Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Inventive use for a Core Duo Mini?

A

Asuriyan

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Feb 4, 2013
622
23
Indiana
My place of work was throwing away a stack of 2006 Mac Minis (the exact explanation was "these have been sitting around and we don't know what they are"). I asked if I could take a couple and they said 'sure'. The ones I picked up were the "best" model from late 2006, with a 1.83GHz Core Duo, 2GB RAM and an 80GB hard drive.

I have an i5 mini that I use as a Plex server/NAS, but I'd been thinking about moving it upstairs and using it as an HTPC and for light duty gaming for the kids. The Core Duo meets the requirements to take over my Plex setup and I think that's what I'll use one of them for. Any ideas on an inventive use for the other? I was thinking about putting it on Einstein@Home or another distributed computing setup, but I'm not sure if its paltry processing power will have much to contribute. Any other thoughts?
 
ValSalva

ValSalva

macrumors 68040
Jun 26, 2009
3,783
259
Burpelson AFB
Asuriyan said:
My place of work was throwing away a stack of 2006 Mac Minis (the exact explanation was "these have been sitting around and we don't know what they are"). I asked if I could take a couple and they said 'sure'. The ones I picked up were the "best" model from late 2006, with a 1.83GHz Core Duo, 2GB RAM and an 80GB hard drive.

I have an i5 mini that I use as a Plex server/NAS, but I'd been thinking about moving it upstairs and using it as an HTPC and for light duty gaming for the kids. The Core Duo meets the requirements to take over my Plex setup and I think that's what I'll use one of them for. Any ideas on an inventive use for the other? I was thinking about putting it on Einstein@Home or another distributed computing setup, but I'm not sure if its paltry processing power will have much to contribute. Any other thoughts?
Click to expand...

Sounds like good ideas. Is the 80GB HDD large enough?

I wish I could find people giving away functioning Macs even if they are seven years old :D Great find!
 
A

Asuriyan

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Feb 4, 2013
622
23
Indiana
ValSalva said:
Sounds like good ideas. Is the 80GB HDD large enough?

I wish I could find people giving away functioning Macs even if they are seven years old :D Great find!
Click to expand...

Yeah, I had to work hard to contain my excitement when I flipped one over and saw that it was Intel. I would have taken the G4s just to play with, but this was even better. They had power adapters for them and everything.

The hardest part was only rescuing two of the fourteen that were there. I surreptitiously informed a couple of the other IT staff that they should go take a look, so I'm pretty sure none of them will make it as far as the dumpster.

As for the hard drive, I have a Mercury Elite Pro 6TB attached to my current Mini, so really all I need the internal drive for is the operating system. The one downside is that there's no FW800 port, so I'll have to get an adapter to FW400 or just use USB2.0. Throughput should be adequate for Plex with either.
 
ValSalva

ValSalva

macrumors 68040
Jun 26, 2009
3,783
259
Burpelson AFB
Asuriyan said:
The hardest part was only rescuing two of the fourteen that were there. I surreptitiously informed a couple of the other IT staff that they should go take a look, so I'm pretty sure none of them will make it as far as the dumpster.
Click to expand...

I think I've actually had dreams where this stuff happened. Then I wake up... :D
 
S

scbond

macrumors 6502
Oct 16, 2010
259
2
Nottingham, UK
Seen plenty of videos of people putting the old G4 and Core Duo minis being put in cars with touch screens on the dash to use iTunes to play music through the stereo. Makes syncing a music library very easy and is a fun project to do...maybe worth a try for one of the minis you grabbed.
 
wrinkster22

wrinkster22

macrumors 68030
Jun 11, 2011
2,623
7
Toronto
I saw something where some guy made a recess in one of his walls and put in a touched screened monitor hooked up to a mini. I would install it in a kitchen and hook it up to some speakers.
 
A

anonnymouse

macrumors regular
Dec 4, 2011
118
16
I would love to get my hands on those. I suppose it is too late and the others have been trashed?

These older minis have significant life left in them running SecuritySpy. SS runs on PowerPC hardware with minimal RAM with OS X 10.4 Tiger as the minimum. I have a 1.5 G4 with 1GB RAM, and it manages 4 VGA network cameras just fine (mix of D-Link and Foscam). I'm running 10.5 Leopard on that machine now, but I have run it previously on 10.4.11. Of course, anything newer than that is gravy - more cameras, higher frame rate, better compression choices.

Load up SS, configure a couple cameras, turn on the web server and poke a hole in the firewall, and throw it in a closet and let it run for years.

If you hear of any more working minis getting unceremoniously dumped, PLEASE message me.
 
eecyclone

eecyclone

macrumors regular
Jul 10, 2013
105
0
Some cool ideas in this thread.

I like the plex/itunes server for one. You could also use it for a time machine server.

I like the kitchen computer too. You could probably get a tv tuner and use it for a dvr, then export files to your plex/itunes server. That would split some of the processing power required between both minis so neither one of them would be overworked.
 
V

vistadude

macrumors 65816
Jan 3, 2010
1,423
1
I'd use at least one of them to install dropbox, box, google drive, skydrive, etc and backup all your photos and other important files. It would basically continuously make a backup of all your cloud documents and keep it as a headless server.

Make sure you install back to my mac so you can use sharing screens with another mac.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom