P-Monk Ponders

Getting DIY with computer hardware

Busy weekend with lots of social obligations but I still managed to take care of a couple of hardware projects: one that was sprung on me and the others that have been nagging.

Ubuntu on the MacBook Air 2014

I hadn't used Ubuntu 24.04 in a good while. I'm not wild about Gnome 3. But the 2014 MacBook Air kind of fell in my lap and I decided it would be useful to have a laptop running Ubuntu to keep a toe in those waters. After some fiddling, I managed to get the proprietary Broadcom Wi-Fi driver loaded and working. Predictably the proprietary driver has its quirks. After first getting Ubuntu up and running, any time the laptop was suspended, upon opening it back up the Wi-Fi wouldn't automatically work. Strangely enough, Wi-Fi still showed as "connected" in the settings. But nothing loaded. I tried turning the Wi-Fi off and back on to no avail. Rebooting the machine would get the Wi-Fi working again. But that hardly seemed like a reasonable solution to this issue.

I found that if I "forgot" the network connection and re-entered the credentials to connect again, the internet would connect again and I'd be back in business. The connection problem seems to have resolved itself. I'm not sure how that happened. But if I ever get around to making a new laptop purchase, it will be a Framework laptop. Not only do I mean to make a statement in support of this sustainability-minded company with such a purchase, but also their products look amazing - great hardware, well thought-out and built such that everything is swappable. I also like the idea of a laptop that can be endlessly upgraded. It could also prove to be a joyful computing experience that encourages tinkering.

The screen on the now decade-old MacBook Air has its shortcomings. It's stuck at 4GB RAM. But Ubuntu runs well enough such that it's not a showstopper. But nothing can really help the now somewhat lackluster screen.

The Ubuntu MacBook Air 2014 Intel

The PC Power Supply Replacement

This project was the most daunting. At first I purchased the incorrect power supply unit. Lesson learned! I should've opened up the PC to have a look at the busted power supply. Doing so and it would've been plainly clear that the one I initially purchased was way too long to fit in my small-form-factor Optiplex 7010.

This PC happens to be my main machine. I use it to assist family members with their technology. Ordering the incorrect PSU (Power Supply Unit) cost me a few extra days away from the PC. The PSU that I needed was only available on eBay. And it took over a week to ship to me. I bided my time with the MacBook tasks, sure. But I felt untethered and discombobulated.

The correct PSU arrived late Friday night. I pulled up a YouTube video from England demonstrating how to go about changing out the PSU. I was concerned that when the PSU went out that it might've taken out the motherboard along with it. So I proceeded cautiously. Removing & replacing the old PSU was a real test of my dexterity and touch - a bit like the game "Operation". Having had precious little experience delving into the insides of a PC, it was touch and go the whole way. Having the YouTube video was very handy. Not sure I would've even attempted this repair without the video.

For those of you curious, yes, the PC is backed up. The repair was an attempt to save the hardware mostly because I upgraded the RAM and want to ride the Windows 10 train until its terminus a little under a year from now. And I've been hacking away at this PC for 7 years now. Foolishly perhaps, a bond has been created.

When PSU's go bad on you, they tend to break when the computer's still on. That raises the stakes in terms of possible permanent damage to the motherboard. Dutifully I followed the instructions on the English repair video, disconnecting the old PSU from the optical drive, then the hard drive, and finally the motherboard. Carefully I lifted the bendable braces that held the harnessed rainbow bundle of wires harnessed to the PSU.

I sprayed some compressed air to blow out the dust bunnies throughout the CPU. (Must remind myself to vacuum the office afterwards!)

The OptiPlex's innards

The replacement PSU went in relatively easily. Then it was time to unspool the harness of rainbow wires and thread it all back through the bendable braces and under the other cords and wires. Everything fit snugly back in its place. And now it was time to close up the PC and plug everything back in for the true test of viability.

Delight I felt when I saw the little green LED turn on in the back of the PC. I wasn't ready for it yet. But the PC was booting itself back up! I hadn't even had a chance to push the power button in. After moving back around to the front of the monitor, the diagnostics test option popped up! More signs of life! I hit the continue option and let the BIOS do its check. Shortly thereafter, the familiar sight of Windows 10 on the screen welcomed me back.

One thing was off-kilter though. There was no sound. No "Windows Welcome Tone" or anything. I loaded a YouTube video and pressed the play arrow. No audio! Ugh. "What is going on?" I asked out loud. There's a certain amount of slack I'm willing to give these DIY adventures. After the choosing to preserve this old computer with a new PSU, it was certainly disappointing to run into this wall. I started to question the whole enterprise. Was my hardware fiddling a waste of time & resources? These kinds of thoughts ran through my mind as I considered next steps.

I went through all of the suggested Windows 10 audio problem diagnostics and none of them fixed the lack of audio output. What could I do to repair this? I opened up the PC again and went back through the harness wiring to make certain everything was plugged in alright. On a Dell support site, I found a photo of the audio panel on the motherboard. The photo showed where the PSU had blown out the connection. So I put two and two together to figure out that replacing the audio panel, while inexpensive, wouldn't help me fix the motherboard's connector. And I've never done any soldering.

Going through the audio options, I noticed that my old Monoprice monitor has an audio output of some sort. I had never used that output. But I decided to give it a whirl. Sure enough, tinny audio started to come out the back of my old Monoprice monitor. Windows hadn't detected any software or firmware issues with my audio because there weren't any issues. Audio was working fine through my monitor's DisplayPort connection.

My next impulse was to see if USB audio would work. I borrowed my son's USB-C headphones and voila, there was perfect-sounding audio coming through loud and clear. All I needed was to ditch my old Logitech PC speakers that only connect through the 3.5mm speaker output jack and plug in my old JBL Pebbles via USB. Boom! Success!

My PC was fully back in action.

Tell-tale Aluminum Unibody Heart - Hard Drive replacement MacBook Pro 2010

SSD replacement MacBook Pro 2010

The MacBook Pro 2010 I purchased at the full retail price 14 years ago at the Apple Store under the spell of Steve Jobs. Shortly thereafter I went to work in a Windows shop and barely ever used the MacBook Pro. It sat there in my desk return drawer for years calling out to me like an aluminum-bodied Tell-Tale Heart. "Nevermore!" I hatched a plan a few years ago to get it back into use over some rainy weekend. Last spring I finally dusted it off, found the old-style charger, and charged it back up. Its unibody construction was now somehow warped and bubbled. I had read about the lithium-ion batteries degrading to such a point that they expand from within the laptop. And in the case of my MacBook Pro 2010, the battery had mushed the touchpad up such that it was malfunctioning.

The battery wouldn't hold much a charge either. But I was able to back everything up before evaluating the ease and cost of replacing the battery. As it happened, the battery was the most difficult thing to do because of its engorged state. I really had to pry it out of there with some force. Fortunately nothing was damaged in the process. Installing the recycled battery was fairly easy in comparison. There was no MacOS upgrade path for the MacBook Pro that would allow me to run a modern browser, so I installed Linux Mint on it and used it all summer. The processor would run a little hot when ripping optical media. But I had doubled the RAM in it and so the laptop was still fairly usable even after all those years.

Right about when the power supply unit went out on my Dell OptiPlex 7010, the 14-year old Hitachi 500GB physical hard drive in the laptop also gave up the ghost. I could hear its HD arm drop and clank against the casing whenever I tried to recover some of my music files. I had never replaced a laptop's hard drive before. It turned out to be very easy. Having read that solid-state drives are great for speeding up old Intel MacBooks, I found a fairly inexpensive Inland SSD 1TB one that fits nicely in the spot where the physical HD was.

Installed Linux Mint on 2010 MacBook Pro's new SSD

I hadn't ever installed an OS on a computer with a brand new hard drive. As a learning experience, on a Mac the logic board ("logic board" in Apple world is the same thing as a "motherboard" everywhere else) hosts the UEFI (firmware interface similar to the old BIOS). Everything went off without a hitch. I installed Linux Mint 22 on the newly restored laptop. And now I have an office full of ancient computers still working and easing the pain of my big early Apple Store investment.

If you use it, please consider supporting Linux Mint. The Linux Mint team do amazing work and deserves our support.

The more Microsoft makes Windows an operating system as a service, the more users will appreciate how well Linux works for their needs. The mobile experience & Chromebooks to a certain degree deserve some credit for breaking down the grip that Windows/Mac has on home users. The backlash to AI being foisted upon consumers will also aide in driving people to more reasonable alternatives.

And the more partnerships that Framework Computers develops, like the one that was recently announced with Linux Mint, the more these alternative OS's will be found in households.