Macbook a1181 - Black - Running Mojave / WiFi AC and other Mods?

[Akulareb]

Hi, I always wanted to modify my old Black Macbook so a while ago I've started with the modifications.

I'm not the type of person who'd like to splash an enormous amount of money toward projects of this calibre as a lot of times you can just recycle so much by researching small bits in flea markets and hidden corners of eBay.

The first one was obviously to transplant a logic board from mid-2009, then I've upgraded the wifi to AC and Bluetooth to 4.0 so I've used an adapter with an iMac 2013 airport card and a recycled Bluetooth antenna from a Thinkpad x131 laptop (very good quality coaxial cables BTW)

Great stuff I thought, then hey presto two 4gb DDR2 modules went in as the Nvidia MCP79 supports easily 8gb of memory.

I also transplanted the multitouch trackpad from a Macbook pro a1260 (keeping the black sleeve so replacing the original grey one) so you have gestures and multitouch under Mojave

As SSD price keeps falling, well I'd like to find a couple of them to push the bandwidth to sata3 speeds on RAID.
Tried before but the problem is that the Optical drive port tends to negotiate at sata1 speeds most of the time with SandForce controllers and the main one randomly at sata1 instead of sata2. So damn you MCP, a solution would be a Marvell based SSD? like the WD Blue which should use 88SS1074 controller.

Screenwise I'm trying to get my head around the fact that maybe my screen is really washed out (CCFL here) as it uses an LTN133W1-L01
with a contrast ratio of 300:1 and may add the weaker lamps too. On Panelook I've found some Chimei with better contrast (one is 800:1) which should considerably improve the quality.

Or another more complicated way is to reroute internally the mini DVI connector to an HDMI controller to EDP screen and fit something newer?(in such case may be the controller can be fitted behind the screen or ditching the second SSD would give loads of space for it)


Then the mighty CPU upgrade, this is already proven to be possible as the genius of @dosdude1 demonstrated, I was thinking about a p9700 due to the reduced wattage compared to a t9600 so I have acquired few tools but I'm still waiting for some core2duo masks for reballing the processor.

I'll try to find some time and update the posts with pictures soon

Thank you for reading

 

[Johnny Sanzimippi]

Hi Aculareb, I'm new here and I'm really, really excited for what you said to have done to your BlackBook!
I've just finished working on my Black 2007 2.1 MacBook, like you did I swapped the logic board for a 5.2 one, also swapped dvd drive (still perfectly working), speakers and lcd assembly (iSight + antennas) like you're almost obliged to do with a 1.1/2.1 to 5.2 conversion.
A new 480GB Crucial BX SSD + 8GB DDR2 from China togheter with a fresh install of 10.15.7 Catalina dual booted with Windows 10 (activated, with Boot Camp drivers installed) completed my project.
Now I read your post and... oh boy you had such great ideas, never thought of those before!

The one I'm most curious of is surely the multitouch trackpad transplant, I'm really pissed having to use a mouse because poor old clicky touchpad is basically unusable in Catalina... I sorted out the old keyboard layout with Karabiner, but touchpad is just... bad.
I know A1260's Early 2008 trackpad supports multigestures, but I supposed those were welded to the top case assembly, just like the A1181's ones, didn't they?
How do you managed to replace it, and how does it look like?

The second thing I'm interested in is the Bluetooth 4.0, and secondly the Wi-Fi AC. Can you please link me the exact same adapter and the model of antenna you installed in, and how did you secured everything in place?

My lcd panel is in good condition, of course it was already a bad panel when it was new, so I'm not really blaming it for its age.

I'm not interested in RAID 0 a double SSD, basically because I still use it now and then for dvd's and cd's.

The CPU upgrade (to a P9900 maybe...) would be a dream, but I don't have the adequate equipment nor the ability to do it by myself, so probably a dream will remain...

Great job, I would really appreciate to see some photos of you machine!