Hi Macrumors,
In my account's tradition of coming to you with bizarre hardware questions, I've got another pickle for the community.
I currently have 4 semi-dead machines lying around:
- White Macbook, late 2009. The keyboard and trackpad are dead. Despite having some fluid spilled on them, both used to work. However, I fooled around a little in the internals, apparently killing both keyboard and trackpad in the process. I've tried fixing them (socket re-seats mostly) to no avail. I use externals now, works fine. Otherwise the thing runs without issue.
- Macbook Pro 15", 2010. Everything should work, except for the logic board. Won't boot past grey screen. Probably a ****** GPU (that generation is notorious for it). Apple told me the logic board should be replaced. I'm planning on cooking it, see if it'll come back to life.
- Macbook Pro 13", 2010. This one's a train-wreck. Won't boot past blue(!) screen, no battery, cracked screen, keyboard is missing the left arrow key, generally dusty internally.
- [Bonus] Macbook Air, probably mid 2011 (not sure). Doesn't have a battery, and apparently WiFi connectivity issues. Otherwise it runs fine.
- Mac Pro G5 casing only. No internals. Just the aluminum casing.
I amassed most of these through the past 5 years of people who had no use for them, given they were usually presumed dead (the computers that is), and they passed them on to me.
Now, my question for the community: with 4 laptops in varying states of 'useful', could I build some kind of Frankenstein machine that gives me 1 fully functioning notebook? Or if not a notebook, then some kind of desktop machine? I'm not scared of opening these bad boys up, swapping parts, that kind of jazz. I've got access to a hacker space with all kinds of tooling too, so even some advanced magic could be an option.
Who wants to take a stab?
Some stuff I came up with myself:
- Could I maybe swap the keyboard/trackpad assemblies of one of the other Macbook Pro's/Airs into the Macbook?
Other fun hacking stuff?
- I could salvage the trackpads, maybe even keyboards, and turn them into USB peripherals (think there's a few blogs floating around the internet detailing how)
- I could salvage the screens, if I get a controller board for them, and make external screens of them.
In my account's tradition of coming to you with bizarre hardware questions, I've got another pickle for the community.
I currently have 4 semi-dead machines lying around:
- White Macbook, late 2009. The keyboard and trackpad are dead. Despite having some fluid spilled on them, both used to work. However, I fooled around a little in the internals, apparently killing both keyboard and trackpad in the process. I've tried fixing them (socket re-seats mostly) to no avail. I use externals now, works fine. Otherwise the thing runs without issue.
- Macbook Pro 15", 2010. Everything should work, except for the logic board. Won't boot past grey screen. Probably a ****** GPU (that generation is notorious for it). Apple told me the logic board should be replaced. I'm planning on cooking it, see if it'll come back to life.
- Macbook Pro 13", 2010. This one's a train-wreck. Won't boot past blue(!) screen, no battery, cracked screen, keyboard is missing the left arrow key, generally dusty internally.
- [Bonus] Macbook Air, probably mid 2011 (not sure). Doesn't have a battery, and apparently WiFi connectivity issues. Otherwise it runs fine.
- Mac Pro G5 casing only. No internals. Just the aluminum casing.
I amassed most of these through the past 5 years of people who had no use for them, given they were usually presumed dead (the computers that is), and they passed them on to me.
Now, my question for the community: with 4 laptops in varying states of 'useful', could I build some kind of Frankenstein machine that gives me 1 fully functioning notebook? Or if not a notebook, then some kind of desktop machine? I'm not scared of opening these bad boys up, swapping parts, that kind of jazz. I've got access to a hacker space with all kinds of tooling too, so even some advanced magic could be an option.
Who wants to take a stab?
Some stuff I came up with myself:
- Could I maybe swap the keyboard/trackpad assemblies of one of the other Macbook Pro's/Airs into the Macbook?
Other fun hacking stuff?
- I could salvage the trackpads, maybe even keyboards, and turn them into USB peripherals (think there's a few blogs floating around the internet detailing how)
- I could salvage the screens, if I get a controller board for them, and make external screens of them.