Gloomy
macrumors regular
Nice buy! But oh dear, that’s a shame you don’t have transport. It weighs about 18kg so I hope you don’t have far to go! 😱
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What have you done with an early Intel recently?
- Thread starter Project Alice
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JulianStaples
macrumors regular
Yeah, I think I’m going to be hopping between forums figuring it out. 😅 Reported specs are only 6GB RAM and some old HDD storage, so plenty of room to tinker/upgrade. But it’s a bit of a sellers market out there right now, so like I say, long-term project!
I’ve made a huge mistake. 😱 Ah well, I’ll either get enough of a workout to not have to bother with the gym afterwards, or (more realistically) it’ll end up being an Uber ride that costs twice as much as the Mac Pro did. 😂
MacInTO
macrumors 68000
Bring a luggage cart or a big suitcase with you. Much easier to transport with wheels!
JulianStaples
macrumors regular
Not sure I’ve got a suitcase big enough! But I’ll break out the tape measure and see. 😅
alex_free
macrumors 65816
It’s 2/22/2026 and legacy chromium just keeps working. Playing a movie with up to date vlc and music videos on YouTube on Mac OS 10.12 with the late 2012 Mac mini like it’s a decade ago. Enjoying the day off from work as I should… god the late 2012 Mac mini is a horrible advertisement for the modern equivalent
The other day I totally ripped my legit copy of fallout new Vegas ultimate edition and have transferred it to my hacked 360 with all dlc… the last good fallout game was released in 2010 and even Bethesda knows it, having a ton of fun with survival hardcore mode on very hard of course. If you don’t play on very hard at least you just suck at video games
The other day I totally ripped my legit copy of fallout new Vegas ultimate edition and have transferred it to my hacked 360 with all dlc… the last good fallout game was released in 2010 and even Bethesda knows it, having a ton of fun with survival hardcore mode on very hard of course. If you don’t play on very hard at least you just suck at video games
JulianStaples
macrumors regular
Well, it took some heavy lifting, but she's home. ☺️ Time to hook this fully-working Mac Pro up to a monitor and get going with...
Oh. 🙃
DCBassman
macrumors 65816
JulianStaples
macrumors regular
Unfortunately I can't get to anything other than that screen. 🙁 I initially thought it was a failure of the Radeon card, but there's also no boot chime audible and the keyboard doesn't respond to input (Num Lock/Caps Lock lights don't illuminate) so can't reset PRAM or get to the boot loader.
The fans come on and the HDD makes noises on startup, but that's about it. Tried booting with the Radeon card removed, no chime. Tried booting without the hard drive, no chime. Tried booting without the RAM sticks, no chime (but the front power light flashes on and off with no RAM present). Even tried replacing the CMOS battery, no chime.
I think the £25 18kg monster was too good to be true. 😔
Discovered that internet radio on iTunes 11 doesn't work anymore, just like iTunes 10 or below. Unlike those versions, however, using the Nubango patcher from the Garden does nothing and using it to patch iTunes 10 on Snow Leopard results in an iTunes that will run for a few seconds before automatically quitting. Patching iTunes 9 on Snow Leopard results in an iTunes that doesn't even start. I tried Aqua Proxy with iTunes 11 installed, but it didn't fix the internet radio problem. Only solution I have found is to downgrade to Leopard on my 2006 MBP. It's not the end of the world since most of my apps work on Leopard anyway and the existence of PowerFox Leopard Intel beta solves the browser problem.
I found that the internet radio in iTunes 11 does still work, but only after you sign into the iTunes store. I do it all the time in 10.7 Lion on my 2008 White MacBook and after the login all the radio stations work just fine. Not sure why you must sign in but there it is. Weird huh!
😁
alex_free
macrumors 65816
Ok, this might be one of my most insane posts. Fallout NV has some really deep lore if you’ve played Fallout 1 and Fallout 2, I only played NV twice, both before playing both of those on early Mac’s. And I’m at level 16 hardcore mode, I have energy weapons and small guns basically close to max. I am perhaps admittedly avoiding certain areas due to this, it makes the game a hell of a lot more interesting… I beat fallout 3 and new Vegas when I was 16 on very hard mode but never survival for new Vegas, it is is a very interesting dynamic. I think I will always play new Vegas on very hard survival from now on because before I always was too nice so to say.
I know this doesn’t have a ton to do with early intel Mac’s but when you consider how to get it into your 360 it makes more sense… thanks mods.
You can get all the DLC with a PPC Mac, you can get the game with a PPC Mac… and you can die an awful lot on a PowerPC video game console… at least I knew PS3 was bad for multi-plat even a decade ago. I love Sony but Microsoft destroyed them and tg we have the advantage now with bad update. Seriously not a single person expect maybe one had a PS3 and the only thing they could say is free live over and over and look at it now.
the fun thing is the lack of mods, just like fallout 2 poc. Probably will end up changing this up too
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Tried signing in on iTunes 11, but it didn't work. Thanks anyway though.
One thing I noticed is that when I'm on SL 10.6.3 (the version of Snow Leopard that is on my install DVD), patched iTunes 10 works just like it does on Leopard, but once I install the 10.6.8 combo update, patched iTunes 10 breaks. I have to say though, I can run all the apps I need to run on 10.6.3, even mainline PowerFox and MacPorts run. Only compromise I have to make is that I have to run Leopard's last version of VLC instead of Snow Leopard's last version, but the difference between those two versions isn't noticeable (at least to me). So, I'm going to keep this 2009 Mini on 10.6.3. I would try out 10.6.4-10.6.7 to see if the patched iTunes 10 breaks earlier than 10.6.8, but I can't find the 10.6.4-10.6.7 updaters anywhere.
DCBassman
macrumors 65816
A weekend away dog/house sitting at the big house in Cornwall. By rebooting the router, I got line speeds of 4.1Mbps, allegedly...
Tools for the weekend: 2013 Macbook Air 13" running Big Sur with added Firefox. 2011 Macbook Pro 15" hires running MX Linux 25.1,
No Windows machine at all, which is a first.
Tools for the weekend: 2013 Macbook Air 13" running Big Sur with added Firefox. 2011 Macbook Pro 15" hires running MX Linux 25.1,
No Windows machine at all, which is a first.
DCBassman
macrumors 65816
Got the replacement trackpad fitted, finally. It's better, but the keyboard mapping has some errors now, I've probably borked part of the keyboard cable. So, this one won't be sold, it will be a test bed for some lightweight Linux distros.
Or, of course, I could gut it, fit a new keyboard (and risk causing the exact same problem again!), repaste the cpu, and see if it works at all by the time I'm finished...
😀
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Amethyst1
macrumors G3
Hello everybody, I know I've not been very active here during the past year so I hope everybody's still alive and well. I've not actually done much out of the ordinary with my early Intel Macs last year, apart from downsizing to just one (the 2015 iMac 4K which is still my main machine) ... but I have recently broken down and got a new toy, so I do have some more experiments to share 😀 (And no, I don't mean to brag!)
I've finally broken the 20-megapixels-per-display barrier. 😀 This beauty is driven by a 2016-era Radeon RX 460 (DisplayPort 1.4 but no DSC) so this is as good as it gets using CVT-RB timings; using CVT-RB v2 I can get 51 Hz. I also "get" the fascination surrounding the 30" (16:10) displays now, as this one just about matches them in height but is a few centimeters wider. In other words, it's absolutely massive but gorgeous.
Now, on to the experiments:
(1) Maximum width at full height and full refresh.
(2) Maximum height at full width and full refresh.
(3) It is quite forgiving when it comes to low refresh rates. The significance of this is that it can be driven at full resolution (and about 26 Hz) from a Mavericks-compatible NVIDIA Kepler GPU, so my fever-dream of running Mavericks at 6K is possibly becoming a reality soon. 😛
I've finally broken the 20-megapixels-per-display barrier. 😀 This beauty is driven by a 2016-era Radeon RX 460 (DisplayPort 1.4 but no DSC) so this is as good as it gets using CVT-RB timings; using CVT-RB v2 I can get 51 Hz. I also "get" the fascination surrounding the 30" (16:10) displays now, as this one just about matches them in height but is a few centimeters wider. In other words, it's absolutely massive but gorgeous.
Now, on to the experiments:
(1) Maximum width at full height and full refresh.
(2) Maximum height at full width and full refresh.
(3) It is quite forgiving when it comes to low refresh rates. The significance of this is that it can be driven at full resolution (and about 26 Hz) from a Mavericks-compatible NVIDIA Kepler GPU, so my fever-dream of running Mavericks at 6K is possibly becoming a reality soon. 😛
JulianStaples
macrumors regular
My run of bad luck with gambles on cheap old Macs continues. 😅 The £25 Mac Pro still won't boot, and looks destined to become a very heavy paperweight, and now an old A1176 Mac mini has arrived from eBay for a whole £20. Never tinkered with one of these before so I thought it might be fun to resurrect as a Linux device or something. Or even some sort of rudimentary home media solution if the Superdrive works.
Alas, the listing stated that the mini had been "previously opened" and the HDD removed. And it seems to have been done with a sledgehammer. 😳 The SATA connector has been clean wrenched off the board along with the old hard drive, just leaving some twisted pins behind, and the socket for the audio ribbon cable was connected to the end of the cable and, erm, not the board itself. Also, every one of the screws holding the inner frame to the base is missing. 🙁
And I thought my repair jobs were bad. 😱
Thankfully, the unit came with an original box(!), PSU and, weirdly, a functioning (but filthy) Pro Mouse. So those bits, plus the few parts I can hopefully salvage (RAM sticks, optical drive if it works) should get me my money back. But having had a cursory inspection of the rest of the mini, it looks to my untrained eye that the damage is limited to that back interconnecting board. So I might try to find a (cheap!) replacement board, and maybe some screws, and see if this poor thing can be resurrected.
In happier news, I also decided to drop a bit more than £20 on an early Intel and finally picked up my dream OCLP MBP. Wanted this to be another little tinkering/upgrade project, but with RAM/SSD prices the way they are right now, it made more financial sense to buy one someone had already upgraded. 😂 16GB RAM and a 500GB SSD, plus a healthy battery (105 cycles, 94% BH according to Coconut Battery). And it runs Sequoia like a dream*. 😍
* - Perfectly smoothly for web browsing, YouTube, streaming and other such light-ish tasks. Please don't ask me to post Cinebench results.
Alas, the listing stated that the mini had been "previously opened" and the HDD removed. And it seems to have been done with a sledgehammer. 😳 The SATA connector has been clean wrenched off the board along with the old hard drive, just leaving some twisted pins behind, and the socket for the audio ribbon cable was connected to the end of the cable and, erm, not the board itself. Also, every one of the screws holding the inner frame to the base is missing. 🙁
And I thought my repair jobs were bad. 😱
Thankfully, the unit came with an original box(!), PSU and, weirdly, a functioning (but filthy) Pro Mouse. So those bits, plus the few parts I can hopefully salvage (RAM sticks, optical drive if it works) should get me my money back. But having had a cursory inspection of the rest of the mini, it looks to my untrained eye that the damage is limited to that back interconnecting board. So I might try to find a (cheap!) replacement board, and maybe some screws, and see if this poor thing can be resurrected.
In happier news, I also decided to drop a bit more than £20 on an early Intel and finally picked up my dream OCLP MBP. Wanted this to be another little tinkering/upgrade project, but with RAM/SSD prices the way they are right now, it made more financial sense to buy one someone had already upgraded. 😂 16GB RAM and a 500GB SSD, plus a healthy battery (105 cycles, 94% BH according to Coconut Battery). And it runs Sequoia like a dream*. 😍
* - Perfectly smoothly for web browsing, YouTube, streaming and other such light-ish tasks. Please don't ask me to post Cinebench results.
JulianStaples
macrumors regular
Not sure if the process is the same for Airs, but I've had to replace entire keyboards on a couple of old MBPs and find it a strangely calming repair to do. Something about having gotten through the stresses of disconnecting a dozen fragile little connectors and removing the logic board, and then just sitting there mindlessly unscrewing 6000 teeny tiny screws to get the keyboard off is oddly therapeutic. 😂
Gloomy
macrumors regular
Sorry to hear about the Pro and Mini. That is some awful damage inside the Mini, what a shame. ☹️
I have that same 2012 15” and it runs great! Mine is still on Sonoma, and like yours it is perfect for general use. Sometimes even some light gaming/emulation. The GeForce 650M is a decent chip for running OpenEMU and Dolphin.
I also played through Life Is Strange on Steam not long ago, ran very well at 720p with 60fps a lot of the time but 45-50 on average.
JulianStaples
macrumors regular
That's just the way things go with bargain basement buys. I guess there's a reason decent Mac Pro 5,1s tend to go for hundreds of pounds still and my one was £25. And the mini was listed as spares/repair tbf. It's just, based on the description, I was expecting to be able to drop a new hard drive in and that was it. I have found a cheap connecting board replacement for an A1176, so I might take a punt to see if that's the only issue. All the other cables/parts seem to be intact. 😬 But if that doesn't work, it might just have to go in the (recycling) bin.
I'm a bit more annoyed with the MP as that came from a legit high street shop that should have done enough of an inspection to note that it wasn't booting to any sort of working screen. I haven't given up on it quite yet. I think I can justify buying a couple of parts (graphics card, PSU) to see if one of those fixes the boot screen issue. And if it still doesn't work and the problem is likely somewhere on the logic boards themselves, I'll have to sell the whole thing cheap on eBay as parts/not working to someone with the experience, skill and patience to do a proper repair on it. 🥲
I'll have to follow your lead and try some gaming on the MBP 😀 I guess you've found the same, but I'm impressed with how quiet it is for general use. Had a 2010 15-inch model that I tried OCLP Sequoia and then Ventura on, and both made the fans spin up to take-off speed even after a complete clean/re-paste. But the 2012 seems to keep itself nice and cool (except for when it was running one of the fancy dynamic Sequoia screensavers, it didn't like that at all 😂).
Currently watching some 1080p YouTube and testing some free CDs I picked up recently whilst planning out tomorrow's agenda. 2007 17" MBP on Mavericks. Runs great, haven't even got an SSD in here but have maxed out RAM to 6GB.
alex_free
macrumors 65816
Interesting. I moved recently and got one of them fancy wifi6 routers. Windows XP SP3 (no updates) can’t see a single WiFi in my building. Tiger can and connects to my 2.4ghz/5ghz network just fine. So does lion. Apparently I need to figure out legacy-update after all to get this WPA2-PSK update. And I guess just connect the MacBook running all these OSes to an Ethernet cable while it’s running xp until I get the update….
JulianStaples
macrumors regular
My run of bad luck with gambles on cheap old Macs continues. 😅 The £25 Mac Pro still won't boot, and looks destined to become a very heavy paperweight, and now an old A1176 Mac mini has arrived from eBay for a whole £20. Never tinkered with one of these before so I thought it might be fun to resurrect as a Linux device or something. Or even some sort of rudimentary home media solution if the Superdrive works.
Alas, the listing stated that the mini had been "previously opened" and the HDD removed. And it seems to have been done with a sledgehammer. 😳 The SATA connector has been clean wrenched off the board along with the old hard drive, just leaving some twisted pins behind, and the socket for the audio ribbon cable was connected to the end of the cable and, erm, not the board itself. Also, every one of the screws holding the inner frame to the base is missing. 🙁
And I thought my repair jobs were bad. 😱
Thankfully, the unit came with an original box(!), PSU and, weirdly, a functioning (but filthy) Pro Mouse. So those bits, plus the few parts I can hopefully salvage (RAM sticks, optical drive if it works) should get me my money back. But having had a cursory inspection of the rest of the mini, it looks to my untrained eye that the damage is limited to that back interconnecting board. So I might try to find a (cheap!) replacement board, and maybe some screws, and see if this poor thing can be resurrected.
No
Replacement connecting board for an A1176 Mac mini secured. Time to attempt some repairs on a device I've never repaired before, is missing basically all of its screws, and might well be broken in ways I haven't realised yet. 😎
JulianStaples
macrumors regular
With obvious apologies to Apple's 2007-era design team. I don't think this was quite the aesthetic they had in mind. 😅
But will it boot? 😱
😮
😀
But will it boot? 😱
😮
😀