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My A1342 MacBook is much worse than yours

I am now using a really bad Mac for everyday use!  It's bad because a lot of its parts are broken - but it still soldiers on.

It's a late 2009 vintage A1342 white polycarbonate model.

Full disclosure:  I have repaired many A1342 MacBooks, and so I have a bunch of mediocre spare parts laying around.  I would never put mediocre parts into a customers' machine, but I don't want to throw them into the recycle bin.  So I took the parts that somewhat work and assembled a "good-enough" Macbook out of them.

Before jumping into the bad, here are the positive highlights:

1. 8 GB of RAM installed
2. 1 TB SSD drive installed
3. It all works for my use

Saved from the Recycle Bin

Yes, my MacBook is made from many bad parts saved from the recycle bin.  So I guess I am REUSING D-grade components instead of RECYCLING them - at least for the next few years.

Here's what's been saved from the recycling mill:

Battery
The battery is a weak, cheap aftermarket device in "service battery" mode.  Normally I'd recycle this battery, but instead I am using it.  (Like many MacBooks, the A1342 operates very slowly without a battery, so it is usually far better to have a weak battery than no battery.)

LCD & Display Housing
The display LCD freezes up when tilted the "wrong" way. I replaced the cable, and it turns out the the problem isn't with the cable - the problem is with the display electronics immediately below the LCD.  The LCD screen sports a 30mm scratch on the right side of the screen.  I put the LCD into a display housing that has exceptionally long and ugly hinge cracks.
Keyboard
The keyboard was from a water damaged MacBook.  It has four non-functional keys: ENTER ,  ], \, and EJECT.  Since I need these keys, I installed and use the Karabiner utility to remap the keyboard.  I miss the ENTER key the most.  I have the right-OPTION key act as ENTER.  Left-OPTION + / is backslash, and left-OPTION + [ is close-bracket.  The re-mappings can take a while to get used to.

Magsafe Adapter
The Magsafe adapter came from a MacBook Pro that wasn't charging properly.  The LED on the MagSafe cable does not work.  The magsafe adapter only powers and trickle-charges the Mac.  It does not charge the battery like a normal charger.  This is due to bad electronics within the magsafe end of the cable.

Bottom
The bottom was from the ugliest, most disgusting MacBook I've ever seen.  I cleaned off the remaining peeling rubber, and so now it's just an aluminum plate with holes.  Now it has floor felt protectors to prevent it from scratching up my desktop.

Assembly
Several screws are "wrong" or "missing", but I didn't want to worry about minor details.  It's good enough.

Conclusion

Now before you get all upset and question me about how much effort I put into assembling this sad MacBook  - the answer is "something like 15 minutes" - I am very experienced dealing with the internals of these Macs.  And in the time since then, I have a computer that I'm am likely to use for at least 18 months, if not much longer.

You got to love these oldie Macs - they keep on running until Apple abandons them, and then you can run Windows or Linux on them.  Once I decide to replace this old Mac, I'll likely repurpose it as a media server.

Things that I have *never* seen broken on an A1342:
  • Fan
  • iSight Camera
  • Hinge cable
  • Antennas 
Things that I have seen wonky on an A1342:
  • Wifi card (spotty behavior (rare))
  • Trackpad (spotty behavior, water ingress?)
  • Keyboard (always water ingress, pretty common)
  • Top case damage (due to battery swelling)
  • Logic board (always water ingress)
  • DVD (usually due to user-inserted debris; often repairable)
  • RAM (usually aftermarket garbage)
  • Batteries (usually aftermarket garbage)
  • Bottom rubber failure (common, was a recall repair at one point)
  • Hinge cracks (very common, but usually harmless)
  • MagSafe burn-out (due to using a fake adapter) 
  • Damage due to poor repair/upgrade attempts 
  • Damage due to hard drops or abuse (usually plastic damage)

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