What have you done with an early Intel recently?

[davigarma]

I bought a 13.3-inch MacBook Pro in Germany for €100. It's a late 2012 10.2-inch MacBook. The 8GB of RAM might be a bit limited, and the battery life is good after 880 charges, but it has other qualities. The rest of the device is in impeccable condition with only a slight scratch. I don't plan to touch it or open it for anything. Catalina is the operating system Apple used to end its run, but that's fine by me. The only problem I have is the damn German keyboard ! 😂

 

[Minghold]

View attachment 2629400
Until and unless something else breaks as I'm tinkering with Mojave over the next few hours, this will likely be the £25 Mac Pro's final form,

Final touches: Terminal disable SIP, MRT, MDS_stores, Spotlight Indexing, Reportcrash, Notifications, Gatekeeper, and System Update. (Shutting all this telemetry off does wonders for speed, memory consumption, and drive longevity.) Set scrollbars to Always, and make the internal drive visible on the desktop. And leave the OS in an APFS partition if SSD, but clone to HFS+ if Fusion or rotational drive.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

I will soon get around to seeing whether or not I can get Mojo to run on my base-model non-Metal trashcan.

 

[DCBassman]

Well, this has been a voyage of discovery. As previously mentioned, I’m a complete idiot who’s kinda figuring all of this old Mac/macOS stuff out for the first time. And the last 24 hours have been a self-taught adventure and a half. 😳

Wrestled with getting the latest firmware for a Mojave install, and apparently got that wrong because the install bugged out and I had to wipe the SSD and go back to a fresh High Sierra installation. Then I couldn’t get my Mojave USB installer to boot for some reason (even though I used it to install 10.14.6 onto a MacBook Air about 48 hours ago). Made a fresh installer on a new USB stick, and that did boot, but the display only worked via HDMI. Then the installer failed to detect my metal GPU (apparently a bug with the Mojave USB installer with GTX680s?). 🤔

Eventually managed to get the install running with a HDMI cable and dosdude1's Mojave installer. And here we are. 😀

View attachment 2629400

Until and unless something else breaks as I'm tinkering with Mojave over the next few hours, this will likely be the £25 Mac Pro's final form, at least until I feel like seeking out a well-priced dual CPU tray and pushing this sucker to 96GB RAM for no reason. 😎

Was planning to add some extra SSDs, but there's no point with prices the way they are. Might pick up a couple of HDDs for pennies to fill the two empty sleds inside and maximise my media storage options, but aside from that, this is job done. 🙂

And finally, confirmation that the £25 Mac Pro really was £25. And confirmation that the other thing I need to do is give the poor thing a good clean. 😅

View attachment 2629401

Good job!

 

[DCBassman]

No, same issue. One more try. Some research tells me the problem is likely to be a combination of that year's hardware and Big Sur. So far, I'm leaning towards hardware. As Monterey Bootcamps have been painless using the same ISO, I've OCLP'd the machine to Monterey, and will try that today. After that: MX.
I'm house/cat sitting again. The owners have upped their broadband speed from 6Mb/s to 80, which makes Mac playtime so much easier.

And... no difference. After taking video of the BSOD that kills it and doing some searching, it seems that there's a driver problem somewhere. Basically, Bootcamp can't give it enough to get it to install and then fully implement the Bootcamp install once it's up and running. Hardware incompatibility. It would seem that anything that can run Monterey natively has a completely painless time with this. In my case, that was two very different machines, a 2013 Mac Pro, and a 2015 11" MBA. Oh well, it's back to MX now.

 

[davigarma]

Why is Catalina going to be okay for me? Because Mozilla decided to remove me from version 140 ESR and put me on 150.02, which is no longer in extended support. It updated itself to the latest version. I don't understand what the hell I did, but I'm very happy! (All written on a German keyboard) 😂
I think the Zen fork has something to do with it. Catalina is widely used and can't afford to lose ground

 

[JulianStaples]

There's only really three more early Intel MacBook models I'd really like to add to my ridiculous collection if I'm honest (the list of Mac desktops I want is another story!):

• A 15-inch A1226/A1260 as a little brother to the 17-inch 4,1.
• A black A1181. Really hard to find a cheap enough one in reasonable condition.
• A 15-inch non-Retina Mid-2012 MBP. Last of the properly upgradable MBPs. I have a 13-inch model (obvs), but I'd love to get the bigger brother fully upgraded and running OCLP. 😍

But that's it. Nothing more. Nope. Definitely not.

I, erm, may or may not have just won an eBay auction for a black A1181. 😳 Worrying lack of photos of it booted up in the listing, though the seller said it was just missing a hard drive and physically it looked in pretty good shape. Either way, snagged it for less than £20 so even if it is substantially more broken than just a missing HDD, it's worth a punt.

Worst case scenario, I have a spare white (well, sort of off-yellow now 🤢) A1181 parts mule that still boots, so I guess I could just transplant the guts of that one into the black chassis.

 

[Certificate of Excellence]

I, erm, may or may not have just won an eBay auction for a black A1181. 😳 Worrying lack of photos of it booted up in the listing, though the seller said it was just missing a hard drive and physically it looked in pretty good shape. Either way, snagged it for less than £20 so even if it is substantially more broken than just a missing HDD, it's worth a punt.

Worst case scenario, I have a spare white (well, sort of off-yellow now 🤢) A1181 parts mule that still boots, so I guess I could just transplant the guts of that one into the black chassis.

I have one that is in really poor shape. It boots believe it or not but the fans go whacko so I think it’s sensors must be missing or broken. I got mine as Part of a a1181 bundle with white MacBook for $40 usd. The white MacBook works great except its battery went spicy pillow on me and I haven’t gotten a new one yet.

Originally I was going to make a b/w book but that project kind of Fizzled out haha and is on the back burner just because not enough time+priorities so it sits on my shelf. I guess I get to look at it until I get around to doing something with it. 🙂

I hope yours is a good specimen. I always liked the black books as a unique Intel mb addition to one’s collection.

 

[JulianStaples]

I have one that is in really poor shape. It boots believe it or not but the fans go whacko so I think it’s sensors must be missing or broken. I got mine as Part of a a1181 bundle with white MacBook for $40 usd. The white MacBook works great except its battery went spicy pillow on me and I haven’t gotten a new one yet.

Originally I was going to make a b/w book but that project kind of Fizzled out haha and is on the back burner just because not enough time+priorities so it sits on my shelf. I guess I get to look at it until I get around to doing something with it. 🙂

I hope yours is a good specimen. I always liked the black books as a unique Intel mb addition to one’s collection.

Thanks! Yep, it's been on my 'to get' list for a while, but the ones that do pop up tend to either be in really bad shape or are horribly overpriced. Like, I know I waste a lot of money on old Macs, but even I draw the line at paying £100+ for a 20 year old laptop that just happens to be an unusual colour. 😅

And I'm justifying starting my summer of clearing out some of my collection by...buying another computer 😳 by saying that if I can get the black A1181 working, I'll swap in the hard drive from one of my two working white A1181s (one booting four Linux distros and the other dual-booting Snow Leopard and Windows XP) and get rid of the white one.

 

[DCBassman]

Away house-siiting as previously mentioned. Using 2011 15" MBP as daily driver running MX, but it began to not boot properly, so transferred daily duties to 13" 2013 MBA. Then decided that the 13" MBA should become my wife's machine, which meant I've spent most of the day getting as close to a clone as I can onto the machine. It's now running Mint Cinnamon 22.3, and all is well, except that glasses may be needed due to the uptick in resolution from 15" at 1366x768 to 13" at 1440x900.
While wading through all this, I recalled seeing the post above by @davigarma about how Catalina now runs the latest Firefox. It was always supposed to, but it always crashed on my Catalina machines. So I repatched the MBP to Catalina and downloaded the current Firefox, and voila, it works perfectly.
So my old MBP is now actually a Mac again.
Edit: The booting issue was while the machine was quite hot, so maybe this old beastie needs a repaste...

 

[davigarma]

Firefox on Catalina has a serious competitor: Zen. Version 150.02 takes two to three days to receive the latest Firefox update. Firefox is currently at version 150.03. It's very good and feels faster. It takes a little getting used to, but once you do, it's fantastic. The only "problem" it has is that it's still awaiting Google's DRM implementation, which it will eventually get. Between these two versions, there are many years of updated browsers on Catalina.

 

[eyoungren]

Combined audio…

Streaming ambient music from Youtube (Microsoft Edge browser) on my MacPro while sending live ATC traffic from my iPhone 6 Plus to that same MacPro. So, getting the ATC traffic over the streaming music. 👍

ATC traffic is from Phoenix, Sky Harbor's North Final channel.

 

[kostka]

SIP is already disabled from the start

Yes, this is already my 3rd attempt on the same device, really weird, because on another devices, the memory result is as expected, although all of them are much newer year MBA 2014 11", MBA 2014 13", MBA 2015 11" (all 8GB ram)

will try as you suggested and get back to you: creating third hfs+ partition, clone to another drive and also erase it with El Cap's Disk Utility to see if I can get the right result

thank you for the Mojo instructions, will read it carefully and try other things that I haven't tried before 🙏

@Minghold

I just want to inform that I don't get the ram as expected

Already tried with El Cap's Disk Utility, creating third hfs+, also clone to another drive, but no luck. Thanks anyway!

I think I will stay with APFS, since the ram on it is very low. I think it's okay with APFS since the drive is already SSD, right?

 

[DCBassman]

Firefox on Catalina has a serious competitor: Zen. Version 150.02 takes two to three days to receive the latest Firefox update. Firefox is currently at version 150.03. It's very good and feels faster. It takes a little getting used to, but once you do, it's fantastic. The only "problem" it has is that it's still awaiting Google's DRM implementation, which it will eventually get. Between these two versions, there are many years of updated browsers on Catalina.

View attachment 2629898

Ah well, it was ok for a short while. Then back to crashing as before, invluding with Zen. Machine is back to MX and much happier and snappier. Meanwhile, during all this messing about, the 2015 11" MBA has taken over Daily Driver Duities, running W10 IoT LTSC under Bootcamp.

 

[davigarma]

Ah well, it was ok for a short while. Then back to crashing as before, invluding with Zen. Machine is back to MX and much happier and snappier. Meanwhile, during all this messing about, the 2015 11" MBA has taken over Daily Driver Duities, running W10 IoT LTSC under Bootcamp.

Good Luk !

 

[rampancy]

Not too far from one of my part-time jobs, I saw a Facebook Marketplace listing for a free MacBook, listed as a "Apple MacBook 2009 13" A1342 (2.26GHz Core 2 Duo, 4GB RAM, 250GB HDD)". The photo was for an A1181, but hey, it was free. The machine was indeed an A1181 with no sticker under the battery, and a newer-ish looking topcase (the plastic was still cracked, but not as thoroughly cracked as I'd expect for an original topcase).

First Challenge: The plug on the adapter is a European plug - which left me having to hunt down a plug adapter at a local convenience/discount store. Awkwardly balancing the plug with an adapter put into a wall socket, I could finally power it on...

Second Challenge: The MacBook is an OG A1181 with a 1.86 GHz Core Duo and a CD-RW drive; the 2 GB RAM and 320 GB hard drive meant that someone loved it enough to give it a substantial upgrade from its base config. Snow Leopard was already installed, but a hasty pre-sale decomissioning process meant that it was littered with the owners' original files and improperly uninstalled apps. I needed to get online to at least install App Cleaner, wowfunhappy's SSL/TLS proxy and a web browser usable with the modern web. But how could I do that, without a USB flash drive and my main Mac? Long story short, I'm glad sites like Macintosh Garden and Macintosh Repository are tuned to be accessible by obsolete web browsers.

Third Challenge: I wanted, as much as possible, to have a clean-slate system, but since I'm living away from home I didn't have access to my Snow Leopard install disk and external DVD drive, so a clean re-install wasn't in the cards. The next best thing I could do was create a new admin account, switch to that, and delete the old admin account. Thankfully the instructions on how to change the root password in Snow Leopard are still floating out there on the Internet. And thankfully the previous owner thought to put "password" as the password hint in their original admin account.

Fourth Challenge: Onyx's startup disk scan threw up a whole bunch of file system errors. But how could I clear that up without another 10.6 disk to boot from? That was when I learned something new about AppleJack 1.6; it can do file system repairs in fsck when the system is booted from Single User mode, no external 10.6 disk necessary.

I was able to get a knock-off battery off of Amazon that hopefully won't blow up on me. But with ShadowKiller installed, I've got a really nice retro Mac on my hands, which I haven't had the chance to play with in a while. I'm contemplating opening it up, cleaning the insides and changing the thermal paste, but it doesn't seem to be showing any thermal issues and I don't want to risk damaging the topcase connector, since replacements are now so expensive.

Still, lots of fun things I could do with this; maybe buy an overpriced 256 GB SATA I SSD and install MX Linux on it? (I've already tried running past Macs in my collection on Zorin, Ubuntu, and Peppermint.)

Edit: I also want to give out a huge shout-out to jazzzny, whose work on InterWeb 55 and PowerFox have been so crucial in keeping vintage Macs like this useable.

 

[DCBassman]

Ooops, another Mac! A1283 Mac Mini 2009, 2.53GHz C2D incoming. Will pair this up with the 20" Cinema Display.

 

[JulianStaples]

Being short on space for extra monitors/setups, I've tried faffing around with a cheap KVM switch to try and get the £25 Mac Pro connected to the same Apple Cinema Display my Trashcan MP is using.

Alas, it seems like that display doesn't like such setups. Couldn't get a display from the second input via the switch. And it must be the monitor, because I swapped the non-displaying Trashcan out for my 2012 Mac mini and the issue persisted, and then swapped the Apple Cinema Display with a generic monitor and both inputs displayed perfectly. Could just use the generic monitor for my needs, but I really wanted the aesthetic of the Cinema Display. 🥲

For the time being, I've gone back to the old-fashioned solution (physically swapping the cables around) while I try and google some sort of solution.

 

[Minghold]

@MingholdI think I will stay with APFS, since the ram on it is very low. I think it's okay with APFS since the drive is already SSD, right?

APFS is fine on SSDs (assuming you don't have an old incompatible one).

 

[Minghold]

Still, lots of fun things I could do with this; maybe buy an overpriced 256 GB SATA I SSD and install MX Linux on it?

MX should run just fine on the existing spinner (it shouldn't hammer writes any worse than Snow Leopard does). --Consider it a perfect opportunity to partition the drive and install MX in one half (I'd CCC Snow to an external to keep a bootable volume safe), then dabble with rEFInd bootloader.

 

[JulianStaples]

Because I'm a sucker for a challenge, my next spot of tinkering is to try and build one functioning Late 2011 13" MBP out of two parts mules I picked up over the last year to repair a couple of identical models (including the one a few pages back I fixed up with Linux Mint for my mother). Trying to clear some space in my flat, and I could just hoy them both in the recycling, but if I can get a single working laptop then I can always sell that on eBay for a few pennies.

Have done a damage report on them today, and here's where we are:
MBP No.1: Half the keyboard doesn't work - assuming liquid damage maybe, guessing that a logic board issue would mean the whole thing was shot? Display works but looks 'dim', even on max brightness (I actually pulled this off the MBP that went to my mother and replaced it with the original display of MBP No.1 for that reason) - assuming a failing display, still usable though.
MBP No.2: One of the antenna cables/connectors to the Airport card has snapped off the display (The work of a clumsy-fingered amateur repairer, no doubt 🥺) - fixing this looks to be way above my pay grade, so I'm writing this display off. Battery doesn't charge when plugged in - not sure if it's just an issue with the little DC-in board or a bigger fault on the logic board itself. This one has been cannibalised for more parts than the other - no hard drive, no optical drive, no left speaker, a whole bunch of missing screws.

So I guess the plan will be to tear both of them down completely (😒) and try swapping the working keyboard of MBP No.2 with the faulty one of MBP No.1, and going with the dim-but-working display of MBP No.1. Any bits and pieces left behind can then go in the recycling, and the completed model can go on eBay. Guess it will have to literally be sold for pennies in the end with that display caveat, but hey ho. 😊

Well, I figured out why MBP No.2 wasn't charging the battery. Not a DC-in board fault, but a bent pin in the battery connector. Somehow not enough to stop the laptop from turning on under battery power, but enough to not receive a charge when plugged in. 😬

But, good news, with MBP No.2's keyboard switched into MBP No.1 and a bit more cannibalisation for missing screws etc, I've been able to assemble one fully working Unibody MBP to sell for a few pennies. 😀

And as part of my summer clear-out, this is the running total of broken/useless bits from this and previous recent repairs that are heading for the recycling centre. Or maybe a modern art exhibition. 😳

 

[Certificate of Excellence]

Well, I figured out why MBP No.2 wasn't charging the battery. Not a DC-in board fault, but a bent pin in the battery connector. Somehow not enough to stop the laptop from turning on under battery power, but enough to not receive a charge when plugged in. 😬

But, good news, with MBP No.2's keyboard switched into MBP No.1 and a bit more cannibalisation for missing screws etc, I've been able to assemble one fully working Unibody MBP to sell for a few pennies. 😀

And as part of my summer clear-out, this is the running total of broken/useless bits from this and previous recent repairs that are heading for the recycling centre. Or maybe a modern art exhibition. 😳

View attachment 2630838

This has rekindled the desire to make/stage a cannibalistic mbp eating the guts of an unhappy mbp picture. Hmm, I will have to get on staging that pic LOL. 😵

Maybe for Halloween this year 🙂

 

[JulianStaples]

Busy week. The Black MacBook has arrived. As well as having no HDD, it was also giving the ‘RAM says no’ beeps of doom when first powered on. Have swapped in some alternative sticks (alas I only had 2x1GB in my spare RAM bucket that was compatible), thrown in an old spinny HDD, grabbed one of my macOS USB installers and here we are booted into Lion. 😀

What a machine.😍

Cosmetically it’s in amazing shape for its age. Exterior plastic is covered in little blemishes, as these plastic ones all are, but the display/keyboard/trackpad etc are all in great shape. Battery even holds some charge, though it is at ‘replace soon’ unsurprisingly.

Now it’s confirmed to be working, I’ll try a straight swap of the hard drive from my white A1181 dual booting Snow Leopard/Windows XP. Hopefully that won’t cause any conflicts with firmware or anything. 😒 Then that white A1181 can join my eBay sales and I’ll just keep the other white A1181 running multiple Linux distros alongside the black one. 😊

 

[Certificate of Excellence]

Busy week. The Black MacBook has arrived. As well as having no HDD, it was also giving the ‘RAM says no’ beeps of doom when first powered on. Have swapped in some alternative sticks (alas I only had 2x1GB in my spare RAM bucket that was compatible), thrown in an old spinny HDD, grabbed one of my macOS USB installers and here we are booted into Lion. 😀

View attachment 2631100

What a machine.😍

Cosmetically it’s in amazing shape for its age. Exterior plastic is covered in little blemishes, as these plastic ones all are, but the display/keyboard/trackpad etc are all in great shape. Battery even holds some charge, though it is at ‘replace soon’ unsurprisingly.

Now it’s confirmed to be working, I’ll try a straight swap of the hard drive from my white A1181 dual booting Snow Leopard/Windows XP. Hopefully that won’t cause any conflicts with firmware or anything. 😒 Then that white A1181 can join my eBay sales and I’ll just keep the other white A1181 running multiple Linux distros alongside the black one. 😊

That looks awesome. 🙂 Nice addition.

 

[Minghold]

Today's recycler haul featured a non-Pro Macbook with the lever-door mechanism underneath. Popped it and saw a gray Samsung SATA SSD in the drive bay. Bought it for $10 without bothering to test if it worked. Turned out to be highest specs possible in a 2008 (first aluminum year, and first with DDR3 ram). SSD was a 512gb & 99% health with less than two months total run time.

All rubber feet intact, battery actually works, and free desktop picture of Trump blowing a tuba.

Machine was last used in late 2021, and booted to a couple subscription-model antivirus utilities clamoring for renewal payment while Google Chrome whined that it couldn't update. Like 99% of all Macs I acquire, the drive icon was not on the desktop and scroll bars were off (those being two golden-era GUI creature-comforts that Apple default-disabled midway through the cat-name era).

Looks like a good candidate for a Zorin Pro + MacOS Mojo dual-boot.

 

[Nightphase]

I have installed Snow Leopard on my 2010 Mac Mini Server to act as a media/video player. Does anyone know a good or updated video player for SL? I currently use VLC and MPlayer OS X Extended