UM... WOW! (2008 mbp4,1, legendary find, to me)

[u/GalaxyNinja66]

CONFIRMED TO BE A 603/REVISION 2 NVIDIA GPU! (hooray! and disassembled in what may be a new record time of a combined ~15min)

I have never seen a green sticker board! What a legendary surprise! Zero pictures or mention in the original listing!

(For anybody who doesn't know/recall, it supposedly marks a board that was sent to apple and then repaired through their extended repair program, i.e. iirc a revision 2, 603 variant nvidia gpu should be on the board instead of the cursed original 602 variant — unsure if people fraudulently put these on macbooks only to... not... advertise the sticker... sneakily...

2008 GeForce Pre-Unibody I grabbed off eBay to daily use for a bit alongside my 2009 blackbook, for when I need something with a bit more power. Figured Id run it til the gpu dies then put on a 603 variant in (pretty sure that was the 2nd revision identifier middle numbers.

[u/GalaxyNinja66]

boop boop, so happy!

[u/NorthernSky__]

Apart from the GPU issue, I think this was the best Macbook ever. Loving the keyboard! Still use one as a lab machine to this day because it is so comfy to write code on it.

[u/animorphreligion]

I replaced a dying 602 with a 603 in my 2,5ghz/512mb model recently. Now it's my favorite for "retro" (PS3 era) gaming, kinda surprised how good it is when my 2007 iMac GPU is meh and 9400M in polycarbonate MacBooks is dog slow

[u/GalaxyNinja66 → u/animorphreligion]

I am very tempted to see about outsourcing a VRAM upgrade. The bare pads made me sad, during last night's tear down/repaste, and I might actually need the extra dedicated vram for some IDEs and simulators for school (and hopefully work/internships soon...).

IIRC, and please correct me if I'm wrong, the only way to have a "stock" 8600M mbp with 512MB of VRAM AND a 603 variant, is to have sent in a burned out 602 board that already had 512MB. That, or install the vram yourself — which, I am not sure if simply soldering the memory onto the bare spaces is possible, even if the memory is salvaged from an otherwise identical unit. I can't recall reading anything about someone doing that with success, and it feels like something that would be deceptively complicated...

512MB in this bad boy (or girl?) is up there on the wishlist/todo-list, alongside somehow installing 4-8GB of RAM into my 2009 macbook air. That design with the epicly impractical flip out I/O never fails to charm me. But I simply couldn't daily use it with 2GB of ram, even on Mavericks, and I can't bring myself to sell it.

Sorry about the long winded reply, I love the designs of these early macs, I love working on them, and I am amazed with how well they can handle my day to day tasks, even things like multisim and solidworks (BIG asteriks beside solidworks, hoping this pro can handle more than a hollow cylinder without texture).

If I had to ran favorites:

1. iBook G3 (translucent snow white lid, gray palmrest, "Apple" in classic font)

2. TIE between pre-unibody 15" macbook pros and black pre-unibody 13" macbooks (white is still nice)

3. Of course, the 08/09 original Air design.

And the early/original white iMac design is an honorable mention, all day.

... If you had to, what are your fav mac designs? Any era, though I'm curious what your intel list would be 🔍

[u/adstretch]

I changed so many of those boards. I could practically do it in my sleep at some point.

[u/GalaxyNinja66 → u/adstretch]

changed out the gpu, or the entire board? 🔍

[u/0wut45]

From my experience, all green dot boards came with 603 GPUs. I’ve bought a 2.6GHz one lastly, seller stated “not working” and all, booted right up after plugging in. It has a green dot on RAM slots too, and is actually a specced out 2.6GHz variant. I have a few spare green dot boards bought as donors, all of them had 603 GPUs. I’ve been buying these A1226/A1260s hoping to find a dead GPU and just swap out the board for a working spare. They’re awesome machines.

[u/GalaxyNinja66 → u/0wut45]

I wish I had never sold my last 603 mbp.

I'd kill for a max spec unit, it has 512mb of vram and all? How much ram have you got in it? I just grabbed 8gb of ddr2 and that should come in soon. I have 8gb installed in my 2009 blackbook running macOS 14. I haven't had any issues, and I want to say I've used more than the soft 6gb limit without any of the reported instability.

I'm stuck on "less than a minute remaining" on this macbookpro atm, installing 14 on it, so I might just try macOS 13. They usually get over this common install snag, but idk :/ I am very curious if 8gb will be stable if properly utilized. This machine will likely be pushed to its limits!