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What have you done with an early Intel recently?
- Thread starter Project Alice
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Still going ok.
Currently set up thus:
Crucial BX500 - Catalina
Wd 500-7200 - MX Linux
A further 2 5TB empty disk space. Will look for some old Photoshop and Logic Pro installs if all goes well.
Currently set up thus:
Crucial BX500 - Catalina
Wd 500-7200 - MX Linux
A further 2 5TB empty disk space. Will look for some old Photoshop and Logic Pro installs if all goes well.
Last night I was looking around for uses for old cellphones. I have a bunch of old iPhones lying around, which I keep because they are still good and functional. I just have had problems for years trying to find a dedicated purpose for them. You can only have so many 'iPods'.
I've played around with Airfoil in the past, but this time a good use case came up. Some time ago I disconnected the speakers from my Mac Pro. They'd been under the desk and so I was blasting others in the front room with sound just to hear them. So, last night I updated Airfoil and installed Airfoil Satellite on my iPhone 5 and my wife's old iPhone 5 (which went to me, then to my daughter, then back to me).
First I had to figure out a way to get the App store to allow me to download an older version because both of these iPhones are on iOS 10 and Airfoil Satellite requires iOS 11 minimum.
Turns out that all I needed to do was download the app on an iPhone that could run it (my 11 Pro Max) and that forced the popup on the iPhone 5s to allow downloading the last compatible app.
There was some uncertainty whether my wife's iPhone 5 was dead or not (it hadn't been charged in a while). But this morning I tried charging it again and it fully charged.
So, with Airfoil Satellite running on both iPhones, I opened the app on my MacPro, created a speaker group that is just those two iPhones and sent audio from my MP to the two iPhone 5s. Worked perfectly.
The thing here is that with Airfoil, the app is going to worry about syncing. I don't need to. So the audio stream is synced between both phones, which means no echo. Since these are iPhones, they have stereo speakers.
So, now I have a set of speakers for my MP again. The problem is just going to be power. I've ordered more lightning cables and will hook them up to take care of that. Those will be here Sunday.
EDIT: LOL. Apparently, there is also an Airfoil Satellite for Android. Just installed and tested on my Pixel 3a XL. Works perfectly!
I've played around with Airfoil in the past, but this time a good use case came up. Some time ago I disconnected the speakers from my Mac Pro. They'd been under the desk and so I was blasting others in the front room with sound just to hear them. So, last night I updated Airfoil and installed Airfoil Satellite on my iPhone 5 and my wife's old iPhone 5 (which went to me, then to my daughter, then back to me).
First I had to figure out a way to get the App store to allow me to download an older version because both of these iPhones are on iOS 10 and Airfoil Satellite requires iOS 11 minimum.
Turns out that all I needed to do was download the app on an iPhone that could run it (my 11 Pro Max) and that forced the popup on the iPhone 5s to allow downloading the last compatible app.
There was some uncertainty whether my wife's iPhone 5 was dead or not (it hadn't been charged in a while). But this morning I tried charging it again and it fully charged.
So, with Airfoil Satellite running on both iPhones, I opened the app on my MacPro, created a speaker group that is just those two iPhones and sent audio from my MP to the two iPhone 5s. Worked perfectly.
The thing here is that with Airfoil, the app is going to worry about syncing. I don't need to. So the audio stream is synced between both phones, which means no echo. Since these are iPhones, they have stereo speakers.
So, now I have a set of speakers for my MP again. The problem is just going to be power. I've ordered more lightning cables and will hook them up to take care of that. Those will be here Sunday.
EDIT: LOL. Apparently, there is also an Airfoil Satellite for Android. Just installed and tested on my Pixel 3a XL. Works perfectly!
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What I did with an early Intel today....
Saved a 4,1 White MacBook from the recycle bin that is in BEAUTIFUL shape. Just installed 4 gigs of Ram, an SSD and a fresh install of 10.6 Snow Leopard. Everything works great and looks mint, no cracks at all on the wrist rest. Haven't seen one this nice in a long time! Only thing this needs is a battery as the original was missing. Still considering whether or not I purchase a new one from OWC for $65 and call it a day. Never had one of these before so it's kind of fun to play with. Using the latest version of InterWeb browser was able to access my local library online and listen to some audiobooks and then used the Snow Leopard version of Hermes to play some Pandora X-Mas music.
All in all pretty useful still for what I like to do.
Also tested the dvd drive in the best way possible!
Saved a 4,1 White MacBook from the recycle bin that is in BEAUTIFUL shape. Just installed 4 gigs of Ram, an SSD and a fresh install of 10.6 Snow Leopard. Everything works great and looks mint, no cracks at all on the wrist rest. Haven't seen one this nice in a long time! Only thing this needs is a battery as the original was missing. Still considering whether or not I purchase a new one from OWC for $65 and call it a day. Never had one of these before so it's kind of fun to play with. Using the latest version of InterWeb browser was able to access my local library online and listen to some audiobooks and then used the Snow Leopard version of Hermes to play some Pandora X-Mas music.
All in all pretty useful still for what I like to do.
Also tested the dvd drive in the best way possible!
Dig out the 2009 MacBook Pro 13 inch from the basement, where I store lots of my old techs. Removed old Windows installation, installed MacOS Ventura which is still being supported by Apple at this point. Dear to say, Core 2 Duo is really struggling with MacOS Ventura.
The laptop heats up pretty quickly with just few Safari tabs open. Webpage is rendering really slowly, especially webpages with lots of ads. Opening applications are slow as well, even with SSD installed on this laptop.
However, this thing still is capable to edit office work with online version of Microsoft Office, still able to watch videos and do some basic computing tasks. I just have to be really patient with this machine and understandable this isn't going to be as fast as newer computer.
What I found is that jumping from 2009 MacBook Pro to 2012 MacBook Pro, the difference is night and day. I tested MacOS Ventura on all unibody MacBook Pro (excluding 2008 15 inch), only 2012 MacBook Pro can run Ventura in acceptable speed.
For the Unibody MacBook Pros, Ventura is probably the highest OS that I am willing to go. Anything past MacOS Ventura is laggy mass even on 2012 MacBook Pro.
The laptop heats up pretty quickly with just few Safari tabs open. Webpage is rendering really slowly, especially webpages with lots of ads. Opening applications are slow as well, even with SSD installed on this laptop.
However, this thing still is capable to edit office work with online version of Microsoft Office, still able to watch videos and do some basic computing tasks. I just have to be really patient with this machine and understandable this isn't going to be as fast as newer computer.
What I found is that jumping from 2009 MacBook Pro to 2012 MacBook Pro, the difference is night and day. I tested MacOS Ventura on all unibody MacBook Pro (excluding 2008 15 inch), only 2012 MacBook Pro can run Ventura in acceptable speed.
For the Unibody MacBook Pros, Ventura is probably the highest OS that I am willing to go. Anything past MacOS Ventura is laggy mass even on 2012 MacBook Pro.
I agree about the 2012 Macbook Pro, those are just great machines. I have a 2012 13” i7 with windows/mojave/catalina triple boot and it is just rock solid.
What a great year of Macbook Pro.
I have both 2012 MacBook Pro non-retina and 2012 Retina MacBook Pro.
The 2012 Unibody MacBook Pro is truly the last upgradable Mac laptop. I have 16GB RAM and 1TB SSD installed and it is fantastic.
However, I have MacOS Sonoma installed on 2012 retina MacBook Pro and it is runs in ok speed. But it is laggy mass on Unibody MacBook Pro. Even though both shares similar specification.
P.S. I am waiting for M1 MacBook Pro become dirt cheaper and I probably will switch to M1 MacBook Pro sometime next year or two.
This looks more like a casing of a capacitor than IC to me.
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Oh, I see. The size was difficult to judge from the picture and, to be honest, I haven't followed the developement of power management IC for some time. Not my cup of tea.
I suspect if I got a good look at it, the rest of the device will still be stuck to a heatsink of some description. Anyhow, definitely a catastrophic failure.
There is probably a screw holding it into the heatsink. There might also (or might not) be a thermal pad or mica insulator sheet between the device and the sink.
I made a significant foray into standing up a web v1.0 website that is very basic so I can easily access it on my PowerPC macs. Though the intent was for it to be a place I can share and access via my PPC macs (intending to do this for the past couple years lol ), I started this project in my lazy boy and my early intel 2009 MBP was next to it, so that's what I used. I did take a number of HTML courses in the late 90s but so much of that was lost to the void of ... 25-26 years now, so I ended up using the vast resources of the interwebs for brushing up on HTML/CSS which was great! Anyhow, ended up choosing Neocities because my first websites that I built were using Geocities webspace back in the day so lotsa nostalgia there and it was free to get started. Being that this site is so basic, the 1gb they provide seems like an ocean of space at this point - I think I have used maybe 1,2% of that space LOL.
Also, I was going to put my site address in my signature, but I have a list of all of my macs in there and I have run out of room; 23 characters short evidently LOL Anyhow, it was great fun getting going. Now I am trying to figure out how to get a guest book in there or maybe connect my wordpress blog to it somehow (without paying for it ) or maybe joining a web v1 or retro computing webring. Lots of fun possibilities.
certofex
), I started this project in my lazy boy and my early intel 2009 MBP was next to it, so that's what I used. I did take a number of HTML courses in the late 90s but so much of that was lost to the void of ... 25-26 years now, so I ended up using the vast resources of the interwebs for brushing up on HTML/CSS which was great! Anyhow, ended up choosing Neocities because my first websites that I built were using Geocities webspace back in the day so lotsa nostalgia there and it was free to get started. Being that this site is so basic, the 1gb they provide seems like an ocean of space at this point - I think I have used maybe 1,2% of that space LOL. Also, I was going to put my site address in my signature, but I have a list of all of my macs in there and I have run out of room; 23 characters short evidently LOL
Anyhow, it was great fun getting going. Now I am trying to figure out how to get a guest book in there or maybe connect my wordpress blog to it somehow (without paying for it ) or maybe joining a web v1 or retro computing webring. Lots of fun possibilities.certofex
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After many weeks of waiting, and me paying way too much for a working topcase on eBay, my "cursed" Blackbook (A 2.16 Ghz 2,1 that I got with half the keyboard not working) is now finally complete with a fully working used topcase (complete with semi-dodgy power button) and the requisite clone battery from Amazon...
The topcase has the look and the "feel" of the later revision topcases with stronger plastic to resist chipping. When I got it however, it was filthy. Nothing a little elbow grease and the last bit of my bottle of 99% IPA couldn't fix.
For now it's got the stock 2 GB RAM and 160 GB 5400 rpm hard drive. I'd love to bump it up to 3 GB (or even 4) and an SSD, but budgetary constraints and limits on my available time and energy have dampened my enthusiasm - especially since affordable used parts for the A1181 aren't as plentiful as they once were on eBay, and the places in my city I used to dependably rely on for parts (or machines I could scavenge for parts) are now mostly gone.
It's happily running Snow Leopard, plus the leftover Lion-based Internet Recovery volume (since I forgot to completely wipe the drive before doing my clean reinstall of 10.6 - whoops) that can't reinstall Lion thanks to Apple's ineptitude.
ArcticFox is running really nicely on it, and the "New" InterWeb runs well too. It makes me wish we'd have more alternative browser options for 10.6.
The topcase has the look and the "feel" of the later revision topcases with stronger plastic to resist chipping. When I got it however, it was filthy. Nothing a little elbow grease and the last bit of my bottle of 99% IPA couldn't fix.
For now it's got the stock 2 GB RAM and 160 GB 5400 rpm hard drive. I'd love to bump it up to 3 GB (or even 4) and an SSD, but budgetary constraints and limits on my available time and energy have dampened my enthusiasm - especially since affordable used parts for the A1181 aren't as plentiful as they once were on eBay, and the places in my city I used to dependably rely on for parts (or machines I could scavenge for parts) are now mostly gone.
It's happily running Snow Leopard, plus the leftover Lion-based Internet Recovery volume (since I forgot to completely wipe the drive before doing my clean reinstall of 10.6 - whoops) that can't reinstall Lion thanks to Apple's ineptitude.
ArcticFox is running really nicely on it, and the "New" InterWeb runs well too. It makes me wish we'd have more alternative browser options for 10.6.
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@DouglasCarroll gave us a sweet story about a beautiful saved A1181.
Now it's time for me to give you a story about one of the nastiest MacBooks I've ever come across in a recycling bin.
My condo's electronics recycling bin can be a veritable Vegas slot machine of electronic goodies. I've scored a working HP G36 laptop, a working Samsung Series 3 laptop (the latter of which had a functioning battery!), plus a needlessly massacred Thinkpad R61. I'm typing this out on the same gross Razer keyboard I fished out of that bin.
Today, while I was taking a trip to return a spoiled rainbow trout I'd gotten from my local grocery store (which seemed fine, until I opened up the plastic wrapping), I found a complete A1181, just sitting there in the bin. Opening it up showed there was signs of moisture on the screen, along with the lines and splotches that signified a cracked LCD - a total red flag. Still, I couldn't pass it up. Something told me it wasn't a good idea to bring it to my usual work space, so I quarantined it to my bathroom.
What the - what on earth happened here? The browning suggested to me the presence of a liquid that got burned on the battery surface. Maybe there was a battery leak? The battery itself seemed intact though with no signs of bulging...
I've seen water/liquid damaged MacBooks before, but nothing severe enough to leave the underside of the topcase browned like that. If it was something like juice, wine or beer, it would have surely left some kind of tell tale sensory cue (a colour, a smell, or a sticky residue on the keyboard). Everything was moist; the RAM and the hard drive, especially. It was at this point that I decided to glove up, something I've almost never done when dealing with used A1181s, even ones with insides caked with pet hair and dead bugs.
Good Lord. I know that has to be the result of corrosion and not mould, but it looks enough like mould to give me a serious case of the ick. I really want to know what happened here. Was it left out in the rain and then thrown in a storage bin somewhere?
Needless to say, the machine won't boot, and doesn't give a green light when plugged into a MagSafe charger. I was hopeful I could salvage some components but apart from the hard drive caddy and the case screws it looks like the machine is completely FUBAR'd.
Apart from stuff on the Internet, I've seen some machines that have been used and abused in my time in Mac repair, and as an early Intel Mac enthusiast (I still think about the beat up 4,1 I got once which used to belong to a private school) but nothing I've seen yet has been on this level. At least with DOA Macs, I've been able to salvage parts like the speakers, heatsink/fan and WiFi card.
Ah well. Lesson learned. Don't buy discounted seafood, no matter how "fine" it may look in the packaging.
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I'll second that! Eek...I commend you for even trying!
OCLP'd the cMP up to Monterey. Once it had shaken itself a bit, it occurred to me to look at the 'About This Mac' page.
One CPU and one set of RAM is 'missing '.
Rats. But then I was going to be redoing the processors anyhow, at some point. That point just moved closer...
One CPU and one set of RAM is 'missing '.
Rats. But then I was going to be redoing the processors anyhow, at some point. That point just moved closer...
OMG... I think a tetanus shot and a Level A Hazmat suit wouldn't be an exaggeration with that. 🤮
I would put the whole thing (minus the battery and screen) to a ultrasonic cleaner and see if anything salvageable would emerge from it. Probably not, looks horrid.
You mean they are physically there but not visible in the About? Did they show originally when you first got it?
Yes and yes. But if I fire it up with a live Linux, I see all eight cores. Still only 8 of 12 GB of RAM, though.