Good old MacBook inverter cable wiring. Very Apple-esque design to route a thin 4-wire cable - prone to breaking from metal fatigue with repeated bending - around a hinge. Replaced around 10 a week when these machines were still in active service in schools across SA.
Apparently with one of the most recent updates, iPhone files now working with Nautilus file manager:
Also GNOME Web/Epiphany browser is the most Safari like and also seems like the best at brightness and contrast on this inferior TN panel and with the best compromise of toolbar/address bar space (given, again, the limited screen space on this panel).
So far, been really putting this through its paces in the work space (I am in a major meeting right now) and I am impressed by just how well it works. The fans are going full bore though, this seems to a downside, but the actual temperatures are okay. Might need to install a fan control app.
Sad to report the audio jack is now full of static on the 2008 MBW–same as the 2006 MBB. I’ve been traveling around Europe for the past three weeks and I did take the 2008 MBW. It’s been good enough for my few full computer tasks, but it is indeed sad that slowly but surely these logic boards are dying.
Update time on the Save The Polycarbonates. With the latest 2008 MacBook White I grabbed from a junk bin, I was able to use it for a restoration from the one I had taken with me Vietnam and Europe. As I mentioned in my previous post.
I also made a discovery–this MacBook came with an Atheros WiFi card, not a Broadcom card like the other three Polycarbonates I have had. And wouldn’t you know it–it works just fine in the other Polycarbonates. …and the Broadcoms work just fine under 10.7.5… Which means the issue is not that what I suspected–that the connectors themselves were failing. Nope; the Broadcom driver just doesn’t work in Linux Mint, and given how good driver support generally is, this means that it’s likely a Linux wide issue. So that’s something to consider (and I’ll mention in the Linux thread, when I update that on the software side).
I also cleaned the entire inside, and the logic board looked to be in good repair. I redid the thermal paste.
The screen is also in good condition except for the tiniest of knicks I usually forget about it quickly. The plastic is generally still pretty white. Very little cracking or scratching (unlike the one it replaces).
The battery was dead, but I still have my replacement battery for MacBook White #1 that was in good condition. It still reports as having 92% capacity. It did, however, have a messed up edge, so I actually peeled off the plastic from the dead battery and put it on the replacement battery.
I got my hands on a 250GB Intel SSD, also from the junk bin, swapped in my 4GBs from MacBook White #2, and then also used the three different keyboards to create the nicest looking combination of key caps and top cover.
Then I put it all back together, and gotta say, this one is gonna last for a while, I think. And now I have even more parts anyway. And these things are only going to get cheaper, which means, I may soon get to the point where I can finally start gifting them to students. Especially students who otherwise would have no computer or are particular interested in STEM and would benefit from a Linux environment.
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