Argh! Crappy xmas-Old Mac wanted

General Random
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Well it’s not even 10 days before Xmas and as usual for myself at this time of year,an F bomb just landed on me.
…Yesterday,weird graphical artifacts appeared as I changed graphic cards in my 2009 17" Mac book Pro laptop.

…So I changed back.pretty quick.
seemed OK, still a little oddity or 2.

today,turned on-No dice! :frowning:

MIGHT mac it to the chime,but usually half a.second then off.
total frazzled!

Was about to do the Time Machine thing too,been clearing external hard drive space.
Great. …Sob
so if anyone has surplus to requirements mac,let me.know. …Bah humbug!

I’ve ONLY had it …TEN years…it’s been some places!

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Uggg… so sorry man. It always goes like this. You depend on your old, reliable workhorse machine and then it just fails at the worst time. Unfortunately I am a total PC nerd. Never caught the Mac bug after the Commodore Amiga went under. Can’t help, but you have my sympathies.

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Yes! doesn’t it just… now on the forum.via someone else’s wifI fine as mine doesn’t do data,with the starter motor off the SECOND broken tractor in as many days,and am.unable.to.login to most anything,with no time. to.fiddle about.
Ho ho ho…Merry Xmas! ;p…meh …humbug

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I have a pair of imacs that are surplus to requirement. PM me for details

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And sorry for. Delay… Er… I haveno computeranymore :))

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The 17” mac has an issue with the AMD chip going bad. There are two video controllers in the laptop. An intel and an AMD for the external DVI but it also uses it for the internal screen when graphic demands need it. When it starts to go you either get lines on the screen or weird flashing artifacts in the “black” areas. Happened to mine which was a 2012.

There is a guy on ebay who will swap the chip for 150.00. You have to send him the motherboard. You can also send it to Louis Rossman who does the mac repairs on youtube. The 17” is worth repairing.

Be careful with removing the LVDS cable (video) it’s pretty easy to bend a pin and screw up the internal video.

Vince

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I wouldn’t waste money trying to fix an eleven year old computer. schpengle is obviously long overdue for an upgrade.

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Yeah cheers @vrooney I watched him solder balling these before as I had heard there was a problem on later MODELS- BUT MINE HAD BEEN fine for ten years… changed it to the higher spec one to play call of duty for a DAY,CHANGED back…oh dear.just lime your description :frowning:
And @Printninja…SACRILEGE!!

:stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

THERE is NO other thing comparable with the 17 inch mac and its OS.if you have one it’s worth Keeping it going, but £150 is a big hit,considering how much work you have to do yourself top-five stripped them down before…hmmm but you must reminded me, I’m next to the old post office, who had contacts in that.i will check out now,after my shower and laundry …hey!what are friends for? :slight_smile:

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Hi Ian,

Mine is from 2012 with a core i7. I’ve upgraded the ram to 16g and have 2-2TB SSD drive in it. It runs all the latest Adobe CC Office and latest audio DAWs and plugins without issues. The idea that you need to upgrade because of age is silly if the hardware meets or exceeds you needs. I’m an electronics engineer and software developer and musician, I repair electronics when I can to keep the landfills clear. My guitar amps use “tubes” which are considered antique but nothing is better that a tube for power and sound. The point is if it works for your needs there is no need to purchase new and spend thousands when you can spend a lot less to repair it. A lot of the new laptops are being made with glued in components making repairs difficult and there is a push to prevent third party repair by making parts unavailable and incorporation tech to detect replacement parts.

Be well.

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@vrooney… Amen Brother!..

Talking of which… If your into the whole Christian Xmas stuff… PuuuurRAISE! the Lord!
My Mac is… Back from the DEAD!>

well…for a while anyway…we shall see.
I stripped it. disconnected the fixed battery as I was noticing weird non charging battery charger light on the charge cable… like it didnt know that the Mac was connected…suspicious,

so that made me think, it was more system wide that graphics card specific.

I disconnected and reconnected that display connector… in the corner…
wiggled some stuff and… holy schmalzy. it fired up.
Further than it has gone for a while…but…then the black screen flashes happened at various fractions up the screen. but it got to boot! And I could see the screen and interact with it.so I have just checked out the Energy Saver option in the System preferences, and swapped Back to the higher end Graphic card (Nvidia 9600M 512MB ram…yeah woppingly massive!)

This made me log out and back in again, and here I am! typing on it with no issues.but the fans are running pretty full on with MDS running, so will let that do its thing, just in case.

-it was AFTER swapping to the better card to game and returning back to the lowely Nvidia 9400 M (256MB - woo hoo) that my woes began.

I had managed to login in and swap back a few times, but then it just started breaking down, weird 256 color artifacts and the black flashing, which I just had again (flashing not artefacts) prior to Yet again swapping back to the higher end card and LO! now the battery is charging too
*currently 13% with 2 and a half hours to go to charge.
not bad for a 10 year old battery! original that still runs for about 3 hours (low power stuff) -instead of its original 8, but really, come on! Ive NEVER had any other laptop battery get anywhere near this!

I had also noticed the 256 Color style artifacts after shutting the lid and awakening from sleep on the login screen - that would slowly disappear as I opened new windows on the Mac.

Right, fans slowing down, Im too worried to close the lid, its hear, run thunderbird now and get my emails…
then panic and run off to do the horse medicines.

I have just done the alternator belt on my motorhome so that my batteries now charge (yay!) and the side door step - that just collapsed and greased my steering as something doenst feel right
And IM away.

right I shall leave this here… running with something to do on the screen then horses and back!
And thank you for the message regarding supstitute Mac @BeyondBeta, I might still very well take you up on this, if this starts to die again. … and sorry for the AWEFUL replies I had to write!
Thte tablet I was using, has a great idea… it puts the virtual keyboard up OVER THE SCREEN WHEN TYPING. I could see nothing
until I hit send… oh the pain… the embarrassment… it read like someone learning to write…>
Right, lets send this

WOO HOO!!

Shut lid, slept, (it not me) rebuilt case… while leaving power supply connected and charging for a few minutes and bingo.

Back in action!
wow.
I am wondering if it was something system pram/ nvram wise
as I was checking this out

and if hardware fails it fails… but this was interesting, and having the option of 2 cards in the laptop, but
you could only do this if it BOOTS… and mine just stopped doing that .
oh yeah
and it WOULDN’T boot without the Powersupply connected as - it somehow killed the full battery at the same time - this is what made me supsicious of system wide (kexts/ corrupted …somthing mumbles voodoo…)

right im off to do horses.
.and I haven’t even GOT TO TRY the animator thingy out yet!
Gah!

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you might want to check the heat sink grease and replace it with new. if the chips are overheating they will do funny things. don’t use too much or it doesn’t work.

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I’m all for extending the life of hardware if it gets the job done, but reliability trumps nostalgia or eco-friendliness. I got a business to run, and having a flaky machine can cost me big bucks, so when an eleven year old computer starts making death moans, I don’t play around. Time to upgrade.

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Left it on overnight (is this 2 days? Cant remember) soak test…erm, behaviour not as expected…>
Screen corruption back after weird trying to recover from sleep stuff… and the battery is yet again, flat.
odd.

right lets try …

ah ok well that was a bit of a total fail.

mac failed again…as i was wriiting this, and it was xmas eve …so left it behind…
drove to the english welsh borders to my mates for xmas and…
had a rear tyre blow out…
fixed that myself as i wasnt gonna wait for a recovery truck on xmas eve
no chance!

pullled out from layby with new tyre fitted , got to 3rd gear, maybe forty seconds… boom
fan belt snapped!!!
just made it to next layby…waited 1.5 hours for recovery truck…
now at my friends… with no mac, typing on a really annoying tablet, luckily for me, i have now found an external keyboard.
so

happy xxmas everyone

I hope yours is going great!

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Good grief a tire and a belt in one night? How often do you use this vehicle? What a bummer.

15

Good grief Charlie Brown! How lucky can a guy be? Like the good ole Hee-Haw, TV show song… “If it weren’t for bad luck, I’d have no luck at all. Blues, despair, and agony on me”.

Maybe it’s a good thing that you weren’t driving to your friends on a tractor in a panda suit. :panda_face:

But, then again, what else could have possibly gone wrong. I’m beginning to wonder.

I actually had a pretty good Christmas for once. And I sent out 24 CDs to 9 different states, and only two deliveries I don’t know about.

And we got invited to someone’s house that we hadn’t seen for over a year… so that was odd, but fun.

But no Christmas trees… guess we’re old as the hills and our trees are sooo small, they’re invisible.

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@schpengle …
I totally agree with and encourage resurrecting older macs. I purchased a dirt cheap late 2009 21.5-inch iMac and updated it to 16GB RAM and a 1TB SSD drive. I now have a beautiful and moderately fast computer for a total cost of $400.00 USD. So far, it’s performing flawlessly.

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https://home.cern/news/news/computing/computer-security-mac-security-nothing-old-versions

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Good point to be aware of Apple’s failure to continue providing security update to older OS’s. But there are numerous 3rd. party security apps that can be installed to make up for cracks in the wall (e.g. VPNs like TunnelBear, virus protections like Norton, network hack-prevention apps like WebRoot, etc.). I’ve also noticed that third party providers are far more responsive than are the folks at Apple.

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Screw Apple and their overpriced, elitist, absolute control, ethos. Even if Macs had some huge technological advantage and weren’t absurdly overpriced, I still wouldn’t buy one on principle because Steve Jobs was one of the biggest, lying hypocrites in tech history.

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just go to Dosdude.
no reason to NOT run the most current OS due to this benevolent genius

http://dosdude1.com