My 2011 Air is now running Ventura via OCLP 0.6.1, and quite nicely...
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What have you done with an early Intel recently?
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Left it to rot 
Nah, I spent six hours trying to fix my MBP '06 with the heat sync issue. I got that part done fine, but putting it back together is turning out to be a real PITA. I realized that I had to tuck a part back under the logic board, and I lost a screw for the fan. And I am having a hard time trying to put it back together in general.
Taking it apart and doing the job itself is easy, but I forgot to take a picture in order to put everything back together and now it's a chaotic hot mess, lol. What do I even do anymore? I can work on it tomorrow, BUT I'm not spending six hours on it like I did tonight. At this stage, it's tempting to just strip it and sell the parts, lol.
Nah, I spent six hours trying to fix my MBP '06 with the heat sync issue. I got that part done fine, but putting it back together is turning out to be a real PITA. I realized that I had to tuck a part back under the logic board, and I lost a screw for the fan. And I am having a hard time trying to put it back together in general.
Taking it apart and doing the job itself is easy, but I forgot to take a picture in order to put everything back together and now it's a chaotic hot mess, lol. What do I even do anymore? I can work on it tomorrow, BUT I'm not spending six hours on it like I did tonight. At this stage, it's tempting to just strip it and sell the parts, lol.
Left it to rot
Nah, I spent six hours trying to fix my MBP '06 with the heat sync issue. I got that part done fine, but putting it back together is turning out to be a real PITA. I realized that I had to tuck a part back under the logic board, and I lost a screw for the fan. And I am having a hard time trying to put it back together in general.
Taking it apart and doing the job itself is easy, but I forgot to take a picture in order to put everything back together and now it's a chaotic hot mess, lol. What do I even do anymore? I can work on it tomorrow, BUT I'm not spending six hours on it like I did tonight. At this stage, it's tempting to just strip it and sell the parts, lol.
Yes, this is the reason why I really don't like working with the internals of the pre-unibody MacBook Pro. Placing the motherboard back into the machine in a way that doesn't potentially damage the board components was something I found surprisingly difficult.
A great way to keep track of screws and other small components for me has been printing out the iFixit guide for my machine/the repair I'm doing, and just taping any screws and/or small parts to the page besides each of the steps they come from.
I use an ice tray to keep my screws organized when getting into the guts of an i/Pbook or mb/p. Cheap & has saved me many times from getting turned around.
I guess I've just done so many of them... I can disassemble and re-assemble them in like 10 minutes. I do find the 17" ones are a bit more tricky to assemble than the 15" ones though.Left it to rot
Nah, I spent six hours trying to fix my MBP '06 with the heat sync issue. I got that part done fine, but putting it back together is turning out to be a real PITA. I realized that I had to tuck a part back under the logic board, and I lost a screw for the fan. And I am having a hard time trying to put it back together in general.
Taking it apart and doing the job itself is easy, but I forgot to take a picture in order to put everything back together and now it's a chaotic hot mess, lol. What do I even do anymore? I can work on it tomorrow, BUT I'm not spending six hours on it like I did tonight. At this stage, it's tempting to just strip it and sell the parts, lol.
I've mentioned this before I think, but I find the most annoying part about putting my A1212 back together is the main power connector, which is located on the underside of the board next to the ExpressCard enclosure, speaker and AirPort card. Doesn't help either that the cable is really short. It takes a whole heap of finicking to get it in, and of course if you move it (the logic board) around too close to the heatsink you mess up the thermal paste.
I have it because I like its design, and it's a heck of a lot lighter than my 2009 MBP 17' beast, which is running well on the Snow Leopard backup I put on it. It's just this darn overheating issue that's a PITA, for me, in the pre-unibody MBP. I want to use this one when it's fixed up as a secondary laptop.
And yes, taping the screws seems like a good idea. I put them all on a sheet and wrote the instructions of what goes where for each pile. Putting the logic board back in is annoying for me too, but once you get it in, it's fine.
I've heard of that before. Maybe I could do that too and label each section and rub it off after.
Because it's bigger?
Yeah, I am gonna have a go tonight at reassembling this because I want to get it up and going again. Yeah, the fiddly cables are really annoying. But we have to bear with them, and push through.
I've actually wondered if a potential way to get around that is to apply the thermal paste to the heatsink instead of the CPU/GPU/Northbridge...
Yes, for me I've always wanted to love the 2006-2008 MacBook Pros, and use them as my daily driver machines, but it's just that the thermals have always been far too problematic. It was quite telling that a 1.83 Ghz MacBook 1,1 with a GMA 950 handled YouTube and retro 3D gaming via CrossOver/Wineskin just fine in my testing, whereas my 2.16 Ghz MacBook Pro 2,1 chugged horribly on YouTube with CPU temps shooting into 80-90+ deg. C.
Edit: Good luck with the reassaembly! Provide pics if you can! Maybe I might learn something about reassembling my MacBook Pro from seeing how you do it...
The one I use is seven across, two rows. I never had to number them because I would just go left to right-top to bottom, so steps 1-7 on top, and 8-14 on the bottom. That with an ifixit guide, and I was always good to go as the guide specifies what length screw goes where with colored circles which is really nice for those of us who are not in these old portables all the time.
If I still had cats, I think I'd look at something like this as they're literally a $1.25, so cheap as heck and come with a tight fitting lid if you need to secure your screws/steps from the likes of a toddler or cat or nosey dog. They have 11 or 12 separate slots, so still a lot of room for most mac related portable disassembly tasks. I have used one of these in the past when I misplaced my icecube tray and ended up doing exactly what you considered - I wrote the step numbers on the lid with a dry erase marker. Came right off afterwards.
Anyhow, I swear by this method of disassembly/reassembly. Best of luck with your reassembly.
Descent into Honolulu, from Charlotte, NC. American Airlines Boeing 777, full flight (~8 hours). Not long now.
Or, go to the dollar store and pick up an ice cube tray.
I found a tray with 21 little semi-circle cups for making hemispheric ice cubes. As a bonus, the bottom of the tray is made of a silicone coating to prevent it from sliding on a hard desk/table surface. That’s how I keep track of screws I remove from a laptop, with each tray cup corresponding to an iFixit step.
Total price: $2.
That’s because you’re a machine (or, as others have put it, you’re a demi-god).
(That’s high praise.)
Hmm, I never thought of that. Maybe that might help. Someone should test that out.
Oh, no. 80-90 is even worse than the 60 I was getting beforehand. In moments, it was scalding. It's a shame because I really like this model myself. I think the plastic seemed to help the early MacBooks and iBooks because I have an iBook G4 and it barely gets warm. The MBP is hellish at times in comparison.
The one I use is seven across, two rows. I never had to number them because I would just go left to right-top to bottom, so steps 1-7 on top, and 8-14 on the bottom. That with an ifixit guide, and I was always good to go as the guide specifies what length screw goes where with colored circles which is really nice for those of us who are not in these old portables all the time.
If I still had cats, I think I'd look at something like this as they're literally a $1.25, so cheap as heck and come with a tight fitting lid if you need to secure your screws/steps from the likes of a toddler or cat or nosey dog. They have 11 or 12 separate slots, so still a lot of room for most mac related portable disassembly tasks. I have used one of these in the past when I misplaced my icecube tray and ended up doing exactly what you considered - I wrote the step numbers on the lid with a dry erase marker. Came right off afterwards.
Anyhow, I swear by this method of disassembly/reassembly. Best of luck with your reassembly.
I never thought of using that method either, but again, I'm just new to the MBP Pre-Unibody disassembling. I should get markers for them, and mark out the colors on the page. That might help as well.
Yes, my dog is very curious and a Dalmatian, so he's curiously hyper. He would probably sneak into my room, and poke at the screws if he could. And that's a good idea. I would like to do that with a marker.
_____________
Update for everyone: So, I put most of it back together to test it, and it seems like the problem is with the fans or something. It's something other than the thermal paste/heatsink. It might be the fans, or something up with another component. The same thing that happened before I applied the paste is happening again.
I am going to have to investigate at another time.
I tossed my Mavericks image on my MBA 5,2. Running quite smoothly. I had been running 11.x on it and while it was running fine I felt like going back in time on a Sunday night..
Where did you find that wallpaper? Looks great with the frosted Mavericks dock.
This week I got myself a late 2011, 17-inch i7 MacBook Pro with SSD. Dual-boot for Snow Leopard and High Sierra, which is awesome. This is about as good as it gets for a portable, IMO.
I upgraded the Ram from 4GB to 16GB, but this caused something weird to happen. Now whenever I boot into Snow Leopard, it warns me that my boot disk is almost full, even though it's not. I checked "don't remind me" but it shows up every time I boot. What gives?
I upgraded the Ram from 4GB to 16GB, but this caused something weird to happen. Now whenever I boot into Snow Leopard, it warns me that my boot disk is almost full, even though it's not. I checked "don't remind me" but it shows up every time I boot. What gives?
The last 17" laptop Apple ever made! Keep an eye on the GPU though, it will fail after some time has past. You can disable it, but then you're stuck with the HD 3000 and no external display support.
Is it the coveted Antiglare/Matte version?
Interesting error, never heard of it before. I would first try putting the original 4GB back in and seeing whether it still happens, if it does then I would use memtest86 to see if your new RAM is faulty. If not, I'd try erasing the SSD and re-installing SL.
Heck yeah!! I never saw one in the wild, and they were discontinued just before I started to get interested in Macs and specs.
Yeah I heard about this, is it easy to disable/reenable? I got it running Minecraft recently, and the GPU is clearly doing magic as the fans aren't spinning up (unlike my 2012 13" unibody). But I know I'll probably have to disable it. Are there any 2011s where Apple repaired the GPU, and are still good?
Yes!! And with a brand new battery. It was basically a steal! I totally don't understand the computing needs of the previous owner, he still had the stock 4GB Ram and 750GB HDD, and even the original OS X Lion. And he told me he'd just bought an M1 Max 16-inch. So... was the guy using Lion all the way until now?? Who knows!
What's this? Is there a program for it?
Memtest86 is a tool that boots off a USB stick and tests the memory in your system to see whether there any discrepancies/faults.
None. Every 2011 Mac (not just MacBook Pro) that has a Radeon HD 6xx0 chip is guaranteed to fail at some point and there is zero way to prevent it. Reflow is only temperamental and has some safety risks.
The failure is IIRC in the connection between the substrate (base board of the chip) and the die, it separates, disconnecting the chips die from the substrate. AMD never released a revision of the chips to fix the problems, so Apple was forced to replace dying GPUs with other "going to die at some point" chips.
I (and I'm sure others too) would love to see some photos of it! Lion is most likely on it due to the owner using Internet Recovery to factory reset it.
Ah, cool. Well the warning went away after a proper shutdown. Interesting.
Ah that explains it. Still, I think it's pretty cool that someone held out on a non-upgraded 2011 17-inch, and waited 10 years to get their next laptop. That's good use. But I'm surprised the graphics are still working. I wonder how much longer I can expect.
Did the previous owner actively use the machine until it was sold? Maybe it spent most of its life on a shelf...
You can boot latest version from EFI shell (easy if rEFInd installed
).
Inspired by @VirtuallyInsane I decided to pull out an old MacBook Pro 2,1 out of storage and toy around with it a bit. Much to my surprise, upon boot, it just sat there on a black screen, doing nothing.
Long story short, I've discovered that this particular Mac's RAM slots are unusually finicky, and the retention clips for the DIMM slots, while they look totally normal, make it oddly easy for one to improperly install RAM by accident.
Now my next challenge is getting YouTube working on this. The latest versions of both ArcticFox and InterWeb both don't seem to want to play any videos.
Long story short, I've discovered that this particular Mac's RAM slots are unusually finicky, and the retention clips for the DIMM slots, while they look totally normal, make it oddly easy for one to improperly install RAM by accident.
Now my next challenge is getting YouTube working on this. The latest versions of both ArcticFox and InterWeb both don't seem to want to play any videos.
I agree: because that's exactly what happened when I set up my 2010 MBA. Internet Recovery offered me Lion instead of Snow Leopard.