I purchased a broken MacBook (Santa Rosa) from Ebay several month ago. I use it as a media center connected to my home theater. The MacBook was dropped and had a broken screen and a beat up case. It was always the eye sore of my entertainment center. I recently decided to put it in a custom tiny enclosure witch is nothing more than an attractive external hard drive case. I got it all together and everything is running great...except one tiny detail. The MacBook underclocks itself to 1200 MHz when the battery is not connected. After much research I discovered this was intentional by Apple and all advice given to me was just put the battery back. I don't have room to put the battery back I just have it laying next to the computer causing the same eye sore I had before. There has to be a way to "trick" the computer in thinking the battery is connected. I wouldn't mind it if 1200 MHz was enough raw power to decode HD h.264 but its not. Does anyone know a way to either directly attach the mag safe adapter directly to the battery terminals or somehow short the pins to simulate a connected battery? Or better yet a software solution?
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Run a MacBook at full clock speed without a battery
- Thread starter yeroc3103
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Uh it may idle at 1200mhz but when more power is needed dont worry it will fully clock to the max speed..,
Im pretty sure its called speedstep in the c2d's.
Of corse i am not 100% of your situation.
Edit, Well im not 100 percent sure anymore, but coolbook may be helpful..
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/23183/coolbookcontroller
""Use your MacBook with full performance without a battery installed.'"
Im pretty sure its called speedstep in the c2d's.
Of corse i am not 100% of your situation.
Edit, Well im not 100 percent sure anymore, but coolbook may be helpful..
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/23183/coolbookcontroller
""Use your MacBook with full performance without a battery installed.'"
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This behaviour is designed in by Apple. It's nothing to do with Speedstep.
Reasons are outlined here : http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2332
Reasons are outlined here : http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2332
Those reasons imply that MacBooks/MBPs use the battery for a "power boost" if needed. I'm a little skeptical on that one.
It's true. There are instances where the AC power isn't enough to meet the power demands and the battery is used in addition to AC power. It's not frequent, but it can happen.
I'm impressed. Why not just make the AC adaptor sufficient to meet the laptop's needs?
Why use a notebook with the battery out, when it's clearly designed to be used with the battery in? Apple uses an adapter that works perfectly, as long as it and the notebook are used the way they're designed. Apple designs things to work the way they're intended to work, not to accommodate those who want to use it in a manner other than intended.
Maybe the battery is swelling and it's a fire hazard, but you still need to use the computer. Maybe it's so dead that it doesn't hold any significant amount of charge and the computer can't function on it anyway. Maybe some idiot sold you a MacBook without a battery.
There are lots of reasons that a MacBook could be used without the battery in. It's not going to be the common scenario, but it's also not going to be so uncommon so as to assume it will never happen.
I understand Apple's design philosophy, and how things are supposed to work a certain way, but it is my opinion (like it's really going to get anywhere) that the power brick wouldn't get too big if it just delivered enough power.
It would be bigger and more expensive. Not more, but some. And most likely the only thing that is not covered are extreme but possible scenarios, like CPU and GPU at full speed, full brightness, using wireless, ethernet and bluetooth at the same time, and spinning up DVD and hard drive at the same time, while there are some fluctuations on your power line that decrease the voltage by 10 percent for a second.
So do you think Apple should make a bigger and more expensive power adapter, which affects millions of customers, to support half a dozen customers who want to run a MacBook without battery?
To put it in perspective, a Mac Mini which uses nearly identical components to a macbook and DOES NOT have a power hungry LCD has a 110W power adapter. If apple wanted to provide the ability to use a macbook without a battery reliably it sounds like it would need at least a 110W power adapter (which is huge).
Exactly.
I've got both machines. The MacBook has a 60W AC adaptor which is 1/3rd the size of the Mac Mini brick.
Ever wondered why your battery slowly drops a little on mains power from 100% to say 97%. It's because the battery bolstering the AC power. Until the battery drops a certain amount it won't start recharging back to 100% to give the battery a longer service life.
I have an old MacBook Air where the battery expanded and I needed to remove it. I wanted to run it as a simple iTunes or Plex server in the house. The Plex part is a stretch since it now runs at half speed. This is unfortunate. There are many ways to throttle a CPU without hard cutting it to half frequency if there is no battery.
Also, I followed some instructions online to edit the IOPlatformPlugingFamily.kext They work and the machine runs full blown and full power just from the adapter. However, the system loses it's the ability to detect CPU temperature and runs the fan at full all the time, regardless of load. A bit annoying.
Also, I followed some instructions online to edit the IOPlatformPlugingFamily.kext They work and the machine runs full blown and full power just from the adapter. However, the system loses it's the ability to detect CPU temperature and runs the fan at full all the time, regardless of load. A bit annoying.
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You're using your MacBook Air in a way it wasn't designed or intended to be used. You shouldn't expect it to perform like a MBA with the battery in.
Well, I've run a few laptops over the years as temporary or low use servers in the house. It helps extend their life, and they are very efficient with power consumption. Other manufacturers generally do not have this limitation and I was surprised to find this Air did. As I hope I communicated, I was not angry, just annoyed to find this limitation. There is more to the story too with Apple support, but really, I thought I would comment here in case anyone else bumps into this thread as I did with a search on this topic.
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I'm not on message boards or forums much these days. What does "necro'd" mean? As for why I commented, I came across this in a general online search and thought I would add to it after I had tried a few things. Just in case anyone else bumps into it.