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What have you done with an early Intel recently?

Recently, I encountered the infamous "dim green dot" problem on my Mid 2009 13" MBP., where the magsafe status LED is a very dim green color and the laptop won't charge. It turns out, when I pulled the motherboard to replace the thermal paste, I tore one of the wires on the DC-in daughterboard and it ended up splitting completely. Luckily, I was able to easily solder it back and now the laptop works perfectly. =)

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Interesting. On the two Mac Pros I've owned, I've only ever used/seen/bought these:
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They're 3D-printed pop-in items, and work very well. The drive itself connects directly, so no extra electricals in the way. But nowhere near as nice-looking as that frame!
 
I have either Newertech Adaptadrive or Sabrents equivalent in each of my iMacs. IMHO quite elegant solution but I guess double sided tape would work the same.

First pic late 2009 27" SSD upgrade with the Adaptadrive some years ago. Second pic from today, trial run of 2011 27" with couple of extra displays. 😎
 

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PS. If you're wondering what that big blue thing is in the second pic, it's my anti-static strap/cord. I have it attached to the table with a metal binder clip with the other end connected to the frame of the MacPro. I touch the strap every time I sit down. The carpet in the front room generates a lot of static and I've zapped the MP sufficiently twice now to warrant resetting the SMC. After the second time I got the strap.
 
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DCBassman said:
Interesting. On the two Mac Pros I've owned, I've only ever used/seen/bought these:
View attachment 2369562

They're 3D-printed pop-in items, and work very well. The drive itself connects directly, so no extra electricals in the way. But nowhere near as nice-looking as that frame!
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DCBassman said:
Example.
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I have never seen that and was unaware it existed. I bought a cheap one off eBay once and I had nothing but data transfer problems. So, I went with NewerTech. More expensive, but I REALLY love the fact that NT drive adapters are metal and not plastic. Little more expensive, but much higher quality. And…the data transfer board is red. 🙂

This is the second one I have bought.
 
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ToniCH said:
but I guess double sided tape would work the same
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Assume double sided tape will always fail unless there's a force keeping pressure on it. I tried some 3M double sided foam bits but they didn't last (maybe hanging two drives from it is too much) so I just let the drive naturally hang (actually, they point upward and are kept from falling out by the drive bay sleds).
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/pcie-ssds-nvme-ahci.2146725/page-98?post=29613683#post-29613683
 
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joevt said:
Assume double sided tape will always fail unless there's a force keeping pressure on it.
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Maybe, not my style 😉 so have no experience. However, I now have a mSata drive temporarily duck taped to my G4 MDD while I wait for proper mount to arrive. And I generally duck tape the glue-on MBP batteries in place instead of using the factory tape/glue as intended, makes replacement in the future way easier.

This is the Sabrent version, same idea and works identical to Adaptadrive. They were much cheaper (in Eu) than the Adaptadrive last time I bought one. Only couple of dollars difference in Amazon com though.

I also like the OWC:s drive adapter/sleds (mount pro) and got them for my cMP.
 
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ToniCH said:
Like I implied, Mojave installer will convert it automatically and you cannot even bypass the conversion. I think in High Sierra installer you could choose not to convert but not in Mojave. So, if the disk utility will not format it to APFS the installer will - or there is something weird going on with the drive, OS or drive-OS compatibility.

Of course you can connect (USB or internally) it to another machine and try formatting there too.
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Looks like I'm going to be doing this be default anyway. For reasons unexplained to me, several attempts to clone the drive to the new drive have all failed and put the OLD drive back in a state of prohibitory booting.

Sigh.

My data is secure, even if the old drive has to be wiped. My last backup was made the day before all this and is sitting on my NAS. This is just hugely inconvenient. Whatever though, it's not like I don't have a Mac sitting around I can't use, LOL.

I think perhaps, the connectors on the drives were not secure and so errors creeped in, IDK. We'll see what happens later on.

And this people is one of the reasons I hate altering things/rebooting. Thankfully, I have backups.
 
So much for that… Looks like I am staying right where I was.

The 2TB SSD works, I have confirmed I can read/write from it, but I can't seem to clone an OS to it. Every attempt fails. Trying to reinstall Mojave results in me being told that I have to disable File Vault and must have Metal graphics cards (I do). A reinstall using the Mojave Patcher gives me my OS back exactly the way it was before I started.

This Mac was converted to a 5,1, has Metal graphics cards and can install Mojave natively. But it still can't deal with APFS volumes. So, either I missed a firmware update somewhere when I upgraded back in 2020 or there is something seriously screwed up somewhere.

And with that, I'm not tracking it down. I want my computer working and I've got a whole host of reasons (to me) to abandon this. 1TB boot drive is enough and I've got three other bays.

EDIT: Couple things I did learn were how to create an installer USB stick, it's important to have the OS images on a network drive (and not one of the drives in the Mac you're working on) and the 2015 work issued MBP running High Sierra was quite helpful.
 
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Last night I asked my wife if she was willing to part with the 2011 MBA I got her a year and a half ago. She doesn't use it much because I had to patch Catalina on to it and while it's capable, it's slow.

It's mine now, she gave it to me. But she still needed a newer computer than the 2007 Thinkpad I got her years back running Windows 7. Apparently the 2015 MBPs have hit my price range.

I got her a 15" 2015 MBP with 16GB ram and a 256GB SSD. Her storage requirements are not extreme (I believe the Thinkpad also has a 256GB HD) and she has access to the NAS. This new Mac has a ~300 cycle count so should hold for a while. She tends to use her computers on power anyway. It's running Monterey. Just based on specs it is equal to, if not better, than the work-issued MBP I was given when hired.

Weill see what happens when it gets here.

www.ebay.com

Apple MacBook Pro A1502 13 Inch Laptop - Early 2015 for sale online | eBay

Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for Apple MacBook Pro A1502 13 Inch Laptop - Early 2015 at the best online prices at eBay! Free shipping for many products!
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MODS! Not my auction, I am showing what I bought and NOT selling anything!

EDIT: It's the 13.1 inch. Which is fine, I was shooting for that and not the 15". And apparently it's running 10.11.6. But Mactracker says I can upgrade to Monterey so that'll be in the cards.
 
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Install the last version of Vivaldi for High Sierra, sync and I'm set up (MBA) for browsing with all my prefs, addons, themes, etc.

Just a quick mockup background. No illusions it won't change.

Julie London by the way, as nurse Dixie McCall on the 70s TV series Emergency!

2024-04-21 16.08.50.jpg

Get it?

I'll show myself out now… 🙂
 
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Yesterday I swapped LogicBoard from a battered, 40bucks-cheap, early2009 2,93GHz 15" MBP5,1
to my late2008 2,8GHz 15"MBP5,1 which suffered GPU-failure (NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT).
Good fun! (fortunately everything still in working condition with 'new' LogicBoard and SpringCleaning.)

Installing OCLP/Monterey worked fine.
OCLP/Sonora too. (SonoraInstaller refused booting on first attempts on a prestine HFS+/SSD. Then, after having installed OCLP/Mojave and blessing the SSD's BootRom, installation of Sonoma was successful.)

The MB(P)5,1 is the most volatile Macbook I can think of: able to boot everything from OSX-Leopard to Dosdude-patched Catalina up to the current OCLP-patched Sonoma. That's a fully 16y lifespan plus about 4-5y Sonoma-support. Unbelievable.

Nevertheless I keep sticking to my mid2012 2,3GHz 15"MBP9,1/Mojave as my daily driver because of a lot of reasons ...
 
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eyoungren said:
I got her a 15" 2015 MBP with 16GB ram and a 256GB SSD. Her storage requirements are not extreme (I believe the Thinkpad also has a 256GB HD) and she has access to the NAS. This new Mac has a ~300 cycle count so should hold for a while. She tends to use her computers on power anyway. It's running Monterey. Just based on specs it is equal to, if not better, than the work-issued MBP I was given when hired.
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If she mostly uses it on wall power then I suggest you install one of the battery charge limiter -apps to it and limit max charge to 80%. That way the battery will last longer as they do not like to be charged to 100%.
 
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ToniCH said:
If she mostly uses it on wall power then I suggest you install one of the battery charge limiter -apps to it and limit max charge to 80%. That way the battery will last longer as they do not like to be charged to 100%.
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Yeah, I have a 2015 MBP, but that one is work issued - they didn't ask for it back when they gave me an M2. At some point I was out of work for a week because the battery had to be replaced. Constantly being on power caused swelling.
 
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