Amateur… I am using a 2009 15’ MacBook Pro Unibody, with a swapped SuperDrive to SSD, another main SSD and RAM boosted to 8Gb. OpenCore Legacy to update to a relatively recent version of MacOS. The only thing that is so annoying is the webcam that doesn’t work anymore, and a USB port is dead also.
So sad this kind of shenanigans are not possible anymore.
Pfah, showoff. My 2005 Thinkpad T42p crawls circles around that thing - slowly. Maxed out to 2GB, Intel 120GB SSD with a PATA->SATA adapter (just fits if you remove some useless bits from the lid) and - what keeps this machine around - a glorious keyboard and 1600x1200 display. It even gets several hours on the battery so what more could you want?
I have one of these with a MacBook Pro 6,2 that I did the same upgrades to. However I finally decided to retire it when 2nd replacement battery swelled and Chrome stopped supporting OSX 13.
It didn't look like a good candidate for OpenCore Legacy because of the dual video cards, but it feels so gross recycling a perfectly working computer.
So sad this kind of shenanigans are not possible anymore.