AstroSurf's Journal: New old Mac Mini

Perhaps I should use this journal as my tech diary. Seems a reasonable idea so here goes....

Having had both my 800MHz G4 iMac AND my HP pizza box P4 croak on me. I've lost something like my last 10 years of data. I _have_ now DL'd my Contacts from Hotmail and will use that to somehow populate my Contacts file on the new machine. Here's the deets on that.

On Halloween (after training for the federal by-election), I went to Carbonation and bought their old (mid-2007) Mac Mini for $199. After bumping it from 1GB to 3GB and getting a DVI->VGA adapter and paying the environmental fee and tax, it came to just under $300. Its liabilities as an old Mini are the following: Runs Leopard, has a brick PS, USB 2.0, DVI only, wifi G, GMA 950 with shared memory. I got 5 updates to move it from 10.5.6 to 10.5.8, after which I got 12 updates to make it a happy 10.5.8. Then there was also a Java update (*#$&* Java).

Runs acceptably well. Notably better than the netbook I'd been using as a stopgap. (Aside: I bought the netbook FOR NO OTHER REASON than to do video Skype. It came with 1GB of RAM and Win 7 Starter. While using it as a stopgap, I considered making it my main machine but found it would only expand to 2GB of RAM. That *might* have been acceptable EXCEPT THAT while it would cost maybe $25 to go to 2GB, Win 7 Starter will only talk to 1GB! To use BOTH GB, you have to pay Bill an extra $90 minimum. F'ing bozo has *INTENTIONALLY* crippled my hardware! Unbelievable! I thought about putting Linux (Ubuntu) on it. I may still do that. I _did_ put bootable Xubuntu on my USB drive, which worked well enough but didn't offer the native resolution of my netbook display. That is probably fixable and I may do that as well, probably with real Canonical Ubuntu, an up-to-date version, which will presumably know how to properly support my LCD panel.)

A troubling problem at the moment is that my TV is not PnP, so I'm running 1400x1050, which is a 4:3 aspect ratio and I have black bars on the side of the display. A proper current Mini w/HDMI would almost certainly default to 1920x1080, as I'd like. But I'm sure this is fixable. Perhaps if I attach my outboard LCD panel (which almost certainly IS PnP) I'll be able to choose from 16:9 resolutions.

The other troubling bit is that stuff I've downloaded won't run. I wanted to get on Usenet to ask about these legacy issues, but there were problems.... First, I DL'd OSXNews, which was a Universal binary and, while it _did_ run, it told me I had wrong username/password, which I almost certainly do not. I'll have to check for a typo in the server name. Then I DL'd Thunderbird to access newsgroups instead. Wouldn't run! Surprised me because it IS (of course) an Intel build. But it was probably expecting a newer OS X, perhaps Snow Leopard. BTW, the last OS that this mini can run is Lion. Len says he thinks he has a SL DVD lying around. 'Twould be good if I could get that. However, I doubt that Lion was ever available in DVD format since it was distributed via the App Store, which may no longer 'stock' it. After taking a peek at eBay, it seems as though Lion is available on USB keys. But SL is required first. And I'd have to figure that, since 10.5.8 was still available for download to 10.5.6, Lion will still be in the App Store for Snow Leopard. Of course, I'll return to this journal if that pans out (or if it doesn't).

I'm thinking now that the problem with the downloaded apps that won't run is that they are 64-bit apps and Leopard is only running 32-bit. My best guess. If that turns out to be the case, I'll report that here as well.