theducks | (no subject)

Mark Twain asked, What is a Man?

An easier question is, What is a MacBook? I recently bought one for a pittance, after it had white wine spilt on it, on the proviso that I would get the data back off it. It seemed quite dead, with a white goo all over the logic board and RAM.

So I parted it out, but just in case, I washed the logic board and RAM with tap water, and gave it a bit of a scrub with an old toothbrush.

And left it to dry for a week.

Because you know, I'm never one to pass up an opportunity for some Mac necromancy.

So the first question, what would you need at a minimum to see if it boots?

Then, some way to turn it on, as the power switch is in the keyboard/top case..

Oh, I wonder what these pads labelled "RST BTN" do? :D

And ~~will it blend~~will it boot?

Great Scott! And yes, that is my finger pushing down on the heatsink, as there aren't any screws to hold it in place. If I wanted to do this longer term, I'd grab a piece of acrylic (of which I think I have an offcut of just the right size) and drill holes in it to mount this all in place.

Of course, the keyboard (which includes the power button) had failed, as has optical drive, but it does seem to power up at least.

This is a bit of a study for what the bare minimums to boot a MacBook are. This is pretty much how I started with the Photo frames, elsewhere on my flickr site.

I'm not sure what I'll do with this one.. I don't need a MacBook, and a new keyboard and optical drive and power adapter will set me back almost $500, on top of the money I already paid for the scrap, vs the AUD$1349 for a new one, and there's always the likelyhood this one isn't going to last as long as it should otherwise.

Maybe I'll make a server cube or something. Hmm! I wonder if it will boot without the Internal LCD attached? An experiment for another day, as I don't have any mini-DVI converters to plug an external display in with. I will keep you all posted.