AlricLantra
Member
So I work as a repair technician, and frequently run a "Wanted: Broken Apple Laptops" ad on my local Craigslist. Today I got in one of the oddest things I've ever seen . . . . what appears to be an unreleased prototype version of the 2007 15" Macbook Pro Santa Rosa.
Upon initial inspection I did a bit of a double-take. Taking out the battery and removing the memory cover there was something that definitely didn't belong . . . . a sim card slot! The man who brought it in said it was a prototype and that he had worked on the design. The 3G feature was then removed before the final release, and he kept the sample and used it as a personal laptop since. Apparently it died on him and he attempted to replace the logic board with no success (his new board appears to be DOA from my tests). I bought it from him for more than I usually pay for parts value, and set about to inspect it further.
The slot in question:
Inside, all the PCBs are a bright red color instead of the normal blue/green of production Apple hardware. The logic board appears to have several hand-soldered wires added and tiny differences from a stock Santa Rosa board, as well as an extra two connectors: one that goes to the SIM slot and one that I assume is where a cell radio board would sit. I might be wrong, but I don't see any other radio chips or antennas not on the production board so I assume it must have been on a daughter card. These connectors have solder traces present on a production board but not populated. The optical drive is marked as an evaluation sample, and there are "EVR" markings on the board's label.
Here you can see the SIM card board. Much of it appears to have been hand soldered:
The additional connectors on the logic board:
Here's a standard production board for comparison:
I'm getting on attempting to repair the machine and get it functional. I'm really curious as to whether I'll see anything in the dmesg log when I insert a SIM card! The other hardware such as the screen assembly and drive were standard and don't seem to be different from the production model.
Either way its a really nifty piece of Apple history, and certainly raises some questions for me about why the feature was left out. There's been speculation for years about 3G Macbook Pros, but this kind of proof that not only was Apple considering it but they actually DID it and had prototype machines with it functional then backtracked really raises some questions for me.
I'll post some better pictures when I get my decent camera back from the other shop, for now cellphone pics will have to content. I'll post an update if I can get it running . . . . I wonder if it will have any trouble with a standard OS X install?
Upon initial inspection I did a bit of a double-take. Taking out the battery and removing the memory cover there was something that definitely didn't belong . . . . a sim card slot! The man who brought it in said it was a prototype and that he had worked on the design. The 3G feature was then removed before the final release, and he kept the sample and used it as a personal laptop since. Apparently it died on him and he attempted to replace the logic board with no success (his new board appears to be DOA from my tests). I bought it from him for more than I usually pay for parts value, and set about to inspect it further.
The slot in question:
Inside, all the PCBs are a bright red color instead of the normal blue/green of production Apple hardware. The logic board appears to have several hand-soldered wires added and tiny differences from a stock Santa Rosa board, as well as an extra two connectors: one that goes to the SIM slot and one that I assume is where a cell radio board would sit. I might be wrong, but I don't see any other radio chips or antennas not on the production board so I assume it must have been on a daughter card. These connectors have solder traces present on a production board but not populated. The optical drive is marked as an evaluation sample, and there are "EVR" markings on the board's label.
Here you can see the SIM card board. Much of it appears to have been hand soldered:
The additional connectors on the logic board:
Here's a standard production board for comparison:
I'm getting on attempting to repair the machine and get it functional. I'm really curious as to whether I'll see anything in the dmesg log when I insert a SIM card! The other hardware such as the screen assembly and drive were standard and don't seem to be different from the production model.
Either way its a really nifty piece of Apple history, and certainly raises some questions for me about why the feature was left out. There's been speculation for years about 3G Macbook Pros, but this kind of proof that not only was Apple considering it but they actually DID it and had prototype machines with it functional then backtracked really raises some questions for me.
I'll post some better pictures when I get my decent camera back from the other shop, for now cellphone pics will have to content. I'll post an update if I can get it running . . . . I wonder if it will have any trouble with a standard OS X install?
