How to check if my MacBook Pro A1261 had it’s logic board replaced in the apple free repair program?

A mismatch between the serial number as reported in "About this Mac" and the physical number in the battery bay:

can suggest a non-Apple replacement. Apple always reset the logic board after service to reflect the original physical number, so that won't help if Apple did the work.

Otherwise I know of no way to check. Those models are not easy to take apart for a physical inspection, which is not guaranteed to show something useful anyway.

I do know this: We have two failed MBPs affected by the nVidea Curse that triggered the repair extension program; in that model, the video hardware has either failed or will fail.

I too, can only recommend buying this computer for parts, adding to a museum collection, or use as a theatre prop. I know of no software you can buy today that will install on that old a Mac. It is even approaching impossible to find a browser that will install and work with modern web sites with their current security requirements.

Please proceed with all the caution of an amorous porcupine approaching his mate!

“How to check if my MacBook Pro A1261 had its logic board replaced in the apple free repair program?: […]The previous owner doesn’t know either. Probably it was sold to him before by someone else and now he’s selling it to me.”

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Is the Logic Board Original?:

The only way to know that if you don’t know is to refer to a feature of the logic board — perhaps a Serial Number of sorts. As to it being the original one, Apple would have that somewhere in their device database.

I think the way you can tell if they replaced the logic board is if the serial number changed. But also, I think your macbook can't be updated to any newer Mac OS beyond sierra. Cmiiw.

I don't know how you can tell if the logic board was replaced but I am curious as to why you care. A 2008 computer is obsolete and is not capable of running current apps/MacOS. And it will not get security updates. My advice is to use your money to buy a newer supported computer.

Sorry I can not answer your question directly.

A1261 could be either

• MacBook Pro (17-inch, Early 2008)
• MacBook Pro (17-inch, Late 2008)

Both shipped with some point release of Mac OS X 10.5.* (Leopard) installed, and on optical recovery discs. I hope that whomever you are buying this machine from still has those discs and is transferring them to you.

Neither can run anything higher than Mac OS X 10.11.6 (El Capitan), which is extremely obsolete. There is a Firefox ESR 78 release that will run on El Capitan, but it has not gotten critical security updates in more than three years – and Mozilla says that Firefox users should move on to a newer version of the Mac operating system.

If you do want a really old Mac for some reason, and already have software to run on it, why would you intentionally purchase a model that, according to you, had "well known GPU failures"?!?

HiyaThereLovely wrote:

I think the way you can tell if they replaced the logic board is if the serial number changed. But also, I think your macbook can't be updated to any newer Mac OS beyond sierra. Cmiiw.

Neither of the MacBook Pros with that model number can be updated as far as Sierra.

JFM_011 wrote:

It is the last pre-unibody model and i love the aesthetic

If you are buying it because of the "aesthetic", it does not matter if the logic board was replaced or not. That year Mac is obsolete and not usable with current or future apps, systems, etc. It is a shelf-item of no practical value regardless whether the logic board was replaced or not.