Moldy Apple Adventures

[zero cool]

It's funny how using an OS built for the period of the machine just works fine; even modern DE's won't run nicely on old hardware I find. How unnecessarily spoilt we have become.

I was having a bit of a chuckle at the wallpaper; thats the sort of thing I would do

Haha yeah, well, it would be very strange if period correct software wouldn't run well on the hardware But it is surprising how usable even an old OS is if you're crafty and work around limitations. I've been using this old iMac as daily driver since I set it up. The 2 year old AMD Ryzen gaming rig has not seen use in about 6 months at this point. It's just not needed in my case, lol.

[zero cool]

So I scored a cheap Macbook Pro from mid 2012 on auction. I've been regretting selling the one I had years ago, so I was pleased to find one for a good price is very fair condition. It already had its original hard drive replaced with an SSD, ad the old hard drive put in an adapter where the optical drive used to be. I managed to snatch up the package on my way to a work trip over a couple of days, and I prepared for this by bringing screwdrivers and two better SSDs to put into it. One Samsung 870 Evo 250GB for the system drive, and an oddball HP Enterprise (rebranded Samsung) 960GB drive to use as general storage in the optical drive bay.

Once I arrived at the hotel room I threw a towel on the desk, pulled out the tools and drives, and set to work. Swapping the drives was very easy. Just a matter of undoing some easy to access screws. This machine did however have another small problem, that is seemingly very common with unibody Macs of this era. Loose display hinges. It presents itself as the display being a bit floppy back and forth. This is due to the hinge screws coming slightly undone on the display side. This was also an easy fix, as it turned out. I just had to unplug all the wires going to the display, undo the screws holding the hinges to the main body, pop it off, and then slide the plastic hinge cover to one side and get access to the hinge screws. It's really surprising how servicable these things are!

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I then put it all back together and put it into online recovery mode (with a key-combo tip by 82mhz)
Since I'm at a hotel, the wifi is annoying with a captive portal and crap, so I decidded to, for the first time try internet sharing from the Macbook Air, to bridge the wifi to ethernet. This worked flawlessly and the MBP installed without any problems.

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[nathanpc]

That's an awesome score and a lot of planning ahead to perform the recovery and fixes while still in the hotel haha. You've probably joined the club of 8 other people who have successfully used Internet Sharing to bridge a wireless network to a wired one.

[zero cool]

Haha yeah! I've done a lot of strange stuff in hotel rooms, but never before torn down a laptop to this extent and fully restored it. But it was all smooth sailing, surprisingly! I was kinda surprised that the internet sharing just worked straight away. I wonder if the original Apple thunderbolt attached ethernet adapter helps the matter? As a side note, those can be had for very cheap. I got mine new in box for the cost of postage, hah!

[zero cool]

Since it's the season of fruits and stuff, my apple tree is bearing a fair amount of fruit by this point! (sigh, I know..)
Numbered from left to right the apple types are..

Hopeful planning and disappointment
Damage control and let downs
Successful damage control
Sheer curiosity
Bad life decisions and nostalgia

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[nathanpc]

We need more Avril Lavigne on even more MacBooks. I can clearly see there’s enough space to expand in both directions.

[zero cool]

Totally! There is heaps of room to expand in both X and Y axis, with all models and their respective variants. xD