Late 2008 Macbook Logic Board - What to do with it?

My Macbook was involved in an incident, and as a laptop, no longer functions.

I've ripped out the logic board out of the unibody casing, hooked up some stuff, and behold, it still boots.

Any suggestions on what I can stuff it in? It would be a little cool to make a little home theater Mac. I'm not very good with fabrication, but I'm willing to give something a shot.

A few caveats about the way its running now...

-Airport doesn't seem to work (where is the airport card located?)
-It did boot very slowly, off a fresh install. Not sure what this means just yet.
-Anyway to power the thing on without the standard power button? the keyboard was taken out of logic board, and trying to get it back in was a pain, and it looks a bit clumsy. Currently using a USB Mouse and Keyboard

Here are some pictures of the incident and where I'm at now.

There are some pictures of some creative ways to build a machine (in trash cans and such) all over the internet. I figure, stick in in a drawer in your entertainment center, or something like that. As long as cooling is sufficient, you should be fine since it seems to be running decently well.

As a note, those pictures of the deceased MacBook made me want to cry.

Oh man, that's a nasty accident. Did someone run over it in a stepside truck?
I'm with kbarnette, make me want to cry!

Even an Invisishield wouldn't have helped !!!!!

Put it in some kind of casing, and install Plex. (http://www.plexapp.com/). The perfect HTPC setup

Depending on how much you want to spend, you can put it back in another laptop case.

iFixit: iPod, iBook, & PowerBook Parts and Accessories

Thanks all for the suggestions. I ended up finding a buyer for the Logic Board who was going to make a Car PC out of it (or something).

So, no project for me, but its amazing what price Mac hardware can go for, even after an accident.

Hey Actaeon,

Glad to hear that you were able to extract the silver lining out of such an incident (RIP MacBook).

Out of curiosity, how much were you able to get for the hardware?

What was the 'incident' that caused that much damage? It looks like you ran it over with a car.

The logic board went for $400 alone. I'm not sure what the going value on these things are (eBay has prices all over the place, depending on condition), I've seen them range from $10 (broken) to $700 (New), so $400 seemed fair. Its amazing how much it was worth. I met the buyer locally. Best of luck to him with his CarPC.

I sold the 4GB of DDR3 for $40, so I've recouped $440 from the incident so far.

I also have the 2GB OEM Memory, OEM 250GB HDD, two Apple spare batteries, unused AppleCare and the Apple 60W charger. I figure I could probably make at least another $300-$400 from those as well (with the AppleCare taking most of it).

That should bring me to $750-800 back from this incident. Considering it was close to 2k invested, it still stings, but hey, when life serves lemons, make some lemonade.

I ended up ordering one of these this weekend as the replacement -

Refurbished MacBook Pro 2.53GHz Intel Core 2 Duo - Apple Store (U.S.)

Not particularly thrilled about the larger size, but the dedicated GPU and resolution should make it a suitable replacement. Considering it was $2499 just 6 months ago and the new MBPro with discrete graphics is at least $500 more (and has 1/2 the GPU RAM), I feel this is a strong value. The non-removable battery and lack of ExpressCard is annoying in the newm odels, so I'm happy with this model and the price. I am waiting for it to arrive on Tuesday.


The incident? No cars or heavy machinery involved, just a very angry girlfriend. Shes is sympathetic about what shes done, and shes looking to reimburse me for the cost of the laptop.

Actaeon said:

Shes is sympathetic about what shes done, and shes looking to reimburse me for the cost of the laptop.

Click to expand...

Wow that is one violent and vindictive gal you got there. >_<"