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I also was unsuccessful connecting via bluetooth to a speaker wihich this box saw just fine but forwhatever reason would not connect to which was a bummer. I'll fiddle with that later.
Pairing BT items to Linux machines is one of the more irritating issues in any Linux. As we're talking Macs here, it's plainly the software, not the machinery.
 
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Oh well, the card was a dud. :confused:
I got that screen but blue-black color scheme with MBP 17" 2011 and OCLP 2.20 + Monterey. I thought my GPU is broken (AMD HD 6570M). I then remembered how I had huge problems with my iMac 2011 (which btw also has the HD 6570M) when upgrading OCLP from 1.5 to 2.0. Had to recover all from backups and install OS from scratch to get it back up and running, huge pain. Upgrading decision was stupid from my part as the 1.5 was already really stable and there was nothing new for Monterey anyway. So, I decided to try the OCLP 1.5 with the MBP 17" 2011 too.

Well, what do you know! It works just fine and the screen is normal. :D👍

It seems like the post 2.0 OCLP-versions broke something for the older gear. And again, do not upgrade if the system works already!

Look familiar? ;) I see you ran Linux but anyways...could be driver/sw related...or not.
 

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I got that screen but blue-black color scheme with MBP 17" 2011 and OCLP 2.20 + Monterey. I thought my GPU is broken (AMD HD 6570M). I then remembered how I had huge problems with my iMac 2011 (which btw also has the HD 6570M) when upgrading OCLP from 1.5 to 2.0. Had to recover all from backups and install OS from scratch to get it back up and running, huge pain. Upgrading decision was stupid from my part as the 1.5 was already really stable and there was nothing new for Monterey anyway. So, I decided to try the OCLP 1.5 with the MBP 17" 2011 too.

Well, what do you know! It works just fine and the screen is normal. :D👍

It seems like the post 2.0 OCLP-versions broke something for the older gear. And again, do not upgrade if the system works already!

Look familiar? ;) I see you ran Linux but anyways...could be driver/sw related...or not.
Thanks for thinking with me :)
The issues are already present on the preboot screen. In the screenshot I was running GRML which is used for flashing GPU's. The artifacts are system wide and sometimes the iMac boots up with a random colour on the screen.

I've decided to return the card and try another one 🤞
 
I bought the same exact model that was my first Mac, a (black) mid 2007 2.16ghz C2D MacBook and it came on Lion so of course I threw chromium legacy and YouTube at it. Performance is a bit all over the place, but it will be corrected with intel tiger and force me to work on PPCMC 7 Intel edition. Still surreal playing 720p YouTube on the official website with it… so many memories. Only with 2GB RAM right now, so maxing it out will happen soon enough.

TIL C2D Macs do actually throttle under heat load… prop up one side of it on your bed with the box that came with your replacement 3.5mm headphones, and suddenly you get pretty good 720p performance with a C2D 2.16ghz on Lion with 2GBs of ram and chrome legacy. I could see on chrome legacy I still somehow had a bit of ram free and that was not the bottleneck, but I always swore these things didn’t thermal throttle back in the day but here I am with irrefutable proof that they do 🤣 they weren’t pushed enough to need that then I guess.
 
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As far as I'm aware, 12s are included, and apparently some 13s also. It does say so somewhere, despite the intro having you believe that anything past Core 2 Duo isn't early enough!
:D
Of course, I've wrecked my own reputation here by buying a 2017 iMac...
 
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Stupid question :D. Can I count my cMP5.1 (2012) as early Intel Mac or not yet..?
If we take it from the constructive point of view, the break-even point is imho 2012.
Before 2012: no metal graphics, no USB3, mainly no Thunderbolt, problematic EFI to run Windows directly, problematic graphics reliability.
From 2012 on all these above mentioned points solved.
 
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As far as I'm aware, 12s are included, and apparently some 13s also. It does say so somewhere, despite the intro having you believe that anything past Core 2 Duo isn't early enough!
:D
Of course, I've wrecked my own reputation here by buying a 2017 iMac...
I would draw the demarcation line at the beginning of the i-series. Anything before it is "early". Anything that officially runs Monterey is "late". Those in between are "middle". (If you're not going to have a middle, and only go with early/late, then Mojave official compatibility is a good spot, as it also mark several other major appearance changes, after which design plateaued for almost a decade.)
 
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IMO "early Intel" doesn't mean early Intel processors but early Intel Macs. Just like the forum section title says.

Then there is the way to examine what years Intels were made (2006-2020) and split that in the middle getting early and late from that. So, that would put the line to year 2013. But, personally I would put the line a year earlier because:

- Macbook Pro: 2012 unibodies - last ones you could upgrade RAM (at all) and drive and battery easily. Can run Catalina. But, year 2012 is little problematic as the Retina MBP was introduced, I would put all Retinas to late side.
- iMac: 2012 ie. last one without glued glass and easy access for maintenance and upgrades. Can run Catalina.
- Mini: 2012 was the last one you can upgrade RAM. Can run Catalina.
- Mac Pro: 2012 was the last cMP. Can only run High Sierra stock, can do Mojave but needs a GPU upgrade to one supporting Metal.

Everything after that was different in some considerable way.

MBA is a weird one: nothing special was upgraded at any time. Only processors got upgrades over time, otherwise pretty much same stuff. Even the display was the basically same until in the very end I think they finally put Retinas in them? MBA 2012 can run Catalina like most other 2012s. From 2013 onwards they can run Big Sur, Monterey etc.
 
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MBA is a weird one: nothing special was upgraded at any time.
The form was kept the same but USB3 from 2012 and Thunderbolt were really a major step.
Even the display was the basically same until in the very end I think they finally put Retinas in them?
Which was imho a clever approach.
With exactly the same i5 processor, the same RAM, the same OS, a MBA with it's TFT screen used for office jobs half the power that a 13" MBP Retina used, which is essential when you are weight-constrained off-grid.
The desktop was less crisp, but the usable real estate was even slightly larger than those of MBPs.
 
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Question for the thread... I just came into a late 2006 iMac (2.16ghz Core 2 Duo) that I got for basically free at a garage sale. I don't have anything of the style and was hoping it was a G5 model but oh well.

Thing is I already have a 2007 Mac Mini Core 2 Duo (1.8ghz) that I've upped the RAM on and added an SSD to. I'm still planning to rehab the iMac just for the fun of it, but my question is whether it's worth it to go all the way with RAM and SSD?

Basically are there known fail points with these iMac models, and/or do they throttle harder than a Mac mini due to thermals?
 
Question for the thread... I just came into a late 2006 iMac (2.16ghz Core 2 Duo) that I got for basically free at a garage sale. I don't have anything of the style and was hoping it was a G5 model but oh well.

Thing is I already have a 2007 Mac Mini Core 2 Duo (1.8ghz) that I've upped the RAM on and added an SSD to. I'm still planning to rehab the iMac just for the fun of it, but my question is whether it's worth it to go all the way with RAM and SSD?

Basically are there known fail points with these iMac models, and/or do they throttle harder than a Mac mini due to thermals?

Your new late-2006 iMac has a Radeon X1600 GPU - the good news is that it's not one of the notoriously failiure-prone Nvidia GPUs used in Macs during the late Early-Intel/Mid-Intel period. The bad news is that it has been known to fail (more famously in the MacBook Pro, but in the iMac too)...just not nearly as much as Nvidia GPUs in the iMac like the 7300 and 7600.

If you've got the capacity to do it, what I'd first think about doing is at the very least cleaning out the fan and heatsink, and repasting the GPU and CPU.

I think it's totally worth going all the way with RAM and SSD upgrades, but only if you've got access to cheap DDR2 RAM (since in my experience at least, it's risen in price on the used market). A SATA SSD can at least be reused in a USB 3 enclosure if your iMac experiences a GPU failure.

And yes, I would expect an iMac to have much harsher thermals than a mini; much like a MacBook Pro, Apple's design emphasis on thinness meant that components like the GPU would be dealing with far more thermal stress.
 
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I just came into a late 2006 iMac (2.16ghz Core 2 Duo)
Personally, I would not invest a penny in any iMac before 2012. The used market is now over flooded by damn-cheap iMacs from 2015 to 2019, ways better, whose users are pissed-of by their's slow HDD.
Put an external USB3 SSD and they are flying again.
 
Personally, I would not invest a penny in any iMac before 2012. The used market is now over flooded by damn-cheap iMacs from 2015 to 2019, ways better, whose users are pissed-of by their's slow HDD.
Put an external USB3 SSD and they are flying again.
Oh, by all means I'm aware that I can get a better all purpose computer than this, I'm more just having fun tinkering. I bought a 2017 5K for $100 to do the monitor conversion (was super fun and a great result), this model is a fun design difference from the unibody.

I also find having a legit early intel kinda of useful for burning discs for my G3 with Toast 11, but I'm facing a bit of an overlap with the Mac Mini I already have. I guess I didn't consider how impactful the additional GPU is in the iMac. I should probably do the suggested maintenance Rampancy mentioned, though looking at the iFixit guides these are not friendly machines to work on haha (heck aside from cutting the screen adhesive I found the 2017 fairly simple).

I reinstalled Leopard and it turns out somebody had already been inside tho, as there's a larger HDD than listed (still a spinner tho) and 3GB of RAM. I should probably replace my Mac Mini with this device (decommissioning it into storage for the time being).
 
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Nope, booted up fine. Got it from college surplus (here in the states all the ‘15 and ‘17 models are EoL and colleges have tons of them)
 
A great use of an old MacBook2008 and a 23" 2K monitor.
The very best sheet music display available for a piano and it's practically free!

It is able to display 2,5 full size sheets of music and scroll pages hands-free on a pedal stroke.
The software? just a plain Firefox browser running on an old Mojave OS!

It can display multipages .pdf documents, if configured with "horizontal scrolling" + "page fit".
The up/down keys will change pages, the ctrl-tab Key combination changes the whole sheet
(if you have several music scores opened on tabs).

I have programmed these keys on a three pedals USB device, that you can buy chineese for peanuts.
That's it ! Enjoy!

see detailed instructions here:
1753645116210.jpeg
 
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Today's EI tinkering will include:
Taking the now-stable HiRes MBP 8,2 to Ventura from Catalina, using OCLP 2.4.0
Using the mid-2013 MBA 11" to create a Mavericks installer using Balena Etcher.
Using said Mavericks installer to put something different to SL, El Cap, or Linux, on the 2007 17" MBP.
Also trying out Mavericks on the 2009 Whitebook, on a 500GB 7200rpm spinner...
 
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