2007 Mac Mini ... anyone here have one running Mountain Lion, Mavericks, Yosemite or El Capitan?

[GameGuru38]

I am researching and see guides on how to put a newer OS X version on my Mac Mini and was hoping to find some other members of the forum who have actually done it and how the experience is with a newer version on? Just wondering if everything works (like iMessage) and if it is really slow with a newer version on not.

Please let me know your experiences!

 

[Kaida]

too much work, in the end, it felt like a hackintosh altogether.. So I had mine running with win10 instead.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/2006-2007-mac-pro-1-1-2-1-and-os-x-yosemite.1740775/

 

[dogslobber]

I am researching and see guides on how to put a newer OS X version on my Mac Mini and was hoping to find some other members of the forum who have actually done it and how the experience is with a newer version on? Just wondering if everything works (like iMessage) and if it is really slow with a newer version on not.

Please let me know your experiences!

2007 Mini is capped at 3.25gb of RAM which isn't nearly enough to run El Cap. Further, the x1600 driver isn't available as 64-bit so you're stuck with non-quartz framebuffer for the display so no video and terrible performance when moving windows. In summary, it just isn't worth the hassle trying to run a 2007 Mini with anything greater than Lion.

 

[GameGuru38]

That sucks, hate being stuck at Lion. My 2007 Mac Mini does show 4GB in About My Mac.

 

[cyclingplatypus]

I wonder if you used an SSD what the speed improvement would be, even with the minimal ram?

 

[dogslobber]

That sucks, hate being stuck at Lion. My 2007 Mac Mini does show 4GB in About My Mac.

http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/mac_mini/specs/mac-mini-core-2-duo-2.0-specs.html

*By default, 1 GB of RAM was installed as two 512 MB modules, no slots free. Apple officially supports 2 GB of RAM, but third-parties have been "unofficially" able to upgrade it to 4 GB of RAM using dual 2 GB memory modules. Please note that some memory in excess of 3 GB cannot be used with 4 GB of RAM installed, so some may prefer to quote an actual maximum of 3 GB of RAM.

 

[GameGuru38]

So I got lucky I guess.

 

[jpietrzak8]

So I got lucky I guess.

If you use "System Profiler" to find out how much RAM you have, it should report 4GB, as that is indeed what you have installed. However, if you take a look at the Activitly Monitor's "System Memory" tab, I believe it should show a total memory size of something less than that. The problem is that, while you can install a pair of 2GB cards into the 2007 Mini, it cannot address the full range of memory on both cards...

 

[Cycling Asia]

I had a 2007 mini (C2D) running mountain lion using MacPostFactor. ML was the last OS to support the graphics in the 2007 model so going beyond that isn't that good.

This box would run 24/7 serving as my gateway and plex media server, but it started suffering from system crashes requiring a reboot every few days. It has been retired and now sits on my desk with a clean Lion install, waiting for me to think of what to do with it.

 

[GameGuru38]

So mountain lion isn't recommended for it then?

 

[Cycling Asia]

So mountain lion isn't recommended for it then?

Using MacPostFactor I had no issues installing and I think the system crashes were due to my hardware failing. Even on lion I'm not able to use the built in wifi (atheros) and had to resort to a usb dongle.

I'd suggest you try ML using MacPostFactor and see how it goes, you can always go back to Lion if it doesn't work for you.

 

[GameGuru38]

Yeah I think I will, Mountain Lion has iMessage right?

 

[CoastalOR]

Yeah I think I will, Mountain Lion has iMessage right?

Yes.
See OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion review page 4.

 

[JAitch]

I used MacPostFactor 2.0.1 to install Mavericks 10.9.5 on my Mac Mini 2007. MPF defaults to EFI32 in configuration, but this machine has EFI64, so make sure to switch to that (works better for me).

Both About This Mac and Activity Monitor's Memory tab show 4GB of RAM being used. Not sure why, since I have seen in multiple places that this machine can only access 3GB total.

Since I use this as a file/media server, I have not tried iMessage.

 

[jpietrzak8]

Both About This Mac and Activity Monitor's Memory tab show 4GB of RAM being used.

Go back to Activity Monitor and add up the values for "Free" + "Used" ("Used" is already the sum of "Active" + "Inactive" + "Wired"), and see what total you get. My guess is, it'll be a number less than 4 GB. (I've heard that the real max amount is somewhere between 3.1 and 3.3 GB).

(I don't remember what Activity Monitor looks like in Mavericks; the used / free memory totals may be displayed in a different manner. Still, you should be able to find the correct number by adding the right values together.)

The problem is that that machine has a chipset with 4 GB of addressing space total. Since some of that addressing space is used to access other devices on the motherboard, not all of it can be used for accessing RAM.

EDIT: Drat! The newer versions of Activity Monitor don't bother with a "Free" value. Hmm. Probably the easiest thing to do would be to use a different mechanism; for example, if you run "top" from the command line, and add up the "used" and "unused" values after "PhysMem", that should give you a more accurate value of how much memory is available. Hopefully...

 

[adam9c1]

I have 1,1. Flashed to 2,1 and upgraded CPU to C2D.

Installed Lion on another machine then modified plist and moved that drive to the mini.

Now the Mini has SL Server.