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DCBassman

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Oct 28, 2021
684
472
West Devon, UK
Saw it at a car boot/yard sale, and idly asked the price. Pristine, in original box, missing only peripherals and a hard drive.
£20! How could I pass that up?

Now, what to do with it...
Apart from attack it with a vacuum cleaner first, that is!
 

DCBassman

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Oct 28, 2021
684
472
West Devon, UK
Specs:
8-core 2.8GHz dual Xeons
16GB RAM
Otherwise stock.
Have cleaned it and installed a 7200RPM 500GB boot drive, a 5900RPM 500GB Time Machine drive, and a 1TB 5900RPM drive as extra storage.
Just beginning the construction of an ElCap installer, and we're good to go.
 

DCBassman

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Oct 28, 2021
684
472
West Devon, UK
And this post is written on the 'new' machine. Took a lot of fiddling to get a bootable installer onto a USB external drive, and then it wouldn't see the drive to boot from it. So took the SSD out of its case and hung it straight onto the SATA connector that was spare. That worked!

My only gripe so far is that this had no Airport card. Not that I'm complaining for a nearly-free machine, but I cannot get it to use a TP-Link Archer T2U ac dongle, even though the correct drivers are installed and the thing shows up under Network. It just says 'Not Connected' but doesn't show me how to connect. Hmmm...
 

DCBassman

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Oct 28, 2021
684
472
West Devon, UK
OK, got that working now, so all set up! Very pleased with it.
What I must do soon is, despite a quick attack with the vacuum cleaner, strip it and clean it up properly, it desperately needs it...
 

OS6-OSX

macrumors 6502a
Jun 13, 2004
948
756
California
"Strip it and clean it up properly"
If not done properly you will not be allowed in the 3,1 club! 😂
Spring Cleaning 2.jpg
 
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DCBassman

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Oct 28, 2021
684
472
West Devon, UK
Back to El Capitan, albeit on the fast SSD. Catalina glitchy due to not having sufficient graphics power, I think. OK, High Sierra then. But I cannot get the patcher to work, or produce a bootable device that works on this machine.
I REALLY want this to run Linux Mint, but there appears to be no way to get it to see the USB installer, or a DVD either, come to that.
 

DCBassman

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Oct 28, 2021
684
472
West Devon, UK
Right, after much wrangling (see 'won't boot linux live USB' somewhere nearby), I have it running Mint 21.1. Then, deciding that I'm less bothered about the boot screen than if I was running macOS, I whipped out the 2600XT and installed a GT1030. Much silence, and it works well. That adds up to a powerful Linux box. Happy!
 
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