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Swapping Macbook battery

I’ve had my Macbook Pro ever since my wife bought it for me back in 2014 for Christmas. It’s been a great machine for me and has provided years of reliable service. Unfortunately, it has gotten to the point where the battery will only last about an hour while unplugged.

After I started working from home, I moved my office to the space that was previously my wife’s studio. And since I am now separated from the main house by a garage, I need reliable mobile computing to move around the house. Yes, the other macbook works, but it’s SO SLOW.

ifixit.com made this task easy. I bought the appropriate battery replacement kit from them and followed this guide of theirs.

Once I had the parts and the instructions printed out, I got to work on a Saturday morning. First, I drained the battery to the point that the laptop went to sleep to reduce power hazards as much as possible. Then, using the stardriver provided in ifixit’s kit, and under Bandit’s supervision, removed the back plate and was greeted with the laptop’s innards.

No going back now.

After working for a bit, my stomach reminded me that it was lunch time. However, my workspace was a mess of tiny screws, disassembled components, and tools. I could just see Bandit jumping down and causing a problem or two while I went in to eat. I couldn’t take him inside with me because he was comfortable and cat law was in effect. Then I realized the incredibly fortuitous fact that my desk is a roll top! I just dropped the cover and my workspace was protected.

Picture of Bandit resting on top of my rolltop desk
Shield’s up!

Getting back to the project after eating, the biggest part

Picture of the removed battery
Old malfunctioning battery has finally been removed
picture of the new battery installed in the Macbook Pro
New battery installed

ifixit battery successfully found by MacOS
Post-installation battery details

I am happy to report it has survived it’s first complete power cycle and lasts MUCH longer than previously. Very good investment of time for this project.

Running Linux on an old Macbook

A friend recently gave me an old macbook, [from about 2009-ish?]

TL;DR
Linux Mint with it’s Cinnamon desktop resulted in the fewest headaches out of the box for me and my needs.

I’ve been looking for a lightweight PC to serve as a dock for my portable hard drives, kind of functioning as an ugly sort of NAS. I have been using my 2011 Macbook Pro with a USB hub. However, it is a pain to disconnect all the USB drives from it if I need to move. But with another small computer I can permanently untether the Macbook and use it around the house again!

So when I was gifted another old Macbook, I set about finding what Linux distro would work best with it.

TIP: To get to the boot select screen on this version of a Macbook, press and hold the Option key when the machine is first booted until the boot device selection menu appears.

As I dabbled, I came up with a list of features I was looking for.

  • Does it boot without error?
  • Does it resume from sleep?
  • Does it resume from a lid close?
  • Does the bluetooth work?
  • Does the wifi work out of the box?
  • Other notes

These are the distros I ended up trying

  • Manjaro
  • ElementaryOS
  • Pop! OS
  • Ubuntu
  • Deepin
  • Ubuntu with MATE
  • Mint
Boots?Resume from sleep?Resume from lid close?Bluetooth?Wifi OOTB?Notes
Manjaro KDEYes, but with errorsYesNonot testedYes
Manjaro XFCEYesYesYesNo, headphones not recognized as outputNo/Yes, when installed on EthernetNo option to add nVidia drivers from install disc
Wifi works OOB
elementaryOSYesNoNonot testedNo
Pop! OSYesYesNonot testedNo
UbuntuYesYesNoYesNo/Yes, when installed on Ethernet
Linux MintYesYesYesYesNo, but an easy add from discwifi & nVidia drivers easily added from disc
DeepinYes, but slowNoNoYesYestrackpad X-axis input is Y-axis cursor movement & no x-axis cursor movement possible
App Store and default browser don’t work
The test results

The most difficult hurdle for any of these distros to overcome was resuming from sleep due to the lid being closed. All but Mint and Manjaro XFCE failed this test. I imagine this is more of a desktop environment issue than related to any particular underlying Linux distro.

The results of these simple tests put Linux Mint with it’s default Cinnamon desktop as the clear winner for my needs.

Worth noting is the utter failure of the Deepin distro. It was unusable on this Macbook and disappointing to such a degree that I doubt I’ll bother with it ever again.

Weekend cleaning

I did some household chores this weekend.  A little bit of laundry, some cooking, grocery shopping for the upcoming week, and cleaning the guts of my laptop and Xbox 360.

It all started with a kink in my neck. A kink that developed because I had to lay on my stomach in the floor, in order to use my Dell Inspiron 1521. I had to use my laptop in the floor because the damn thing gets way too hot if I use it anywhere but directly over an A/C register. I finally got fed up with having to deal with this and decided to investigate the cause.  I haven’t cleaned it since I bought it in 2007, so I figured maybe there was at least some dust accumulation inside. So I set about opening up the laptop to check things out.

Holy crap! The screws used to hold this thing together! There are so many screws to remove in order to get to the motherboard. I suppose it might have been a bit easier, had I had a guide. But I couldn’t find one (Makes me wish I had taken photographs, so that I could help other Inspiron owners), so I had to wing it. After removing approximately 20 tiny Phillips head screws, I finally got to the internals of the system, and, sure enough, the heat sink was almost completely clogged with dust. I don’t have any canned air, but I blew that out easily enough with just my breath. Turns out, all of those years of blowing Nintendo cartridges were good for something. This resulted in a huge plume of dust being ejected from the main-board and directly into my face. I know, I’m so smart. So after I recovered from a sneezing fit, I proceeded on to phase 2 of my cleaning mission. In my search for the nonexistent Inspiron 1521 dis-assembly guide, I happened across a forum mentioning Dell laptops and the shitty thermal paste that is used on their CPUs. I popped the heat sink off of the Athlon 2800+ and checked. True to the forum poster’s word, the bottom of the heat sink (and top of the CPU) were covered, not with a paste, but a coagulated grey solid. I don’t know if it was age or heat or just an inferior product, but there was no way this junk was going to transfer any heat in its current state. I easily scraped off the crud, cleaned the area with a bit of isopropyl alcohol and applied a thin line of Arctic Silver that I had in my tool kit. Knowing that I had at least reduced some of the problem areas in the internals, I excitedly reassembled the laptop. After having run it consistently for a few days now, I can tell you that the results have far exceeded my expectations. Everything is running much much cooler now, and quieter to boot because the exhaust fan isn’t working overtime any more.
With that cleaning successfully under my belt, I wondered if the same thing would help the xbox 360. I easily found this guide and set to taking apart my beloved 360. Once I got to the insides, yep, heat sink was clogged with dust.  Using a bit more caution this time around, I blew out the dust from this heat sink as well. A quick reassembly, and I can now report that the Xbox is noticeably more quiet.

Hopefully these cleanings will allow me to squeeze a little bit more performance and longevity out of these devices.

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