What have you done with an early Intel recently?

[joevt]

I might have to open this thing up and hope I can put it back together neatly so I can get an SSD in it.

Are you sure it's 4K? EveryMac.com says the model with the i5-5575R is only 1080p (but it could be wrong). What's the speed of the CPU?
https://everymac.com/systems/by_year/macs-released-in-2015.html

macsales.com has upgrade kits and videos. It should be pretty easy to upgrade the HD to an SSD. If the iMac was configured with a Fusion drive, then it also has an SSD that can also be upgraded.

In the "Shop All" menu, select "Upgrade Support" » "Upgrade Your Mac" » "iMac" » "iMac16,2 Late 2015" » "2.80 GHz (21.5-inch, Late 2015)" » "Internal Drive Options".
I don't see the Fusion drive upgrade options there so I went to "Home" » "SSD" » "iMac" » "iMac 21.5-Inch (Late 2013 - 2019)" which does have some Apple compatible NVMe options and a list of install videos.

 

[sdfox7]

I've been using my Late 2008 Aluminum MacBook lately, which I would consider "early Intel" since it's closer to 2006 than 2020.

One thing I've noticed recently is that the App Store headers are missing, you would normally see "Featured", "Top Charts", "Categories", "Purchased", and "Updates". Any idea why these would be missing? They are also missing on my 2016 MacBook Pro with High Sierra.

Image below is what it looks like, image below THAT is a stock photo of what it should look like.

 

[eyoungren]

Thought I'd boot up the 2006 17" MBP (Snow Leopard maximum OS) for a bit. Aside from here and there, this Mac was brought in from the garage last year and hasn't been on very regularly. Has the lion's share of my apps from around 2013 or so when I got the Mac. It served as my primary laptop until about 2015 when the 2008 MBP showed up. One of my few laptops that has a 500GB HDD. 5400rpm, but free. A gift from a former member here.

Forgot I stuck a Nixie Clock screeensaver on it.

 

[DCBassman]

Have decided to get the 2009 A1181 Whitebook going properly. To that end, incoming is an incomplete case with logic board from a unit with a broken display backlight. This should give me two working RAM slots if all is well, and possibly also fix the weird power button sequence that it currently takes to get it fired up. Then I'll put in 6GB RAM and an SSD and put MX Linux on it. It will run well, it does OK on 2GB!

So, it's arrived. Now, A1181 experts, what's easiest? Logic board swap or lower case with logic board swap?

 

[avz]

That moment when I realized that my Late 2008 unibody MacBook does optimised battery charging without breaking a sweat and no software or hardware solutions(I am guessing having a 2-power battery also helps). Steve Jobs spoke the truth when he said that this MacBook has a lot of technological advancements. It has been 48 hours + and counting at 80% charge.

 

[rampancy]

One thing I've noticed recently is that the App Store headers are missing, you would normally see "Featured", "Top Charts", "Categories", "Purchased", and "Updates". Any idea why these would be missing? They are also missing on my 2016 MacBook Pro with High Sierra.

Assuming you've already have wowfunhappy's security certificate updates installed, have you tried deleting the App Store cache? I have seen such weirdness before, but honestly just chalked it up to Apple's poor maintenance of their online infrastructure for older versions of OS X (I'm looking at you, Internet Recovery.)

So, it's arrived. Now, A1181 experts, what's easiest? Logic board swap or lower case with logic board swap?

If it were me, I'd just port over my RAM and hard drive/SSD (plus any other upgrades like an ODD drive bay) over to the "new" lower case+logic board, assuming all of the components and structural parts on that assembly are fine. Extracting the A1181 logic board isn't necessarily hard, just time consuming. Display swaps are relatively pretty easy. The only exception I can think of is if one has a Blackbook.

 

[DCBassman]

If it were me, I'd just port over my RAM and hard drive/SSD (plus any other upgrades like an ODD drive bay) over to the "new" lower case+logic board, assuming all of the components and structural parts on that assembly are fine. Extracting the A1181 logic board isn't necessarily hard, just time consuming. Display swaps are relatively pretty easy. The only exception I can think of is if one has a Blackbook.

I'll go with your advice.
First, I wanted to see if the board was good for both RAM slots, being the cautious guy I am. Don't want to do this work for no gain, after all. So researched online to find the "power-on pads" and fired it up. I used a generic 802.11n wifi dongle and the dual-boot MX Linux SSD from my Windows machine.

It booted flawlessly, so now I will find time this week, along with much other Windows PC and laptop rebuilding, to do the swap.

 

[rampancy]

I'll go with your advice.
First, I wanted to see if the board was good for both RAM slots, being the cautious guy I am. Don't want to do this work for no gain, after all. So researched online to find the "power-on pads" and fired it up.

Glad I could help you! And yes, the power-on pads have been an invaluable troubleshooting resource over the years. I've resurrected many an A1181 that would have otherwise gone into e-waste thanks to them.

And I love the fact that you've got a 2.13 Ghz model. It's far and away my favourite version because it just has so many more options for tinkering and upgrading compared to the older models.

 

[MBAir2010]

everything  is upgrading to "2025-four" so im behind the macbook air 2010 typing here.
some websites work with SnowLion as this as other wont load videos.
i dont think java script is activate or even n this macbook since the new ssd was installed last year i think.
there should be a copy of that on a drive somewhere.

 

[kPoponmyiPod]

I've been using my '09 unibody white MacBook on Mavericks for all of my everyday computing! I upgraded the HDD (80GB since I guess the previous owner installed a smaller one for some reason?) to a 500GB SSD and the RAM from 2GB to 8 and it works amazingly! It boots up and to the destop in under fifteen seconds, not counting typing in my password. I love the look and that it has an optical drive so I can watch a DVD between classes! I also had Mountain Lion and Snow Leopard partitions but had to remove those to use Boot Camp with Windows 7. On both OSes everything works amazingly! The only thing is that I can't find a version of the IDE for my compsci class for either OS, and I do my on-line banking on my 2019 Intel Air.

 

[DCBassman]

Updated the hires MBP8,2 L2011 to 15.4 and OCLP 2.3 and 2.3.1. It will not now reboot or shut down without power button intervention. 2011 Mini: same process, no issues.

 

[headlessmike]

I've been using my '09 unibody white MacBook on Mavericks for all of my everyday computing! I upgraded the HDD (80GB since I guess the previous owner installed a smaller one for some reason?) to a 500GB SSD and the RAM from 2GB to 8 and it works amazingly! It boots up and to the destop in under fifteen seconds, not counting typing in my password. I love the look and that it has an optical drive so I can watch a DVD between classes! I also had Mountain Lion and Snow Leopard partitions but had to remove those to use Boot Camp with Windows 7. On both OSes everything works amazingly! The only thing is that I can't find a version of the IDE for my compsci class for either OS, and I do my on-line banking on my 2019 Intel Air.

Modern Linux runs really well on these machines too if you need support for more modern software. My 2010 white MacBook has 4 OS's on it: Snow Leopard (oldest OS supported), High Sierra (newest OS supported), Sequoia (unsupported but runs surprisingly well with OCLP), and the latest version of Ubuntu.

 

[MBAir2010]

I've been using my '09 unibody white MacBook on Mavericks for all of my everyday computing! I upgraded the HDD (80GB since I guess the previous owner installed a smaller one for some reason?) to a 500GB SSD and the RAM from 2GB to 8 and it works amazingly! It boots up and to the destop in under fifteen seconds, not counting typing in my password. I love the look and that it has an optical drive so I can watch a DVD between classes! I also had Mountain Lion and Snow Leopard partitions but had to remove those to use Boot Camp with Windows 7. On both OSes everything works amazingly! The only thing is that I can't find a version of the IDE for my compsci class for either OS, and I do my on-line banking on my 2019 Intel Air.

Good for you, this older early Intels do perform as great as we want them to be!

my ex GF had one of those for years as she used that as a teen on a iPhone would. took that everywhere
I think high Sierra was the last OSX that worked as that was th least I saw her.
the MacBook was easier to repair or upgrade and had a nice ascetic or feel
BUT
not as nice as was the MacBook Air silver I used then, and still today!
i'm still running snow leopard with some limitations internet wise playing videos.
I kinda wish I could use my other early intel only macbooks as I did last all last summer.

have fun!

 

[MBAir2010]

Modern Linux runs really well on these machines too if you need support for more modern software. My 2010 white MacBook has 4 OS's on it: Snow Leopard (oldest OS supported), High Sierra (newest OS supported), Sequoia (unsupported but runs surprisingly well with OCLP), and the latest version of Ubuntu.

I could not get anything to work linux wise on my MacBook Pro m2012 as the wifi, bluetooth would not patch
last year I installed three linux ummm flavors (forgot the lingo now..oh 'distro') as GitHub was too hardy for me to navigate or execute for some silly "brain of mine' reason. then the whole system would crash after a day or so.
since him not using computers or hav Eto time to tweet systems like last year, im content with the 2 MacBook books early intel using their original osx.

quite honestly mountain lion can perform many tasks like video streaming and design but no icloud
which is fine with me since I rarely use iCloud on my m1s, only for safari tab syncing.

 

[headlessmike]

I could not get anything to work linux wise on my MacBook Pro m2012 as the wifi, bluetooth would not patch
last year I installed three linux ummm flavors (forgot the lingo now..oh 'distro') as GitHub was too hardy for me to navigate or execute for some silly "brain of mine' reason. then the whole system would crash after a day or so.
since him not using computers or hav Eto time to tweet systems like last year, im content with the 2 MacBook books early intel using their original osx.

quite honestly mountain lion can perform many tasks like video streaming and design but no icloud
which is fine with me since I rarely use iCloud on my m1s, only for safari tab syncing.

Whatever works for you.

Plain Ubuntu works better than most distros with Macs out of the box and usually just works. My 2012 iMac didn’t require. Any patching to get full hardware support from Ubuntu 24.10. Same with 2010 MacBook. I use the various macOS versions I have for different tasks, but Linux is probably the most effective way to keep an old Mac up to date with modern software.

 

[DCBassman]

Updated the hires MBP8,2 L2011 to 15.4 and OCLP 2.3 and 2.3.1. It will not now reboot or shut down without power button intervention. 2011 Mini: same process, no issues.

Will not now boot at all. Optical drive cycles, fans are spinning, but no display, no reaction to attempted PRAM reset, nada. Oh well it IS an 8,2, after all...

 

[DCBassman]

And as for the A1181s: a no-go, so as I can't make 1 good one out of two, this is now an A1181-free zone...

 

[rampancy]

And as for the A1181s: a no-go, so as I can't make 1 good one out of two, this is now an A1181-free zone...

What happened? The machine won't boot? The display doesn't work?

 

[DCBassman]

What happened? The machine won't boot? The display doesn't work?

Entirely my fault. I misread the eBay listing and bought a duffer. It worked via external display, but the board would not drive the inverter, so no backlight. Cut my losses.

 

[rampancy]

Entirely my fault. I misread the eBay listing and bought a duffer. It worked via external display, but the board would not drive the inverter, so no backlight. Cut my losses.

Oh that sucks. I've made mistakes like that before (only in my case it was A1181s that hadn't been tested, but assumed were working).

Strange that the board wouldn't drive the inverter; if you have micro soldering skills, perhaps a fix may be possible?

 

[dandeco]

Managed to find my old pre-2016 Final Cut Pro X on one of my older MacBook hard drives, so I copied it to my 2012 unibody 15" MacBook Pro running FCP X 10.2.3!

Even when the interface did look more iMovie-ish I was still using it to make many of my YTPs. Amazing how far it's come since its initial 2011 launch...

 

[DCBassman]

Oh that sucks. I've made mistakes like that before (only in my case it was A1181s that hadn't been tested, but assumed were working).

Strange that the board wouldn't drive the inverter; if you have micro soldering skills, perhaps a fix may be possible?

Nope, I barely have macro soldering skills these days! Never mind, more important things - MBP 8,2 late has turned up its toes...

 

[Certificate of Excellence]

Picked up a cheap Radeon HD5770 for $20 shipped to replace the GT240 I had. Both are 1GB cards however the 5770 is ddr5 vs ddr3, so should produce a nice boost in performance. It’s also a MAC card so I’ll get the boot screen again lol. Anyhow, I’ll repaste it prior to installing it in my cMP 1,1. Now what to do with that 240

 

[sdfox7]

Assuming you've already have wowfunhappy's security certificate updates installed, have you tried deleting the App Store cache? I have seen such weirdness before, but honestly just chalked it up to Apple's poor maintenance of their online infrastructure for older versions of OS X (I'm looking at you, Internet Recovery.)




If it were me, I'd just port over my RAM and hard drive/SSD (plus any other upgrades like an ODD drive bay) over to the "new" lower case+logic board, assuming all of the components and structural parts on that assembly are fine. Extracting the A1181 logic board isn't necessarily hard, just time consuming. Display swaps are relatively pretty easy. The only exception I can think of is if one has a Blackbook.

Cleared the cache, still no go. Oh well. Sooner or later this stuff was going to break.

 

[occupant]

Are you sure it's 4K? EveryMac.com says the model with the i5-5575R is only 1080p (but it could be wrong). What's the speed of the CPU?
https://everymac.com/systems/by_year/macs-released-in-2015.html

macsales.com has upgrade kits and videos. It should be pretty easy to upgrade the HD to an SSD. If the iMac was configured with a Fusion drive, then it also has an SSD that can also be upgraded.

In the "Shop All" menu, select "Upgrade Support" » "Upgrade Your Mac" » "iMac" » "iMac16,2 Late 2015" » "2.80 GHz (21.5-inch, Late 2015)" » "Internal Drive Options".
I don't see the Fusion drive upgrade options there so I went to "Home" » "SSD" » "iMac" » "iMac 21.5-Inch (Late 2013 - 2019)" which does have some Apple compatible NVMe options and a list of install videos.

Huh...you're right, it has the 2.8GHZ i5 with a maximum resolution of 1080p, that's fine though, it's still working quite well. Got the 2.3.2 OCLP in there and patched and bumping from 15.3 to 15.4 Sequoia as I type.

This is just a plain 1TB drive, not the Fusion model. I think a SATA SSD will be just fine in it, but I want to save up a bit and get a 1TB sized one.