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What have you done with an early Intel recently?

bobesch said:
Mojave on an MBP4,1 with only 4GB RAM really is ok - but SSD is mission critical (the 4GB RAM stick is certainly another welcome helping - I do not regret the 30bucks ...).
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Moving up to an SSD has been the first thing I try to upgrade when I take on a new-to-me Mac. I have one HDD holdout — in a 2013 iMac — because I want to manage all the upgrades (RAM, CPU, SSD) at the same time. Opening it, of course, requires a new adhesive kit.

bobesch said:
My routine is to prepare the SSD in an external USB-housing with HFS+ partition-mapping and a small 12GB partition at the very end to hold the MojavePatch-Installer.
Mojave is also my final frontier for the sake of all my favorite 32bit-Apps.
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I really like that last part as a means to handle patching updates.
 
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As for the Black MacBook (on which I'm typing this !), it's still useful for light tasks : web browsing (with Nightly and some add-ons), word processing, listening to music, convert vinyle into Wave using Audacity... nothing a more recent machine can't do, but it does look cool !
 
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B S Magnet said:
This may be, but it still astounds me how there are folks who are completely able to run everything up to Big Sur on the last of the C2Ds — and they actually do.
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It's always a matter of requirements, expectations and patience. There's also quite a difference between e.g. a 1.4 GHz Core 2 Duo (2010 11" MBA) and a 3.33 GHz one (2009 iMac) - let alone an 8-core Mac Pro. :)
 
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So I put aside my A1150 revival project for my one and only true Mac love - the A1181. First was a (comparatively) cheap MacBook 5,2 I got off of eBay from a local seller who was willing to do a (distanced!) meet up and pick up. I filled it with two SSDs using an optical drive caddy, set it up to dual-boot 10.7 and 10.11, changed the RAM from DD2-667 to DDR2-800, and changed the thermal paste with AS Ceramiqué 2. I got all three of the second Tomb Raider Trilogy recently released on GOG (Legend/Anniversary/Underworld) working decently well on it using Wineskin, but I'm limited to a version of the wrapper that won't let me enable CSMT to boost performance (anyone got a copy of Wineskin 2.9.0.6?) I'll likely see if I can use dosdude1's patcher to get it up to Mojave...

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Near the cat-sitting/house-sitting gig my partner and I have, is a small-time computer repair shop stacked and filled with old computers and aging parts and equipment; one of the last (perhaps the last) shop of its kind in my city. The guy who runs it gave me four A1181s, as-is, untested for $40. Three of them actually work! I got the best of the bunch, a 4,1 running using a topcase scavenged from one of the other three and a dying hard drive. Since I'm away from my usual parts bin and crafting supplies, I fashioned a DIY drive caddy using cardboard cut out of a pizza box and masking tape.

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rampancy said:
So I put aside my A1150 revival project for my one and only true Mac love - the A1181. First was a (comparatively) cheap MacBook 5,2 I got off of eBay from a local seller who was willing to do a (distanced!) meet up and pick up. I filled it two SSDs using an optical drive caddy, set it up to dual-boot 10.7 and 10.11, changed the RAM from DD2-667 to DDR2-800, and changed the thermal paste with AS Ceramiqué 2. I got all three of the second Tomb Raider Trilogy recently released on GOG (Legend/Anniversary/Underworld) working decently well on it using Wineskin, but I'm limited to a version of the wrapper that won't let me enable CSMT to boost performance (anyone got a copy of Wineskin 2.9.0.6?) I'll likely see if I can use dosdude1's patcher to get it up to Mojave...

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Near the cat-sitting/house-sitting gig my partner and I have, is a small-time computer repair shop stacked and filled with old computers and aging parts equipment; one of the last (perhaps the last) shop of its kind in my city. The guy who runs it gave me four A1181s, as-is, untested for $40. Three of them actually work! I got the best of the bunch, a 4,1 running using a donated topcase and dying hard drive. Since I'm away from my usual parts bin and crafting supplies, I fashioned a DIY drive caddy using cardboard cut out of a pizza box and masking tape.

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That caddy is some hardcore Red Green engineering!
 
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Guys, got a question. Does it worth to buy Xserve (I suppose it's 3,1 by its configuration details from seller, RAM is DDR3-type) for home experiments? Is it loud when work? If yes - what can be done to make it a bit quiet?
 
Tratkazir_the_1st said:
Guys, got a question. Does it worth to buy Xserve (I suppose it's 3,1 by its configuration details from seller, RAM is DDR3-type) for home experiments? Is it loud when work? If yes - what can be done to make it a bit quiet?
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They are loud. This is generally because the 1U height of the enclosure constrains the size of the fans, and the fans which must fit within that height need to move a comparable volume of cool air as the much larger fans within a Mac Pro (or Power Mac G5) enclosure do. This means they must run at a much higher RPM than the large intake/exhaust fans in a Mac Pro/PMG5.

Another consideration is making sure both power supply units are operational. While running just one should still be enough to test hardware and to set up things, these Macs really were designed with colo-intended redundancy measures and should be run as if they’re in that setting.
 
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@Amethyst1
@B S Magnet

Thanks for explanations. More dumb questions :D. Is it loud all the way or load dependent? I'm not planning some heavy enterprise-grade deployment. May be MacOS Server for educational purposes, may be make a ProxMoxVE (or ESXi - not familiar with it) server, or some else home-grade tasks :).
 
From the moment the power button is pressed until the moment it is shut down, it is always LOUD. And, as if that were not bad enough, it gets LOUDER with heavy load. Even if you put this in your garage, you can still hear this in your house.

The only place you could run this without hearing it is if you placed it in a detached shed outside your house.

This is how my wife describes the XServe, which is why it sits unplugged now, with most of it's functions now performed by a few very quiet Mac Minis.
 
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I redid the decorations on the back of one of the monitors in my classroom. On the one, I've had the logic board of a TI-99/4A and a G5 module; those haven't changed. On the other though, I had the logic board of a very dead 14" iBook G4 and an older ThinkPad. I've replaced those two today with the logic board of a very, very dead 17" iMac G5! I love the look of the blue logic boards.

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MultiFinder17 said:
Especially since, teaching Robotics & Coding in middle school, my classes tend to attract all the scrawny little nerds. Hell, I was one of them back when I was here, so I don't tolerate that in any way, shape, or form :D
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And that's really important since bullying can also be a big probelm in STEM circles too. You sir, are a legend. :)

And speaking of nerds, Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force and Elite Force II just hit GOG. Time to set my Early Intel phasers to frag...
 
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Soooo…today discovered that SOMA FM has it's own app on the App Store. I have it on my iPhones but did not (EVER!) think to look for Mac. All this time I've been using iTunes and Nightingale (and Triode) to stream Drone Zone.

But yeah, it's there. Works on High Sierra too (screen caps are from the 2015 MBP).

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Certificate of Excellence said:
Another hobby of his that IIRC started at a Radio shack was RC planes. I was very sad to see Radioshacks go the way of the dodo. Spent alot of time in them as a kid.
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eyoungren said:
Yeah, that was always odd to me. RS was the one 'tech' place that was always there.
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Likewise for me in the UK where Radio Shack operated under the Tandy moniker. I remember always eagerly awaiting their latest catalogue of products and studying every page and thinking up potential electronics projects. :)

eyoungren said:
My dad followed up with a TRS-80 CoCo in 1981.
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The CoCo was the first computer that I had regular access to - courtesy of a childhood friend receiving one (much to his chagrin because he'd wanted an Atari VCS!) during the UK's Home Computer Revolution and I have fond memories of the machine because I cut my teeth learning about BASIC using the well written manual that put to shame the one supplied by Commodore with my C64 a few years later.

Amethyst1 said:
You can always transplant a 5,2‘s logic board into a BlackBook‘s case and at least get better graphics and more recent OS X. Nonetheless a Core 2 Duo is getting long in the tooth.
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That reminds me, I really need to resume my own transplant project. :D
 
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