Laptop Acquired: MacBook

[coius]

Been thinking of doing simple Video input (Firewire) and Final Cut Pro editing on the go. I headed over to ebay and found a really nice deal. I found a non-unibody white macbook that has much similar features to the plastic uni-body.

Basically a 2.13Ghz C2D

2GB RAM DDR2-800

DVD-+RW DL

13" LCD

nVidia 9400M graphics

FireWire, 120GB HDD, Etc..

I didn't know these existed. Instead of DDR3-1066 I believe they use DDR2-800. But I haven't looked into it yet.

Only things wrong is no PSU (I have one) and the DVD drive is shot. Plus a small piece of plastic missing out of the bezel above screen.

Total cost? $250. Cheaper than I could find a lower-end one locally with the crap beaten out of it. So kind of nice. I will probably up the RAM to 4GB and throw a 500GB 7200RPM HDD in it. Guessing the DVD drive is gonna be SATA, so I have one of those.

Essentially it's described as the plastic uni-body's guts thrown into the earlier plastic. Slightly slower CPU, slower RAM bus, but has FireWire.

eBay auction

 

[Hugh]

Nice one !

We have exactly the same machine here; unfortunately my wife and I used have own one each, but the screen went on hers (logic board issue, not economically repairable), so I had to put both our accounts onto the remaining MacBook.

Cheers

Hugh

 

[IIfx]

I have been wondering this for a long time:

Will the logic board from a 2008 nVidia old plastic non-unibody Macbook fit in a 2007 Santa Rosa Macbook? It may make for a cheap upgrade for my Macbook. (Or at those prices just get another one)

 

[antony701]

Looks like a good deal.

 

[TheMacGuy]

Will the logic board from a 2008 nVidia old plastic non-unibody Macbook fit in a 2007 Santa Rosa Macbook.

I think so. The MacBook my mom has is a 2006/7 body and screen with an 2008 logic board.

 

[coius]

Umm the one I got is actually a 2009 apparently. It came out after the poly-unibody one. Like I said, Unibody plastic in non-unibody fashion.

The Unibody Poly was 2009. Slightly after the metal unibody macbook. So this is newer I believe.

Do you think apple would warranty the plastics on this? I don't think the extension program exists, but I might take it out to Apple and see what they say. It is only 4 years old technically. What would be the statue of limitations on that?

 

[TheMacGuy]

Apple stopped manufacturing the non-unibody after the unibody was announced. The early 2009 model (2.0 C2D) had the original, non-unibody case. Only the mid 2009 model (2.13 C2D) was unibody.

What I would like to know is how they got a unibody MoBo into a non-unibody case. The ports are completely different:

From left to right:

Non-Unibody: MagSafe, Ethernet, Mini-DVI, FW400, 2 USB 2.0, Audio In, Audio Out, Kensington Lock

Unibody: MagSafe, Ethernet, Mini DisplayPort, 2 USB 2.0, Audio Out, Kensington Lock

Apple will warranty only the top case (keyboard, trackpad, and surrounding plastic) and display bezel, bottom case is only on the Unibodies.

 

[Bunsen]

That's pretty good for $250. Comparable to mine. How's the battery?

 

[coius]

500 Cycles apparently. It says the battery health is normal. It's still charging. It was sitting at 0 which I think they put it to sleep before sending it. Battery was drained. It's taken 2 hours and it's about 82%



Has had the plastics already replaced, but a nice health chunk was taken out of the bottom plastics on the corner:

 

[CC_333]

I see you're installing Windows XP on there!

XP runs nicely enough on our Mid 2007 MacBooks, but it should really work well on yours.

Good find!

c

 

[TheMacGuy]

So what are all the specs? Whats the age of the logic board?

 

[coius]

Mid-2009 MacBook (Poly-carbonate shell)

2.16Ghz Core2Duo

4GB PC2-6400 (800Mhz) DDR RAM

nVidia GeForce 9400m Graphics (Chipset/etc... 256MB RAM Shared with VRAM)

13" TFT 1280x800 LCD

Seagate Momentus (Might swap) 7200RPM SATA-II HDD w/ 16MB cache

I got a WD Black that I will most likely swap into the MacBook. I just got Windows XP Setup (For avid/etc..) and OS X 10.8.2 Installed on the OS X drive. Drive is split down the middle for both OS (Aka 250/250GB) One RAM stick will need to be replaced by seller. When I bought it, it was advertised as PC2-6400. Instead he shipped one PC2-6400 and one PC2-5300. In other words, right now the RAM is running at 667Mhz instead of the 800Mhz it should. Both clock to slowest RAM stick.

He will be swapping one with me when I send back the DDR2-5300 Stick though. So it will be running @ 800Mhz when both are in total. Machine came with a 160GB 5400RPM Toshiba HDD (Apple branded) and the Stock 2GB RAM. Battery has 577 Cycles. I will let you know more about the battery, but it seems to be a good battery.

$250 shipped for this. (well I added some stuff, like a newer HDD and RAM) Also the optical drive is dead. Not planning on replacing it. Laser is bad and so is eject mech. I got an external USB I can use if I need it. It's a DVD-+RW DL burner (portable) I bought back when I was in the netbook craze.

 

[coius]

So I pulled the DVD drive and surprise surprise, my hunch paid off:



That is an mSATA connector. It's what SATA optical and expansion bays use. Essentially a SATA data and power connector that does 5v only.

So I threw the HDD into an adapter and threw it in the optical bay:



So I will have an OCZ Vertex II 60GB SSD as the OS X boot/App Drive in the HDD bay, the 500GB 7200RPM Momentus will be in the OptiBay. Otherwise I still got a 500GB WD 7200 RPM drive coming. Terabyte of storage on a macbook? Nah... Get outa here!

 

[coius]

And coconut battery:

93% health @ 577 Cycles:

 

[TheMacGuy]

I'd do the HDD/SSD combo for speed. Even just a small SSD to hold the OS and important files would be a great speed increase. I don't think that MacBook had SATA 6Gbps, so the OCZ drive won't be able to release its full potential, but it would be a great speed increase.

 

[coius]

Vertex 2 is SATA-II (3.0Gbps) but it more maxes out slightly over SATA-I speeds for read and under ATA-100 for writes. The fast app open times will be nice

 

[coius]

So I took the laptop out of the bag and went to use it and "BLUESCREEN"

The hard drive (windows XP was running on it) slipped off the connector on the SATA Optical Bay adapter. I shimmed it so it won't do it again, but I had to tear it apart to get it reseated. I was hoping the drive wasn't dead so I didn't have to figure out how to get another drive (it came out of my ASUS G74SX behemoth). Either way, laptop is happy again. so I am happy as well