Prototype/Test Macbook Pro

Hey, so I bought a MacBook Pro two nights ago on Craigs List here in Philadelphia-area so that I could eventually fix it up and give it to my girlfriend. It's a 2.16 Core 2 Duo MBP with 1 GB of Ram and 120 GB of HD.

The listing had said that it had recently been diagnosed with logic board problems at the apple store but I know that is apple store language for "I don't know what's wrong with it." I decided to give it a shot.

The guy had bought it off ebay and it came with Tiger. It stopped working for him after his buddy tried to install Leopard. It currently goes through a funny loop of verbose text and then starts over in an endless loop.

When I came to look at it, I saw that it had an Apple Development Team sticker on the bottom. With my interest piqued, I decided to give it a shot at fixing it and bought it from him.

When I got it home, it wouldn't take the leopard disk. It just hangs at a blue screen after the gray apple screen. Same goes with booting off another drive with a leopard install.

I then took it apart to see if the hard drive was bad and to swap it out. While doing that, I noticed a couple weird things. Namely:

• The motherboard is green instead of blue
• The airport card is a "M35B Dusty Client DVT Wireless Client" and not production

While inspecting the stickers underneath, it seems that the wireless card is a "dusty atheros" and the antenna is a "Tyco". I'm not sure if the unit was for testing the wireless card or not but it's definitely a development unit. Still, it'd be interesting to see it run.

To do that, I remembered that I have a tiger restore disk for my Santa Rosa MBP and popped it in. Surprisingly, it boots up and runs but won't restore as it's not the same computer. I was able to install Tiger using Target Disk mode so it's up and running. Also, the diagnostic software says nothing is wrong but it still can't take an install of Leopard.

Have you seen something like this? Is it weird that the motherboard is green and in the configuration it is? Anything else weird?

Here are some pics to prove what I'm saying and to see if anyone else notices anything weird:
Prototype MacBook Pro - a set on Flickr

I'm thinking of selling it as the girlfriend needs something more functional than inherently historical and weird. Not sure how, though.

Definitely appears to be a development mule. Amazing that it was able to leave Cupertino. Still, definitely an interesting piece of hardware, although not sure how much value it has.

Have you tried doing a Leopard install with the wireless card removed? That seems to be the most dubious component as far as I can tell.

Thanks for the reply!

I tried taking the card out and booting the leopard install disc to get the same hanging blue screen. I didn't try booting from a leopard install, though.

Would weird hardware really stop it from booting though? It happens after the gray screen but before the mouse cursor shows up.

It is an odd bird, though.

After fidgeting around with it for a couple days, I decided not to push my luck and actually break the laptop so I'm putting up on the ol' fleaBay.

I am interested to see what the person who buys it does with it, though...