What have you done with an early Intel recently?

[840quadra]

Went on iFixit to get a battery for my poor performing mid 2015 MacBook Pro Retina, when I discovered they also have batteries for my late 2008 Unibody Macbook pro. Decided to order both, will be nice to run the older unibody out in public again (coffee shops, breweries, etc) and do basic computing with an older system.

Something nostalgic about the older laptops, the way the keyboards feel, the backlit keyboard glow is a bit more "leaky" and techie feeling than the new laptops. Also love / miss the glow of the apple logo on the back. Still bummed the world of "thin" killed this on newer laptops.

Crazy to still be somewhat regularly using an ~18yo laptop I picked up the day after Steve Job's keynote.

 

[alex_free]

thanks to people here I navigated apples developer website search and found most Xcode downloads from 1.0-4.6.3 (last version for lion) and have them saved forever in my archive in case they remove any more downloads (still missing some versions).

With Mac ports everything has been a breeze on Lion. I did enable the mpstats to let Mac ports know. Many binary packages (finally!) and getting even exotic things like rpm (yes the red hat package manager) and dpkg (the Debian package manager) went perfect. I’m not using those for what you’d think either. I have a cross platform build system I’ve developed called Ezre that basically entails the user to edit some variables in a configuration file and then it gives you:
* automatic deb file creation.
* automatic rpm file creation.
* You can cross compile for windows 95 pentium, windows x86_64
* You can build for Linux x86 or x86_64 (probably BSD host as well).
* builds release zip files for Linux, Mac OS, and windows with specified documentation files and naming conventions.
* Designed to build static or portable executables that require nothing else to be installed by the end user.
* Support for running a unique per target shell script before compiling (i.e. compile a library that will be linked for the target executable).
* Support for a ‘LEGACY’ specification for Mac OS, this allows you to have 2 different sets of I.e. compiler/CFLAGS/LDFLAGS/release names so that you can target something like i386 or PowerPC but still target more modern


Best of all you install nothing! It only requires GNU make, and works with even very old GNU make from I.e. Xcode tiger.

I wrote it because now I can edit a few lines in a text file and then generate 10+ releases of software, I.e. like this for every popular platform. I HATE writing GNU make files so much that I vowed to only write one single GNU Makefile that can take a variables text file and do anything I can think of for my own c/c++ programs.

Anyways I’m able to use it just fine on lion, and can push some updates to it, allowing me to finally complete this C library the way I want all from this 2011 OS! After installing OpenSSH and git from Mac ports even my GitHub ssh enabler that makes setting up a new dev computer with my GitHub account and git one command.

 

[840quadra]

Completed the migration of my Mac Pro 3,1 to Sonoma and put it back into a supported version of MacOs on my purpose built secondary child account. Amazing how well this ~18 YO system still does with a modern OS. Currently on day 3 of this OS, so far no crashes despite the lack of AVX / AVX2 support, and with relatively minor mods outside of a GPU and upgraded USB card.

So far I don't feel any slowness as compared to Monterey, and honestly some aspects of the system feel a bit more Snappy™.

May upgrade to MacOS Sequoia at the end of the year, but will likely be the last OS I load on this machine, unless OCLP can optimize Tahoe a bit more as we move through 2026.

 

[alex_free]

View attachment 2596122

Completed the migration of my Mac Pro 3,1 to Sonoma and put it back into a supported version of MacOs on my purpose built secondary child account. Amazing how well this ~18 YO system still does with a modern OS. Currently on day 3 of this OS, so far no crashes despite the lack of AVX / AVX2 support, and with relatively minor mods outside of a GPU and upgraded USB card.

So far I don't feel any slowness as compared to Monterey, and honestly some aspects of the system feel a bit more Snappy™.

May upgrade to MacOS Sequoia at the end of the year, but will likely be the last OS I load on this machine, unless OCLP can optimize Tahoe a bit more as we move through 2026.

Don’t tell Moore but Moore’s law is dead

 

[DouglasCarroll]

Don’t tell Moore but Moore’s law is dead

Moore takes issue with your assertion!

 

[DisraeliGears]

Tonight I totally bricked my early Intel Mac Mini 😵

Finder locked up during a file transfer, I got impatient, and hard reset.

Now the machine won't boot at all from the internal SSD I installed? I was able to get a USB stick of Leopard to get to the installer, but disk utility doesn't show the SSD at all. Meanwhile it is identified in system profiler.

I'm not proficient in terminal, is there any way I can fix this without manually pulling the drive out?

 

[alex_free]

Tonight I totally bricked my early Intel Mac Mini 😵

Finder locked up during a file transfer, I got impatient, and hard reset.

Now the machine won't boot at all from the internal SSD I installed? I was able to get a USB stick of Leopard to get to the installer, but disk utility doesn't show the SSD at all. Meanwhile it is identified in system profiler.

I'm not proficient in terminal, is there any way I can fix this without manually pulling the drive out?

your only hope is single user mode + fsck_hfs. if that fails new install it is, but wow HFS+ should be better then that.

 

[headlessmike]

Went on iFixit to get a battery for my poor performing mid 2015 MacBook Pro Retina, when I discovered they also have batteries for my late 2008 Unibody Macbook pro. Decided to order both, will be nice to run the older unibody out in public again (coffee shops, breweries, etc) and do basic computing with an older system.

Something nostalgic about the older laptops, the way the keyboards feel, the backlit keyboard glow is a bit more "leaky" and techie feeling than the new laptops. Also love / miss the glow of the apple logo on the back. Still bummed the world of "thin" killed this on newer laptops.

Crazy to still be somewhat regularly using an ~18yo laptop I picked up the day after Steve Job's keynote.

I've been using my 2010 White unibody MacBook more and more recently and I have to say that the Core 2 Duo era holds up surprisingly well. After moving back and forth I've settled mostly on using High Sierra, which is the last supported version of macOS it will run. With 16 GB of RAM and an SSD it runs surprisingly well, and software support is still good enough to do both work and personal tasks on it. The original battery still lasts about two hour as well! I loved the white polycarbonate Macs and this is the latest and greatest one.

 

[DCBassman]

Just for pure idle fun, I'm trying an earliest-macos internet recovery on an early 2011 MBP with duff GPU.
Generally, this will not do a normal install of, say, High Sierra, because the installer expects to see the Radeon GPU and falls over when it can't. This may well do the same. However, patched Catalina installs on this without a hitch, so who knows?
Back in a bit...

 

[DCBassman]

Just for pure idle fun, I'm trying an earliest-macos internet recovery on an early 2011 MBP with duff GPU.
Generally, this will not do a normal install of, say, High Sierra, because the installer expects to see the Radeon GPU and falls over when it can't. This may well do the same. However, patched Catalina installs on this without a hitch, so who knows?
Back in a bit...

Nope, won't have it. Back to patched Catalina it is, then.
Edit: forced shutdown and reboot - login, good, desktop, good, solid white screen preceded by some message about scrolling in Lion. Forced shutdown #2 and reboot - seems to be working! Doing updates at the moment.

 

[DCBassman]

Nope, won't have it. Back to patched Catalina it is, then.
Edit: forced shutdown and reboot - login, good, desktop, good, solid white screen preceded by some message about scrolling in Lion. Forced shutdown #2 and reboot - seems to be working! Doing updates at the moment.

Updates finished it off. Now won't boot at all. Where's that Catalina installer?

 

[840quadra]

I've been using my 2010 White unibody MacBook more and more recently and I have to say that the Core 2 Duo era holds up surprisingly well. After moving back and forth I've settled mostly on using High Sierra, which is the last supported version of macOS it will run. With 16 GB of RAM and an SSD it runs surprisingly well, and software support is still good enough to do both work and personal tasks on it. The original battery still lasts about two hour as well! I loved the white polycarbonate Macs and this is the latest and greatest one.

Newest my late 2008 will run native is 10.11.6 which I do have a working bootable volume of on my system. In that OS, it is still a workable system for period applications and does well with modern browsers. That said, it doesn't run as smoothly as Catalina does with the OCLP patch for it.

El Capitan does boot a little faster, but overall that OS (oddly) tends to stutter more on window resizing, is in that odd in-between look & feel I don't much care for. Oddly I prefer Tiger / or Leopard era feel, or later Catalina look. The stuff in the middle was ok, but not as much for me.

Catalina feels faster somehow (after the longer boot, and some app launches are a bit slower). I also like the Catalina still has a major browser (Firefox) that is on extended release and regularly upgraded.

Nope, won't have it. Back to patched Catalina it is, then.
Edit: forced shutdown and reboot - login, good, desktop, good, solid white screen preceded by some message about scrolling in Lion. Forced shutdown #2 and reboot - seems to be working! Doing updates at the moment.

For me the sweet spot is Catalina as well! There are some items that I like a bit better in later operating systems (Later compared to 10.11.6 , especially versions that don't require much from Metal or AVX.

I want to run some benchmarks between El Capitan and Catalina to see if what I feel is placebo, or really a smoother experience.

The smoothness in scrolling & window sizing in Catalina (at least on this system) are hard to ignore. Not sure if it is MacOS, or optimizations the Open Core community implemented, or what. But all I know is Cat is a far better fit for my use case.

Honestly thinking about making a boot for it on my Mac Pro 3,1 as well as my 2015 Retina MBP for a uniform experience on the older systems.

 

[occupant]

today on WHYDWAEIR I am starting the process to update the 2009 24 inch to something a little newer than Leopard

Said 45 minutes 16 minutes ago, says 40 minutes remaining now. I may be here awhile. El Capitan is next. I am not sure why I'm doing this without changing hardware, but once the firmware is in place, I can still change out the storage device and just install things directly on it without going through the update dance. I may just go for Mint after all is said and done but at least the firmware will be as current as it can be. I think that's how that works, but I am often wrong and it's amusing to some when I challenge myself through self-sabotage.

 

[Snowlover]

Tonight I totally bricked my early Intel Mac Mini 😵

Finder locked up during a file transfer, I got impatient, and hard reset.

Now the machine won't boot at all from the internal SSD I installed? I was able to get a USB stick of Leopard to get to the installer, but disk utility doesn't show the SSD at all. Meanwhile it is identified in system profiler.

I'm not proficient in terminal, is there any way I can fix this without manually pulling the drive out?

I had a similar problem messing with oclp on my 2014 mini. I reset smc and pram (3 chimes) it booted normally again.

 

[DouglasCarroll]

I've been using my 2010 White unibody MacBook more and more recently and I have to say that the Core 2 Duo era holds up surprisingly well. After moving back and forth I've settled mostly on using High Sierra, which is the last supported version of macOS it will run. With 16 GB of RAM and an SSD it runs surprisingly well, and software support is still good enough to do both work and personal tasks on it. The original battery still lasts about two hour as well! I loved the white polycarbonate Macs and this is the latest and greatest one.

I’ve been having a ton of fun with my late 2009 white MacBook with Lion (last supported OS) and, like you, have found it shockingly usable….and that’s with only 4gb of Ram!! I was hesitant to move on from Snow Leopard but after doing that so much more software became available I feel it was definitely worth it. Toying with trying Linux on it but not sure I really need to since I’m pretty satisfied where I am now.

😁

 

[Certificate of Excellence]

Newest my late 2008 will run native is 10.11.6 which I do have a working bootable volume of on my system. In that OS, it is still a workable system for period applications and does well with modern browsers. That said, it doesn't run as smoothly as Catalina does with the OCLP patch for it.

El Capitan does boot a little faster, but overall that OS (oddly) tends to stutter more on window resizing, is in that odd in-between look & feel I don't much care for. Oddly I prefer Tiger / or Leopard era feel, or later Catalina look. The stuff in the middle was ok, but not as much for me.

Catalina feels faster somehow (after the longer boot, and some app launches are a bit slower). I also like the Catalina still has a major browser (Firefox) that is on extended release and regularly upgraded.



For me the sweet spot is Catalina as well! There are some items that I like a bit better in later operating systems (Later compared to 10.11.6 , especially versions that don't require much from Metal or AVX.

I want to run some benchmarks between El Capitan and Catalina to see if what I feel is placebo, or really a smoother experience.

The smoothness in scrolling & window sizing in Catalina (at least on this system) are hard to ignore. Not sure if it is MacOS, or optimizations the Open Core community implemented, or what. But all I know is Cat is a far better fit for my use case.

Honestly thinking about making a boot for it on my Mac Pro 3,1 as well as my 2015 Retina MBP for a uniform experience on the older systems.

I tried Cat but ultimately have stayed with el cap. My big issue with el Cap for me is that we havent been able to sign into our apple id with itunes 12.8.2.3 since 2024 which is a pain as itunes will complain endlessly about it. I have moved to mostly MX on these older intel macs anyways but I do have three that I keep on El Cap - a 09 macbookpro my boys 24" 09 imac and I have a El Cap partition on a cMP1,1 that lives on my garage bench. I tried Catalina in the past but it borked wifi LOL. After sleep, upon waking up, wifi didnt work unless I rebooted the mac. That coupled with the longer boot ups and very slow indexing at boot up has kept me on El Cap which works well enough for now but like I said, I have moved most of these early Intel macs to MX linux which has been a really nice, supported experience. I also noticed the macbook ran noticeably hotter in Cat (my assumption was that cat pushed the cpus harder) which I was not very excited about. Anyways when in el cap, for supported browser I use basilisk and I use the stand alone pandora mac app for internet radio which still works great (if you can find it), my kids like to play NES/SNES/Genesis emulation so for that we have retro arch and open emu and for ChatGPT, I use LegacyAI. Everyone's expectations, use case & experience is unique however 🙂

YMMV.

Do you have any issues with OLCP, Cat and your A1278 mac?

 

[Certificate of Excellence]

I’ve been having a ton of fun with my late 2009 white MacBook with Lion (last supported OS) and, like you, have found it shockingly usable….and that’s with only 4gb of Ram!! I was hesitant to move on from Snow Leopard but after doing that so much more software became available I feel it was definitely worth it. Toying with trying Linux on it but not sure I really need to since I’m pretty satisfied where I am now.

😁

My favorite white polycarbonate macbook is early 2008 mb as it still had FW400. By late 2008, FW400 was dropped compleyely in the aluminum unibody MB and only FW800 was available with the mbp.

This reminds me - my a1181 gave birth to a very spicy pillow, so Ill need to pick up a new battery 🙂

 

[840quadra]

Do you have any issues with OLCP, Cat and your A1278 mac?

No issues worth noting. When I am using the higher performance GPU I do notice the device warms up a bit, but does not often spin up the fans much. I have setup a profile for SMC for when I am using the faster graphics to have the fans turned up a touch more. Not so much that I notice any sound issues, but enough that it keeps the overall temps under control.

• For El Cap I have no issues signing into iTunes account, though I created a specific child account under my main for this exact purpose, and for an extra level of security. My main has 2FA and passkeys that just don't work well with the older operating systems.
  • This account does not have access to unlock anything on my main account
  • this account has no credit card or payment information saved
  • this account has access to family shares but unable to make any purchases
  • I manage all of my older iPods from this account, as well as older iOS devices.
    • This means the devices are firewalled from doing anything too bad on my main account
    • These devices do not impact my authorized computers
    • these devices do not impact my authorized device counts on my main account
  • as a member of the family, this account can still access airplay devices, and homekit items I have enabled for it.
• On the Unibody, everything is working as expected in Catalina, even Wifi functions out of sleep, and stability of the system is excellent. I do use Apple Music on that OS, but anything I do with my older iPods is completed on my PM G5, or my El Cap boot volume.
  • the only big downside is lack of classic iTunes, and slightly slower launch times for some apps and slightly (talking maybe 30 seconds) longer boot times. once apps are loaded, things feel quick to me.

 

[DouglasCarroll]

I’ve been having a ton of fun with my late 2009 white MacBook with Lion (last supported OS) and, like you, have found it shockingly usable….and that’s with only 4gb of Ram!! I was hesitant to move on from Snow Leopard but after doing that so much more software became available I feel it was definitely worth it. Toying with trying Linux on it but not sure I really need to since I’m pretty satisfied where I

No issues worth noting. When I am using the higher performance GPU I do notice the device warms up a bit, but does not often spin up the fans much. I have setup a profile for SMC for when I am using the faster graphics to have the fans turned up a touch more. Not so much that I notice any sound issues, but enough that it keeps the overall temps under control.

• For El Cap I have no issues signing into iTunes account, though I created a specific child account under my main for this exact purpose, and for an extra level of security. My main has 2FA and passkeys that just don't work well with the older operating systems.
  • This account does not have access to unlock anything on my main account
  • this account has no credit card or payment information saved
  • this account has access to family shares but unable to make any purchases
  • I manage all of my older iPods from this account, as well as older iOS devices.
    • This means the devices are firewalled from doing anything too bad on my main account
    • These devices do not impact my authorized computers
    • these devices do not impact my authorized device counts on my main account
  • as a member of the family, this account can still access airplay devices, and homekit items I have enabled for it.
• On the Unibody, everything is working as expected in Catalina, even Wifi functions out of sleep, and stability of the system is excellent. I do use Apple Music on that OS, but anything I do with my older iPods is completed on my PM G5, or my El Cap boot volume.
  • the only big downside is lack of classic iTunes, and slightly slower launch times for some apps and slightly (talking maybe 30 seconds) longer boot times. once apps are loaded, things feel quick to me.

I just signed into my icloud account with mac os Lion iTunes so you should be able to with El Capitain

 

[840quadra]

I just signed into my icloud account with mac os Lion iTunes so you should be able to with El Capitain

I haven't tried, but I have seen (on this forum) people having issues with Passkey or 2FA on their AppleID with older OS and iOS versions.

Regardless, I refuse to log into my main account on unsupported operating systems for security / device count reasons.

The added security is subjective, however device count is not 😛

 

[Certificate of Excellence]

No issues worth noting. When I am using the higher performance GPU I do notice the device warms up a bit, but does not often spin up the fans much. I have setup a profile for SMC for when I am using the faster graphics to have the fans turned up a touch more. Not so much that I notice any sound issues, but enough that it keeps the overall temps under control.

• For El Cap I have no issues signing into iTunes account, though I created a specific child account under my main for this exact purpose, and for an extra level of security. My main has 2FA and passkeys that just don't work well with the older operating systems.
  • This account does not have access to unlock anything on my main account
  • this account has no credit card or payment information saved
  • this account has access to family shares but unable to make any purchases
  • I manage all of my older iPods from this account, as well as older iOS devices.
    • This means the devices are firewalled from doing anything too bad on my main account
    • These devices do not impact my authorized computers
    • these devices do not impact my authorized device counts on my main account
  • as a member of the family, this account can still access airplay devices, and homekit items I have enabled for it.
• On the Unibody, everything is working as expected in Catalina, even Wifi functions out of sleep, and stability of the system is excellent. I do use Apple Music on that OS, but anything I do with my older iPods is completed on my PM G5, or my El Cap boot volume.
  • the only big downside is lack of classic iTunes, and slightly slower launch times for some apps and slightly (talking maybe 30 seconds) longer boot times. once apps are loaded, things feel quick to me.

Oh man that is an excellent idea. It never crossed my mind to create a limited kids acc to access on older machines sans 2FA. 🙂

Awesome, I’m totally going to do this. Thanks!

 

[840quadra]

Oh man that is an excellent idea. It never crossed my mind to create a limited kids acc to access on older machines sans 2FA. 🙂

Awesome, I’m totally going to do this. Thanks!

Clearly there are some limitations and it can create some small hurdles, but overall it has been a positive experience and the boost in authorized devices is a good tradeoff for my use case 🙂 .

 

[alex_free]

Ended up restarting Fallout v1.0 (original release). The designer Tim Cain said “this CD is almost full, no one is gonna be able to copy this” 🤣 so he shipped no anti-piracy in it). Got the full 1997 experience, zero issues on Windows XP (part of my Mac OS X 10.7/Mac OS X 10.4/Windows XP triple-boot on my MacBook 2,1). Hit like one crash and one glitch but I know how to avoid those now, and can mark down that I’ve completed fallout 1. This is the way, focus on one thing and see it through. Focusing on hundreds of things and completing none leaves you with no accomplishments..

Also managed to finally ship my C library: https://github.com/alex-free/lib-enigma which was entirely developed on lion until testing for other platforms came into play on this MacBook 2,1. Another good thing about having a native XP machine is you can test your super portable C99 code you wrote in the year of 2026 without a VM and it matters:

Seriously, besides the GPU of these MacBook 2,1 being absolutely abysmal in web browser video playback on windows XP (lion is perfect with the right extensions and legacy-chromium on my maxed out 2,1) early intels are some of the best win xp machines out there. The MacBook 2,1 will always have the best trackpad… and 90s gaming will always be optimal with availability of installing win xp.

 

[headlessmike]

My favorite white polycarbonate macbook is early 2008 mb as it still had FW400. By late 2008, FW400 was dropped compleyely in the aluminum unibody MB and only FW800 was available with the mbp.

This reminds me - my a1181 gave birth to a very spicy pillow, so Ill need to pick up a new battery 🙂

The early and mid 2009 white MacBooks also came with Firewire (and Nvidia graphics), though they were overshadowed by the aluminum unibody MacBook and mainly focus on the educational market. I had one of the mid 2009 models that got me through grad school after my iBook started struggling. They were the last models with the original MacBook design before the Unibody design came late in 2009 also to the polycarbonate machines.

 

[Certificate of Excellence]

The early and mid 2009 white MacBooks also came with Firewire (and Nvidia graphics), though they were overshadowed by the aluminum unibody MacBook and mainly focus on the educational market. I had one of the mid 2009 models that got me through grad school after my iBook started struggling. They were the last models with the original MacBook design before the Unibody design came late in 2009 also to the polycarbonate machines.

Aye dios, this is a confusing time (2008-09) for me and MacBooks lol. You had the polycarb a1181s, aluminum a1278, polycarb a1342, air a1304, and pros a1278 a1297 & a1286 lol. Enough to make your head spin haha.

Somehow in my brain I thought a1181 ended late 2008 & A1342 began early 2009 but that is patently wrong lol. Not enough coffee in the world to keep my memory straight anymore lol.

Thanks for the correction. 🙂