC adapter! Here I am using the MagSafe 1-to-2 adapter from my toolkit in order to use the 85W MagSafe AC adapter I use when testing these Mac laptops. (The 85W adapter will also work with 13" MacBook models (and the 11" Air), automatically adjusting to the proper wattage.)

 

[theMarble]

The display issue on one of the matte 15" MBP's might be a graphics card fault. The 2010's (GT 330M) and much more commonly the 2011's (HD 6490M/6750M/6770M) had crippling graphics failure, that is one of the first warning signs of it.

 

[dandeco]

The display issue on one of the matte 15" MBP's might be a graphics card fault. The 2010's (GT 330M) and much more commonly the 2011's (HD 6490M/6750M/6770M) had crippling graphics failure, that is one of the first warning signs of it.

Hey thanks; I'll add a mention of that on its' "NO GOOD" label.

 

[dandeco]

A few photos from last Friday...

We got some MacBook Airs from a school district, 2010-2014 models. Only one of them did not have a firmware lock, so we reserved that one for me to use to wipe those proprietary SSDs in the 2010-2017 MacBook Airs and 2012-2016 Retina MacBook Pros with! I can just open the bottom, pop one inside the Air, slide a Mac OS install thumb drive in one of the USB ports, and wipe the SSD via Disk Utility! I've got a pile of those SSDs I've taken out of broken MacBook Airs and Retina MacBook Pros that still need to be wiped (usually I wouldn't wipe them until I install one in such a laptop that either came without one or when replacing a failed SSD.)

One of the aforementioned firmware-lock MacBook Airs had a bad battery. But as I've mentioned, the batteries are fairly easy to remove/replace in these kind of MacBook Airs. (That 15" Retina MacBook Pro we got a while back had a similarly bloated battery, but it's VERY difficult to remove, and will require some additional supplies we don't have on hand.) So for this one I just had to remove the battery and SSD, and mention on the label that it had no battery or SSD.

 

[dandeco]

A couple of weeks ago at work, they had me wipe a bunch of 13" 2nd-generation MacBook Airs we got from a university that someone was buying the whole lot of...

There were around 87 of these MacBook Airs! Most were the mid-2013 model, but there were some early 2015 models and one early 2014 Air. They were all bought in bulk by the university, and each one came configured with 8 GB of RAM and a 512 GB SSD.

We also recently got a couple of these AirPort Extreme wi-fi cards. I told my boss what they were for and how some people may still be looking to install them in their early-to-mid 2000s Macs, and so we will be listing them on our eBay store for resell.

In a box of Apple stuff, a FireWire-to-Thunderbolt adapter was also included! We decided that I should definitely hold onto this, for using Target Disk Mode on certain Macs and such.

This week, I got a "new" work computer as well, after using that late-2009 unibody iMac for nearly a year!

We recently got a lot of slim-unibody iMacs, largely 21.5" and a few 27" models, and I figured I should use one of them as my work computer, due to the limitations of my late 2009 Mac. I ended up setting up a late 2013 21.5" iMac and installed Mac OS 10.15 Catalina on it. I can now run the newest versions of the DYMO labeling software and a few other apps! Here I am transferring my files via Ethernet using Migration Assistant. I let this process run over night.

Heh, check out my desktop wallpaper! This 2013 iMac should suit me for at least a year.

System overview.

 

[dandeco]

This week at work, I brought in my 2m Thunderbolt 1/2 cable in order to perform Target Disk Mode on a couple of slim unibody iMacs with broken displays but would still otherwise boot...

I'd connect the broken iMac to my "new" work iMac via Thunderbolt and erase the internal hard drive with Disk Utility. For this process, when wiping the drive I had to increase the wiping security to the three-pass mode, so I would let the wiping work overnight, just like I do when using the KillDisk DOS-based app on other slim unibody iMacs (and even, this only works on iMacs with traditional hard drives, otherwise I have to use a Mac OS installer USB thumb drive.)

 

[dandeco]

Wow, I can't believe I've been working for this electronics recycling/reselling company for a whole year now! And here are some recent updates...

From that batch of iMacs last month, two of the 27" Retina models did not come with RAM or cover plates for them, so when testing them and wiping the hard drives with KillDisk I'd pop the appropriate RAM modules in.

Testing and resetting an early AirPort Extreme base station! The one in the box had never even been unwrapped, so we sold it as new in the box.

Testing printers is easy when hooking them up to my iMac, since the Mac OS can easily locate the drivers online or in the system files.

We also got some 2014 Mac Minis (the 1.4 GHz i5 model), and I was able to securely wipe the hard drive in each one using the KillDisk software.

This week I worked on a bin full of 13" and 15" unibody MacBook Pros, testing them to see if they will boot and don't have firmware locks, get down the specs and such. This one here is the first 13" MacBook Pro A1278 model, back when it was just branded as a "MacBook" and did not have the FireWire port or SD card slot (not to mention the backlit keyboard only being on the more expensive model).

One of the 15" 2012 MacBook Pros, when I entered its' serial number into the EveryMac website, it gave me two possible processor configurations, but I was able to pop my Mac OS High Sierra 2.5" test hard drive into the Pro so I could boot it up to the About This Mac screen and get the processor info. This turned out to be a 2.6 GHz quad-core i7 model, just like the one I have! The battery was also swollen and had to be removed.

And speaking of my MacBook Pro, lately I've been using it at my workplace! It's noticeably faster and more up-to-date than my 2013 21" iMac running Mac OS 10.15 Catalina there. I was even able to download and install the DYMO Label software to use my work label printer with, and Microsoft Teams for communicating with my boss and other co-workers! And thanks to the network sharing features I can drag and drop files between the Pro and the iMac. Though I'll still use the iMac for printing out the "NO GOOD"/"Chrome OS Reset"/etc. label sheets and scanning in Chromebook serial numbers and the like.

Another project I'm working on this week; we got a lot of 25 iMacs from a school district; all of them are the late 2013 21.5" i5 model, configured with 8 GB of RAM and 256 GB SSDs. This means I can't securely wipe them with KillDisk or whatever...

But I CAN use a Mac OS USB installer to wipe each one AND install Mac OS 10.15 Catalina on them! Because I only have two Catalina installers on hand, I can install it on two iMacs at once! It's still a lot quicker than installing Catalina on one Mac at a time.

 

[UltimateSyn]

View attachment 1908987

This photo makes me so sad / anxious... Those poor Macs!

 

[dandeco]

This photo makes me so sad / anxious... Those poor Macs!

Don't worry; so far they all work pretty well, with only a few minor physical defects!