Unibody Aluminum MacBook Late 2008 Won’t Boot

[Danger! Will]

I recently replaced the fan on my MacBook and broke the fan connector to the logic board. I had my friend solder the connectors back on which worked great for awhile but now my MacBook won’t but. It only beeps. I’ve tried removing the battery, resetting SMC and PRAM and it still won’t boot. Should I try resoldering the fan connector? If the logic board has finally gone out what’s the newest logic board I can put in and from what year. I realize this is an old computer but it has a new battery, 480GB SSD and 8GB of ram and handles my daily tasks of surfing the web and Microsoft Office. Any feedback is appreciated. Thanks.

 

[EugW]

You can sometimes pick these things up cheap on Kijiji. I got an aluminum late 2008 MacBook5,1 like yours with 2 GB RAM and 160 GB HD locally for under US$150. The trackpad didn't click 100% consistently, but 10 minutes of trial and error adjustments fixed that, as there is an adjustment screw in them specifically for this purpose. (I already had an SSD so I wasn't worried about the HD, and I had 4 GB RAM left over from my MacBook Pro upgrade, although I just ordered 8 GB Transcend RAM for around US$36 from a killer Amazon.ca sale.) Also you can sometimes pick up its successor, the polycarbonate MacBook6,1 for cheap on Kijiji. Furthermore, there is a guy in the US who sells refurb MacBook6,1 units on eBay for US$180.

MacBook 6,1 is basically the same internals as your MacBook5,1, but with a plastic shell. More importantly, it officially supports High Sierra whereas yours doesn't (unless you patch it). Since the internals are so similar, your SSD and your 8 GB RAM will work in MacBook 6,1. The only issue would be your wasted battery, but at least it would come with a working battery.

You can get "For Parts Only" MacBook5,1 units for even cheaper to attempt a motherboard swap, but there's no guarantee it would actually have a fully functional motherboard. Plus it would be a major PITA.

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BTW, with my MacBook5,1 Kijiji purchase, I re-discovered that 2 GB RAM with 160 GB HD is completely unusable, even with and old OS like Yosemite 10.10.