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Question Whats the oldest Mac you still use daily?

shortylickens

shortylickens

No Lifer
Anyone still have a working Berry Mac?



imac_flowershot.jpeg
 
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I want one of those to use as wall art. They are useless as a computer at this point, but they still look cool. Johnny Ive used to make cool looking stuff until he got obsessed with making every new Apple model 1 millimeter thinner than the last one.
 
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Yeah, I just replaced my 2013 Macbook Pro with a shiny new 16" 2019 model. I'd imagine that I'll keep it around as a spare for another year or two, though. Besides the dying battery, it's still a solid system.
 
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Not technically a Mac, but my wife's Hackintosh is from like 2011. Still stupid ridiculously solid. I need to upgrade it to Catalina & put in a terabyte SSD one of these days...
 
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ultimatebob said:
I want one of those to use as wall art. They are useless as a computer at this point, but they still look cool. Johnny Ive used to make cool looking stuff until he got obsessed with making every new Apple model 1 millimeter thinner than the last one.
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I wish I hadn't sold my G4 Cube - just to keep as an art piece, at least. Such a great design! I want a strawberry iMac G3 someday too. And at some point I want to convert my tower to a G4 Quicksilver. Ah, projects.
 
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I have a MacBook Pro 15” I bought in 2011. I updated the memory to 16gb and installed 2x500gb ssd drives about 3 years ago. The machine still runs well today. I recently bought a MacBook Air which I thought would be an upgrade but it wasn’t other than the form factor.

I imagine I will purchase a Intel MacBook Pro 13” this year before they are no longer sold. An arm based Mac will be Totally garbage/useless for my needs.
 
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My oldest daily use Mac is a 2008 aluminum MacBook sitting in the kitchen for recipes and surfing during breakfast.

However, my main setup is a dual iMac combo, comprised of a 2017 27" 5K iMac with a 2010 27" 2.5K iMac used as a monitor. I've posted this before, but here it is again:

DualiMac_combined_1008_noGPS.jpg

Kaido said:
I wish I hadn't sold my G4 Cube - just to keep as an art piece, at least. Such a great design! I want a strawberry iMac G3 someday too. And at some point I want to convert my tower to a G4 Quicksilver. Ah, projects.
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MacMuseum.jpg

😎
 
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BTW, the Mac Pro in the picture above is one I am currently in the midst of sprucing up.

MacProElCapitan.jpeg

Since it's a 2006 model, it's older than the daily use 2008 MacBook I mentioned above, but much faster of course (even without a CPU upgrade).

The parts are becoming really cheap these days. Paid about US$10 for an OEM Bluetooth module and US$5 for an OEM WiFi module. I also paid about US$45 for an Apple OEM Radeon 5770 (necessary for El Capitan), that is built specifically for the Mac Pro. Only thing I'm waiting for now is memory. It currently has 5 GB, but 4 GB of that is third party server RAM without the Apple-mandated large heatsinks, and it gets too hot and is unstable. So, currently I am running it with just the stock 1 GB Apple RAM, which means I'm stuck in 10.7 Lion for the time being. Man that is painful... Remember the swap file?!?

Screen Shot 2020-07-30 at 10.31.36 PM.png

That is just with Activity Monitor and ONE other application open, Firefox Legacy, and ONE web page loaded. No other tabs in the background at all. I've ordered more OEM RAM with the proper heatsinks at ~US$40 to bring me to 7 GB. And another ~US$22 for a 120 GB Crucial BX500 SSD (which in El Capitan has TRIM support).

So, all said and done that's about $120 in upgrades to get this thing ship shape. For another US$20 I can get dual quad-core Xeons to double the multi-core performance, but I'm not going to bother since with dual dual-core Xeons it's already quite snappy for general usage. I don't feel like doing the firmware flashes and disassembling the machine at this point to install new CPUs, considering I won't be doing anything heavy duty on this machine.
 
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Eug said:
So, all said and done that's about $120 in upgrades to get this thing ship shape. For another US$20 I can get dual quad-core Xeons to double the multi-core performance, but I'm not going to bother since with dual dual-core Xeons it's already quite snappy for general usage. I don't feel like doing the firmware flashes and disassembling the machine at this point to install new CPUs, considering I won't be doing anything heavy duty on this machine.
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Famous last words.

Got bored yesterday and did the firmware flashes to MacPro2,1, and I've got a pair of 2.33 GHz quad-core Xeon E5345 chips on order. 😛

The deciding point for me was video playback. 720p Netflix (Radeon 5770) and even 1440p YouTube VP9 worked well enough on the 2.66 GHz dual-core Xeon 5150 chips, if that's all they were doing, but any multi-tasking could cause some lag. For example, if I wanted to open up a menu while playing a video in Netflix, sometimes there would be a lag in the menu opening and/or a video stutter. Not a big deal, but nonetheless an annoyance. Hopefully going to 8-core will eliminate or at least markedly reduce this type of lag.
 
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Eug said:
Famous last words.

Got bored yesterday and did the firmware flashes to MacPro2,1, and I've got a pair of 2.33 GHz quad-core Xeon E5345 chips on order. 😛

The deciding point for me was video playback. 720p Netflix (Radeon 5770) and even 1440p YouTube VP9 worked well enough on the 2.66 GHz dual-core Xeon 5150 chips, if that's all they were doing, but any multi-tasking could cause some lag. For example, if I wanted to open up a menu while playing a video in Netflix, sometimes there would be a lag in the menu opening and/or a video stutter. Not a big deal, but nonetheless an annoyance. Hopefully going to 8-core will eliminate or at least markedly reduce this type of lag.
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The machine came with 9 GB RAM, but it turns out 8 GB (4 x 2 GB) was garbage. It was some no-name brand called Wintec and it was ALL bad. That just left the OEM 1 GB (512 MB x 2) RAM. Can you believe they shipped this high dollar Mac Pro with just 1 GB RAM?!? Do give it credit, the Wintec RAM did not have the proper Apple-approved heatsinks, because it was designed for better cooled servers, but still, if the RAM got just moderately warm, it would fail. With that RAM installed, to keep the machine from crashing, I had to make sure the room wasn't warmer than usual and had to keep the case cover off. And then it would still fail after a time after the RAM warmed up.

So I ordered 4 GB (1 GB x 4) more RAM with the proper heatsinks for the time being, until I could get more later. Unfortunately, the shop messed up the order so I still had no RAM, but they made up for it in spades. Not only did they deliver my 4 GB RAM as requested, they added another 16 GB RAM for free. 😳 The extra 16 GB did not have the Apple-approved heatsinks either, but it works just fine.

MacPro20GBconfig.png

MacProMemoryTypes.jpg

20 GB in a 2006 machine isn't too shabby. 😉 However, I ended up taking out 8 GB just to be safe because it's a mismatched pair and one of them doesn't technically meet the timing specs (as the Micron is PC2-5300-555-12 not PC2-5300-555-11), but I'm not complaining since they were free anyway, and I still have a total of 13 GB (2 x 4 GB, 4 x 1 GB, 2 x 512 MB) now in the machine.

I am now just awaiting the two quad-core Xeon E5345 chips to arrive so I can take the final step in this upgrade journey, which is to replace the CPUs.
 
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I spoke too soon. I could get the other RAM I got this week to fail under intense conditions, so I figured it had to be the lack of the proper heatsinks, and the interaction with the Mac. After some experimentation with Macs Fan Control, I discovered that I could get the Wintec RAM to work. As mentioned, it just couldn't stand the heat. It turns out the problem is that it doesn't have a heat temp diode anywhere in them. So, there is no way for the Mac Pro to know what temp they are, and thus no way to adjust cooling for the RAM.

As seen by the Macs Fan Control software, there are two memory slots where the Mac Pro measures memory temperature. If you stick the Wintec in there, the Mac Pro sees no temp to measure, so it just defaults to baseline 500 rpm. (I had read elsewhere that when the RAM temp couldn't be measured, the Mac would default to full fan speed. However, what actually happens is the exact opposite, and the Mac defaults to minimum fan speed.) In this scenario the Wintec RAM overheats and fails. Also, if you put OEM Apple RAM with the giant heatsinks in there, the Mac Pro sees it but measures a relatively cool RAM temp, again keeping the fan at baseline 500 rpm. Thus again in this setup, the Wintec RAM overheats and fails.

However, it turns out the RAM I got this week included Kingston server RAM that just had standard heat spreaders like the Wintec, but which also includes the temp diode. It also runs just as hot (if not hotter) than the Wintec RAM. So I stuck the Kingston RAM in those DIMM slots with temperature measurement and suddenly the Mac Pro could see the RAM running really hot, and would then ramp up the fans to keep them from going over 80C. In this scenario, I could add the Wintec RAM and it would work, because the cooling of the Kingston RAM also cooled the Wintec RAM of course.

Unfortunately, while it works, I don't like this setup because the Mac Pro becomes periodically noisy due to the fans. Plus, when the Wintec RAM is installed, it cause problems with manual warm restarts when the RAM is hot so it’s clear the Wintec RAM is still problematic. I am currently using the Kingston server RAM with my OEM RAM. The Kingston RAM does cause the the fans to kick in a bit but it’s not as bad when used in combination with the OEM RAM with the big heat sinks.

I never thought dealing with RAM would be so complicated, but I guess that's what you get when dealing with server parts.
 
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2011 MBP 15". I put an SSD in it almost immediately after buying it along with upgraded RAM (and I've upgraded the SSD a couple times over the years). In late 2016 its logic board was replaced as part of the botched logic board repair program Apple issued. It's continued working since then, including being used as a Modded Minecraft machine for my friend's kid, so obviously it's continued to hold up (the laptop sounds like a turbine while playing).

My only other Mac is a 2012 rMBP 15", which is still my daily driver. In all honesty I'm kind of tired of both of them. They run so hot, and are generally slow at this point, especially with modern streaming content (thank god for h264ify for YouTube). I actually got into Macs because my workplace offered a substantial yearly discount for them, but after they stopped, I stopped buying them.
 
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I have a new favourite old Mac. :kissingheart:

I was perusing Kijiji and came across a very cheap Mac Pro, but the ad had very few useful details. It turns out it was because it was machine that had been put out as garbage, so the guy picked it up but couldn't get the thing to boot and didn't really test further as he wasn't really a Mac guy. The machine had been wiped already so there was no OS, so I tried to boot it with an external drive, but it died with all sorts of video anomalies which explains why it was in the garbage in the first place. Despite this, I bought it anyway, because from what I could tell, it was a nicely configured machine with some good parts and because I thought there was a good chance it was just a dead GPU.

I took it home and swapped out the GPU, added a boot drive, and instantly I had a fully functional 8-core 3 GHz Xeon X5365 machine. 🙂 I even have USB 3 in it too now, using a 10 year-old D-Link USB 3 card I just happened to have.

MacPro21-X5365-28GB-MixedRAM.png
 
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I'll chime in here, why not? My daily driver when I work from home used to be a 2013 rMBP 15". 512GB SSD with 16GB RAM. THere's a little bit of a story behind that one.

I had found it in my work's recycle bin for electronics. This was maybe 2017 or so. An employee had brought it for proper disposal after Apple quoted her almost $1000 for a new motherboard to fix it. I asked her if she wanted me to look at it for her, I'd be much cheaper, and could maybe offer a much more cost effective fix. She refused (obviously put a lot of faith in Apple's diagnosis... I didn't). So I took it. I booted it to an OS USB drive and attempted to clean install it, it installed, and ran for a time but would always get pinwheels after so long. After they started it was almost constant, every program I tried to open, every menu i tried to access, just pinwheel pinwheel pinwheel. So I set it aside until I had time to crack into it. I thought maybe it was cooling. Once I did crack it open i checked all the fans and heatsinks, all good, all clean. Even removed them, regreased the CPU/GPU, etc. I kicked myself for setting it aside for so long though, finally, almost by accident, I reseated the SSD. Once I did that the system ran flawlessly, still does.

Ive since replaced that with a 2016 rMBP 13" with 4 USB-C ports and a CalDigit Dock so it can run on my two 27" IPS monitors. If I want to take it with or use it on the couch, just unhook one cable and off I go.

The 15" is still solid though.

At work, I have a 2014 27" Retina iMac. i7 clocked at 4.0GHz, 32GB RAM and a 256GB SSD. Much like Eug's setup, that one is plugged into a 2010 iMac that runs as a second display. I will often Screen Share into it when i need to run a mundane task like DoD wiping a hard drive or something that it can just sit and churn on while I use it as the 2014's second display. Setup still works great, both machines still work fine, though the 2010 is god-awful slow with a mechanical drive in it, and an i3. Some small image burn in on the 2014 Retina from 6 years of use but its not noticeable unless you look close on certain color shades. Runs Catalina, snappy and fast. Probably won't be replaced for another 1 to 2 years at least.

My parents still rock my OLDEST 2008 MBP that I gave them so we can Facetime a couple times a month. The front plastic screen cover has fallen off and my dad has glued it back on a couple times. But it does still work.

Officially the 2010 iMac at work is my oldest Mac that I use daily.
 
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Paperlantern said:
I'll chime in here, why not? My daily driver when I work from home used to be a 2013 rMBP 15". 512GB SSD with 16GB RAM. THere's a little bit of a story behind that one.

I had found it in my work's recycle bin for electronics. This was maybe 2017 or so. An employee had brought it for proper disposal after Apple quoted her almost $1000 for a new motherboard to fix it. I asked her if she wanted me to look at it for her, I'd be much cheaper, and could maybe offer a much more cost effective fix. She refused (obviously put a lot of faith in Apple's diagnosis... I didn't). So I took it. I booted it to an OS USB drive and attempted to clean install it, it installed, and ran for a time but would always get pinwheels after so long. After they started it was almost constant, every program I tried to open, every menu i tried to access, just pinwheel pinwheel pinwheel. So I set it aside until I had time to crack into it. I thought maybe it was cooling. Once I did crack it open i checked all the fans and heatsinks, all good, all clean. Even removed them, regreased the CPU/GPU, etc. I kicked myself for setting it aside for so long though, finally, almost by accident, I reseated the SSD. Once I did that the system ran flawlessly, still does.
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Heh. The last two Macs mentioned were both picked out of the garbage. 😛

Yours was a fully functional MBP which just had a loose connection. Mine was a Mac Pro with just had a defective GPU, easily replaced.
 
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