MacBook!

[quinterro]

I found a MacBook on Craig's list for $20. Picked it up this morning and it looks like a laptop that cost $20.  :smiley:

It's a late 2006 Model with the original 1gb memory and 80GB hard drive with 10.6.8 installed. I'll need to get a power supply for it since it didn't come with one.

The bottom case is cracked and the palm rest exhibits the typical cracking of the edges common to MacBooks of this era.

Mac OS X needs to be reinstalled since it is missing things like system preferences, system information, etc.

 

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The blue tape is there to keep a screw that I found when I removed the battery until I figure out where it came from.

The laptop on the bottom is a ThinkPad T500 for comparison.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

The blue tape is there to keep a screw that I found when I removed the battery until I figure out where it came from.

:lol: LOVE it, keep 'em coming!

 

[TechEdison]

not bad! For that cost you could shove the full 4gb and OS X 10.7 and still not pay that much.

 

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I have 2 x 2GB in an older Dell laptop that I want to try. If that doesn't work the memory kits on eBay are pretty cheap.

I have ordered a power supply for it that  should be here tomorrow. Can't wait to get it so I can do a proper install of Mac OS 10.6. Will upgrade to 10.7 after that.

There is also a 500Gb hard drive waiting to be installed depending on how well the MacBook runs.

 

[quinterro]

The power supply works and the laptop battery and Mac OS 10.6 is installed. It does run a bit warm though. Given that it still has the original memory and hard drive it probably needs to be taken apart and cleaned out.

 

[TechEdison]

I have 2 x 2GB in an older Dell laptop that I want to try. If that doesn't work the memory kits on eBay are pretty cheap.

I have ordered a power supply for it that  should be here tomorrow. Can't wait to get it so I can do a proper install of Mac OS 10.6. Will upgrade to 10.7 after that.

There is also a 500Gb hard drive waiting to be installed depending on how well the MacBook runs.

If you care at all about running PPC apps, do NOT upgrade to 10.7.... I learned that the hard way

In all honesty, I wouldn't upgrade to 10.7. It didn't benefit me enough for me to care, it only made it so I couldn't run powerpc apps.

 

[quinterro]

If you care at all about running PPC apps, do NOT upgrade to 10.7.... I learned that the hard way

In all honesty, I wouldn't upgrade to 10.7. It didn't benefit me enough for me to care, it only made it so I couldn't run powerpc apps.

Thanks for the heads up!

I have an iBook G4 and a Lombard for PowerPC applications, but to be honest it's been years since I have used one of my Macs.

The 2 x 2Gb DIMMs from the old Dell laptop worked great.  Currently Lion is installed along with Windows 7 Home Premium via BootCamp. 

I'm going to have to put the 500GB hard drive in the MacBook though.  I assigned 35GB out of the original 80GB drive to Windows but it's down to about 5GB free after installing 200+ updates and installing some of the software I use for development.  After seeing how little free space was left I didn't bother installing the remainder of the software. 

Installing a larger hard drive will allow me to have multiple Mac OS X partitions as well as a larger Windows partition.  I saw some posts on other sites about installing newer versions of Mac OS X but would like to have a version installed that needs no fiddling with to work.

 

[quinterro]

I bought a replacement bottom case and installed it.  Only took 3+ hours.  Even with making notes as to where every screw went I still had two left...

After getting everything back together I powered it on and heard the fan spinning and rubbing against its enclosure.   :O  I get to take it apart again, but fortunately not as much as was needed to swap bottom cases.

 

[MOS8_030]

I bought a replacement bottom case and installed it.  Only took 3+ hours.  Even with making notes as to where every screw went I still had two left...

Ha ha! Yeah, I know the feeling. I swapped a screen on one of those. What a pita! Worse to work on than the PowerBook 500's.

And I had one screw left over. After spending many minutes trying to figure out where it went I finally gave up and buttoned up the machine.

It worked fine and as far as I know is still working.

 

[quinterro]

I was removing the battery from the MacBook after first bringing the laptop home and a screw fell out from that area.  Not knowing where it came from I wrapped it in blue painter's tape and attached it to the lid. Shortly before swapping bottoms another screw appeared and I taped that one to the lid as well.

Strangely enough just before swapping the bottoms I found another screw that I know didn't come from the MacBook on the carpet. Turns out it was from one of my ThinkPad T500 laptops that fell out of the hard drive cover months ago and survived several vacuuming sessions. 

 

[TechEdison]

and survived several vacuuming sessions.

:O that's impressive

 

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Either it was really resilient or I just don't do a good job of vacuuming.

After removing the keyboard/wrist rest I found the cause of the fan noise - the small piece of foam that covers the two temperature sensor connectors had moved and decided to rest in top of the fan enclosure. After putting it back where it was supposed to be and reassembling the laptop the fan noise is gone! 

While it was apart the first time I cleaned it out since it hadn't been opened up since it was new, cleaned off the processor and heat sink and applied new thermal paste and it runs a lot quieter.

 

[quinterro]

Yesterday morning I used the MacBook for a while and found out that the fan wasn't spinning after it slowed down to a crawl. Took it apart again last night and found that the fan housing was pushed in on one side, causing the fan to not spin at all.

After fixing the fan and putting the MacBook together again I played a game on it for an hour. Much to my relief the fan kicked in and I didn't have any issues with the laptop slowing down.

I did find a place to put one of the leftover screws so I'm down to one.  :smiley: