My laptop died
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Well, not mine, but Mrs. George's old MacBook Air. She has a new computer (2023) that she uses when needed.
This is an old, old MacBook Air (2012 version) with bare necessities of memory and storage. For the last year, it's sat on my Roland digital piano with the only stresses put on it have been running the OS and Pianoteq.
A few weeks ago, I got the dreaded "Question mark in a folder" on startup - it can't find an OS to start from. I was able to boot into an "Internet recovery" and re-install the OS after reformatting - just to be safe.
The problem recurred last weekend, and I can't get it to boot - from anything. No internal recovery partition, no internet recovery startup.
I chatted with Apple tech support today and they said that the error it was throwing (-6003F) indicates it might be a hardware problem.
Considering this computer does nothing, nothing, other than sit on my piano and run PianoTeq, I wonder if a cheapo Chromebook might be a reasonable alternative. OTOH, I see that Other World Computing has some reasonably-priced (<$150) older, refurbed MacBook Airs.
Remember, I need nothing other than for the thing to start up and run one program, which is famously not resource-intensive.
Thoughts?
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Hmmm I'd say just go with a basic chromebook, but you might need to do some tinkering: https://forum.modartt.com/viewtopic.php?id=9088
Otherwise, you're used to MacBook, might as well get one for ~$150
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Does the Chromebook have the appropriate ports for connecting?
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I think I'd just go with the devil I know and get the refurb.
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A twist...
Looks like the internal SSD is toast. I tried booting from an external drive and it booted fine, at least to the point where I could reinstall the OS or reformat the drive.
However, the drive could not be formatted. Installing a new SSD into the thing is not that big of a deal - I've done it before, so that might be an option....
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Update...
When Mrs. George was using the computer, she was running short on space, so I purchased a 256GB module and replaced the standard 128GB module with the bigger one. The purchase included an enclosure into which I could put the original SSD. I used it as a Time Machine drive for her.
Link to video
However, since the only function of the computer is for my Roland, there's no need for a backup, right?
So, this AM I pulled the SSD out of the enclosure it was in and put it into the laptop - took about 15 minutes.
I was able to boot into "Internet Recovery Mode", erase the internal SSD and proceed.
Looks like I saved some $$.
"Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... " - Mik, 6/14/08
The saying, "Lite is just one damn thing after another," is a gross understatement. The damn things overlap.
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for an old boomer you r pretty tech savvy. It would be beyond me at any level
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Update...
When Mrs. George was using the computer, she was running short on space, so I purchased a 256GB module and replaced the standard 128GB module with the bigger one. The purchase included an enclosure into which I could put the original SSD. I used it as a Time Machine drive for her.
Link to videoHowever, since the only function of the computer is for my Roland, there's no need for a backup, right?
So, this AM I pulled the SSD out of the enclosure it was in and put it into the laptop - took about 15 minutes.
I was able to boot into "Internet Recovery Mode", erase the internal SSD and proceed.
Looks like I saved some $$.
