Hacker News

Love the energy with "i decided to just go for it.". The soldering to the touchpad is absolutely frightful, but you know what? First time soldering (to small testpoints no less), it works, it can always be fixed later if the joints fail. I've been getting too caught up in perfection with my recent projects, it's a good reminder that with a userbase of 1, it really doesn't matter.

They never actually say what the project is, LOL. I figured out that it’s to put the guts of a framework laptop into an old MacBook case.

Wow, 64 GB of RAM.

I'm really tempted to build a modern computer into an HP Jornada case. I really miss that form factor. It's pocketable yet has a usable keyboard.

I have an old aluminium 17" MacBook. It got retired fairly early because it suffered from a design flaw but was outside the free replacement window.

Its screen is nice, and there looks to be plenty of room inside. I have been keeping an eye on options for putting something else inside. Its mostly the power delivery for the display that I think is beyond my skill that's holding me back.

The palm rest plastic and screen frame cracked on almost all of these. Not a model I romanticize.

https://www.cultofmac.com/how-to/exchange-your-cracked-macbo...

I remember these Macbooks did tend to break apart at the corners of the palmrests.

But I like the idea of re-visiting Macbook plastic chassis w/ new inside.

I would love to know what the weight is in the end.

Can the old Macbook chassis lead to a lighter weight computer than the current 1.23kg Macbook neo and Macbook air?

I want a laptop form factor that is basically a briefcase with the display, computer and battery with space for a keyboard and mouse of some kind. I basically hate laptop keyboards/trackpads but want a portable computer. Plan on building my own at some point using frame.work components as the base but I haven't started on it yet. One day.

I’d love the same thing but with the titanium powerbooks / intels. What a beautiful design it was.

Interesting because I always felt like the Framework already looks like a Macbook Pro with the grey case and the black keys.

I had a black and white MacBook that was a Frankensteins Monster made out of at least 3 of these. It was around 2011-12 and I couldn’t afford anything else. I think I still remember how to disassemble them by heart… <3

very cool project. id like to do something similar with my favorite thinkpad models.

that said, practice soldering, the insulation on those wires[0] and the sheer distance that they wicked solder upwards makes me really wonder how much heat got dumped into those tiny pads!

[0]: https://fb.edoo.gg/assets/images/image06.jpg?v=86ae0ddf

This is pretty impressive! I'm always impressed with what one can 3D print to fit commercial products into a previous case! Modifying to fit the larger webcam module, battery in that way was neat too. Does the display connect via framework's cable without modification? I have an old motherboard running headless I was thinking of resurrecting but if I need to hook up a USC-C display.

Now you should go and reinforce the two lines on top of the screen, make them wider. Or replace them with something softer. Otherwise they will crush your topcase to a pulp. Like they did on every genuine macbook out there for many years because Apple never bothered to fix it.

Personally I thought the later plastic macbook with the rounded edges was a much nicer design. Or the earliest white iBooks, which had a transparent case with white paint inside so they had this really cool glow. Unfortunately that caused shadows on the tiniest scratch which acted like a magnifying glass, so you really had to keep it pristine. But in those days a macbook was super expensive so I always kept mine in sleeves.

By the way I love what you've done with the EL film powering the back apple light. That looks amazing. It should always have been implemented like this, so you can drive it separately.

An ebook reader from Framework would be awesome....

This is brilliant! The techniques remind me of a lot of my Toughbook modding, back in the day, which I did not document nearly enough.

I still have the shell of a CF-17 that's just begging for new guts... but I'd have to aim for something quite a bit lower-power as it's a sealed chassis with no provision for air cooling. Perhaps a CM4-based build...

Aaah! Why must other people be so productive! It gives me too many projects!

The first-gen macbook shared a lot of internals with certain Dell laptops of the era. In 2010 I was homeless and attending high school at a boarding school and didn't have nice macbooks like my classmates, but I cobbled together my first laptop that summer from a few different old salvaged Dell models.

Dual-booting into a hackintosh was a breeze. I eventually salvaged an old T60 and it was a similar case, enough crossover in components that it wasn't any trouble running macOS.

This was in an era where you wanted Apple software even on non-Apple hardware. Today, it's the opposite.

Can I just say again that I absolutely love what Framework's built/enabled? Between projects like this and things like the RISC dev board, they've immediately become the hacker supplier of choice. When they first debuted, I was skeptical they'd survive, but they've really shown you can build a successful company for a niche audience, and they've had a huge impact for the maker community.

So it's a Hackintosh?

I wish the same could be done with the 11 inch MacBook airs, still my favorite laptop I’ve owned.

The mid-2000s Yahoo chat writing style is too grating for me in this article.

theseus's macbook, love it!

Very cool!

Ugh, those bezels are so 2000. Maybe a good laptop if you don't wanna look at it all the time (e.g., as a home server).

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