I am trying to mod an old iMac 21" late 2009 with an Intel CPU and repurpose it as a monitor. I was hoping to find the PSU pinout, which is a 14 pin one. My further goal is to allow the button on the back to turn on the PSU. So far I have identified: 1. GND in pins 01, 08, 07, 14. 2. 3.7V in pin06. 3. 12V in pin04. This is on a turned off PSU, connected to AC. I have to mention here that the pin06 is not connected to the motherboard connector but to the jst4 that is connected to the LCD controller. Here with your help I have found a pin guide: - PSU/logic board pinout voltages Pin12 suggests that it is waiting for a signal from the logic board, possibly the 3.7V on Jst4. I tried connecting the 3.7V via a 1K resistor to pin 12 but nothing happened, voltages across the pinhead remained the same. The momentary switch has a very small resistance about 24ohm. Will I need some additional circuitry, like a transistor, to accomplish the turn on. Is there any other resource for finding how to mod this iMac and use its PSU?

I am wondering if a Thunderbolt 5 dock such as the *Anker Prime TB5 Docking Station* can charge attached devices (iPhone, iPad, power bank, etc.) without any Mac attached? That would increase the value for me if it did double duty as (a) a Mac dock part-time, plus (b) a high-powered charging station full-time.

When MacBook Pro 2018 is completely shut down, it will power up by simply opening the lid, pressing any key, or tapping the trackpad, which is very annoying. I managed to make it not power up when the lid is lifted, but I couldn't figure out how to prevent the key presses or trackpad tap from doing so.

I have a MacBook Air M1 and two different solar batteries* that have 100W USB-C outputs. Can plug the USB-C cable that came with my computer from the USB-C output port on the battery directly into the USB port on the MacBook Air? *Bluetti EB70 and PowerWorks PSE701

So while on battery power you have the option to prevent the computer from sleeping when display is off. How ever this option is only available while on power adapter. Is there a way to do this on battery power? Prevent computer from sleeping when display is of but on battery power? thank you in advance

The process neagent has high CPU usage (60%) when the Mail app is open (macOS 15.4.1). This leads to a high rate of battery consumption. How to fix this?

Really weird problem that started today: my MacBook Pro Retina 2015 won’t stay on unless I hold down the power key *and keep it held down* for the entire time I’m using it. It works perfectly as long as I keep it down but shuts off within a minute or so after I release it. I’ve reset the SMC and NVRAM, to no avail. This is *not* just a power on/boot issue (Google hits are all about Macs not powering on unless the power key is held down for several seconds, but then stay on). I don’t think it’s a software issue, but I installed the 10.15.3 update a few days ago. The only clue I have is a very brief “Do you want to shut down/sleep” dialog that popped up once before the random shutdown but hasn’t since. I’m guessing this is some kind of hardware issue like a dirty power switch contact. Any solutions?

Just recently picked up an iPad 4. Saw that it specifies "not charging" when plugged into the usb port. Saw that it is a common issue due to usb power. I have usb 3.0 ports on my desktop so I tried that and the same result. USB 3.0 is specified for up to 900 ma while 2.0 is 500ma. Course even that can change depending on a few things. Seems that the iPad wants up to 2.1 amps. So I searched for solution using dual usb ports like some external 2.5" laptop hard drives use. I found nothing which surprised me. If I can get 900ma x 2 ports (for 1.8 total amps) I am near the full charge spec for the iPad. Such cables seem foreign but I found 2 of them. Most Y cables like this come with a mini usb at the end so these are unfortunately rare and more expensive (unless you want to solder your own which I suppose I could do too with my abundance of cables). http://www.shopaddonics.com/itemdesc.asp?ic=AA2USBPC http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812161003 From here the lightning cord would simply plug into the female end. Anyone tried something like this? Result?

My iMac (late 2014, 27 inch) stopped working so, I opened it up and figured out that the problem was in the power supply. I replaced the power supply and started it again, 3 LEDs were on (first 3 from bottom, I hadn’t connected the display) the iMac chime played but then I was unable to turn it off via the power button, so I pulled the plug. Then I tried to start it back up again but only the bottom most LED was on and the power button wasn’t doing anything. What could be the problem.

Since my Macbook Pro (Big Sur 11.6) is burning through its battery power really quickly with mds_store clocking the most CPU usage, running the following command sudo fs_usage -w -f filesys mds_stores shows that /System/Volumes/VM/swapfile10 is commonly being used by mds_store. Running sudo fs_usage | grep /System/Volumes/VM/swapfile10 shows that this file is constantly being used by Brave Browser. However, when I tried to exclude /System/Volumes/VM/ from being indexed by Spotlight by going to System Preference > Spotlight > Privacy, I get a Privacy List Error, stating that > The item couldn't be added or removed because of an unknown error. How can we fix this and exclude the directory from Spotlight indexing?

I have a problem when I lock my MacOS Ventura MBP. My external monitors take an eternity to wake up after being asleep. I want to log back in and return to work immediately. The built-in display wakes almost immediately. I've tried using the "prevent automatic sleeping on power adapter when the display is off" option. It doesn't work. When I lock the screen, all the displays are immediately turned off. I have also played around with screensaver settings to no avail. How do I prevent my displays from sleeping? I don't mind if the built-in display sleeps. ***Edit for adding detail*** It seems to me that it is some power-saving feature of Ventura to immediately put all displays to sleep when the system is locked. The screensavers will start if I leave my system without locking, but I always lock my screen when I get up and leave my computer (I'm in an office environment). If I leave the machine like this, the screen lock will eventually be activated (the screens don't turn off). However, if I hit ctrl-command-q, the screens always turn off immediately. Here are my lock screen settings: The external monitors are the same and details are below. One is attached via the HDMI port on the side of the M1 MBP. The other is attached via Apple's own TB4 to USB/HDMI/TB4 dongle.

DELL S2721QS:
  Resolution:	5120 x 2880 (5K/UHD+ - Ultra High Definition Plus)
  UI Looks like:	2560 x 1440 @ 60.00Hz
  Main Display:	Yes
  Mirror:	Off
  Online:	Yes
  Rotation:	Supported

syspolicyd is consistently using ~20% CPU and consuming lots of power. Tracing it with sudo fs_usage "$(pgrep syspolicyd)" reveals that it's repeatedly scanning the same dozen or so Steam apps in my ~/Library/Application Support/Steam/steamapps/common directory. Is there any way to convince it to be less aggressive about scanning, or remind it that it's already scanned these locations? Or at least get it to tell me why it's doing this without resorting to dtrace tooling?

I have MacBook Pro late 2011. I decided to reset the SMC controller with the charger connected (not original, cheap). When I did the SMC reset, the MagSafe indication did not change. When I turned on the MacBook, the fans were running at full power, but MagSafe was burning red. Then I turned off the MacBook, turned off the charging and plugged it back in, but the charging indicator was no longer on MagSafe. The battery is not charging. What do I do in this situation?

I am running macOS Catalina Public Beta 9 (10.15, 19A573a) on my MacBook Air (2019) and noticed these — at least to my eyes — odd entries under “Hardware > Power” when looking at system information. FWIW, I don’t recall ever seeing these under “Hardware > Power” when running macOS Mojave (10.14): Power Events: Next Scheduled Events: appPID: 353 Type: Wake Scheduled By: com.apple.alarm.user-invisible Time: 10/6/19, 6:27 AM UserVisible: 0 appPID: 356 Type: Wake Scheduled By: com.apple.alarm.user-invisible Time: 10/6/19, 7:47 AM UserVisible: 0 I have utterly no alarms or power events that I have set on my Mac and double checking under “Energy Saver” as well as my calendar shows nothing as well. And besides, I would never set up crazy early morning alarms like this anyway. Is this something connected to me using macOS Catalina Public Beta? Since November 6th seems to be the date macOS Catalina will come out of beta. FWIW, checking my running processes right now I see the following for those appPID values: 501 356 ?? 0:03.06 /usr/libexec/UserEventAgent (Aqua) 501 353 ?? 0:02.74 /usr/sbin/cfprefsd agent Found some info on cfprefsd on this Other World Computing post and UserEventAgent on this How-To Geek post . And the information is useful as to literally what these processes do, but no real explanation as to why they are set in this case.

On my M1 MacBook Air I can check the "Screen On Usage" for the last 10 days: What I would be interested in is how much time I spent actively using the machine since I last charged to 100%. Of course I could combine the information visible here, and try to estimate from the bar chart how many minutes I have spent per day - but this is tedious and not very exact, as the axis of the lower graph only shows intervals of one hour. Is there any better way to get this information without having to resort to commercial apps? Obviously the information I need is available, but I do not know where to find it.

I have four different old MacBooks, from 2008 to 2010. - 2008 MacBook - 2009 MacBook - 2009 MacBook Air - 2010 MacBook I have five chargers, all MagSafe 1. - 1x 45W - 3x 60W - 1x 85W All except the 45W are replacement ones, so the 45W is original. Now suddenly on the same moment two MacBooks (2008 and 2009 Air) lost their capability to charge. I unplugged the MacBook 2008 from charger for a two hour work and then went to plug it back in as it reached 10% as I have always done for last two years and it started charging (orange/green light), and when I placed the laptop down the table green light went off. I had swapped battery to it year ago and it was 100% healthy. So I did normal: - Replug couple times. - Clean the connectors with toothbrush and made sure those are clean. Nothing. So I took a MacBook Air from another room and plug it in the same charger and it was charging (it has as well replaced battery year ago). I re-plug the MacBook 2008 to same charger and nothing. Then I plugged charger back to MacBook Air and it was charging. And then couple seconds later charger light went off. I re-plug it, nothing. I connected it to MacBook 2008 and nothing. So did the charger die? I went to plug the MacBook Air to its own 45W charger and it was not charging. Rechecked the connectors for foreign objects and all were perfectly clean. I picked third MacBook (2010) and plugged it in to 45W charger, and it was charging. I plugged MacBook Air to it, not charging. I took the MacBook 2008 to 45W charger and it was not charging. But MacBook 2010 was charging. I went to plug MacBook Air to third (60W) charger and it was not charging. I connected the MacBook 2010 to it 3rd charger and it was charging. I brought from different location the MacBook 2009 and tried, it was charging on all chargers, same way as MacBook 2010 does. But the MacBook 2008 and MacBook Air does not charge on any charger. And now as I was writing this, the MacBook Air jumped alive as I left it on the charger for 2 hours just to try out. It had battery left 23% since last charging (been a week sleeping). It was not charging and I just heard suddenly the power-on tone as MacBook Air turned on (it always has turned on every time when it is plugged to charger, even when display is closed) I have tried SMC and PRAM reseting on the MacBook 2008 and MacBook Air and neither one reacted any means to it. I thought that the battery would have died suddenly on the same minute by charger outputting a peak power and shortcutting, but as now MacBook Air is charging for some reason (after trying so dozen times and kept long time before) I don't think it has battery problem as it only stopped charging but not running on battery. I am now very confused that what makes old Intel Core 2 Duo MacBooks to stop charging suddenly for no reason (or even to suddenly just revive after couple hours being connected)? Is there any other means to check does the charger input power than just opening the laptops again and start measuring? As the charger connectors has the small chip that will initiate the protocol for accepting charge, is there something to do overcome it? I already purchased two replacement Magsafe 1 cables to check if that would help in case, but as all chargers work on two other MacBooks, than on two.

This is for those who have had trouble with all the combined issues: - Macbook Air 2012-2017 ( possibly other models) - Won't turn on unless the battery is disconnected for a short time and then plugged in. - Connecting the mag-safe cord is what only turns it on. - Tried SMC reset Tried PRAM/NVRAM - Tried a different battery - Battery still charges. - Ready to sell it for parts due to a total waste of precious time!

MacBook Pro (13”, late 2011); Memory 4GB; Processor 2,4Ghz Intel; Graphics Intel HD; Mac OS Sierra 10.12.6; Power adapter original 60W (got 2 of them); Battery new. This issue has been reported before (MacBook Pro 2011 slow) and appeared to be solved since the Mac was working fine for three days. Before the problem only occurred when the battery was nearly 100% charged with the power adapter connected. Here is what happened afterwards: - When the battery is charging while having the power adapter connected, the Mac always gets very slow. - The activity monitor is showing kernel CPU usage of up to 500%, the system is running at ~93%, user load is normal =/< 8%. All other processes are normal. - The activity monitor is not showing any processes with excessive energy consumption. Memory consumption is normal too. The CPU goes back to normal immediately when on Battery only, with the Power Adapter disconnected. Within a minute after connecting the power adapter the game starts all over again. - No difference with different power adapters. - Sometimes it takes a while before the green or orange LED from the Power Adapters connector is coming up. A couple of different tests have been performed, all done without third party hardware, nothing connected, not even LAN. Software which had kernel extensions in Library/LaunchDaemons before, was completely removed. Checking the System load while on Battery: ***pmset -g sysload*** - 2025-01-02 15:34:49 -0300 - combined level = OK - user level = OK - battery level = OK - thermal level = Great Checking again while on Power Adapter with the CPU throttling: ***pmset -g sysload*** - 2025-01-02 15:36:19 -0300 - combined level = Bad - user level = OK - battery level = Great - thermal level = Bad Checking the thermal log while on Battery, no problems: ***pmset -g thermlog*** - Note: No thermal warning level has been recorded - Note: No performance warning level has been recorded - 2025-01-02 15:56:26 -0300 CPU Power notify - CPU_Scheduler_Limit = 100 - CPU_Available_CPUs = 4 - CPU_Speed_Limit = 100 Checking again while on Power Adapter with the CPU throttling: ***pmset -g thermlog*** - Note: No thermal warning level has been recorded - Note: No performance warning level has been recorded - 2025-01-02 15:58:25 -0300 CPU Power notify - CPU_Scheduler_Limit = 40 - CPU_Available_CPUs = 4 - CPU_Speed_Limit = 29 Afterwards TG Pro was installed showing normal temperatures all the time. The fan speed was adjusting well to CPU loads. The fan and outlet are also clean. Adjusting the fan speed to max when the problem occurred made no difference. It is also not possible to sense any excessive heat when touching the Mac. The only way to get the CPU back to normal is disconnecting the Power Adapter and the system load drops immediately. A SMC reset is solving the problem for the moment until the battery is charging again while the Power Adapter is connected. The System Report is showing a negative mA reading while on battery power only which appears strange. In Safe Mode the Mac is still working fine under any power supply condition. Anyhow, after shutting down from Safe Mode and rebooting the problem comes back.

I ran the following sequence of commands as root: Check output of pmset -g:

pmset -g
System-wide power settings:
Currently in use:
 standby              1
 Sleep On Power Button 1
 hibernatefile        /var/vm/sleepimage
 powernap             1
 networkoversleep     0
 disksleep            10
 sleep                0 (sleep prevented by Python, powerd)
 hibernatemode        3
 ttyskeepawake        1
 displaysleep         0
 tcpkeepalive         1
 powermode            2
 womp                 1

Disable sleep using pmset disablesleep 1 and then run pmset -g again:

pmset disablesleep 1
pmset -g
System-wide power settings:
 SleepDisabled          1
Currently in use:
 standby              1
 Sleep On Power Button 1
 hibernatefile        /var/vm/sleepimage
 powernap             1
 networkoversleep     0
 disksleep            10
 sleep                1 (sleep prevented by powerd)
 hibernatemode        3
 ttyskeepawake        1
 displaysleep         3
 tcpkeepalive         1
 powermode            2
 womp                 0

Observe the extra line SleepDisabled 1 that appears in the output above. I then tried to remove the line by running pmset disablesleep 0:

pmset disablesleep 0
System-wide power settings:
 SleepDisabled          0
Currently in use:
 standby              1
 Sleep On Power Button 1
 hibernatefile        /var/vm/sleepimage
 powernap             1
 networkoversleep     0
 disksleep            10
 sleep                1 (sleep prevented by powerd)
 hibernatemode        3
 ttyskeepawake        1
 displaysleep         3
 tcpkeepalive         1
 powermode            2
 womp                 0

Now I have a line that says SleepDisabled 0. **What command can I run to get back to a state where the line does not appear at all in the output of pmset -g?** Also, is SleepDisabled 0 equivalent in the state where the line does not appear at all? --- **Update**: pmset restoredefaults does something but it does not remove the scars left by using disablesleep.

$ pmset -g
System-wide power settings:
 SleepDisabled          0
Currently in use:
 standby              1
 Sleep On Power Button 1
 hibernatefile        /var/vm/sleepimage
 powernap             1
 networkoversleep     0
 disksleep            10
 sleep                0 (sleep prevented by powerd)
 hibernatemode        3
 ttyskeepawake        1
 displaysleep         0
 tcpkeepalive         1
 powermode            2
 womp                 1

$ pmset restoredefaults
Restored Default settings.

$ pmset -g
System-wide power settings:
 SleepDisabled          0
Currently in use:
 standby              1
 Sleep On Power Button 1
 hibernatefile        /var/vm/sleepimage
 powernap             1
 networkoversleep     0
 disksleep            10
 sleep                1 (sleep prevented by powerd)
 hibernatemode        3
 ttyskeepawake        1
 displaysleep         10
 tcpkeepalive         1
 powermode            0
 womp                 1

So let's get this out of the way first. I know this PC is very old now. I got it for free from a friend and with my "more than beginner" electronics repair knowlege, I would like to learn further and if possible fix this computer. **Diagnosing:** Plugging in the AC cable, it remains OFF. Upon pressing the power button, I can hear fans, HDD and disc reader come to life and remain like that, fans stay at a low speed like during normal operation. No chime, nothing. After seeing this, I decided to swap RAM, try all the slots with just one stick and swap in between 2 ram sticks for each slot at a time. Nothing. So I knew it was time to take it apart, after removing the screen and finding diagnostic LEDs, after plugging in AC cable, LED1 is green, which is a good sign. After pressing the power button, LED1 stays on but all other LEDs are off. Fans spinning, now going to MAX speed after 15 seconds as it should when unplugging temp sensor on the screen, and everything remains as mentioned before. The fact fans go full speed tells me that motherboard works, but main components aren't getting proper power to work. This is where I got stuck as I don't want to disassemble the iMac further before doing some more research. It does react to the power button, shuts down after holding it down and all. I wasn't able to find this exact problem anywhere on the internet, so I am asking for your help. From my research it appears as if the power supply switches on but the motherboard does not power on properly, maybe faulty voltage regulators, PSU not sending proper voltage, who knows. My friend gave it to me thinking the GPU is dead but I don't think so from the diagnosis to this point. Maybe both, GPU and motherboard are faulty, I am lost as it could be anything with these machines. It seems that the PSU works by the fact that all accessory parts get power but it may just be "lying" to me. Can anyone provide guidance on triage or repair for this vintage of Mac and described symptoms?