a couple of questions before i buy a mac mini

miltontong said:

i'm thinking about getting a mac mini but i need to know a couple of things before ordering one

1. i have a usb wireless adapter from my old pc and i don't feel like spending $99 cdn on an airport extreme card. will the usb adapter work?

2. i also have an 8x lg dvd writer from my old pc. i'm thinking it would be cheaper if i just bought an enclosure for it to use on the mac mini than getting a superdrive upgrade, is this possible?

thanks in advance

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I know the second is possiable. Just make sure it is Firewire..

kyle

I've read that all of Apple's programs will only burn to a Superdrive, and not an external 3rd party burner, so I would recommend you get one.

Toast, and other 3rd-party applications will be able to use it without a problem though.

ilife 05 supposedly supports external firewire

aparently it is possible to burn directly to an external firewire drive with the new ilife 05 suite.

I am using the 1.25 GHz 15" Powerbook with a Combo drive, but when I simply click the burn button in iDVD it defaults to my DVR-105 drive in the Mercury enclosure.

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but other people say it only works with Combo drives for them

there is a hack called Easter Egg
http://homepage.mac.com/geerlingguy/mac_support/mac_help/pages/15-burn_idvd_other.html
which allows people to select the drive to use to burn from the 'i' apps.


Edit: Aparently Easter Egg is no longer necessary. this is what it says on their website:

NOTICE: With the release of iDVD 5, Apple has finally allowed the option for burning to disc images and to external burners to be a built-in feature of iDVD! If you have iDVD 5, you do not need this easter egg to burn to non-Superdrives.

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1. I would just go for the $99 bluetooth/AE combo, if you were going to get BT anyways since the combo is only $50 more. But if you decide to stick with your USB wireless adapter, I'm pretty sure (at least on my eMac I was able to) install an Airport card after I bought it.

2. Since they just lowered the prices on BTO options on the Mac mini, that $99 superdrive is hard to pass up. If it was up to me, I'd go with the superdrive.

miltontong said:

i'm thinking about getting a mac mini but i need to know a couple of things before ordering one

1. i have a usb wireless adapter from my old pc and i don't feel like spending $99 cdn on an airport extreme card. will the usb adapter work?

2. i also have an 8x lg dvd writer from my old pc. i'm thinking it would be cheaper if i just bought an enclosure for it to use on the mac mini than getting a superdrive upgrade, is this possible?

thanks in advance

Click to expand...

Most likely you will have no problems with your usb wireless adapter. What brand is it? I know belkin is well supported on macs, and Dlink works as well.

As fro the dvd writer, there are some hacks necessary as mentioned above. However I read on http://www.xlr8yourmac.com that iLife 05 supports some external drives NATIVELY, so you may not need those!

Bill

2. i also have an 8x lg dvd writer from my old pc. i'm thinking it would be cheaper if i just bought an enclosure for it to use on the mac mini than getting a superdrive upgrade, is this possible?

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Be careful when you buy an external drive enclosure - there are 'issues' (which means that lots of them don't work reliably). There are 3 chipsets - the Oxford 911 and 922, and the PL3507. They have different capabilities, the PL3507 is a combo usb/firewire chipset for example. BUT (and its a big but!) many people are having problems with drives not mounting and data being lost, possibly because of a problem with OS 10.3.6 and 7. I think many of the problems are due to the boot sector being corrupted or not recognised. Try a Google search on the chipset codes above.
My own external drive (branded 'Metal Gear Box') has these problems - annoyingly it works every time on XP but rarely mounts on my iBook G4 10.3.7.

stevep said:

Be careful when you buy an external drive enclosure ...

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I second that. Make sure your enclosure has an Oxford chip!