Best Way To Proceed with MacBook

[KingofChips]

Budget (including currency): I want to spend no more than $200 CAD

Country: Canada (The Macbook has a German layout)

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Youtube, Word, Presentations, movie machine (using hdmi), etc. (just light work)

Other details 

Hi everyone!

 

I just wanted to see if anyone on this forum can give me useful advice about what to do now. 

 

History:

My Macbook Pro 2014 13-inch was water damaged a few years ago. Recently I tested it and I was told the logic board was fried. I got a logic board from a MacBook pro for parts for $230. The Macbook will now turn on but unfortunately the screen is messed up. I never saw any damage on it (even after the water damage because I managed to turn it on again before the logic board fried) before I replaced the logic board. The trackpad is also glitchy. Lastly, the machine does not allow me to boot up properly. It has the question-mark folder on display.

What to do now?

I was told I could do a couple of things. 1) Take the cable for the trackpad from the for parts MacBook I bought and fix the trackpad of my Macbook (will probably do this). Then find a screen online or from someone I know to replace my MacBook screen. (I was told the retina display of all Macbooks from 2013-2015 should work fine). 2) Find another Macbook pro from around that time-period and just insert the storage. Then, sell my macbook for parts. The logic board is ok and the battery was just recently replaced before the water damage...

 

Additionally, I don't know how to get the Macbook to boot at the moment. It seems I need to reformat the drive to reinstall MacOS but then I lose all my data. What can I do?

 

[Action_Johnson]

I'd do the latter, just replace with a similar vintage unit. 

[Bombastinator]

I remember recently seeing a mention about the newest MacOS possibly not working on some of the machines it was expected to.  Not sure of details.  Might matter as to whether you want to put more money into the machine or not.  Also might not.

[KingofChips]

do you think I have a chance getting a MacBook Pro with a retina display for around $300?

[Bombastinator]

1 hour ago, KingofChips said:

do you think I have a chance getting a MacBook Pro with a retina display for around $300?

There used to be a completed auction filter for eBay that could tell you more or less what things are going for but I can’t find it.  It may have been removed

Best available I can find is “buy it now” which isn’t very good. At any rate there were 13” pro machines that had retina in their title for $325 on eBay.  It was sort of the bottom though.  I don’t know how accurate that is. It used to be the way to roughly gage what something was going for was to look at a bunch of completed listings for the last few days.  I can’t make that go though.  I don’t know if it’s a failing of Google, my app (written by Google) or my failure to competently navigate a GUI.