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How long does the battery last? Is replacing it easy? My 2009 A1342 lasts anywhere from 2.5-5 hours on a normal day, with what I'm pretty sure is the original battery, which is surprising, but I've considered whether or not I should replace it one day. Also, where did you find the battery?

Ifixit battery swap instructions.

Looks like they’re all over eBay for about $20 shipped USD. Essentially you pop the back off and you’ll have access to the battery, hdd and ram, so could upgrade/max out all three in one swoop.

Good luck :)
 
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What have I done? Bought an Intel Mac that is NOT early, although I suppose it's not far off as the timelines shift.
A1465 MBA, only problem apart from usage marks is the need for a new battery. My similar 2011 model has developed an erratic trackpad, which might indicate a new battery also. As they're the same battery, I'll be after a bulk discount...
:D
 
Not EI specifically either as AirPort Extreme uses ARM CPUs lol but I did pick up a cheap ($20) a1521 ape 6th gen to create an a/c network upstairs in my den and my wife’s office. This allowed me to bring my even cheaper ($14) a1408 ape 4th gen legacy a/b/g/n network back downstairs into my office on the other end of the house for all of my old macs lol. I also reattached all my external drives & fired up my ghetto NAS :D which was in a box in my closet while my a1408 was broadcasting upstairs for my wife’s devices.

>>Drive one is legacy windows softwares and win isos
>>Drive two hosts my music library
>>Drive 3 holds legacy classic mac & OSX & linux isos, respective updates and softwares.

Not the fastest at usb2 speeds but suits my needs so Im glad to have it back up. It was kind of a pain to have to go grab the respective drive out of the closet when I needed something off it.

IMG_1593.jpeg

I *did* use my early Intel 08 mbp to configure my airport so there’s that lol.
 
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How long does the battery last? Is replacing it easy? My 2009 A1342 lasts anywhere from 2.5-5 hours on a normal day, with what I'm pretty sure is the original battery, which is surprising, but I've considered whether or not I should replace it one day. Also, where did you find the battery?

I haven't had the chance to do any comprehensive testing but in the past I've gotten about ~2-2.5 hours max on my replacement batteries, if I manage my activities and power usage carefully. But for a lot of replacement batteries I've come across (for the A1181 and A1151/A1150), around 1.5-1.75 hours is the norm. That's not much compared to the original OEM batteries when they were new, but I don't expect much out of replacements, since they're built not very well and by this point even the better quality ones are new old stock that's over a decade old.

All I'm asking of them anyway is to be useable enough to the system that it won't downclock the CPU to 1 GHz, and it'll keep the machine alive while I'm transporting it.

I got my battery from an eBay seller of used laptops and older model batteries that just happens to have a retail store too. It was a little far for me on public transit, but I was able to save on shipping, and they could charge me a lower price and avoid eBay fees.

It's a great machine. I've got one maxed out with 16 GB of RAM and a 1 TB SSD. With Linux it's still a perfectly capable daily driver in 2025. I also use it for gaming, playing PPC and Intel from the 00's on Snow Leopard. Mine still has the original battery that lasts an hour or two.

Oh yes, I don't doubt that at all. For a while I daily drove an A1181 that I maxed out which ran Linux too. I'm starting to really take a shine to the A1342, but I can't shake the niggling feeling that when/if the power button breaks it's going to be an absolute bear to fix.
 
Is replacing it easy?

Oh, I forgot to mention, as Certificate of Excellence points out, replacing it is easy...but it's also potentially tricky too. The problem is that the battery is primarily held in place with tri-wing screws, for which some (but not all) decent-ish screwdriver kits for repairing electronics have a bit.

The kit I have on hand doesn't have a tri-wing bit (and the kit with the tri-wing that I did have was so cheaply made that the bit actually broke), so what I ended up doing was masking off the whole computer with paper and masking tape, and then using a dremel tool to cut a line in the screw deep enough for a flat-head screwdriver to unscrew it. Messy, and a little nerve-wracking, but it worked well-enough.
 
Dead MBP 8,2 Late: still no clue as to how to revive it. May swap in the logic board and SSD from the early 8,2 and at least gain a high-res display for it. Doesn't seem to be much else I can do. The machine gets warm, so it's doing *something*, but what? It feels like it just needs some sort of nudge to wake it up, but I'm all out of ideas...

The only things I can think of are either a dead AMD GPU or a hard drive cable failure, but I'm guessing you've already tested for that?
 
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Today i installed the slot loader from an iMac in to my 2007 Mac mini. I bought the mini a few weeks back, listed as fully working. Only to arrive with a none working optical drive. I ordered a replacement, but it turns out there were two versions of the drive, SATA vs IDE. And wouldn't you know the one I ordered was the IDE version, teach me to ordered without asking to see the rear of the drive. Anyways, the mini is now working great, finally.
I feel bad doing it, but I can't bring myself to leave good feedback for the seller I bought the mini from.

1. I bought something listed as working and when I reached out, they pretty much shrugged me off with a 'I know nothing about macs' response.
2. They didn't offer any solution, so I was left buying a replacement drive. A small refund under the circumstances wouldn't have hurt, but that just my view.

Yeah I could have returned it, but for all the hassle, it was just as easy to order a replacement drive. If I had known I was buying a 'fixer upper', I wouldn't have bought it.

Ah well, all sorted now and at the end of the day, I'm now a pro at popping the lid of these mini's
 
I just tweaked a 2013 iMac that I bought for peanuts.
The seller had done things quite well and installed Sequoia OCLP on the 120GB blade and formatted the HDD in HFS+.

It didn't work too badly, but Ventura on an external USB3 SSD beats it hands down in speed.

In my humble opinion, now Apple develops only for Apple Silicon and new versions only bring slowdowns on Intel hardware. Ventura is MHO the best choice if you want to stick with macOS.

Ultimately, this 2013 iMac ended up with a current Windows 11 on the 120GB blade (full to 60%, very responsive as primary boot), the HDD formatted in 750GB exFAT for user data, and a 250GB HFS+ Mojave backup partition without changing anything to its original hardware.
 
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I'm curious as to why the seller didn't just replace the stock hard drive with an SSD. I first lived on my 2013 iMac as it limped-along with a half-dead internal hard drive and an external SSD.

It worked fine enough like that, but when I finally replaced the internal drive with an SSD it was like night and day.
 
What have I done? Bought an Intel Mac that is NOT early, although I suppose it's not far off as the timelines shift.
A1465 MBA, only problem apart from usage marks is the need for a new battery. My similar 2011 model has developed an erratic trackpad, which might indicate a new battery also. As they're the same battery, I'll be after a bulk discount...
:D
Of course, the other thing is that this MBA needs MagSafe 2, so ordered one to arrive the day after the machine itself.
Except...
Amazon UK entrusted the delivery of the machine to Royal Mail, who have proceeded to royally screw up proceedings. So I have the MagSafe 2 charger, and nothing to charge. This will likely be a waiting game...
:(
 
I'm curious as to why the seller didn't just replace the stock hard drive with an SSD. I first lived on my 2013 iMac as it limped-along with a half-dead internal hard drive and an external SSD.

It worked fine enough like that, but when I finally replaced the internal drive with an SSD it was like night and day.
Just because he did not want to fiddle with opening that iMac?
Personally, I have done it on other iMacs, even replaced the blade, which is rather tough.
But it works also really nice with the OS on the 120GB blade and the data on the HDD. No need to do more.
 
What have I done? Bought an Intel Mac that is NOT early, although I suppose it's not far off as the timelines shift.
A1465 MBA, only problem apart from usage marks is the need for a new battery. My similar 2011 model has developed an erratic trackpad, which might indicate a new battery also. As they're the same battery, I'll be after a bulk discount...
:D

Of course, the other thing is that this MBA needs MagSafe 2, so ordered one to arrive the day after the machine itself.
Except...
Amazon UK entrusted the delivery of the machine to Royal Mail, who have proceeded to royally screw up proceedings. So I have the MagSafe 2 charger, and nothing to charge. This will likely be a waiting game...
:(
Well, it got here. But it seems that both me and the seller had somewhat of a brain fart over the description.
Turns out it's a 2013 1.3GHz, so only Thunderbolt 1, but not really that concerned. Still good for the money.
My first Metal-capable Mac! And it creeps back into proper early-Intel territory.
 
Well, it got here. But it seems that both me and the seller had somewhat of a brain fart over the description.
Turns out it's a 2013 1.3GHz, so only Thunderbolt 1, but not really that concerned. Still good for the money.
My first Metal-capable Mac! And it creeps back into proper early-Intel territory.
Metal!? That's truly modern! (Typing this on my 2010 Core 2 Duo.)

It might not be the 2015 Air you were hoping for but the Haswell machines hold up very well even today in my experience. My wife has a 2013 11" that she maxed out with an i7 and 8 GB of RAM. It got her through grad school and still finds use for our son's homework.
 
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Metal!? That's truly modern! (Typing this on my 2010 Core 2 Duo.late)

It might not be the 2015 Air you were hoping for but the Haswell machines hold up very well even today in my experience. My wife has a 2013 11" that she maxed out with an i7 and 8 GB of RAM. It got her through grad school and still finds use for our son's homework.
I've given it a clean, ordered a new battery from iFixit (cycle count 1071!), and am typing on it now in Monterey via OCLP. Re your wife's maxed out version: I had a quick trawl through Aliexpress, and it purports to sell logic boards for these, some of which have an 8GB option. Tempting, but unsure about serial numbers, etc.
 
It might not be the 2015 Air you were hoping for but the Haswell machines hold up very well even today in my experience. My wife has a 2013 11" that she maxed out with an i7 and 8 GB of RAM. It got her through grad school and still finds use for our son's homework.
The 2013 11/13" i7 MBA with 8GB seem to be pretty much underestimated,
since they are damn close to the performance of the latest/fastest 2015 11"MBA / 2017 13"MBA.
Best upgrade is a faster and bigger NVMe-Blade-SSD:
I 've upgraded my 2013 11" i7 MBA with a 2TB WD_Black SN770 NVMe,
which runs 3-times faster than the original one from Apple and makes the MBA a great mobile companion.
 
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I am currently trying to install at least windows 10 on a Mac Mini 2011.
It looks to be quite tough...
Normal installation sticks will just bring a black screen after 1-2 minutes.
The same occurred with a Windows to Go stick that went black-screen almost immediately.
Finally the only way to get it to work was to make a Windows to Go stick with a MBR partionning.
But that was not the end of the problems.
The Boot-Camp installation refused to run, arguing that it needs Windows 7 !
Installing the drivers one by one worked, excepted the crucial one: the display driver, that refused to install.
So my els working installation ends with a black screen.

Has someone got a clue on how to get Windows 10 to run on that hardware?
Regards
Laszlo
 
I am currently trying to install at least windows 10 on a Mac Mini 2011.
It looks to be quite tough...
Normal installation sticks will just bring a black screen after 1-2 minutes.
The same occurred with a Windows to Go stick that went black-screen almost immediately.
Finally the only way to get it to work was to make a Windows to Go stick with a MBR partionning.
But that was not the end of the problems.
The Boot-Camp installation refused to run, arguing that it needs Windows 7 !
Installing the drivers one by one worked, excepted the crucial one: the display driver, that refused to install.
So my els working installation ends with a black screen.

Has someone got a clue on how to get Windows 10 to run on that hardware?
Regards
Laszlo
For the moment, graphic driver disabled and remote desktop activated to be able to recover from a non working screen...
 
Ups, sorry about that. But black screen & white Standby Light with optical drive ranting on boot
might indicate failure of the dGPU.
That had failed before I ever owned it, so I would presume it's finally killed the logic board. It's been running well on iGPU to this point. There's no response to any key combination.
 
My cMP 1,1 to the rescue. I was completing a cf mod+ new battery on my gen 3 iPod when I realized I didn’t have a mac in the house that had the required FW port to restore this thing and also have a functioning ITunes that connects to Apple servers. Enter my cMP. Got the job done with minimal grumbling and w/o it I’d have to go dig around for my FW400 hub in the garage and stick it onto my a1278 with a 400 to 800 cable and hope it worked out ok.

IMG_1599.jpeg


42D51055-9DA8-4197-90B2-6D657A176D98.jpeg
 
Today i have done something really different:
A free music score reader with pages turned from the left and middle pedals from a piano.

Score readers are frequently done with iPads. Beside the fact that big iPads are awfully expensive, you are limited to display a single page or get ridiculously small scores, hard to read.

Here I have used a cheap 24" 2K monitor capable of displaying two pages in full A4 size, plus a preview.
I have recycled an old Mac Mini 2011 connected to the monitor with a mini-DP to DP cable (HDMI will not provide enough resolution). The Mac Mini 2011 runs OCLP Monterey.
The PDF scores are displayed regularly just with the regular preview app.

You can turn the pages with left/right arrows on Mac's keyboard or –ways better– using a cheap USB-Midi cable and the free app CoyoteMIDI, that will convert the left and middle pedal from the piano to the corresponding keyboard strokes.

Enjoy, musicians !

Laszlo
 

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Migrated my last power-sucking machine (a Mac Pro 2006), that acted as a media server, to a 2012 Mac Mini, and decommissioned her. My 2013 Mac Pro (not considered early Intel, but eh...) has already been decommissioned, and it's files moved to an M2 Mac Mini. Running an all-Mini "shop" here now- 2009 for development (I'll post pics of this monstrosity in the near future), 2011 for media streaming, 2012 for media serving, M2 for daily use...

... and a problematic 2005 G4 that I *will* get running again, dammit...
 
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