I have an early 2008 model MacBook Pro (17") that went the way of all the earth a couple of days ago. I haven't diagnosed it fully yet, but it appears that it's the logic board that's gone, and if that truly is the case it's not worth it to spend the money to repair a nearly 3 year old machine (and no, I didn't have AppleCare because, apparently, I'm an idiot).
The question is this: besides the easily-removable RAM chips, what other parts could conceivably be scavenged from it and be realistically useful elsewhere? I haven't disassembled one of these before, I'm wondering how easily the hard drive could be removed and placed in an enclosure, for example (a zapped logic board should, theoretically, leave the HD data intact).
Any other bits you'd keep before sending it to the great recycling depot in the sky?
Best Answer
The memory and the hard drive are probably the easiest to remove and reuse. But there are plenty of parts that could be re-used including the keyboard, the display, optical drive and airport.
The site ifixit has a great guide to disassembling MacBook Pro machines.
If you do not have a need for the parts yourself, you may be able to sell them on eBay or elsewhere. I am not sure what the market is like for individual parts, but another option is to sell the machine as a whole on eBay stating that it is non-functioning and for parts. It would save you the trouble of disassembling it yourself.