My 2008 does absolutely everything any ordinary user needs today with Linux mint, but the screen leaves a lot to be desired in 2010. I should really make a video. I have completely restored one--but in fairness, it took a combination of three messed up donors to turn into one mint condition example. It was a good learning process. I took it on vacation with me to Vietnam and to Europe (a total of 10 weeks) so I wouldn't need to take my 2015 Retina MacBook Pro, and it was exactly what I needed--since I only really needed a place to dump and organise photos, use internet, do word processing, watch some basic media. I should do a video on it.
@@willblundell2250 old slow 5400rpm drives are the biggest bottleneck IMO (depending on pc but it’s a safe bet) and ram upgrades help but not as noticeable
@@captainchuppachup Cool. Are you running El Capitan? Or did you manage to get a newer OS working it seems from what I've read that 10.11 is the "official" limit for this machine.
Found one of these abandoned on the side of my apartment, someone was unable to get iOS installed and left it there. Been running Linux Mint Cinnamon on it since then. And dude... You don't have a single spudger for those fragile connectors!? I was cringing watching you pull them out by the wire with tweezers =/ Pro tip: The only thing you should be using to remove thermal paste is a coffee filter as they do not leave fibers behind. Both of the options you gave will leave fibers behind.
I have an A1181 from 2007. It won't operate without the plug. Don't know if it's the battery or the plug which always had a problem making a good tight connection. I was going to replace both but it has another problem with volume which gradually decreased in the 4 or 5 yrs that I did use it. It's been sitting since maybe 2003. Now that I have come across this video I have a renewed interest in the old Mac and may try to bring new life to it. ....Thanks for the information on how to do this.... ....
I personally bought a lot of 2 A1181 MacBooks, one black 2008, and one white 2009, for US$45. Only the black one ended up being usable, but it has 4GB RAM, has the newer wifi card from the 2009, and also has a 1TB SSD which was handed down from my 2012 MacBook Pro. Runs really well, even using the OS X Mountain Lion patch.
thanks for making this video and bringing a lot of A1181 diehards together! You are a nudge to get my thermal paste replaced and my mind is absolutely blown in regards to throttling even while the MacBook is plugged in. Did you manually create the benchmark graph or is there a link to a benchmark suite you specifically ran? I’d like to run the same exact suite so i have a direct comparison to yr #s
I have the exact same model of this macbook, the A1181, and for some reason even though I have the exact same ram kit, my MacBook refuses to boot at all with 4GB installed, but is completely fine when 3GB is installed... Not sure what may be causing this, but it is somewhat annoying that mine seems to be incompatible with 4GB... Anyways, great video! Keep up the awesome work!
3GB is a bit of a hack. by design, this model is only supposed to support 2GB. I don’t remember the details, but it will recognize 3GB if you put 4GB in. they say it works better if you put 2x2GB - I’ve been using 1+2GB for years and never did any benchmarks to know what the difference is (if any)
You purchased the wrong RAM even though it is DDR2 the speed must be the same as the original RAM. It will recognize 1 stick because you're using 1 original ram and the system will down the speed to match original ram
I currently have my 2007 A1181 running MacOS Mojave 10.14.6, it does lag a bit at times, but I enjoy nearly all the features of a modern MacBook for much less! I also enjoy using this laptop as it is quite a good conversation starter
@@karljokat I just got this laptop as a broken hand me down. Fix it as this video suggest. How can I install Lion on it. I'm not a apple person but I learned a lot. I can install any linux, but not any Mac OS. I tried patchers for Sierra and that doesn't work which is expected. Basically, how can I get any Mac OS on this MacBook. Lion would be fine.
In the battery bay on the side nearest the screen with all the screws there is actually only 4 screws you have to remove and you don’t need to take out the screws right next to the battery connector so it’s only like 9 screws instead of 18
I am going to be getting one of these just because i like the aesthetics and the fact that i can easily replace parts that break. I like to tinker and id rather have something that is dirt cheap like these ancient macbooks but still from the time frame when apple was still synonymous with "build quality" and "innovation".. I wouldnt be caught dead getting a new mac.. but these old ones, this model specifically.. with linux mint or something like that.. cannot go wrong.. i just need a word processor and something i can write code in easy.
good guide, but one constructive comment - i actually recommend NOT blowing out the fans before disconnecting them. When the fans are still wired into the machine, they are can introduce a lot of back emf into the fan driver, and damage it. Plus, you have to clean the part anyway - why risk blowing small unnoticed parts out of the machine outside when all you really want to blow out is the fans? I like to remove the fan entirely, blow it out at a nice 90psi or so, which can free up gummy fans sometimes too, particularly with some DeoxIT F5 sprayed in - then the chips, inductors, mosfets, whatever - get thoughly alcohol cleaned, or in some really bad cases, ultrasoniced and IPA bathed.
I have a 2009 White Macbook and running on AC with battery removed (as it died long ago), and was wondering why it seemed that everything was running slower compared to before, even when downgrading to older Snow Leopard OS. Now I know... I guess battery is required.
I was blown away by this fact too. I thought (probably like you), having it plugged in gave it max power. To think i thought this for who knows how many years!
I have been trying to replace an imac late 2012 27" 1440p display. And I do see why that most would rather buy a used or new display. Because, once you try to take the monitor from the glass. You will basically have the inside display opened. And I am still working to get the display off the glass (the display with a good glass is broken. The glass is fine). But I can't for my life perfectly clean any display.
11.51...ram grades are DDR2.This How To is exceptional; everything done is easy to understand. If you think you can do this servicing here, get this veteran Macbook.....but ask yourself first.....why do I need a new laptop?.. what whistles and bells will it have that I will never use?...can I do all that I need on a revamped laptop,e.g. this Macbook?
I have the same 2007 "White" Macbook and did the SSD-240/ RAM-3Gb upgrades but I ditched Mac OS. Instead I installed Kali Linux 2021 , and it´s way much better and faster than Lion OS it came with. Unfortunately I still have a dead battery...
it shows more RAM, but as far as I know it is not able to use it, not even under windows due to chipset restrictions Official & Actual Maximum RAM Apple officially supports a maximum of 2 GB of RAM in the original (Core Duo), "Late 2006" and "Mid-2007" MacBook models. However, third-parties have discovered that the "Late 2006" and "Mid-2007" MacBook models -- both of which are equipped with a Core 2 Duo processor -- will work with 3 GB or 4 GB of RAM. Due to chipset limitations -- the same limitations that apply to the "Late 2006" MacBook Pro systems -- these models can hold 4 GB of RAM but cannot fully utilize the memory beyond 3 GB due to the possibility of memory "overlap".
I got a black one for $50 on eBay, which happened to have a new[er] 3rd party battery. I grabbed an Inland 120GB SSD for $12, had some RAM laying around, and I was up and running. It wasn't very useful with MacOS, since I couldn't really install anything... I ended up putting Ubuntu on it, which was alright. I use it for writing when I'm trying to get into a slightly retro mindset. Plus I just like it.
not a Mac guy never was. but did like to see how apple likes to make it very hard for their customers not to work on an apple product. they want you to buy new.
All I really need out of this mac is an iTunes machine for older iPods and my iPhones. I never sell my iPhones and use them as iPods too after I get a new phone lol. Do I need to upgrade or do you think for that single purpose they're ok as is?
you want to start with a 2009 or newer mac and load it with open core legacy patcher give a good clean load monterey on it 8 or 16gb of ram 256gb or 512gb ssd and your good to go.
So what would be the best old school laptop computer that I can modernize instead of spending an arm and a leg on one of these newer models? And has a bright good screen because of my vision problems
9:43. I have a few older laptops at my disposal and I would like to clean off the old thermal paste. But, I *do not* have isopropyl alcohol. I used a lot of q-tips and dampened both sides in regular tap water and scrubbed off the old paste. Is this method a safe one?
yeah, I'd say so, I've cleaned up many old laptops this way, just make sure is the processor and anything else you may have gotten damp or wet is dry afterwards :)
When I work on old laptops I almost never use any alcohol or water, as long as you can remove the paste and polish up the die using something like a cotton bud it should be fine. I'd avoid using water anywhere near it, carefully cleaning off the old paste and a polish should be enough
i’m in the process of seeing if I can get Win10 working with Apple drivers. i gather it’s possible but you have to wedge them in yourself (Bootcamp won’t support Win10 on a 2007 MacBook)
0:32 I still have a Dell latitude e6400 ATG from 2010 that I saved from being thrown out at a college I was going to about 5 years ago. Upgraded the RAM (2 gbs-4 gbs- 8gbs), CPU, HDD to SSD, wifi card (to the Intel ac 7260 card which also has Bluetooth surprisingly), and for some reason, the optical drive. It allowed me to use this laptop for another 4 years. The screen made for my particular laptop, was the ONLY laptop in the past decade with a class action lawsuits over the screen itself. Still use the original screen as it's not worth it to replace it.
The E6400 is a great model. Rock solid. I still use E6410 for class laptops in schools Because they are cheap, rock solid and easy to work on. The display on the ATG has bubbles from the glue they used on the sides of the underneath the bezel. I never seen one that didn’t have the bubbles problem, some severe.
Latitudes are great machines. If you aren't one that uses that optical drive I would suggest getting a hard drive caddy adapter to put in place of it. You could then add a secondary drive such as a 1TB HDD or an SSD. If you look around on ebay I believe there may be a full HD (1920x1080) screen you could upgrade it to, if it has the basic 1366x768 panel still, there was for my e6430, not sure about the 6400. I loved my e6430, I had upgraded the CPU, Ram and HDD to an SSD. Unfortunately it seemed that the ebay seller may have scammed me, the laptop had coffee spilled on it at some point and the motherboard soon died, it would have cost more than the laptop was worth to put a new board in.
There's no way that the performance could be less just because the battery is stone dead because you could just take out the battery connect your charger and the computer will still turn on
I have both an 2007 A1181 and the A1278, from 2011 respectively. Both in Bright white. 2007 and 2011. I love these machines! My question is ...is there a browser that picks up where Safari left us OGs in the dark? I have tried a few of them with no luck. Maybe some sort of upgrade would help? Thanks!!
I have the same macbook. But it is a 32bit. The os is stuck at snow leopard. Yes, i can do Mpostfactor ‘upgrade’ but there are issues when i did that. Web browser (ffox) is still working but not the latest. At best, you can watch youtube on it. Not sure what to do with it. Windows 10 32bit?
RMC’s OSX Patcher worked on 10.11.6 the first time: www.rmc-team.ch/osx-patcher - someone here apparently has Mojave running (not surprisingly slow). I kludged Win10 on my A1181- i haven’t had time to get Apple drivers installed yet - I’m sure I’ll figure it out at some point.
I want to know the name of that ribbon adapter that can be attached to the inside of this Macbook, so I can install a full size pci card, so I can use that hack to install Catalina on it. That hack typically does not work on machines older than the first half of 2008 because Mac OS did not have 64 bit driver support for these machines, but Windows did support the video card. That is why Windows 10 64bit is possible on these machines, but Catalina is not, but it is possible if a newer video card is attached. I have one of these where the battery lock is broke on it and I feel like it would be perfect for a DIY desktop MacOS conversion.
It's a lucky thing old MacBook can be upgradable unlike those latest models. They glue the battery and soldered memory rams and ssd drives inside the logic boards.
I have one of those Late 2007 MacBooks, and the thing is that the second RAM slot just doesn't work, and I've tried everything, it just won't work, if you got any ideeas let me know :)
@@chinarut Think 'making the flashy hot thing look old and busted.' Like making a honda civic that could dominate in a quarter mile but no lights, no detailing or rims to make it look like anything other tha na cheapo used car. Same thing applies here. Make the terrifying and modern PC look like something you dug out of an attic rather than see how much RGB you can cram into it.
Those Kingston A400 drives are shite.I will never buy one ever again.Very prone to failure.Now I know why they are so cheap. I was given one of these MacBooks and it works fine.
In one of my sensor cables @8:59 the cables went out. So now I can connect only one of then, the other one is loose. What can I do? is there any problem if only is connected one?
Hi, Thanks for the video and the discussion the comments is very useful. I too have a MB A1181 Black. I have not been using it for a few years now. Now since I have some spare time on hands due to the lockdown I thought of working on that MB. However, it just wont boot. No matter what option I try it takes me to the flashing question mark screen. I was able to boot from USB previously but now even that does not seem to work no matter how long the option key is kept pressed. I have tried bootable USB, bootable DVD. RAM seems fine as the startup chime is played. Any advise what could be wrong with the MB? Any suggestions would be much appreciated
Would you mind making a video about installing elementary OS on this machine? Having a lot of trouble with the 32 bit EFI. The Odin installer no longer uses ubiquity and I’m getting an error setting up grub
I would really like to know how you got the SSD to work with this computer. I have 6 of those computers I was using for a kids after school STEM class and I could not get the hardware to recognize any of the SSD's that I tried. Mostly because I could not find any that had the slowest Serial SATA interface of 1.5 Gbps. Everything seems to be 3 or 6 Gbps SATA 2 or SATA 3.
Later SATA standards are backward compatible with earlier standards. I.E. you should actually be perfectly fine using a SATA III drive in a system that originally supported SATA I (you will just be limited to SATA I speeds). So you should be able to use a normal modern SATA III (6 gb/s) drive in these laptops. The one I used in the video is SATA III. I'm not a huge MacOS guy, so I might be wrong here, but it might be MacOS itself that cannot recognize the drive. You should try using a Linux distro, like I did in the video, and seeing if that recognizes the drive. There are a ton of other things to check, but that would be my recommended first step.
yup known defect - the Apple Store replaced my shell for free in 2010 even though it was 3 years old - they even special ordered a Thai keyboard to replace the whole thing!
Hi! I have a question, because I have a MacBook 2007 at home and I would like to get it ready for children. Which web browser are you using in the video? Thanks a lot!
cant figure mine out, i can install windows to a hard drive and put it in and it works, but i cant install MacOS for some reason! i have tried from DVD, USB and even CMD R and nothing works, its a CONSTANT folder with ? in it. im ready to chuck the thing out the window because i cannot get it to work
i recently obtained a black coloured macbook 1181. the battery is stone dead. is there any way to get power to it aside from obtaining a magsafe charger? please reply, anybody, with suggestions. thank
The author stated that the CPU is (permanently) soldered to the motherboard. The power/data connectors on the DVD are identical to those connectors on a SSD. So, it will connect. The problem is getting the 2nd SSD to stay connected -- not moving-around in the drive-bay.
How do I image it? Can I do usb? If yes then how I held the alt button from off until it booted It just booted normal. Also I know I can install Linux mint or Elementary via DVD. Problem is my disk drive is dead. I am going to try and drop in my cd drive from my 2012 MacBook Pro and hope it fires up so then I can then install from dvd by pushing the c key when booting up and then select dvd drive. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Doesn't work on anything earlier than a 2009. There was a very short lived 2009 that shared this same outward case and can use dosdude's patcher. But then they switched the plastic unibody (which also of course can use the patcher, I've got one).
I have this exact computer that I'm trying to get going for my daughter's schooling needs. I only need it to run 1 program well. The system requirements of said program are iOS 10.13 or higher, safari 14.1 or higher, or chrome 88 or higher. If anyone could tell me whether or not these upgrades could make this program work I would be soooooo thankful.
Short answer No. Long answer. You can use the last compatible version of that program on this MacBook with the upgrades on macOs Lion.. (mountain lion unofficially). (parotgeek script). 10.13 is H.Sierra so you would need at least a MacBook pro 2008 and up or MacBook white 2009 and up. All those support high sierra officially and unofficially and run very stable. With SSD and 6-8ram they are still very usable even in 2021. I sold a few for $200-250 with max upgrades and essential apps pre-installed. This white ones from video I'll probably sell for $100-150 max hopefully with max upgrades + apps
