I bought one of the new MBP's, my wife got my old plastic c2d macbook, and the G4 mini (1.4Ghz, 1Gb Ram) became free.
So, I have a spare mini, my options are sell or use it for something. I don't think I'll get much for it, it's not intel, it's about 4 years old, so, a home server seems like a good use.
So, first, thing is to put a clean install of the OS on, I was going to go with Leopard, but it kept on spitting out the install DVD (which I used perfectly happily on the macbook hours earlier), so I went for Tiger from the original restore discs, it rejected the second install disc, but it's not too much of a problem as I only wanted a barebones install anyway. Aside from printer programs (a shared printer is attatched), vlc, codecs and iPlayer, the hdd is empty.
I have it connected to the network via ethernet, connected it to the (720p)TV with a DVI->HDMI cable, there is no monitor, keyboard or mouse attatched, I enabled screen sharing on it, both laptops just log straight in.
A 500gb usb hdd has two partitions, 250gb media (dvd rips etc), 210gb time machine.
Everything is working perfectly except for three things
1) I can't get iPlayer/youtube etc to play properly, it's really choppy, like 2fps (although the audio is faultless), It always managed to play them before. it's not outputting a large resolution (720p which is small compared to the monitor it was on before), it's not a network issue as it does it for pre-downloaded iplayer things. I have the latest flash and adobe air installed. Video playback isn't the issue as ripped dvd's play perfectly. I've tried moving the iPlayer downloads to the external HDD where the DVD rips play from perfectly, so it's not IO bottlenecks, I can only now blame adobe...
2) time machine, I can't seem to get the connected HDD to play nice with time machine, ie, using it as a network drive for the laptops to back up to. Would leopard allow this or do I have to get a time capsule/airport extreme?
3) printer, I can only print via printer sharing, not scan etc, I get the same results via airport express. any ideas? As I bought it from apple with my laptop, I actually expected it to work...
generally I'm happy with the setup, but these few issues could make it perfect.
There are only 2 available upgrades, the HDD (currently a 4200 IDE, could go to a 5400, or 7200) and Leopard,
(and yes, I've spend hours on MRoogle as well as apple's discussion boards
)
So, I have a spare mini, my options are sell or use it for something. I don't think I'll get much for it, it's not intel, it's about 4 years old, so, a home server seems like a good use.
So, first, thing is to put a clean install of the OS on, I was going to go with Leopard, but it kept on spitting out the install DVD (which I used perfectly happily on the macbook hours earlier), so I went for Tiger from the original restore discs, it rejected the second install disc, but it's not too much of a problem as I only wanted a barebones install anyway. Aside from printer programs (a shared printer is attatched), vlc, codecs and iPlayer, the hdd is empty.
I have it connected to the network via ethernet, connected it to the (720p)TV with a DVI->HDMI cable, there is no monitor, keyboard or mouse attatched, I enabled screen sharing on it, both laptops just log straight in.
A 500gb usb hdd has two partitions, 250gb media (dvd rips etc), 210gb time machine.
Everything is working perfectly except for three things
1) I can't get iPlayer/youtube etc to play properly, it's really choppy, like 2fps (although the audio is faultless), It always managed to play them before. it's not outputting a large resolution (720p which is small compared to the monitor it was on before), it's not a network issue as it does it for pre-downloaded iplayer things. I have the latest flash and adobe air installed. Video playback isn't the issue as ripped dvd's play perfectly. I've tried moving the iPlayer downloads to the external HDD where the DVD rips play from perfectly, so it's not IO bottlenecks, I can only now blame adobe...
2) time machine, I can't seem to get the connected HDD to play nice with time machine, ie, using it as a network drive for the laptops to back up to. Would leopard allow this or do I have to get a time capsule/airport extreme?
3) printer, I can only print via printer sharing, not scan etc, I get the same results via airport express. any ideas? As I bought it from apple with my laptop, I actually expected it to work...
generally I'm happy with the setup, but these few issues could make it perfect.
There are only 2 available upgrades, the HDD (currently a 4200 IDE, could go to a 5400, or 7200) and Leopard,
(and yes, I've spend hours on MRoogle as well as apple's discussion boards
)