Show off your Early Intel Macs!

[bobesch]

A coworker gave me an 11” Air they didn’t want anymore. As a bonus I also got a SuperDrive. It had 10.10.2 on it and seemed like it hadn’t even been turned on since 2015. The battery has 3 cycles.
View attachment 2001803

Congrats - what a nice present!
It feels really good to travel light with an 11"MBA ...
A small TB-cable (or TB-FW-adapter plus FW800cable plus FW800/400 adapter), a TB-Ethernet adapter and a Magsafe2/3 adapter proved to be pretty useful gadgets for on the go.
I've set a CCC-backup-procedure for my important document-folders (no music/film/fotos, no cloud-related files, no "libraries", no VM's) to be copied to an encrypted SSD (within a 10bucks USB3 case) to have my important stuff always at hands.

 

[Jack Neill]

Congrats - what a nice present!
It feels really good to travel light with an 11"MBA ...
A small TB-cable (or TB-FW-adapter plus FW800cable plus FW800/400 adapter), a TB-Ethernet adapter and a Magsafe2/3 adapter proved to be pretty useful gadgets for on the go.
I've set a CCC-backup-procedure for my important document-folders (no music/film/fotos, no cloud-related files, no "libraries", no VM's) to be copied to an encrypted SSD (within a 10bucks USB3 case) to have my important stuff always at hands.

I bought a Sintech from Bezos, it should be here today, I have a spare 512 m.2 sata stick I want to put in it. I am trying to decide what version of OS X I want to roll with, I put my ML image on it at first and then I tried my 10.9 image instead to have better browser support.

 

[Project Alice]

I actually use my 17” C2D white iMac for web browsing & Front Row.
It runs 10.4.11, and with the TenFourFox port for Intel Tiger, browses the web surprisingly well.
With 3GB of RAM and a fast 7200 RPM disk, it absolutely flies on Tiger. View attachment 1971828

I have one of these and have to agree. It does pretty well. Mine has Snow Leopard and *gasp* Windows 7. But I need to put an SSD in it. I want to upgrade it to a C2D eventually too…

 

[Jack Neill]

I got my adapter today, dropped a 512 stick with Mojave on it. This is a cool little machine, I was always interested in adding an 11” to my collection.

 

[ahurst]

If this iMac dies I have already further plans to give him a 2nd life. So this will stay for very long.

A white 24" iMac with a modern Mac mini retrofitted in would be a really special machine. There's way more than enough room in the case, the only tricky bit (apart from the LVDS adapter and backlight control) would be finding a way to handle the ports on the back nicely: the headphone jack, ethernet, and 2 of the USB-A ports could be wired up directly with male-to-female extenders, and I guess you could get a USB-C dongle to get the third USB-A and the line-in jack, you'd just need to figure out what to do with the FireWire 400/800 and mini-DVI ports.

If you could 3D-print or mould some white plastic or rubber inserts around the FireWire ports, you could map them to the two Thunderbolt 4 connections without cutting or messing too much with the aesthetic. The grey sort of rubber Apple used in that era might look alright? You'd also need to get a dongle with a lot of USB-A ports for handling a SATA bridge for the DVD drive, the internal webcam, the internal speakers (?), and maybe the IR sensor if you're feeling particularly completionist.

Either way, a guy can dream...

 

[CJMac23]

I have a Macbook 2,1 Mid 2007 triple booting El Capitan, Windows 11, and Lubuntu. It has 3 GB of ram and a 128GB SSD.

A year or two ago, I realized there were ways to install something beyond Lion. So, I went all the way to Yosemite (https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/os-x-yosemite-on-unsupported-macs-guide.1761432/).

Then a way was figured out to go to El Capitan https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/os-x-el-capitan-on-unsupported-macs.1889851/ .

I used my work Windows computer to burn a 32-bit Windows 10 installer and also installed that (had to repeatedly hit 1 and enter on my keyboard to boot the install DVD, not ideal).

More recently, I needed the SSD, so swapped in an old 500GB HDD. Copied over my Lion and Snow Leopard installs, so was quad booting in a sense. I became more familiar with Linux recently, and after some searching online, found Matt Gadients 32-bit Linux installers https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/os-x-el-capitan-on-unsupported-macs.1889851/ .

On my first try, Lubuntu installed, so I had 5 OS’s installed. But I think it was somehow unstable as I tried resizing one partition and it broke Windows and Lubuntu.

So starting fresh, I had seen articles suggesting if a computer can run Windows 10, it can probably run 11 (and possibly more efficiently), so I figured I would give it a shot.

It seemed the best option to get everything to work is formatting the hard drive as MBR. (I swapped back to the 128GB SSD.)

I used my original MacOS install discs to open disk utility. I formatted MBR with three partitions. (I believe formatting MBR automatically creates an extra partition, so I therefore had the max of 4). My first one was planned for Lubuntu, the second for El Capitan, and the third for Windows 11.

I installed Lubuntu first. I believe I chose the option of keeping the boot files on the same partition as the install. There is a recent comment on Matts site that was also helpful:

“Olaf on January 24, 2022 - click here to reply

Lubuntu 20.04.1 LXQT (64-bit Mac) single OS working on Mac Mini 2,1”.

It mentions different flags etc.

So once Lubuntu was working, I moved on to Windows. Since I wanted to go to Windows 11, I knew I needed to get 64-bit Windows 10 first. I have never been able to boot installers from USB on this computer so I needed to use a DVD. I didn’t have dual layer, so I found this “Lite” Windows 10 64-bit installer, however, it is in German: Help! Stuck at "Select CD-Rom Boot Type" | Page 4 | MacRumors Forums.

(But this was actually ok. I just opened install guides with screenshots online and I was able to figure out where I was in each step and what I was agreeing to. Luckily, once we install Windows 11, it can overwrite everything to English.)

Once you have that installer, you need to follow the “Create a Win10 install DVD” steps from this link (MacPro 1,1 flash to MacPro 2,1 with Win10 x64 install at 32Bit EFI incl Bootcamp Driver - Complete Guides - Hackintosh-Forum - Deine Anlaufstelle für Hackintosh & mehr...) to create a DVD that is easily bootable on this computer (ie. No repeated clicking of 1 and enter in hopes of triggering a boot).

Something happened when installing Windows 10 for me. It appears to have moved the 1st partition, or the Master Boot Record Partition, from the first to third. So originally, it was MBR|Linux|El Cap|Windows. Now it appeared as Linux|El Cap|Small Windows Partition|Main Windows Partition.

This broke my ability to boot Lubuntu. Using my Lubuntu install disk, I opened a Live version of Linux and did a boot repair. This got Grub working again. I can use Grub to boot Linux and Windows. I cannot boot Windows directly. Maybe there is a fix for this but I’m fine booting to Windows via Grub so I haven’t tried.

Once Windows 10 is installed, upgrading to Windows 11 is fairly straightforward. I believe I just followed Method 3 here: How to Install Windows 11 on an Unsupported PC: 3 Methods (geekflare.com).

To get bootcamp installed and all functions key etc. working: How to get Windows 10 (1903) working properly in boot camp on older Macbooks, brightness control, keyboard back light, volume control, etc... : bootcamp (reddit.com)

Follow these instructions carefully, as errors can occur with bootcamp if you let it reset.

I also had to turn off fast boot. Otherwise the computer just looped back to Windows when I restarted or shutdown.

I also recommend testing some of these, especially #12:

How to Speed Up Windows 11 and Improve Performance (2022) | Beebom


I still had my El Capitan install from before, so I just copied it over to the partition I had already setup for it. I did have to update the security certificates to be able to browse the internet. This has been covered quite often so I wont link. Chrome and Brave are current and fully up to date on El Cap, however, with the limitations imposed to install El Cap on this computer, I had to force them to boot without hardware acceleration using Terminal commands:

Brave Crashes constantly - Browser Support / Desktop Support - Brave Community

open -a "Brave-browser.app" --args --disable-gpu

Chrome: Enable/Disable Hardware Acceleration (technipages.com)

defaults write com.google.chrome HardwareAccelerationModeEnabled -integer n

I don’t really need this computer, so I haven’t really tested it in depth. But streaming the new Kenobi trailer looked quite normal on Windows 11 and Lubuntu, I might give the slight edge to Lubuntu. El Cap, with Chrome or Brave was noticeably worse than the other two OS’s. I would also say Windows 11 64-bit runs better than Windows 10 32-bit did.

The volume keys work on Lubuntu, however the brightness keys dont. I havent tried to very hard to fix this as it doesn't bother me that much. Lubuntu also had some default trackpad settings that I just had to turn on that made it very similar to how it works in Macos.

I have never done a guide, and didn’t plan to, so apologies if this isn’t the most in depth or organized.

 

[Alexis Trinquet]

Hiya! It's been a long time since I have logged in here... Since I got a few early Intels I thought I'd chip in.

First one is a very sad looking 2006 Mac Mini 1.66 that I've got at a garage sale for 20€ without the PSU (drat!), as far as I can tell it's been opened up in the past as it's got missing screws on the DVD drive, yet nothing seems to have been pulled or replaced.

I plan on upgrading it to the absolute max (notably change the CPU for a T7600, although I need to find a PSU first to see if it even boots or is dead as a doornail), I'll then most likely use it as a bridge machine for my PPC Macs and experiment with dual booting OSX and Linux on it.

Excuse the crappy cellphone pics:



The second one is a 2007 MacBook Pro, (I don't have any pictures of it on hand at the moment) it's not my Mac per se, but rather my father's Mac, he got this MBP at a different garage sale for 50€, when we came home, we found out that the charger was shorted and would get extremely hot after being plugged in for 20 seconds.

The funny thing with this MBP, the seller tested it in front of us, so we know it works and turns on and all (no artifacts), but the battery was low... I've already located a replacement charger, it's coming up in the mail.. I don't know when it'll arrive.

 

[Raging Dufus]

Hiya! It's been a long time since I have logged in here... Since I got a few early Intels I thought I'd chip in.

First one is a very sad looking 2006 Mac Mini 1.66 that I've got at a garage sale for 20€ without the PSU (drat!), as far as I can tell it's been opened up in the past as it's got missing screws on the DVD drive, yet nothing seems to have been pulled or replaced.

I plan on upgrading it to the absolute max (notably change the CPU for a T7600, although I need to find a PSU first to see if it even boots or is dead as a doornail), I'll then most likely use it as a bridge machine for my PPC Macs and experiment with dual booting OSX and Linux on it.

Excuse the crappy cellphone pics:
View attachment 2007418
View attachment 2007417

The second one is a 2007 MacBook Pro, (I don't have any pictures of it on hand at the moment) it's not my Mac per se, but rather my father's Mac, he got this MBP at a different garage sale for 50€, when we came home, we found out that the charger was shorted and would get extremely hot after being plugged in for 20 seconds.

The funny thing with this MBP, the seller tested it in front of us, so we know it works and turns on and all (no artifacts), but the battery was low... I've already located a replacement charger, it's coming up in the mail.. I don't know when it'll arrive.

Freaked me out there for a second with that DVI-VGA adapter. The perspective made it look like someone had frankensteined a VGA-out port onto the Mini's board, LOL! Couldn't figure out why someone would do that...

Anyway, congrats on your garage sale find! I like your plans for it, good luck.

 

[Alexis Trinquet]

Thanks! In the same vein I found two older beige Macs (and a Apple M1212 monitor thrown in, 30€ for the bundle) a week before the MBP.. Speaking of which, I've snapped some pictures of it, just like the Mini, it's going to get fully upgraded (full RAM, SSD...) although since it belongs to my parents and that they really don't know how to use OSX, I don't know what OS I will put on it yet.

Honestly I really like the design of these older MacBook Pros, maybe because of the thin bezels... It's a real shame they're (all?) plagued by faulty GPUs 😥

 

[Amethyst1]

Honestly I really like the design of these older MacBook Pros, maybe because of the thin bezels... It's a real shame they're (all?) plagued by faulty GPUs 😥

Try to get one with a green dot on the RAM bridge indicating a revised GPU. Problem solved

 

[Flyin Ryan]

Been tinkering with a 1.83ghz core duo MacBook Pro I snagged for $59 shipped (first pic). So far I’ve installed snow leopard, picked up a brand new genuine battery, replaced the SuperDrive and installed arctic fox, tenfourfox, photoshop cs4 and a few other apps. I got a box for it as well but it’s for a 2.2ghz model. Still has Tiger pictured on the back so it’s close enough. Just wanted it for display anyway.

My first new mac ever was a 2.16ghz model I got in early 2007. Great machine and I wish I kept it since it was in immaculate shape. The second pic is just before I sold it around 2012.

 

[eyoungren]

Been tinkering with a 1.83ghz core duo MacBook Pro I snagged for $59 shipped (first pic). So far I’ve installed snow leopard, picked up a brand new genuine battery, replaced the SuperDrive and installed arctic fox, tenfourfox, photoshop cs4 and a few other apps. I got a box for it as well but it’s for a 2.2ghz model. Still has Tiger pictured on the back so it’s close enough. Just wanted it for display anyway.

My first new mac ever was a 2.16ghz model I got in early 2007. Great machine and I wish I kept it since it was in immaculate shape. The second pic is just before I sold it around 2012.

You are probably already aware, but just to put it out there anyway…Adobe CS6 will run on Snow Leopard.

 

[wicknix]

and installed arctic fox, tenfourfox

Forget both of those. Grab InterWeb instead. Based on FF52/60 (rather than FF38/45), supports TLS 1.3, and has push notifications.
It's starting to show its age, but will get you a little further than the others.

Cheers

 

[originaldotexe]

traded my 3,1 mac pro to a friend and now have this one coming soon
it is a 4,1 model. will upgrade to 5,1 firmware and put 250gb nvme ssd, 16gb ram, xeon x5675 cpu, radeon hd 7750, and monterey OS

 

[originaldotexe]

its here its here its here its here its here its here!!!!!!

 

[Dannyshing27]

A coworker gave me an 11” Air they didn’t want anymore. As a bonus I also got a SuperDrive. It had 10.10.2 on it and seemed like it hadn’t even been turned on since 2015. The battery has 3 cycles.
View attachment 2001803

is that nerdrotic you are watching?

 

[Jack Neill]

is that nerdrotic you are watching?

I love Gary, he's very entertaining.

 

[Alexis Trinquet]

I guess it's time for an update on my parent's 2007 MBP... At long last we got a charger for it, so I let it plugged in to charge fully and lo and behold it booted into a wrecked installation of Leopard...

With that in mind, I swapped the stock 160gig hard drive for a 240Gb SSD, kinda took me a solid few minutes to take out all the screws but I managed to extract the old HDD without breaking anything.... Well sort of..

I broke a tab on the side of the top case and bent the metal around the cover release hatch *facepalm* but that's not really visible thankfully.


Now since my parents are used to PCs and aren't really experienced with Mac OS (and beside I don't think I can run anything higher than Mountain Lion or Mavericks (or whatever version preceeded El Capitan), I've been debating getting an external drive to install OSX on it so if needed, this Mac can boot from the external drive.. But for now I'll put Windows 10 on it.

If it were mine, I would've probably put the highest supported OSX version on it and triple booted with W10 and Linux (because why not? I'll probably do that on my 2006 Mac Mini), but since my father asked me if I could put Windows 10 on this MacBook... I obliged.

But I hit another snag... After a while I noticied that the macbook would ramp up the fan power Mac G5-style after a few minutes then shutdown on its own.. Only when it's running on battery power though, on AC power, it ramps up the fans yet doesn't shut down strangely enough.

Now I've have to install an OS on it... I've got a windows installation USB and while it's recognized by the Mac, whenever I try to boot from it, the Mac hardlocks and starts ramping up the fans like crazy... I'm not sure why is that.

I even made a Mac OS 10.6 installation USB (using my iMac G4) and same thing. It just does the same thing... Guess I'll have to burn a DVD.

Edit: @Amethyst1 - I've looked and mine doesn't have the green sticker... Yet it doesn't seem to have early signs of GPU failures, I'll keep an eye on it, thanks for the tip.

 

[Certificate of Excellence]

Hmm, do you think you accidentally disconnected a temperature sensor somewhere? Conversely, perhaps one may have failed. This could explain the across-OS fans ramping up. SMART is reading wonky temps so the machine is cranking up the fans in response.

 

[Alexis Trinquet]

Hmm, do you think you accidentally disconnected a temperature sensor somewhere? Conversely, perhaps one may have failed. This could explain the across-OS fans ramping up. SMART is reading wonky temps so the machine is cranking up the fans in response.

I don't belive so, before I popped the top case off and swapped the HDD, it still ramped up the fans and even I could feel the hot hair coming from the vents.. I made sure not to snag or rip apart anything but perhaps a failed sensor could be likely as you say.

I've took a pic of the whole HDD side of the board if that helps, my photography skills aren't the greatest though.



Whatever is the crux of the issue, I'll redo the thermal paste, from what I could see it never was opened up in all these years (I can only assume since I do not know the history of the machine).

(edit: installed Speedfan and it reports that both cores are hitting close to 90°C, the case is extremly hot (as in "can't keep my hand on the case more than 10 seconds) to the touch, I couldn't see any dust in the fans but regardless I'm going to give them a through cleaning plus new thermal paste)

What's curious is that I've got it booted onto a Windows 10 install CD and now the fans have calmed down (and the Mac doesn't feel as warm as it was when I was in the boot drive selector). I had a PC do that to me as well, I guess PCs and Macs both have their share of mystery

---

Okay so finally I managed to install Windows on it, I tried to first run the install in a VM (w/ raw disk access to the SSD), then shut off the VM and continue booting on the MBP...


That avenue unceremoniously failed (the MBP would pick the drive up but hang at a white screen), after going back to the drawing board, I ended up finding a blank DVD and burning an ISO of W10 v21H1...


And it works! Though it did give me a little scare as at first the MBP would boot to a blinking underscore on a black screen, but after letting it do its thing, it's now greeting me with the W10 setup prompt.



As I'm writing this section it's busy unpacking the files (I forgot how slow it was on DVD) but so far so good, no error message, nothing.

Now to prepare a USB drive with the drivers and all that jazz... (EDIT: mostly done, need to remap the keyboard and sort out the audio and trackpad issues... Aside, anyone know where I can find a utility to control and/or monitor (just monitoring them is fine) the fans under Windows? I've installed Speedfan but it's not reporting the fan speeds.)

 

[originaldotexe]

my 2009 macpro4,1 (on the left) is working perfectly!
144.x 5,1 firmware, xeon x5675, 16gb ecc ram, 250gb nvme ssd, 4tb hdd, sapphire rx 580 8gb, macos monterey os
and crossover is so advanced now that i can even play my windows pc games on macos! no bootcamp needed B-)
already tried the witcher 3 and got 60 fps on max settings 1920x1200 in crossover

 

[Amethyst1]

I don't think I can run anything higher than Mountain Lion or Mavericks (or whatever version preceeded El Capitan),

2007 MBPs can run El Capitan. Newer versions require SSE4 instructions the CPU lacks so El Cap really is the end of the road.

Edit: @Amethyst1 - I've looked and mine doesn't have the green sticker... Yet it doesn't seem to have early signs of GPU failures, I'll keep an eye on it, thanks for the tip.

The GPU might still have been replaced by someone else, or it may be the original revision. The only way to find out is to look at the actual chip. Best to keep an eye on it.

 

[satcomer]

I remember my First Mac a Mac 8800 at PX Electronic store in '98 in Japan! Then I got my fist widescreen at Japanese Electronic chain store where downstairs was Intel machines the upstairs where the Mac computers/software lived! That widescreen was best 98 dream I could get for under $500 at that time! In remember to the nightmare when leaving back to station in States and still kept that display with 2003 Mac and in 2008 getting the 2008 Dual until Intel! Still have that one in Storage to this day still! However have noticed modern Displays have dropped in quality lately!

 

[firelighter487]

 

[Alexis Trinquet]

2007 MBPs can run El Capitan. Newer versions require SSE4 instructions the CPU lacks so El Cap really is the end of the road.


The GPU might still have been replaced by someone else, or it may be the original revision. The only way to find out is to look at the actual chip. Best to keep an eye on it.

In that case, I'll see about popping the logic board out and repasting the CPU and GPU, I really, really hope it's a revised chip. (with that, I'm going to split the SSD in two 120gb partitions for good measure, one for El Capitan and another for Windows), since that thing runs absurdly hot.. If that still doesn't cure the overheating problems this MBP has then I'm all out of ideas.

Though it wouldn't surprise me if the thermal paste has degraded to ineffectiveness given this MBP is practically 15 years old (and I still remember when they were new, I was back then roughly 6 years old, time flies so fast), I couldn't find any speck of dust under the keyboard, but I didn't look underneath the fans nor in the heatsink fins if there was anything blocking the air exhaust.