[ale] Old MacBook (late 2008)

Chuck Payne terrorpup at gmail.com
Thu May 19 10:33:45 EDT 2016


You can upgrade to 10.11, but make sure you upgrade the memory to
8Gigs. I have the same model and finally upgrade to 10.11. I had to to
download the 10.11 and make USB boot stick to upgrade it.

It might be better to wipe and place Linux on it, you might have a
longer life with it.

On Thu, May 19, 2016 at 10:20 AM, Jim Kinney <jkinney at jimkinney.us> wrote:
> Get that battery out NOW! If it leaks lithium goo you have a real mess.
>
> Third party batteries are OK but are not as long lived.
>
> Don't waste time trying to run crapOS on it. The rottenfruit company no
> longer support the hardware with OS patches of any kind. It will run any
> flavor Linux distro rather well.
>
> On May 18, 2016 1:43:53 PM EDT, "Lightner, Jeffrey"
> <JLightner at dsservices.com> wrote:
>>
>> Someone gave me their old MacBook (late 2008) and over the weekend I
>> played with it a little.   It has Intel Core 2 duo in it.
>>
>>
>>
>> I noticed on trying to use Safari I got a complaint about it being old and
>> not supported by whatever site I tested.
>>
>>
>>
>> Reading suggests I have to upgrade OS X to get newer Safari.   The system
>> isn’t under support and when I told it to do the update it said there wasn’t
>> one.   More reading led me to the conclusion this unit will run a newer
>> 10.6.x and maybe even a 10.7.x (Lion) but not the latest one.   It also led
>> me to believe I’d need to buy more memory to run a newer OS X.
>>
>>
>>
>> Did it tell me there was no update because:
>>
>> a)      There is no support contract?
>>
>> b)      There is insufficient memory?
>>
>> c)       OS X upgrades cost money?
>>
>> d)      It hates me?
>>
>>
>>
>> I’m not really in the market for a MacBook and am only playing with this
>> one because it was given to me.   It appears new ones are in the $2K range
>> and I don’t plan to spend that kind of money.   I might be willing to spend
>> less money to upgrade RAM and even the OS X but am wondering if any of the
>> Mac fans out there think it worth doing at all?
>>
>>
>>
>> Also the battery (A1185) is kaput – I’ve seen 3rd party replacements on
>> line for less than $50 where true Apple replacements are more than $100.
>> Is there any specific replacement folks would recommend?
>>
>>
>>
>> By the way the existing battery is somewhat separated such that the plate
>> one sees on the bottom of the laptop isn’t flush with the bottom of the
>> laptop because the housing in the battery is sprung.   I don’t know if that
>> is the case because of the old swelling issues batteries had in some things
>> or if the previous owner simply dropped it.   I haven’t tried to take it
>> apart (though I did of course remove it from the laptop to see it is sprung)
>> and wonder if there’s any reason to try to fix this battery given its
>> presumed age.   It operates just fine without the battery off of A/C power.
>>
>>
>>
>> The reason it won’t lock in the laptop is because of the sprung housing of
>> the battery itself – the locking screw in the laptop does turn and pushes
>> pins out that should lock the battery in place is working but where the pins
>> would lock the batter into place is where the housing of the battery is
>> separated from the bottom plate so it isn’t locking.
>>
>>
>>
>> Finally I did look briefly at Arch Wiki that seemed to suggest one could
>> install Arch but it seemed to imply that one would do that in tandem with
>> the OS X.   I didn’t delve into that.   Can one simply replace OS X with
>> Linux?   If so are there distros other than Arch?
>>
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>>
>>
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>
> --
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>
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-- 
Terror PUP a.k.a
Chuck "PUP" Payne
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