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A1181 white Macbook upgrades

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Fluke32

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 15, 2022
7
7
Hi everyone
Im fairly new to the Mac world having been a PC user all my life. I have been given a white late 2008 Macbook. Its 4'1 and has 4 gig of RAM. I put a SSD in it and installed Lion as I was told thats the latest it would go up to. I have read a lot about installing later OS on unsupported Macs but I believe the GPU would be a problem if I tried this. I have a usb with the Mountain Lion installer on but it says Mountain Lion is not compatable with this Mac.

I guess my question is , what can I do with this. I mean realistically so its a functioning machine. I could just leave it on Lion but it seems like a good opportunity to try and tinker with it a little bit.

Sorry if its a really silly noob question but this is a new world for me!
Fluke
 
Amethyst1

Amethyst1

macrumors G3
Oct 28, 2015
9,783
12,183
TheShortTimer said:
I've seen Lion described as Snow Leopard but without Rosetta. An accurate assessment in your opinion?
Click to expand...
Not really I’m afraid.
Lion is slower than Snow Leopard in my experience (especially noticeable on slower machines).
I personally hate AutoSave/Revert (thankfully it can be turned off!) and most changes that were done to the UI.
Sure, Lion brought a few under-the-hood improvements and new features (e.g. HiDPI) but I’d have been very happy with these on top of Snow Leopard’s UI.
 
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rampancy

rampancy

macrumors 6502a
Jul 22, 2002
741
999
Fluke32 said:
Hi everyone
Im fairly new to the Mac world having been a PC user all my life. I have been given a white late 2008 Macbook. Its 4'1 and has 4 gig of RAM. I put a SSD in it and installed Lion as I was told thats the latest it would go up to. I have read a lot about installing later OS on unsupported Macs but I believe the GPU would be a problem if I tried this. I have a usb with the Mountain Lion installer on but it says Mountain Lion is not compatable with this Mac.

I guess my question is , what can I do with this. I mean realistically so its a functioning machine. I could just leave it on Lion but it seems like a good opportunity to try and tinker with it a little bit.

Sorry if its a really silly noob question but this is a new world for me!
Fluke
Click to expand...

Hey! Congrats on your new (old) Mac! As a long-time devotee of the A1181, the 4,1 is one of my favorites - the 64-bit EFI means you have many interesting options for alternative OS installations beside Snow Leopard/Lion. In addition to running Mountain Lion as mentioned by Amethyst1, you can also run modern lightweight/medium-weight Linux distros like Zorin OS, Xubuntu or mxLinux. I've also heard that Crunchbang++ works really well on the 4,1 too. I'm personally a big fan of Zorin OS myself.

In terms of hardware, you can do quite a bit with this machine, depending on how much money you want to spend...

You *could* install a 4 GB DDR2-SODIMM to bring it up to 6 GB, but such memory modules are generally quite expensive, in my experience. You could also remove the slot-loading optical drive (they're usually inoperable or faulty with age on used A1181s anyway) and replace it with an optical drive bay caddy (to install another SSD or large capacity hard drive), but you'll have to make sure that it's a SATA-IDE caddy (most of the drive caddies out there are SATA-SATA). Beyond that are aesthetic mods where you can mix and match display bezels, key caps, or even the entire topcase with those of black A1181 MacBooks.

Regardless of how far you decide to go, it's important to make sure that you have at least an operational battery (it doesn't have to be new or in like-new condition), since the system firmware (independent of whatever OS is running) will downclock the CPU to 1 Ghz if it doesn't detect a working battery.
 
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F

Fluke32

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 15, 2022
7
7
rampancy said:
Hey! Congrats on your new......
Click to expand...
Hi rampancy
Thank for the reply. I do have a 2015 Mac that I bought for photo processing but as Im not really familiar with Mac I saw this one for £20 and snapped it up. The battery is fantastic on it. I did have an issue with the airport card not working so no wifi and I even bought another wifi card but that didnt work. Then I managed to get a wifi dongle working on it.

I did buy a second hard drive caddy but foolishly I didnt check it came with the righ connections. It didnt. But you have answered my question on another thread on here where I asked if anyone knew what the connection was. Its a PATA/IDE so thank you so much for solving that for me, I am eternally grateful. Im just about to order the correct caddy.

I really like this little thing. Its chunky and quirky and a refreshing change from my Windows laptops.
 
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Aoligei

Aoligei

macrumors 65816
Jul 16, 2020
1,147
1,363
WoW, nice to see a 2008 MacBook user. 2008 was my first Mac that I brought by myself after two years of part time job at McDonald's. I still remember the day I unboxed that machine. It was fantastic. Although I do not have this machine anymore, I certainly would like to purchase other one for cheap.

I remember that I have upgraded the machine to 6GB RAM back then and during my university year, i brought an SSD (2010. 128GB SSD was very expensive back then).

I would only suggest you using older version of MacOS, since software support is non-existent anymore. Recently I acquired a 2009 MacBook Pro and installed MacOS El Captian, I found myself constant search for supported software. Browser support is bigger issue for me as well as good video editing software. It seems most browser do not support any macOS that is older than macOS High Serria. Therefore, I ended up upgrading to Catalina through patcher.

I don't believe 2008 white MacBook is capable running anything past Mac OS X mountain lion. You are most welcome to try to use this, but i strongly recommend some Linux distributions.

Anyway, very nice to see 2008 MacBook again.
 
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Amethyst1

Amethyst1

macrumors G3
Oct 28, 2015
9,783
12,183
Aoligei said:
I don't believe 2008 white MacBook is capable running anything past Mac OS X mountain lion.
Click to expand...
The 2008 MacBook is definitely capable of going past Mountain Lion. The lack of graphics acceleration for the GMA X3100 in Mavericks and later versions causes various issues however. These can be overcome by using an eGPU, but this destroys the portability of the system.
 
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Jack Neill

Jack Neill

macrumors 68020
Sep 13, 2015
2,272
2,308
San Antonio Texas
Amethyst1 said:
Not really I’m afraid.
Lion is slower than Snow Leopard in my experience (especially noticeable on slower machines).
I personally hate AutoSave/Revert (thankfully it can be turned off!) and most changes that were done to the UI.
Sure, Lion brought a few under-the-hood improvements and new features (e.g. HiDPI) but I’d have been very happy with these on top of Snow Leopard’s UI.
Click to expand...
I remember when it first dropped, I was so stoked. Especially when I got it boot on my Hackintosh. Then I used it, and it had more bugs than a by the hour motel. I used it later on a MB 2,1 as well and it was the worst thing I ever did to that machine. I am referring to the 10.7.0 days. Later versions fixed a lot of its problems, but in launch days it was a dumpster on fire on a ship on fire sinking into a polluted ocean drying up on a dead planet barreling towards the sun about to go nova.. I might be remembering it with anger and less facts tho..

Mountain Lion was a great OS for me especially on that 2,1. Thanks Hackerwayne!
 
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