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What have you done with an early Intel recently?

Gloomy said:
The newer versions with the iOS inspired vertical list make my skin crawl.
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Agreed, I'm not a fan.
I've tried pretty hard to like macOS, from Tiger onward, but I don't get on with it. Apple do several dim things. No proper cut-and-paste. No number row on phones, even iPads! Totally dim.
I absolutely always have got on with Windows. OK, Vista and 8/8.1 weren't great, but they were tweakable. Once Windows 10 LTSC bows out, it's Linux all the way for me, on all hardware.
I do agree about Monterey, it's pretty usable.
 
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Been playing around with the OS configuration of my 2009 mini again. Here are some things I've come to realize...

-I mentioned in a post on here a long time ago that EyeTV 2 worked in 10.8. While yes, it is technically useable in 10.8 in that you can complete setup and capture video, you have to go through the setup process again every time you open the app. Even updating to the last version of EyeTV 2 did not fix this problem.
-I installed El Capitain at one point for the firmware updates only to realize I already had the firmware updated. I find 10.11 to be rather boring, imo, and there's nothing I can run on it that I couldn't already run on Mavericks. While I love to max out my macs, this is one case where I don't feel like using the maximum macOS on here. I already experimented with patched macOS on a 2009 mini before and I don't feel like doing it again.
-Internet radio seems to work on iTunes on Mountain Lion and newer, no patchers or Aqua Proxy required. How long this will be the case for? Who knows.
-Aqua Proxy was able to give me Internet radio functionality back on iTunes 12 in Lion only for Internet radio to stop working again the next time I opened iTunes. I know others have gotten it to work by logging in with their Apple ID, but I'd rather not do that.
-While I appreciate the advice others have given me, I really would rather not have to manually put in URLs for Internet radio. I like the list of categories iTunes has and love being able to just change the channel by clicking on different stations.
-My idea of using SheepShaver like I do on Catalina only seems to work well on Lion and newer. When using the SheepShaver method on SL, the audio glitches out if I browse PowerFox while the Internet radio plays on SheepShaver and also seems to suck up all the bandwidth, making PowerFox slow down sometimes to the point of having no internet on PowerFox at all. Upgrading to Lion and using its last version of SheepShaver eliminates this problem.
-Patched on iTunes 10 on 10.5 and 10.6 has another bit of weirdness. If I import a video I downloaded from PPCMC and try to play it in iTunes, iTunes quits and the video disappears from my library (but still exists in my library folder in Finder). This behavior happens on both Intel and PPC. This does not happen on patched iTunes 9 in Tiger. Something about the combination of the iTunes radio patch and the Leopards leads to weird results. While I don't need to import videos into iTunes 10, the fact that I can't do it is kinda annoying.
-Momiji runs perfectly on the Mini if I'm running Mavericks but crashes on Lion. I tried doing what the github said and boot Momiji into safe mode via Terminal, but Terminal won't let me for some reason.

My 2009 Mini is on Lion at the moment. It's the last OS where EyeTV 2 functions properly and I can run iTunes radio in SheepShaver without issue. No Momiji, but PowerFox works great for my needs, Momiji just would've been nice to have. If I ever cough up the cash for an EyeTV 3 era device (with the software CD and key), or a bigger SSD, I think I'll upgrade/dual boot with Mavericks. Mavericks is the final OS X with the 3D dock and Momiji runs there without issue.
 
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Last year I migrated my Music library back to iTunes 12.0.1 on Yosemite on a 2014 MacBook Pro. Then I rolled back to iTunes 11.4 on 10.9.

Recently the MBP's battery swelled up, so I took the opportunity to pick up a 2012 Mini. I migrated last week and upgraded the RAM to 12GB today.

Music is mostly played through a HomePod using the Remote app on iOS or Screen Sharing from my MBA. Video content is played back through Home Sharing.
 
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DCBassman said:
Hving said that, I'm typing this on a 2015 MBA 11" in Monterey, as it's such a great travel device and I'm away from home right now. I usually have this running Windows 10 under Bootcamp, but this and the Trashcan are both pure Monterey at the moment.
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As a refurbisher, the one thing I'll appreciate about the MacOS is how quickly I can spam whole application layouts to disparate new machines off RescueZilla archives or via CCC5/6 without ever having to worry about Microsoft hardware ID-locked registration BS.
 
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Well, the M3 iMacs in my college's video editing lab were upgraded to Mac OS '26 Tahoe (I think they upgraded by themselves!), meaning they lost IEEE-1394 FireWire support.
00186659-4E4C-4180-B0E5-44C02A04BD30_1_105_c.jpeg

So I am using my 2012 unibody 15" MacBook Pro (running Mac OS X 10.11 El Capitan) to digitize their Video8 and Hi-8 tapes with the QuickTime player software. At least I don't have to daisy-chain FireWire-to-Thunderbolt adapters together this way!
When I arrived at the college's Fine Arts building, I was stunned to see these iMacs now had Tahoe installed, and so I rushed back home to pick up the MacBook Pro and bring it here (and it didn't help I had to slam on the brakes for a couple of trolls along the way). And I've already gotten one tape safely digitized on this and am working on another one (which is a little trickier because this tape has some damage at the beginning).
 
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I swore I already had enough MacBooks but here we are again. 🫢 I liberated another MacBook from the recycle center today. Appears to be a 15” 2012 Unibody MBP. Also snagged a spare Apple OEM MagSafe 85W adapter and two meter Thunderbolt cable with it. Initial inspection shows a few bumps and scrapes here and there but okay enough for a 14 year old laptop. Test boot went fine into Catalina.

System Profiler:
2.6GHz Intel Core i7 (Quad-Core)
16GB DDR3
HD4000/nVidia GT650M 1GB
Battery is a bit long in the tooth at ~700 cycles. SuperDrive and all ports work perfectly.

Took the bottom plate off to clean the vents and fans, surprised to see a 500GB Samsung EVO 870. Result! After a fresh install of Mojave, I am going to set up a dual boot with Windows 10 IoT Enterprise LTSC.

IMG_1281.jpeg
 
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Tinkering with the £25 2012 Mac Pro continues. Picked up a couple of 2TB 3.5" HDDs for pennies this week to throw in the two empty hard drive racks. So that's now a 500GB SSD boot drive for Mojave and a total of 5TB storage across the three HDDs in the other racks. 💪

I've also been using the optical drive to rip a bunch of recent second hand DVD purchases onto my home server as well, and will use the extra HDDs as backup space for all that. My main home server (for now) is running on an external hard drive connected to my OCLP-ed Trashcan Mac Pro. Really need to switch to a way to watch my stories that doesn't involve running two desktop computers with the combined power consumption of the Starship Enterprise. 😅
 
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Something that I totally forgot to post last time was my experiments with PPCMC 7.2.6. This isn't supposed to work with Lion or later, but I discovered that if I do what I usually do with my Snow Leopard setups and build a new python and git and then upgrade to Lion or later (newest I tested was El Cap), PPCMC 7.2.6 still works! The updated python and git have to be built under Snow Leopard, however, because I tried to build them under Mavericks and putting the Mavericks-built python and git into PPCMC caused it to crash. I'm glad to have discovered this because it means I am no longer bound to Snow Leopard (other than the building of python and git part). I love Snow Leopard, but I felt held back by it. Having also bought an EyeTV 3 era device with the license key off of eBay, I have officially moved the 2009 Mini over to Mavericks (installing Snow Leopard first for python and git and then upgrading to Mavericks). I'm guessing in the future if I need to update python and git again, I'll have to carve out a partition for Snow Leopard (unsure if the Snow Leopard version of MacPorts still works on Mavericks). While I do use PPCMC 7.2.7 on my PPC Macs, I still use 7.2.6 on my Intels (except for the 2012 MBP due to Catalina) because it has a native Intel edition. I am interested in Alex's newest downloader too and plan on trying it out on my 2012 MBP.
 
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dandeco said:
Well, the M3 iMacs in my college's video editing lab were upgraded to Mac OS '26 Tahoe (I think they upgraded by themselves!), meaning they lost IEEE-1394 FireWire support.
View attachment 2636681
So I am using my 2012 unibody 15" MacBook Pro (running Mac OS X 10.11 El Capitan) to digitize their Video8 and Hi-8 tapes with the QuickTime player software. At least I don't have to daisy-chain FireWire-to-Thunderbolt adapters together this way!
When I arrived at the college's Fine Arts building, I was stunned to see these iMacs now had Tahoe installed, and so I rushed back home to pick up the MacBook Pro and bring it here (and it didn't help I had to slam on the brakes for a couple of trolls along the way). And I've already gotten one tape safely digitized on this and am working on another one (which is a little trickier because this tape has some damage at the beginning).
Click to expand...
They Fd up and left Sequoia's auto-update turned on.
 
Gloomy said:
I swore I already had enough MacBooks but here we are again. 🫢 I liberated another MacBook from the recycle center today. Appears to be a 15” 2012 Unibody MBP. Also snagged a spare Apple OEM MagSafe 85W adapter and two meter Thunderbolt cable with it. Initial inspection shows a few bumps and scrapes here and there but okay enough for a 14 year old laptop. Test boot went fine into Catalina.

System Profiler:
2.6GHz Intel Core i7 (Quad-Core)
16GB DDR3
HD4000/nVidia GT650M 1GB
Battery is a bit long in the tooth at ~700 cycles. SuperDrive and all ports work perfectly.

Took the bottom plate off to clean the vents and fans, surprised to see a 500GB Samsung EVO 870. Result! After a fresh install of Mojave, I am going to set up a dual boot with Windows 10 IoT Enterprise LTSC.

View attachment 2637693
Click to expand...
Wow, great find! Looks to be in excellent condition too. Why do people throw these things away? Because Apple says they're obsolete? I'd love to have a spare one to give to my girlfriend. She's so sick of Windows but money is tight.
 
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boswald said:
Wow, great find! Looks to be in excellent condition too. Why do people throw these things away? Because Apple says they're obsolete? I'd love to have a spare one to give to my girlfriend. She's so sick of Windows but money is tight.
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Thanks! The bottom case has a small dent and the keyboard has the telltale wear on it, but otherwise it’s in great condition. I’m thinking of using it for light gaming and media playback mostly.

It’s probably just luck on my part that I’ve been “at the right place at the right time” but it definitely also helps that I have a family member who works at the yard and can put stuff aside for me to peek at haha. Don’t be afraid to ask when you see people there, the worst they can say is no. 😂

In my experience as long as you are polite and let them know your intentions with it, most folks are happy to let them go to someone who can use it. I only saw the MagSafe charger and Thunderbolt cable to begin with and then she offered me the MacBook itself once I asked for those. Those Thunderbolt 1 cables are disgustingly expensive so I was glad to get it. I have a 50cm one with my LaCie drive but this was a full 2m one so definitely good to have as a spare.
 
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Gloomy said:
Thanks! The bottom case has a small dent and the keyboard has the telltale wear on it, but otherwise it’s in great condition. I’m thinking of using it for light gaming and media playback mostly.

It’s probably just luck on my part that I’ve been “at the right place at the right time” but it definitely also helps that I have a family member who works at the yard and can put stuff aside for me to peek at haha. Don’t be afraid to ask when you see people there, the worst they can say is no. 😂

In my experience as long as you are polite and let them know your intentions with it, most folks are happy to let them go to someone who can use it. I only saw the MagSafe charger and Thunderbolt cable to begin with and then she offered me the MacBook itself once I asked for those. Those Thunderbolt 1 cables are disgustingly expensive so I was glad to get it. I have a 50cm one with my LaCie drive but this was a full 2m one so definitely good to have as a spare.
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That's another thing I need to get: A LaCie drive. Do you see many of those there? We have a recycling center close by but it doesn't offer electronics. Maybe I'll go out of town one day and score a good haul like yours.
 
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boswald said:
That's another thing I need to get: A LaCie drive. Do you see many of those there? We have a recycling center close by but it doesn't offer electronics. Maybe I'll go out of town one day and score a good haul like yours.
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Yeah, I don’t often see external drives or the like there. I think mostly because of data privacy concerns.

I got mine for cheap on eBay (it’s a LaCie Rugged USB3.0/Thunderbolt series, same model as the pic included) and slapped a big SSD inside it. It gets full SATA III speeds over Thunderbolt so I use it as an external Boot Camp drive.
IMG_1300.jpeg
 
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Gloomy said:
The newer versions with the iOS inspired vertical list make my skin crawl.
Click to expand...
Agreed, I'm not a fan, as previously said. However, I OCLP'd the Trashcan to Sequoia yesterday, and find it runs it very well, so I'll grin and bear it. The 'can can be a bit of a pain with Linux distros, so I'll leave it on Sequoia for the time being. Also, as my travel machine, an 11" MBA, is also macOS rather than Linux, it's probably time to resurrect the A1355 Airport Time Capsule and get some backups in place. It has a 4TB drive, so is massive overkill for just two machines, but it's what I have, so...
 
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MacBH928 said:
cant you do same with usb3 wired devices? i think the only thing that does not work is adding gpus
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Off the top of my head - I use a lot of legacy fw400 & 800 devices/peripherals (audio interfaces, ext hdds etc.). In regards to that era Early Intel & powerPC Macintosh, modern macs lack that I/o completely without multiple adapters via thunderbolt which I don’t have. So to your point if you want to fork over $$ for the needed usb-c adapters, you can in fact attach that legacy I/o on a modern Mac however there is no guarantee that the devices you connect will work on modern macOS. For me it’s easier, cheaper, and more convenient to just use my cMP with era correct macOS to leverage those devices.

YMMV
 
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