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We're eating good tonight. Especially 'cause we didn't spend all our money on the MacBook.

Okay, so we are into El Capitan. So let's actually make sure that everything is showing up. Look how snappy it is. Oh wait, what? Why does it show four gigs of RAM? Oh, okay, so I need to check that, that's not right. But you can see here that we've got ourselves a 240 gigs solid state drive. So this is the mid 2009 model with the 2.26 gigahertz Core 2 Duo. And it does have the Geforce 9400M. I can play Minecraft and Runescape, and should be able to watch HD videos actually.

So the battery is showing up fine. So basically all I need to do is just restart the computer and make sure that both of my sticks of RAM are working. But assuming that I just didn't insert it all the way or something. We've got a fully functional MacBook.

Yeah baby eight gigs of RAM! Mmh!

So I'm gonna give you a full tutorial but I'm using OpenCore Legacy Patcher. So what this allows me to do is to create a MacOS installer, which I did pick MacOS Monterey. And then you can build and install OpenCore which basically patches it to put a lot of like the drivers and the support for this specific MacBook in.

Theoretically, I can now restart this system with my flash drive installed. It will load up a copy of MacOS Monterey which is two years old, but it's quite recent. And then I think I need to run one thing after the fact and I will have a fully functional MacBook that actually can do stuff in 2023.

So I'm gonna hold option and hit the power button. That should give me the USB as a boot drive and it does. Okay, so we don't need that. I think I need to do EFI boot, yes. OpenCore Patcher, let's do that.

All right, yes, so I want to install MacOS monitoring. Yes, I do.

Hey yo, MacOS recovery, boom. So we are in, so I guess what I'll do is I will just nuke my existing OS installation. Okay, goodbye El Capitan.

(laughing) Hope this works or I'll have to start from scratch.

Uh-oh, I don't like a beach ball. That's not good. (laughing)

Yahoo! I don't want on a beach ball on the very first screen. Oh no, oh, oh, oh, what?

Yes, I agree, I agree, yeah, boy! Yep. Yep.

Is it actually gonna work?

It's working!

Okay my friends. So assuming it doesn't crash and burn on me in 23 minutes, I'll have a copy of MacOS Monterey on my hundred dollar MacBook.

(grunting) Okay, I'm gonna be patient, let this install and then we're gonna see exactly what it's like to use a 2009 MacBook that's been fully upgraded for less than a hundred dollars. And I'm also gonna gloat a lot.

So I've been using the MacBook for a few days and I have some thoughts. First and foremost, this is a 14 year old system so tempering your expectations is important. That being said, though, it is usable here in 2023.

The keyboard is decent, the track pad is phenomenal. The only thing I can really ding it for for everyday use is the actual screen. Now the quality of the display is totally fine. It's the resolution that lets it down. 1280 by 800 is just not enough pixels for even like regular web browsing, especially considering that MacOS typically loses a little bit of the top and the bottom of you have your dock up.

It's workable, but it does feel quite cramped, especially considering this is a 13 inch laptop. At a hundred dollars for this, $100 MacBook challenge, I think it did pretty well. But if you were to spend say $200, you get a significantly newer retina MacBook. Or if you spend like three or $400, you're getting into MacBook Touch Bar territory.

At the end of the day, I bought a laptop that was pretty much destined to become e-waste and turned it into a fully functional device that can be used in 2023. It's got years of life ahead of it. Thanks to the newer version of MacOS and the upgrades I've done. Plus I now have a system that has an optical drive and FireWire. It's really neat.

But if you enjoy, definitely be sure to subscribe to my channel and let me know in the comments below what project should I do next?

WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: en- Welcome to the $100 MacBook Project.My goal is simple.With $100 in my pocketI'm going to attemptto purchase a MacBook,upgrade it and fix itup to as much as I canand get it usable in 2023.Ever since Apple Silicon came out,there've been absolute floodsof older Intel MacBooks.That are being sold fornext to nothing on eBay.So I saw a terrific Luke Miani videowhere he was able to find a $24 MacBook.Now, while I'm not gonnago quite that cheap.My hope is I can find a MacBookthat's maybe 40, 50 bucks.I'm gonna straight do whatLuke did in his video.I'm gonna go for buy itnow, lowest price first.So let's see what we can find.Well, number one is a pizza cutter.Am I cutting apple slices?Old Apple MacBook for repair or parts.Okay, so it's like 20, a little over $20.Oh my God.What did someone run overthis with a car or something?MacBook Air.Okay, so whoa, what areyou selling this thing for?Put that in the recycle bin.Look how swollen themiddle of this MacBook is.Uhuh, nope, nope, not doing that.Ooh! Lots of MacBook parts.I might need some of these.What do we get here?We get some screensand some keyboards for some MacBook Airs.and a Pro.Huh.Oh, you know what?Potentially, what if I buy two MacBooksand Frankenstein them togetherinto one functioning MacBook?Ooh, okay, okay.So here's one that's actuallyfunctional and booted.$40, but there's keyboard issue,there are few keys on thekeyboard that doesn't work.If the only issue withthis is I need to buy itand swap out the keyboard, Ican get a replacement keyboard.Or I could just buy another MacBookand just Frankenstein the parts together.Here is another 13 inch MacBook.This might be my move.Visually, it looks great.The screen is fully functional.I think I've got the MacBookthat I want to start this project with.Let me put my order in,try to get my hands on itand let's see exactly how much workI'm really gonna need todo and how much budget.I'm gonna have to do it with.My friends, it is here.This is our $20 MacBookplus 37.99 shippingand I'm very excited.So the listing that we purchased saidthat it is pretty much afully up and running MacBook.It's got hard drive, RAM everything we needexcept that it is bootingto a white screen.Now that doesn't sound good,but at $38 shipped,I'm feeling optimisticand I also just really wanna play with it.So I actually accidentally opened the boxbefore I realized it was a MacBookbut I have not actually opened it.Don't worry, I'm not, I'm nota dirty cheater like that.Because we only have ahundred dollar budget.I've had to be very carefulwith the things I purchase.However, I did preemptively go aheadand buy a MagSafe power adapter.This ran me, I think $13.So I definitely need that.So visually, the outside's fine.Some nicks and scuffs butnothing out of the ordinaryfor a 10 year old laptop.Smells quite pleasant.Ooh, okay, so the,the hinge is not straight.So you see how on this sideit's like flat and flush.On this side look howmuch the gap is there.The whole thing, like wiggles,like can you see how much the gap,like that should not be there.Like look on this side, there's nothing.So that makes me a little concerned.See what it looks like on the inside.Okay, this is fine.This is fine.That hinge has definitelyseen better days like it,if you listen to it.(popping sound)(grunts)What I'm gonna try to avoid with thisis having to buy a second MacBookand Frankensteining thegood parts together.That would be in some ways the best move'cause I could buyanother like $40 MacBook.But at that point I'm gonnahave no budget for upgrades.Again, I've already spent$13 on the power supply.So this point I've onlygot, I feel like 40 bucks,maybe even a little less than$40 to work with right now.First test is to seeif the battery willtake any kind of charge.If not I'm gonna be spendingsome decent money on a battery.Oh okay, okay.So yes, yes, yes.So the battery's been turnedon, it is now charging.Okay.So at least we do havea battery inside herewhich will hold some level of charge.We'll let the battery charge a little bit.Let me crack it openand take a look to seeif there's any obvioussigns of water damageor of disaster on the inside.Okay.Let's crack it open and see what we got.Ooh, okay.It's actually quite clean on the inside.Like, I mean, a little tiny bit of dustbut nothing that's,that bad.So we've got a battery,which is of course it's anofficial actual Apple battery.So it's not been replaced.It's certainly not gonna be good'cause it's gonna be, you know,10 years old at this point.But if it holds any kind of charge,I can probably work with it.So for the sake of completenessI have removed the batteryand I've removed the hard drive.I've reseat the RAM andI've dusted everything out.So theoretically it shouldboot without the battery.Oh wait, I hear something.It turned over.Wait, it turned off.Oh, the fan spinning, the fan spinning.Oh, oh, oh, okay, okay, we got progress.We actually have some signs of...(loud cheering)What! And it chimed too.It's a white screen, but it chimed.Okay.Not perfect 'cause westill gotta figure outwhy it's not actually postingbut at least we have signs of life.Resetting.Oh, there we go.So we're resetting the PRAM.So we'll give that a first try.Oh, oh, oh, oh, we gotit, we got it, we got it.Okay, we got the flashing disc icon.Okay, so resetting the PRAM did do it.So now it's just lookingfor an operating system.(magical sound)I was really worried there for a second.We've got, this is, this isexactly what you want to see.This just means that theMacBook should be functionalif we can just get an operating system on.So now I'm gonna just tryputting the hard driveback in first just so I canget any kind of life out of it.Hard drive's clicking away.Oh okay, interesting.So I hook, hook up the hard drive.Now instead of getting a nodisc error I'm getting a...It doesn't like the disc.So either there's no OS on the hard drivewhich would be strange ormaybe the hard drive has died.Next step, I'm goingto plug this hard driveinto a newer MacBook to see ifit will function in any way.So the drive is trying to spin upbut that doesn't sound good.Oh wait, no, no, it does, it does.Macintosh HD.Mac OS 13.3.3.Mac OS Extended Journaled 320 hard drive.So the hard drive does actually function.Apparently Christine witha C and Khristine with a K.So Christine, I will deleteeverything on your drive,don't worry.But our hard drive works.Right now I'm feeling pretty positive,like this is, this isactually really good news.This thing, when it was notbooting at all, I was stressed.So let me make the installer first.- So this is theMacBook that I'm working on.So what I had to do to make the installeris I had to pull out anotherold MacBook that was compatiblewith El Capitanand it took so long to actuallyget the installer to work.Thankfully it is now copyingall of my El Capitan filesover here.The copy of the installer app failed.- Of course it did.Why would it work?I didn't think that by trying to workwith a hundred dollar budget,my biggest problems would just be...Getting a USB installer to work.- What are you still doing here?- Hello my friends.I have made progress.So I did have to use a MacBook Airbecause apparently this is dyingand keeps ejecting USBsafter a few minutes.But regardless, I nowhave the USB installerand this is fully functional.So first of all, I doknow that this disk works.So in disk utility,even though the OS looks like it's broken,I actually have it up and running.But now I wanna find outwhat the battery health isbecause it has actually nowstarted to take a chargewhich it was not going yesterday.So this battery doeshave a capacity of 3933compared to 5450 when it first came out.I don't know the math on thatbut it's probably somewherein the neighborhood of 75,80% of the original capacity.So I think it's safe to saythat this is now a fullyfunctional MacBook.A fresh copy of Mac OS andit will be up and running.But even factoring in shippingeven factoring in my actual charger,I still have about a $50budget to upgrade this thing.So now I really just need to think aboutwhat do I actually want todo to this to make it better.So I've never worked on oneof these motherboards before.So I know that on the flipsideof this is like my CPU.So like I can like, you know,change the thermal pasteand clean and tidy up.I got a bunch of like dirtout of the heat sink already,but something's not letting it out.Ah!Okay.I've got some progress hereand I can also see is Ithink I still have a cableunderneath here.I do.Okay.- So ah,this is why I want topull the logic board out.That is about 13 years of dustthat has just beenabsolutely caked on here.You can get a little bit ofjust compressed air here.So you know what I'mlooking at is what was,what's attached to is actuallythe bottom of the keyboard.So if I wanted to,I could actually remove thisas well, but I don't need to.The keyboard as far as Iknow is fully functioning.I should have checked keyboard.Well to be fair, thelisting didn't say anythingabout a broken keyboard and Idid type on it a little bit.I think it's fine.I'd be really grumpy if Ihave to redo all of this.- Okay,so now that I have removed the logic board.I'm going to take off the heat sink.I'm going to repaste bothour CPU and GPU here.Get some dust off the speaker.Just try to clean up as much as I can.And while I'm in hereI also wanna see if Ican maybe fix the hingebut that'll be a problem for later.I'll go ahead and setthis off to the side.Let's clean up this logic board.Cue the slow motion dust blowing montage.(soft music)(soft music continues)- I pulled in a ringer.Luke is the editor on Denki.- It looks like thishas just like popped outbut what we probablyshould do is take it apart.Just take it out and thenwe can push it back inand then clip the whole thing back.- Um.- Yeah.(laughing)- Are you okay?(laughing)- So I had all my screwsin very specific spotsand now they've got alittle jumbled, that's fine.- See, that's whywe use the magnetic pad.- Well I, the mag-- Yeah, I waswondering why you didn't use it.(cross talking)It's right there.- I have things on mymagnetic pad and here.It's okay I can rememberbig screw goes in big hole.Little screw, little screw, it's fine.Okay, so I have now undone the hinge.- I'm surprised you have kids.(laughing)- I'm a big fan ofdon't ask for directionsor favors just ask for forgivenesswhen you break the thing.- Who's gonna forgive you?- The commenters when Ihave to buy another MacBookand pretend that I never did this oneand stay in my $100 budget obviously.- There you go.- Oh my goodness.Let's go boy.Freedom!- What is wrong with this hinge?Because we actually havenot actually fixed anything.We've just gotten access tofind out why it's broken.- It looks like it literallyjust got bent out of shapeand it's been stuck that way forever.- It looks, yeah, it lookslike it's been bent, right?- Okay, let me crack, I wanna.- Oh!- Oh that!- Just like that.(crosstalk)- I fixed it.- How did you just fix it?- Just like that.- Put it back.- Oh my god! That's it, it's fixed.(laughing)- Let's go.- All right, we saved ourselves the money.- Denki saved him the money.- Subscribe to Denki for excellent advice,like how to fix MacBooksand how to make videosthat don't get views.- What?- Whoa whoa! Okay!- Now I gotta um...Remember where all my screws wentand put everything back together.So now let me show you how Ihave spent my remaining budgetto upgrade my MacBook.So I was able to get this240 gig WD Green for 14.99.So not only is this almost the same size'cause it was a 320 gig,but importantly this is going to do a lotfor my responsiveness.So this my friends,is a total of eightgigabytes of DDR3 memory.Now if this MacBook wasvery slightly newer,I could have put 16 in there.And technically I do think there's a waythat you can kind of make 16 workbut I didn't have the money for that.Eight gigs of RAM cost me 15.99.A $17 third party battery, nota good idea for most systems,but again I'm working witha hundred dollar budget.So if you tally up thelaptop, the shipping, the SSD,the RAM and the battery,you get a total of 99dollars and 40 cents.So I said a hundreddollar budget, didn't I?Here's the thing, I alreadydid all the hard work.Disassembling it, repastingthe CPU, fixing a hinge.These upgrades are thekind of upgrades thatif you bought this system,especially if you're able tofind one that was functional.I mean look, I'm done.I should put some screws inbut like technicallythis should now fire upand maybe work.Okay, here goes nothing.(suspenseful music)- We're eating good tonight.Especially 'cause wedidn't spend all our moneyon the MacBook.Okay, so we are into El Capitan.So let's actually make surethat everything is showing up.Look how snappy it is.Oh wait, what?Why does it show four gigs of RAM?Oh, okay, so I need to check that,that's not right.But you can see herethat we've got ourselves a240 gigs solid state drive.So this is the mid 2009 modelwith the 2.26 gigahertz Core 2 Duo.And it does have the Geforce 9400M.I can play Minecraftand...Runescapeand should be able watchHD videos actually.So the battery is showing up fine.So basically all I need to dois just restart the computerand make sure that both ofmy sticks of RAM are working.But assuming that I justdidn't insert it all the wayor something.We've got a fully functional MacBook.- Yeah baby eight gigs of RAM.Mmh!So I'm gonna give you a full tutorialbut I'm using OpenCore Legacy Patcher.So what this allows me to do isto create a MacOS installer,which I did pick MacOS Monterey.And then you can buildand install OpenCorewhich basically patches it toput a lot of like the driversand the support for thisspecific MacBook in.Theoretically, I cannow restart this systemwith my flash drive installed.It will load up a copy of MacOS Montereywhich is two years old, butit's quite quite recent.And then I think I need to run one thingafter the factand I will have a fully functional MacBookthat actually can do stuff in 2023.- So I'm gonna hold optionand hit the power button.That should give me the USBas a boot drive and it does.Okay, so we don't need that.I think I need to do EFI boot, yes.OpenCore Patcher, let's do that.All right, yes, so I wantto install MacOS monitoring.Yes, I do.- Hey yo, MacOS recovery, boom.So we are in, so I guess what I'll do isI will just nuke myexisting OS installation.Okay, goodbye El Capitan.(laughing)Hope this worksor I'll have to start from scratch.(bouncing sound)- Uh-oh, Idon't like a beach ball.That's not good.(laughing)Yahoo.I don't want on a beach ballon the very first screen.Oh noOh, oh, oh, oh, what?Yes, I agree, I agree, yeah, boy!Yep.Yep.Is it actually gonna work?- It's working!Yes!Okay my friends.So assuming it doesn't crashand burn on me in 23 minutesI'll have a copy of MacOS Montereyon my hundred dollar MacBook.(grunting)Okay, I'm gonna bepatient, let this installand then we're gonna seeexactly what it's liketo use a 2009 MacBookthat's been fully upgradedfor less than a hundred dollars.And I'm also gonna gloat a lot.- So I've been using theMacBook for a few daysand I have some thoughts.First and foremost, thisis a 14 year old systemso tempering yourexpectations is important.That being said, though,it is usable here in 2023.The keyboard is decent, thetrack pad is phenomenal.The only thing I can really ding it forfor everyday use is the actual screen.Now the quality of thedisplay is totally fine.It's the resolution that let's it down.1280 by 800 is just not enough pixelsfor even like regular web browsing,especially considering that MacOStypically loses a little bit of the topand the bottom of you have your dock up.It's workable, but itdoes feel quite crampedespecially consideringthis is a 13 inch laptop.At a hundred dollars for this100 dollar MacBook challenge,I think it did pretty well.But if you were to spend say $200,you get a significantlynewer retina MacBook.Or if you spend like threeor $400 you're getting intoMacBook Touch Bar territory.- At the end of the day,I bought a laptop thatwas pretty much destinedto become e-wasteand turned it into afully functional devicethat can be used in 2023.- It's got yearsof life ahead of it.Thanks to the newer version of MacOSand the upgrades I've done.Plus I now have a systemthat has an optical driveand FireWire.It's really neat.- But if you enjoy,definitely be sure tosubscribe to my channeland let me know in the comments belowwhat project should I do next?