Owning, Using, and Collecting Early Intel: Quirks, Problems, and general FAQs

[Dronecatcher]

On the PowerPC platform, we now have several good software sources, but the 32-bit Intel platform appears to be quite challenged - Can anyone recommend a good place to start for this?

I can only echo this - 32bit is truly out in the cold. My only Intel Macs are both Core Duos and in regard to the web they are struggling. Older versions of Firefox and Chrome are begining to creak and some sites are breaking - a lot of embedded video is out of reach too. Roccat is great when it works but it seems to be unstable.

At some point a Linux install will become inevitable...

 

[647156]

The hardware appears to be OK, except for the battery, which is rejected after a few seconds (with an X in the menu bar icon). This limits the Core Duo speed to a mere 996Mhz.

That's really strange, I've never heard of a battery issue affecting performance when a computer is plugged in - is this the case for all Intel Macs and/or any PowerPCs? Does it still do it even if the battery is removed completely, and what about under Windows if you've tried?

Any particular software you are looking for? Latest versions of most applications that support Snow Leopard should work, I don't remember being that much that supported Snow Leopard but only 64-bit processors (looks like Adobe CS6 might be one, CS5.5 was the last to officially support 32-bit processors but CS6 supports Snow Leopard on 64-bit processors) And yes, Firefox 48 is the last for Snow Leopard and is still pretty modern at the moment, there's always Windows if you need newer browsers

 

[weckart]

That's really strange, I've never heard of a battery issue affecting performance when a computer is plugged in - is this the case for all Intel Macs and/or any PowerPCs? Does it still do it even if the battery is removed completely, and what about under Windows if you've tried?

I had an experience of this recently on a PowerBook G4

https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...enshots-powerpc.1947650/page-17#post-25933555

 

[AphoticD]

That's really strange, I've never heard of a battery issue affecting performance when a computer is plugged in - is this the case for all Intel Macs and/or any PowerPCs? Does it still do it even if the battery is removed completely, and what about under Windows if you've tried?

Yes, it was typical behaviour for the MacBook and MacBook Pro to throttle CPU speed when the battery is removed (or too far gone to properly register). Using CoolBook, I can watch the stepping "unlock" after I remove the battery and reinsert it. I get about 10 seconds of 1.83Ghz before it deems the battery unworthy and locks itself back down to 1Ghz. If I register another copy of CoolBook, I can also override the stepping and force the MBP to run at full speed. CoolBook registrations are per machine and it locks itself to the hardware (I have one reg for my C2D MacBook uni '08 which works only up to Snow Leopard 10.6.8). But for about $10 more, I can just buy a cheap eBay special Chinese knock-off battery to suit and also make the Mac portable again, so I'll go with that instead.

I haven't tried Windows on it yet. My understanding is it will have the same hardware speed throttling. I will try to avoid resorting to Windows though, but at least it is an option.

I think I like running it with Leopard. It feels very snappy compared to Snow, even at the throttled speed. I know it was designed to originally run with Tiger. It shipped with 10.4.5 (and it is fast), but it seems Leopard's optimizations were very much Intel (32-bit) focused, with PowerPC speed priority taking second place.

Any particular software you are looking for? Latest versions of most applications that support Snow Leopard should work, I don't remember being that much that supported Snow Leopard but only 64-bit processors (looks like Adobe CS6 might be one, CS5.5 was the last to officially support 32-bit processors but CS6 supports Snow Leopard on 64-bit processors) And yes, Firefox 48 is the last for Snow Leopard and is still pretty modern at the moment, there's always Windows if you need newer browsers

Thanks, I don't have anything specific I'm looking for. It would be good to see a website which can outline all of the specific versions of Mac software which were 32-bit compatible before Apple find a way to obliterate 32-bit existence completely (as they have done with PowerPC). OldApps.com appears to have a pretty decent listing of app versions for Snow Leopard (although not specifically 32-bit) and Leopard (Intel).

I have a license for Adobe CS3 Premium, which I will install on the MBP. I don't think I'll need to go any higher than this. I also have boxed Final Cut Pro Studio 2 (inc. Motion, SoundTrack Pro, etc) which was the last to support PowerPC and will likely work, but possibly requires more HDD space than I allowed for this. I'll need to go through my software library to find all of the "Universal Binary" versions... So far, I have also installed and activated my licenses for Panic's Coda 1 and 2 (v1.7.5 for Leopard, v2.0.14 [Mac App Store] for Snow Leopard) and Transmit (v4.2 for Leopard, v4.4.8 for Snow Leopard) - See Panic's OS compatibility.

Although 1GB of RAM won't allow much elbow room, I was thinking that I could probably install VMware Fusion. It looks like Fusion v3.1 (and 3.0) was the last to support 32-bit Snow Leopard and Leopard 10.5.8.

It also looks like iLife '09 (Leopard) and iLife '11 (Snow Leopard) are supported for iPhoto, iMovie and Garageband, as are the iWork equivalents for Pages and Numbers.

I would love to see Leopard WebKit resume support for Snow Leopard and 32-bit Intel. That would be the ideal option. PaleMoon 32-bit builds would be great too. I'll have to play around with these when I make some time.

There is a very specific level of obscurity with 32-bit Intel which is far more limited than PowerPC. At least with PowerPC we had several generations (6 or 7 years) of supported hardware from G3 through to G5. But when you look at it, the range of 32-bit Intel hardware was really just Macs with the Intel Core Duo (2006), which included one revision of MacBook, 3x MacBook Pros and 3x iMacs. All other Intel Macs are 64-bit, with some 32-bit EFI limited hardware in the Core 2 Duo and Xeon range (2006 and 2007). But even a 32-bit OS can accommodate apps in a 64-bit user-space if the hardware is 64-bit capable.

 

[bobesch]

[...]
But for about $10 more, I can just buy a cheap eBay special Chinese knock-off battery to suit and also make the Mac portable again, so I'll go with that instead.
[...]
Although 1GB of RAM won't allow much elbow room, I was thinking that I could probably install VMware Fusion. It looks like Fusion v3.1 (and 3.0) was the last to support 32-bit Snow Leopard and Leopard 10.5.8.
[...]
It also looks like iLife '09 (Leopard) and iLife '11 (Snow Leopard) are supported for iPhoto, iMovie and Garageband, as are the iWork equivalents for Pages and Numbers.
[...]

A cheap battery is always the better-choice IMHO - just fancy popping off the MagSafe and get a sudden blackout.
As far as I remember too, Fusion3 might really be the latest version to run with SL. I'd go with Win2kPro as a VM. Does require only 128-256MB of RAM and will leave enough RAM for the Mac to work. It's quite speedy (well, at least on my c2d early 2008 MBP). I'd also go for a BootCamp partition with WinXPpro SP2/3, since only RDP6-Client allows to connect to WinServer2008 and later, when it comes to handling of the certificate-handling. Otherwise the WinXP(SP2)Fundamentals as a VM will do the same job.
When it comes to iLife I'd go for iLife'06 with iMovie6, since it offers a lot of semi-professional gimmicks and effects, which were removed in later versions (http://www.geethree.com)

 

[miksat]

View attachment 760194

I recently picked up a very cheap MacBook Pro (1,1) 2006, 1.83ghz Core Duo. The machine was sold as untested and covered in grime. I gave it a thorough clean up and powered it on. It picked itself up out of a deep-sleep state and dropped me into a previous owner's Desktop and iPhoto library. It looks like it was put to sleep around 2013 and the 10.4.11 system volume was formatted in early 2006. (I should have checked 'uptime'...)

The serial number indicates it was built in week 8 of 2006, so it was one of the very first cabs off the rank and shipped with just 512MB of DDR2. I put in another 512MB SO-DIMM which I had spare and began to re-partition for a triple-boot 32-bit Snow Leopard, Leopard and Tiger setup.

This is my first MacBook Pro and my 2nd Core Duo machine. I also have the MacBook Unibody '08 C2D, which is far less limited and runs El Cap surprisingly well with 8GB of RAM and a 240GB SSD.

Everything about the first gen MBP scrubbed up perfectly (just a couple of minor dents on the back of the display). The hardware appears to be OK, except for the battery, which is rejected after a few seconds (with an X in the menu bar icon). This limits the Core Duo speed to a mere 996Mhz.

Snow Leopard is a beautiful operating system to use, with at least partial connections to the modern world via the Mac App Store. But, there is a very small percentage of apps which will actually install. I can imagine all 32-bit versions of apps will disappear completely within the next year or so.

Firefox v48.0.2 appears to be the best browser option and Flash Player v22.0.0.209 might be the last version which works on the 32-bit Mac OS X 10.6.8. I have also installed Xcode 3.2.6 (with iOS 4.3 SDK), so that I can use the machine as a test platform for my Mac app projects. This version of Xcode appears to be completely compatible with Leopard's Xcode 3.1.4.

It's interesting running Leopard 10.5.8 on the MacBook Pro 15.4" Core Duo 1.83Ghz side by side with a PowerBook G4 15.2" DLSD 1.67Ghz. I know the faulty battery is causing the CPU to throttle the Intel, but I feel that the PowerBook G4 provides a smoother experience, which is likely the result of ironing out PowerPC bugs over time.

So far (less than 24hrs) using the 1st gen Intel, I've experienced one kernel panic, one failed attempt at installing Snow Leopard and an endless "configuring" stage when trying to install the 10.5.8 combo update. It has also switched itself off twice, which I believe is heat related. The fans run at 1000rpm by default and the CPU temps rise above 60°C quite quickly, so I've used SMC Fan Control to set the default speed to around 3000rpm on both fans. This is still relatively quiet and keeps the reported temperature around 47 - 50°C during use.

The MacBook Pro's ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 GPU provides a smooth UI. Definitely smoother than the Intel GMA950 in the MacBook1,1. I have configured Leopard with my usual array of software and find it pretty much on par with my 2005 PowerBooks. I think once I install a new battery, it will provide a decent performance boost - performance similar to a Dual G5 1.8Ghz perhaps(?). In my Core Image tests, the X1600 (128MB) appears to be practically on par with the ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 (128MB) in the G4 DLSD. I wonder if the GPU performance is also being throttled by the (lack of) battery...

I will want to max out the RAM to 2GB to make it more usable, and probably install a 128GB mSATA SSD to give it a real boost. When I do, I'll strip it down, clean out the internals and re-paste the CPU and GPU to give it the best chance at staying cool.

On the PowerPC platform, we now have several good software sources, but the 32-bit Intel platform appears to be quite challenged - Can anyone recommend a good place to start for this?

Overall, I really like the first gen MacBook Pro. Possibly because, for the most part, it looks and feels just like I'm using a dual-core Aluminum PowerBook G4, which is capable of running Snow Leopard.

Are there many 32-bit Core Duo Macs still in regular use? Feel free to share your experiences.

I also got an original 2006 MacBook Pro around 3 months ago with the original charger for only €60. The thing is almost perfect. It was sitting in storage since 2006. I powered it on and it had 5 user accounts by which I'm guessing this was "used" by some sort of business back in the day. It was running Tiger 10.4.6 in German.

After installing 2 GB of RAM, I installed Snow Leopard on it. BY THE WAY from my personal experience, the 10.6.8 combo update installed through Software Update always crashes the system and breaks the Snow Leopard install. Instead download the update from this link.

Right now I have it dualbooting Snow Leopard and Peppermint OS. Peppermint OS is a Linux distro based off Linux Mint IIRC. It runs really fast even on my battery-less Core Duo MacBook Pro. You can even stream YouTube in HD through SMTube. On Peppermint OS it runs the latest Chromium built surprisingly well. However on Peppermint OS, you will need to manually get drivers for iSight and fan control.

I've also tried getting other Linux distros but a lot of Linux distros simply don't support x86 anymore. I tried the last supported version of ElementaryOS and it ran OK but it was a bit slow (maybe due to the battery being dead). I also tried Windows 7, but it was slow and took forever to boot up and open anything. Youtube playback in 1080p worked great in Windows 7 though.

While on Peppermint OS you can run just about anything that you can on any other Linux distro, the situation on Snow Leopard is much different. Most software you'll be able to run on Snow Leopard would be from 2012-2014. However, the experience on Snow Leopard is actually pretty good. Firefox 45 ESR works pretty well for most websites, while video streaming is much better in Safari. I use the MacBook Pro mainly as a secondary computer when I'm in bed or the living room. I also use the laptop for writing school papers and such (because the keyboard is so nice).

I ordered a new battery for €17 which should arrive on Thursday. Hopefully that can make the machine run at 1.83Ghz and not 996Mhz.

EDIT: The battery is here.
Pros: The laptop is portable again, and the CPU is working at full speed. The UI in Snow Leopard is a lot smoother and I can play 1080p video in YouView now. Web browsing is also much nicer and MacRumors forums scroll smoothly now.

Cons: The battery is made out of very cheap plastic and doesn't fully fit for some reason, however, with a hard push I got it in. But hey, it was only €17

 

[AL1630]

So I've been wondering, what's the oldest Mac (Excluding Mac Pro/Xserve) that can run a 64 Bit OS (Mountain Lion or newer I believe) also, I thought Lion was still 32 Bit Compatible, so why can the Mac Pro 1,1 run it, but not other '1st-gen' Intel machines?

 

[miksat]

So I've been wondering, what's the oldest Mac (Excluding Mac Pro/Xserve) that can run a 64 Bit OS (Mountain Lion or newer I believe) also, I thought Lion was still 32 Bit Compatible, so why can the Mac Pro 1,1 run it, but not other '1st-gen' Intel machines?

You can't run Lion on the other 1st gen Intel machines because they are 32-bit (although there is a hack to run Lion on them). Mac Pro 1,1 has a 64-bit CPU, therefore it can run Lion with no issues.

Lion is compatible with 32-bit but some things like the finder are 64-bit only.

 

[AphoticD]

Any early Intel with a Core 2 Duo or Xeon should be able to run Lion. The Mac Pro 1,1 was introduced with a 64-bit architecture, whereas the MB, MBP, iMac and Mac mini were introduced with the 32-bit Core Duo. The Core Duo appears to be essentially like a dual-core Pentium 4 with a few added bells and whistles.

I think the earliest models to run Lion, other than the first Mac Pro, would be those C2D Macs from Late ‘06 and early ‘07.

 

[647156]

So I've been wondering, what's the oldest Mac (Excluding Mac Pro/Xserve) that can run a 64 Bit OS (Mountain Lion or newer I believe) also, I thought Lion was still 32 Bit Compatible, so why can the Mac Pro 1,1 run it, but not other '1st-gen' Intel machines?

All Macs with a 64-bit processor (Core 2 Duo or later) can run Lion - the issue with the Mac Pro 1,1 and other older 64-bit machines is that Apple used a 32-bit EFI firmware in them, so they were not supported from Mountain Lion onwards which requires a 64-bit EFI as well as a 64-bit processor - 64-bit versions of Windows have no trouble running on those machines as they ignore the EFI firmware and use Apple's Boot Camp BIOS emulation layer instead.

Yes, it was typical behaviour for the MacBook and MacBook Pro to throttle CPU speed when the battery is removed (or too far gone to properly register).

Wow, that is rubbish indeed - I'm struggling to see how that differs to the way they downclocked older iPhones that had ageing batteries, which was seen as some kind of scandal by many - so essentially laptops that are more than a few years old run at a fraction of their real performance unless you buy a new battery, and in years to come when you just can't get new batteries for these machines any more we will be stuck with them like this? Is this an Apple-specific thing, I've never heard of PC laptops doing this?

Although 1GB of RAM won't allow much elbow room, I was thinking that I could probably install VMware Fusion. It looks like Fusion v3.1 (and 3.0) was the last to support 32-bit Snow Leopard and Leopard 10.5.8.

Yep, Fusion 3.1.4 is the latest version for 32-bit Snow Leopard - VMware dropped 32-bit support pretty quickly, also ending support for 32-bit Windows hosts with VMware Workstation 7.1.6.

 

[AL1630]

Ok, thanks for clearing that up for me!

 

[bunnspecial]

On the 64-bit thing-many early Intel Macs hit a wall past Mountain Lion because the processors don't support the instruction sets required for Sierra(SSE4).

With that said, Mountain Lion is a realistic limit for MOST computers that officially were dropped after Lion. The GPUs in these computers-particularly the GMA 940-starts to really bottleneck newer OSs and they are not at all satisfactory to run. Mountain Lion is okay on a GMA 940, but Mavericks really isn't.

Of course, the Mac Pro 1,1/2,1 is the glaring exception to this since you can just keep swapping in newer GPUs. I've been too lazy to upgrade my MP at work past Mavericks, but I have Geforce 8800(from MacVidCards) that should El Capitan just fine.

I'll be interested to see how long the Radeon 5770 in my MP 5,1 remains useable. It's fine in High Sierra, but it's getting long in the tooth for doing GPU-intensive stuff. Unfortunately, I require SL support on this computer(to run PPC apps that control legacy hardware with no contemporary replacement) and prefer to run it natively, so I'm really stuck with a Radeon 5870.

 

[AL1630]

Geforce 8800(from MacVidCards) that should El Capitan just fine.

I can confirm this, I run an 8800 in my MP with El Cap.

 

[bobesch]

A cheap battery is always the better-choice IMHO - just fancy popping off the MagSafe and get a sudden blackout.
As far as I remember too, Fusion3 might really be the latest version to run with SL. I'd go with Win2kPro as a VM. Does require only 128-256MB of RAM and will leave enough RAM for the Mac to work. It's quite speedy (well, at least on my c2d early 2008 MBP). I'd also go for a BootCamp partition with WinXPpro SP2/3, since only RDP6-Client allows to connect to WinServer2008 and later, when it comes to handling of the certificate-handling. Otherwise the WinXP(SP2)Fundamentals as a VM will do the same job.
When it comes to iLife I'd go for iLife'06 with iMovie6, since it offers a lot of semi-professional gimmicks and effects, which were removed in later versions (http://www.geethree.com)

Update: after mentioning the advantages of iMovie6 I couldn't withstand to create an extra-partition for SnowLeopard-Server on my early 2008 15" MBP.
Guess I'm going to go for those GeeThree Slack stuff just for the hell of it and before that site is down forever!
At least something to play with after retirement ...

Found out, that VMware Fusion 4.1.4 is the latest version to run with OSX 10.6 SL.
There is no Fusion 5.x on the download-site and Fusion 6.x doesn't run on SL.

 

[LightBulbFun]

The Core Duo appears to be essentially like a dual-core Pentium 4 with a few added bells and whistles.
.

That would be the Pentium D you are thinking of the Core Duo is Way diffrent then Pentium 4s

the Core Duo can be thought as as a Dual Core Pentium M built on a 65Nm node. its a shame your on the other side of the ocean from me, I have a relatively fresh (about 50 cycles or so) anker MBP1,1-4,1 Battery that iv not used in a good couple years since my MBP3,1 bit the dust. That I would of been happy to donate

as for why a lot of Macs stop at Lion.

even if every Mac had a 64bit EFI, the GPUs used in all the macs that are not supported past Lion do not support anything newer then OpenGL 2.1. Mountain Loin and newer Require a GPU with OpenGL 3.3 or newer. the EFI32 thing just adds another complication Layer for us hackers that do try and run newer OSs then Apple intended but EFI32 is most likely not why Apple Dropped the Macs it did drop, the reason for that was the GPUs most likely.

a good example is the MacBookAir1,1 MacBook3,1 MacBook4,1 Xserve2,1 all of these Macs have 64Bit EFIs yet Apple officially cut them off at Lion most likely due to their GPUs not supporting OpenGL 3.3 (GMA X3100 in the MacBooks and ATI Radeon X1300 in the Xserve) for example if you chuck an OpenGL 3.3 capable GPU into an Xserve2,1 it can be made to run even high sierra quite happily (it has SSE4.1 capable CPUs, Quad Core Harpertown Xeons, it shares the same platform as the MP3,1)

 

[bobesch]

I also got an original 2006 MacBook Pro around 3 months ago with the original charger for only €60. The thing is almost perfect. It was sitting in storage since 2006. I powered it on and it had 5 user accounts by which I'm guessing this was "used" by some sort of business back in the day. It was running Tiger 10.4.6 in German.

After installing 2 GB of RAM, I installed Snow Leopard on it. BY THE WAY from my personal experience, the 10.6.8 combo update installed through Software Update always crashes the system and breaks the Snow Leopard install. Instead download the update from this link.

Right now I have it dualbooting Snow Leopard and Peppermint OS. Peppermint OS is a Linux distro based off Linux Mint IIRC. It runs really fast even on my battery-less Core Duo MacBook Pro. You can even stream YouTube in HD through SMTube. On Peppermint OS it runs the latest Chromium built surprisingly well. However on Peppermint OS, you will need to manually get drivers for iSight and fan control.

I've also tried getting other Linux distros but a lot of Linux distros simply don't support x86 anymore. I tried the last supported version of ElementaryOS and it ran OK but it was a bit slow (maybe due to the battery being dead). I also tried Windows 7, but it was slow and took forever to boot up and open anything. Youtube playback in 1080p worked great in Windows 7 though.

While on Peppermint OS you can run just about anything that you can on any other Linux distro, the situation on Snow Leopard is much different. Most software you'll be able to run on Snow Leopard would be from 2012-2014. However, the experience on Snow Leopard is actually pretty good. Firefox 45 ESR works pretty well for most websites, while video streaming is much better in Safari. I use the MacBook Pro mainly as a secondary computer when I'm in bed or the living room. I also use the laptop for writing school papers and such (because the keyboard is so nice).

I ordered a new battery for €17 which should arrive on Thursday. Hopefully that can make the machine run at 1.83Ghz and not 996Mhz.

Great wallpaper. Reminds me on buildings of Frank Lloyd-Wright ... What is it?

 

[v0lume4]

View attachment 760194

I recently picked up a very cheap MacBook Pro (1,1) 2006, 1.83ghz Core Duo. The machine was sold as untested and covered in grime. I gave it a thorough clean up and powered it on. It picked itself up out of a deep-sleep state and dropped me into a previous owner's Desktop and iPhoto library. It looks like it was put to sleep around 2013 and the 10.4.11 system volume was formatted in early 2006. (I should have checked 'uptime'...)

The serial number indicates it was built in week 8 of 2006, so it was one of the very first cabs off the rank and shipped with just 512MB of DDR2. I put in another 512MB SO-DIMM which I had spare and began to re-partition for a triple-boot 32-bit Snow Leopard, Leopard and Tiger setup.

This is my first MacBook Pro and my 2nd Core Duo machine. I also have the MacBook Unibody '08 C2D, which is far less limited and runs El Cap surprisingly well with 8GB of RAM and a 240GB SSD.

Everything about the first gen MBP scrubbed up perfectly (just a couple of minor dents on the back of the display). The hardware appears to be OK, except for the battery, which is rejected after a few seconds (with an X in the menu bar icon). This limits the Core Duo speed to a mere 996Mhz.

Snow Leopard is a beautiful operating system to use, with at least partial connections to the modern world via the Mac App Store. But, there is a very small percentage of apps which will actually install. I can imagine all 32-bit versions of apps will disappear completely within the next year or so.

Firefox v48.0.2 appears to be the best browser option and Flash Player v22.0.0.209 might be the last version which works on the 32-bit Mac OS X 10.6.8. I have also installed Xcode 3.2.6 (with iOS 4.3 SDK), so that I can use the machine as a test platform for my Mac app projects. This version of Xcode appears to be completely compatible with Leopard's Xcode 3.1.4.

It's interesting running Leopard 10.5.8 on the MacBook Pro 15.4" Core Duo 1.83Ghz side by side with a PowerBook G4 15.2" DLSD 1.67Ghz. I know the faulty battery is causing the CPU to throttle the Intel, but I feel that the PowerBook G4 provides a smoother experience, which is likely the result of ironing out PowerPC bugs over time.

So far (less than 24hrs) using the 1st gen Intel, I've experienced one kernel panic, one failed attempt at installing Snow Leopard and an endless "configuring" stage when trying to install the 10.5.8 combo update. It has also switched itself off twice, which I believe is heat related. The fans run at 1000rpm by default and the CPU temps rise above 60°C quite quickly, so I've used SMC Fan Control to set the default speed to around 3000rpm on both fans. This is still relatively quiet and keeps the reported temperature around 47 - 50°C during use.

The MacBook Pro's ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 GPU provides a smooth UI. Definitely smoother than the Intel GMA950 in the MacBook1,1. I have configured Leopard with my usual array of software and find it pretty much on par with my 2005 PowerBooks. I think once I install a new battery, it will provide a decent performance boost - performance similar to a Dual G5 1.8Ghz perhaps(?). In my Core Image tests, the X1600 (128MB) appears to be practically on par with the ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 (128MB) in the G4 DLSD. I wonder if the GPU performance is also being throttled by the (lack of) battery...

I will want to max out the RAM to 2GB to make it more usable, and probably install a 128GB mSATA SSD to give it a real boost. When I do, I'll strip it down, clean out the internals and re-paste the CPU and GPU to give it the best chance at staying cool.

On the PowerPC platform, we now have several good software sources, but the 32-bit Intel platform appears to be quite challenged - Can anyone recommend a good place to start for this?

Overall, I really like the first gen MacBook Pro. Possibly because, for the most part, it looks and feels just like I'm using a dual-core Aluminum PowerBook G4, which is capable of running Snow Leopard.

Are there many 32-bit Core Duo Macs still in regular use? Feel free to share your experiences.

I drool every time I see the old aqua color scheme, as well as the bubble-inspired buttons.

It's really too bad that Apple killed off what was one of my favorite parts of macOS.

 

[weckart]

Out of the early Intels, the iMac and Mac Mini also came with 32bit CoreDuo processors, however, these were socketed so that you could swap those out with C2D processors and get up to Lion at least. On the notebooks, the CPU was soldered on.

 

[miksat]

Great wallpaper. Reminds me on buildings of Frank Lloyd-Wright ... What is it?

I don't remember what it was, I found it on reddit. Here's the original image.

 

[647156]

Mountain Lion and newer Require a GPU with OpenGL 3.3 or newer. the EFI32 thing just adds another complication Layer for us hackers that do try and run newer OSs then Apple intended but EFI32 is most likely not why Apple Dropped the Macs it did drop, the reason for that was the GPUs most likely.

Essentially Apple couldn't be bothered to support the older machines and would rather you buy a new Mac The latest Windows 10 (32- or 64-bit flavours) works absolutely fine with these older GPUs and the drivers for them so there's nothing fundamentally wrong/old with them in terms of using them with modern software.

Found out, that VMware Fusion 4.1.4 is the latest version to run with OSX 10.6 SL.
There is no Fusion 5.x on the download-site and Fusion 6.x doesn't run on SL.

Fusion 5.0.5 is the latest for 64-bit Snow Leopard, get it here: https://my.vmware.com/web/vmware/details?productId=294&downloadGroup=FUS-505

 

[LightBulbFun]

Out of the early Intels, the iMac and Mac Mini also came with 32bit CoreDuo processors, however, these were socketed so that you could swap those out with C2D processors and get up to Lion at least. On the notebooks, the CPU was soldered on.

if your handy with a hot air gun you can also swap the BGA Core Duos in MacBook1,1s for Core 2 Duos and run up to ML (in theory the same should be doable for MBP1,1/1,2s however no ones tried it so far, although @dosdude1 is planning to IIRC . )

 

[bobesch]

Fusion 5.0.5 is the latest for 64-bit Snow Leopard, get it here: https://my.vmware.com/web/vmware/details?productId=294&downloadGroup=FUS-505

Oh, thanks! - Finally found that version in the website-jungle of VMware ...

 

[dosdude1]

Out of the early Intels, the iMac and Mac Mini also came with 32bit CoreDuo processors, however, these were socketed so that you could swap those out with C2D processors and get up to Lion at least. On the notebooks, the CPU was soldered on.

Yeah, as @LightBulbFun said, it is indeed possible to swap the Core Duo on a MacBookPro1,1 or MacBook1,1 logic board for a Core 2 Duo. It's a lot of work though, and requires a donor board to take a CPU from, but it is indeed possible. I have already done this on a MacBook5,2 logic board (which I have a video about here), and I've even soldered a CPU socket onto another MacBook5,2 logic board, making it upgradeable (it doesn't fit in the case anymore, but probably could with some minor modifications). I have a thread about all this here.

 

[miksat]

if your handy with a hot air gun you can also swap the BGA Core Duos in MacBook1,1s for Core 2 Duos and run up to ML (in theory the same should be doable for MBP1,1/1,2s however no ones tried it so far, although @dosdude1 is planning to IIRC . )

Wouldn't you still be restricted to only 2 GB of RAM?

 

[AphoticD]

MacBook Pro (2006) Tiger Restore method

On the topic of early Intel Mac tips and tricks, I encountered a situation with my newly acquired MacBookPro1,1 which was how to correctly restore the Intel version of Tiger. I don't have the original restore discs for this machine and my retail Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger DVD is PowerPC only. I had a burned copy of what I thought was the Intel 10.4.6 DVD which turned out to be just a later revision of the PowerPC retail disc.

So, in order to get Tiger on the MacBookPro1,1 I did the following;

1. Search on the Macintosh Garden for "MacBook Pro Restore". The listing I used is a 19-part (2 disc) MacBookPro3,1 restore disc set titled "Mac OS X 10.4.10 (MacBook Pro)"
2. Download said archive of 19x 500MB-ish files.
3. I used '7z' at the command prompt to unpack the files on my Mac Pro (El Cap). I believe I had previously installed 7z via Homebrew, but could have been MacPorts.
Firstly though, the initial part for disc 1 was affixed with "_0.001" upon download. I couldn't get anywhere with the stitching / decompressing process until I tried renaming the file to end with just ".001" (removing the "_0"). 7z then picked up the complete set for disc 1 okay with;

7z e /path/to/downloaded_file_ending_in.001

4. This spits out a 5.51GB .iso file (Dual-Layer DVD) - take this into Disk Utility with Convert Image... and make a read/write copy to work on. I named this one simply "MacBookProRestore.dmg"
5. Mount the read/write .dmg copy.
6. Navigate to "/Volumes/Mac OS X Install Disc 1/System/Installation/Packages/OSInstall.mpkg/Contents/"
7. Open the "OSInstall.dist" file with TextEdit
8. Use Find... (cmd-F) to locate the first instance of "MacBookPro3,1" and either replace with the correct code for your Mac (e.g. "MacBookPro2,1", "Macmini1,1", "MacBook1,1", etc) or add to the array to cover more than one machine, such as ["MacBookPro1,1","MacBookPro2,2","MacBookPro3,1","MacBookPro4,1"].
9. I replaced each instance of "MacBookPro3,1" with my list of early MBPs (in 3 places).
10. Save the changes and unmount "Mac OS X Install Disc 1".

Now, if you have a DL DVD-R (or +R), you can burn this edited .dmg file directly to disc from within Disk Utility and it should be good to go.


How to shrink the Dual-Layer Mac OS X Install DVD to fit a standard DVD-R disc

I only had single layer DVD-R discs, so I decided to delete the Xcode Tools packages from the install disc to free up approx. 1GB of space so that it would fit under 4.7GB. (Note that this process failed for me under El Capitan on my cMP, so I moved the files across to my Dual Core G5, running Tiger);

1. Mount the read/write image (if not already).
2. Move "Xcode Tools" to the Trash and then "Empty Trash".
3. Unmount / Eject "Mac OS X Install Disc 1".
4. In Terminal, navigate to where your read/write .dmg exists and then;

hdiutil convert MacBookProRestore.dmg -format UDSP -o MacBookProRestore.sparseimage

5. Make sure the newly created sparse image file is not mounted, then in Terminal again;

hdiutil compact MacBookProRestore.sparseimage

6. Now double-click the .sparseimage file to mount the new compacted volume.
7. In Disk Utility, create a New Blank Disk Image of 4.7GB in size. I chose "sparse disk image" for this process, but read/write might work just fine too.
8. Mount the new blank disk image.
9. In Disk Utility, with the newly mounted blank disk image selected, choose the Restore tab.
10. Drag the mounted MacBookProRestore.sparseimage VOLUME (not the image file) into the "Source" field.
11. Drag the mounted blank disk image VOLUME into the "Destination" field and check the "Erase Destination" option.
12. Click Restore and wait. I found that once completed, although it was successful, Disk Utility produced an error toward the end of the process. This didn't affect the final image though.
14. The newly restored .sparseimage file is now ready to burn to a single-layer DVD-R or you can convert it back to a "CD/DVD Master" format, which is just Apple's way of storing an .iso format with a .cdr extension - this is easily changed by renaming the file. You could also convert to a compressed .dmg to save some space for long-term storage.

It's worth noting that Disc 2 of the restore set will burn to a 4.7GB single-layer DVD, but I didn't go through with this as all I wanted was the basic Tiger installation.

10.4.10 can then be updated to 10.4.11 with all of the relevant security and software updates pulled down via Apple's Software Update. It's always a good idea to save these files by choosing "Download Only" before installing. This way, when Apple pull the plug on Tiger updates, you'll still have your own sources for restoring your older Macs.

This method will likely suit all of the early Intel Macs which shipped with Tiger 10.4.x. Let me know how you go!

-AphoticD