What have you done with an early Intel recently?

[VirtuallyInsane]

I bought an Early Intel '09 17 Inch Macbook Pro, and it runs very well, but I corrupted the disk. It was on El Capitan, and I erased the disk and a new copy of El Capitan refused to install on it through the internet installation.

So, I got my copy of my Macbook Pro '06 HD which was running Snow Leopard (the old Hard Drive that I replaced with an SSD was in an external enclosure) and I booted into that. I managed to erase, and repair the SATA drive with the old HD and now the '09's running Snow Leopard and has 500GB of space...

... And I don't want to upgrade it now lol. It's working very well, and I have all my old apps. I also have a Mountain Lion DMG, if I ever want to upgrade but this is cool.

I put "Dark Mode" on Interwebs browser from the add on store (Basililsk) and now it's not cutting my eyeballs out every time I try to type or do something. (Nah, I don't play League, just wanted to see what it looked like by typing in 'lol' to Google).

I might be using this as a secondary device more than I think now. It doesn't hold a lot of charge but can leave it plugged in because the lead is long (not gonna be bringing it anywhere much really and the lead is long enough for me). It doesn't run overly hot, and I don't care for replacing the battery as of now.

 

[GMShadow]

10.6 is a good fit for them, though perhaps because I used it a lot later as a daily than most folks (up to 2016 with the HW I had at the time) I have less nostalgia for it than others. Still, it's one of the OSes I have loaded on my mid '09 17".

 

[eyoungren]

I bought an Early Intel '09 17 Inch Macbook Pro, and it runs very well, but I corrupted the disk. It was on El Capitan, and I erased the disk and a new copy of El Capitan refused to install on it through the internet installation.

So, I got my copy of my Macbook Pro '06 HD which was running Snow Leopard (the old Hard Drive that I replaced with an SSD was in an external enclosure) and I booted into that. I managed to erase, and repair the SATA drive with the old HD and now the '09's running Snow Leopard and has 500GB of space...

... And I don't want to upgrade it now lol. It's working very well, and I have all my old apps. I also have a Mountain Lion DMG, if I ever want to upgrade but this is cool.

View attachment 2143972 View attachment 2143973

I put "Dark Mode" on Interwebs browser from the add on store (Basililsk) and now it's not cutting my eyeballs out every time I try to type or do something. (Nah, I don't play League, just wanted to see what it looked like by typing in 'lol' to Google).

View attachment 2143974

I might be using this as a secondary device more than I think now. It doesn't hold a lot of charge but can leave it plugged in because the lead is long (not gonna be bringing it anywhere much really and the lead is long enough for me). It doesn't run overly hot, and I don't care for replacing the battery as of now.

You can get a pseudo 'Dark Mode' for Snow Leopard Finder if you want. Just use XtraFinder and turn off all the stuff you don't want to use (tabs, etc). In one of the preferences there will be an option to color the background of Finder windows and the type. Just use a black (or dark background) and gray or white type.

 

[VirtuallyInsane]

You can get a pseudo 'Dark Mode' for Snow Leopard Finder if you want. Just use XtraFinder and turn off all the stuff you don't want to use (tabs, etc). In one of the preferences there will be an option to color the background of Finder windows and the type. Just use a black (or dark background) and gray or white type.

Thanks, I didn't know that. I'm going to do that soon.

Dark Mode on Big Sur is so handy, though.

 

[eyoungren]

Thanks, I didn't know that. I'm going to do that soon.

Dark Mode on Big Sur is so handy, though.

There's a script that will give you sort of a broken Dark Mode on Sierra and High Sierra. You have to run it per app. My work MBP is on High Sierra so I use it for the Finder. It was made for Sierra so I've never tried it on Snow Leopard. Doubt it'd work.

But Dark Mode was a primary reason for my upgrading my own MacPro from High Sierra to Mojave. I just needed Metal compatible video cards to do that.

But XtraFinder was my go to for years to get 'Dark Mode' in the Finder on my Intels - before I ever used High Sierra.

 

[MacFoxG4]

Did a lot of different things on a lot of different early Intel Macs. On my 2006 MBP, I downgraded to my patched Mavericks partition to Lion. I installed Office 2008 and the latest Chromium Legacy under Lion and was able to do a voice call in Discord. I was even able to watch a livestream. I’m astonished that I was able to do these activities on Discord on a C2D running Lion!



Side note: Anyone else feel that it is more comfortable to rest your hands on the aluminum MBPs than the unibodies? Going between my 2012 MBP and 2006 MBP today, I really noticed that it is more comfortable to rest my hands on the 2006 than on the 2012. I wish Apple had kept the plastic trim around the edges when they went with the unibody design.



On my 2012 MBP, I installed an emulator called 86Box, which allows me to emulate old PCs. As I discovered, however, the decade old i5 has it’s limits when it comes to this emulator. I initially attempted to emulate a 450mhz Pentium II, one of the newest CPUs you can emulate and one I have some experience with on real hardware, and both Windows ME and Windows 95 were incredibly laggy. The emulator offers quite a bit of options, which also makes it tricky to set up because you have to make sure the options you selected are compatible with each other. The sweet spot I found has been a 486 running at either 66 or 75mhz. I equipped it with a S3 Trio in the PCI slot and a Soundblaster 16 PnP in one of the ISA slots. I also gave it a 3.5’’ floppy drive, 8x CD-ROM drive, and a 500 MB 5400 RPM HDD. I installed Windows 95 OSR2 on it as well as Plus 95 and it runs well. Pinball runs great without the skipping audio heard in VirtualBox. There is a slight crackle to the audio though, at least when setting the virtual CPU to 75mhz. I don’t think I heard the crackle at 66mhz.



Unfortunately, 86Box doesn’t support using the host’s optical drive, so I had to make images of my old Windows CDs. I attempted to do this in Disk Utility, but it failed, so I turned to my late 2009 Mini. I was going to use my early 2009 Mini, reinstall Ubuntu and use Brasero, but I totally forgot that the Mini I had setup at my makeshift computer desk was my late 2009 instead of my early 2009, so I was surprised when I saw the Windows XP startup screen on my monitor. This ended up not being a problem, however, because I had a copy of the installer for ImgBurn, which thankfully works on XP SP2. The Mini’s internal drive wouldn’t play nice with my old Windows CDs though, so I had to get out my external Samsung DVD/CD burner. This roughly decade old external drive played nice with my ancient Windows CDs and now I have backups of my 95 OSR2, NT 4, and ME CDs. I did play 3D pinball on my late 2009 Mini some time before this and I can say that it plays flawlessly on that Mac.

 

[ToniCH]

Macbook 2008 A1181: New battery, upgraded RAM to 4GB and hd to 120GB SSD. Then I installed the Firefox (45.9esr) and the OpenOffice -package. Now the machine is quite usable. But, is there a better browser which would work with the 10.7.5 and open modern web sites with better success and maybe forums too?

 

[Amethyst1]

But, is there a better browser which would work with the 10.7.5 and open modern web sites with better success and maybe forums too?

You can try the browsers mentioned in this thread. It's also possible to run Mountain Lion with graphics acceleration on the system, but according to the thread this won't enable running more (modern) browsers. You'd have to run a much more recent version of macOS for these, and while that is possible on the 2008 MacBook, the experience won't be that great without graphics acceleration.

Side note: Anyone else feel that it is more comfortable to rest your hands on the aluminum MBPs than the unibodies?

I wish Apple had kept the plastic trim around the edges when they went with the unibody design.

I totally agree with you; the unibodies have sharp edges which can get uncomfortable; the pre-unibodies have nice soft edges.

The emulator offers quite a bit of options, which also makes it tricky to set up because you have to make sure the options you selected are compatible with each other.

86Box gives you all the flexibility of a real PC in terms of configuration, so you have to ensure your "components" work with each other. And, for instance, a 486 system won't boot from CD, because real 486s don't either.

 

[theMarble]

But, is there a better browser which would work with the 10.7.5 and open modern web sites with better success and maybe forums too?

Chromium Legacy is the best browser for Lion+, however adding a side-note to what @Amethyst1 said, I'm not confident that it (or a newer browser on a patched OS) would run as well on a GMA-series chip compared to an X1600 or other chip. You may get a slightly better experience by downgrading to Snow Leopard and using a combination of Arctic Fox and InterWeb.

 

[Amethyst1]

You may get a slightly better experience by downgrading to Snow Leopard and using a combination of Arctic Fox and InterWeb.

...or an even better experience by running Linux or Windows (either natively or virtualised) and getting access to current browsers that way. I know, I know, but at some point, it's a question of having the means to an end.

 

[Michael.S]

I bought a new battery for my A1261 (17" 2008 MBPro) and was charging it.
Couldnt do more as this device is damaged due to a GPU death which needs to be replaced.
So this is what I plan to do next:
Send it in to a repair shop who will replace the GPU and then I will try to upgrade it to Big Sur or Monterey.

Or I install Linux on it.

 

[ToniCH]

...or an even better experience by running Linux or Windows (either natively or virtualised) and getting access to current browsers that way. I know, I know, but at some point, it's a question of having the means to an end.

Yes, I do have Linux in couple of my Macs and that is an option. I guess I need to figure out what I really want to do with this machine. Have plenty of more capable machines for proper daily operations but I kinda want all (even vintage) machines to be as usable as possible. Hmm... maybe a dual boot to Linux could be a good solution. But Windows is not an option for me.

 

[B S Magnet]

Send it in to a repair shop who will replace the GPU and then I will try to upgrade it to Big Sur or Monterey.

If you’re in the U.S., this is a service @dosdude1 can provide. There isn’t mention of it on his web site, but you should be able to contact him here with a private message to arrange for it.

If you‘re in Europe, you may be able to contact @JoyBed to provide a similar service.

 

[Michael.S]

If you’re in the U.S., this is a service @dosdude1 can provide. There isn’t mention of it on his web site, but you should be able to contact him here with a private message to arrange for it.

If you‘re in Europe, you may be able to contact @JoyBed to provide a similar service.

Thanks.

I'd love to send it to @dosdude1 but I live in fact in Germany.
I found someone on EBay who is offering this service.

If he's good I will post his account and my recommendations here for all others who are willing to revive their machines.

 

[ToniCH]

...or an even better experience by running Linux or Windows (either natively or virtualised) and getting access to current browsers that way. I know, I know, but at some point, it's a question of having the means to an end.

Aaaand....done... 😎

Installed PopOS. First tried to do a multiboot but for some reason the installer didn't see the partitioning I did to the disk. Got bored, remembered that I have a clone of the boot disk and then did a clean PopOS install. Otherwise straightforward but the os didn't recognize the Wifi-card (Broadcom BMC4321 14e4:4328) but after some creative googling and trying things out (installing and removing drivers etc.) it finally started working. 🤔 😀

Brave browser and Libre Office installation, some fiddling and now everything works. Its not that slow either, even in youtube it auto chooses 720P. 👍🏻

 

[Michael.S]

I bought an Early Intel '09 17 Inch Macbook Pro, and it runs very well, but I corrupted the disk. It was on El Capitan, and I erased the disk and a new copy of El Capitan refused to install on it through the internet installation.

So, I got my copy of my Macbook Pro '06 HD which was running Snow Leopard (the old Hard Drive that I replaced with an SSD was in an external enclosure) and I booted into that. I managed to erase, and repair the SATA drive with the old HD and now the '09's running Snow Leopard and has 500GB of space...

... And I don't want to upgrade it now lol. It's working very well, and I have all my old apps. I also have a Mountain Lion DMG, if I ever want to upgrade but this is cool.

View attachment 2143972 View attachment 2143973

I put "Dark Mode" on Interwebs browser from the add on store (Basililsk) and now it's not cutting my eyeballs out every time I try to type or do something. (Nah, I don't play League, just wanted to see what it looked like by typing in 'lol' to Google).

View attachment 2143974

I might be using this as a secondary device more than I think now. It doesn't hold a lot of charge but can leave it plugged in because the lead is long (not gonna be bringing it anywhere much really and the lead is long enough for me). It doesn't run overly hot, and I don't care for replacing the battery as of now.

I'd also love to pull the trigger on one but I fear the GPU issues on those as well.
I already have one from the earlier gen that I want to take care of first.

Hope your will runs smoothly for a few more years to come.
17" is a really nice "screen estate" to work with

 

[Amethyst1]

I'd also love to pull the trigger on one but I fear the GPU issues on those as well.

FWIW, 2010 17”s also have seemingly GPU-related issues but they’re usually due to a faulty capacitor which is much easier to replace than a GPU.

 

[VirtuallyInsane]

I'd also love to pull the trigger on one but I fear the GPU issues on those as well.
I already have one from the earlier gen that I want to take care of first.

Hope your will runs smoothly for a few more years to come.
17" is a really nice "screen estate" to work with

Thanks. Yeah, it's not quite a desktop but still a laptop. A nice middle ground for what I am gonna do with it.

 

[VirtuallyInsane]

I got the MBP 06 working again but its running scalding on the heatsync at almost 60 degrees celcius. Time to fix the heat sync and use some thermal paste tomorrow...

The MBP 09 isn't as bad:

It's decided to stabilize at this temperature. Heatsync's not so bad.

 

[B S Magnet]

I got the MBP 06 working again but its running scalding on the heatsync at almost 60 degrees celcius. Time to fix the heat sync and use some thermal paste tomorrow...

The MBP 09 isn't as bad:

View attachment 2145020

It's decided to stabilize at this temperature. Heatsync's not so bad.

For your ’06 running mega hot, I really, really encourage you to have a read-through of this project [1] [2] [3] [4] I did on my ’08 in November and December. You’ll need both your preferred thermal paste and also sheets of thermal pad you can cut (optional: specialized lubricant for improving and extending the life of your fan spindles).

I can attest — and corroborated it with data shown within the above links — this works really well by making use of your entire aluminium case as a passive heat sink alongside the active cooling of the fans. For reasons not totally clear to me (except for, maybe, shaving away a few grams in the heat sink assembly), Apple engineers chose not to rely on the case itself as a way to move heat away from the CPU/GPU/memory controller area and out of the case.

 

[B S Magnet]

What have I almost done with an Early Intel recently?

I thought I’d give a nifty firmware hack covered by @dosdude1 on his YT page, called, “How to Change the Startup Chime on an Intel Mac,” a go with my A1261 MBP4,1. But why would I do that?

Because for one, why not? For another, with that era of Intel Macs, it doesn’t require any special equipment to dump the ROM, and also because the Quadra 840AV start-up chime always makes me smile (it’s more cheerful to my brain). Moreover, the start-up chime all of us know on pretty much every Mac made in the New World and in the Intel and Silicon realm is descended directly from the creation of the Quadra 840AV’s chime.

I say almost done because I got hamstrung by the step to dump my system’s EEPROM contents into a bin file using ROMtool, as I was met with the following error:

The only reason why I think my particular MBP could be having trouble is I have a green-dot board which I bought direct from Thailand. That board has not yet been assigned with a serial, and it’s also possible the EEPROM contents may not have the details it would need for ROMtool to parse and dump the EEPROM’s contents:

In other words, I have kind of an oddball.

I do have the Apple utility for writing the serial permanently to the board (which, for those unaware, is a one-time deal to write that info to ROM and it cannot be changed — something which I did a few years ago with my A1138 PowerBook with its quirky af logic board, also not original to that machine), but that likely would not tell the EEPROM dumper anything new or useful to go beyond this error.

So I won’t be getting to change the startup chime on my MBP4,1, but I almost got there!

 

[Michael.S]

The only reason why I think my particular MBP could be having trouble is I have a green-dot board which I bought direct from Thailand.

Would you be willing to share a link or information where exactly to gut such boards from?
Was this an EBay find?

 

[B S Magnet]

Would you be willing to share a link or information where exactly to gut such boards from?
Was this an EBay find?

Yah, it was an eBay find from a couple of years ago. I don’t know if they’re still around, but I could dig into my buying history and check.

I should note: in my case, it wasn’t a simple, one-and-done transaction, as the first board they sent failed within the first five minutes (basically DOA), and trying to get them to send me a working replacement resulted in a few rounds of tense exchanges which, in the end, got resolved. Part of that was probably the language barrier (they were in Asia), but part of that was possibly them not being very thrilled about having to ship a replacement (after I, repeatedly, offered to send them the faulty board at my expense). I gave them positive feedback; they gave me no feedback.

So make of that what you will — caveat emptor and all that.

 

[VirtuallyInsane]

For your ’06 running mega hot, I really, really encourage you to have a read-through of this project [1] [2] [3] [4] I did on my ’08 in November and December. You’ll need both your preferred thermal paste and also sheets of thermal pad you can cut (optional: specialized lubricant for improving and extending the life of your fan spindles).

Thanks, I will buy some thermal pads. I have the paste, and I am waiting to use it. I never thought of using them, but it does make sense as to why you'd use them to disperse the heat throughout the system. I read your post, and I am planning to buy some thermal pads this weekend. Probably from eBay or something (Aliexpress is taking two months to ship here and I'm not waiting that long).

I can attest — and corroborated it with data shown within the above links — this works really well by making use of your entire aluminium case as a passive heat sink alongside the active cooling of the fans. For reasons not totally clear to me (except for, maybe, shaving away a few grams in the heat sink assembly), Apple engineers chose not to rely on the case itself as a way to move heat away from the CPU/GPU/memory controller area and out of the case.

Yeah, that's weird because I really like the look and the feel of the MBP 06-08, but I don't want to be scalded every time I decide to use it.

 

[B S Magnet]

Thanks, I will buy some thermal pads. I have the paste, and I am waiting to use it. I never thought of using them, but it does make sense as to why you'd use them to disperse the heat throughout the system. I read your post, and I am planning to buy some thermal pads this weekend. Probably from eBay or something (Aliexpress is taking two months to ship here and I'm not waiting that long).



Yeah, that's weird because I really like the look and the feel of the MBP 06-08, but I don't want to be scalded every time I decide to use it.

As I made mention in a related thread for the A1139 PowerBook 17-inch (on which I did the same thermal pad intervention), the basic contours of the MBP’s heat sink assembly design seems to have originated with the PowerBook 17, then carried over with minor tweaks for the aluminium MacBook Pro 17s. The original engineering-designer desire for saving weight (maybe Jobs pushed for it, idk) was probably, I’m guessing, valued as a way to make the PowerBook 17 feel less heavy in any way possible. [Indeed, the original marketing materials for the first Powerbook 17 boasted being “thin and weighing a mere 6.8 pounds.”]