In the last article we took a look at the first of my 2 Mac mini purchases, “MiniServ” which acts as my home Macintosh file server. To say that, following some natural upgrades, I’m pleased with that system would be an incredible understatement – for as basic as it is, just sitting there running Snow Leopard and hosting some files I look at it as almost an achievement in my incredibly nerdy home networking and computer usage experience. The system has really gone above and beyond my expectations for it and so long as it still works I’m likely to use it in some capacity.
That being said, I was always a little annoyed that it was only a Core Duo machine — not Core 2 Duo like I thought I was purchasing. This limits me a bit in options with the system, but given the super cheap cost of these old Mac mini systems I had the bright idea to go on and buy another one for the hell of it! What I wound up buying was a complete-in-box 2007 or so Core 2 Duo Mac mini system for about the same price I had bought the original Mac mini for. Nice.
My original plan was to, of all things, retire the original mini after just a few months, and probably use it for some light MacOS computer work (writing things, etc.. you know, the usual crap you say you’ll use an old computer for but never do) and make the Core 2 Duo system the new MiniServ. The thing is, I just couldn’t bring myself to do it — by this time the system had pulled over 100 days of nonstop uptime and had done amazingly well. I couldn’t just say “hey, sorry you’re a 32bit system, go to Hell” like that.
Additionally came the odd nature of Mac OS 10.7 Lion on the new Mac mini. Lion isn’t all that beloved of an operating system, apparently, and for good reason; it’s a bit of a mess. With hacks I could go up to 10.8, Mountain Lion, on that Mac mini no issue, but I prefer to keep my systems “legit” as possible so I stuck with Lion. Sure, I could have gone lower, as well, but what would be the point of 2 Snow Leopard machines? Lion runs everything Snow Leopard does, except for PowerPC software, but again, if I want to use PowerPC I’ll just break out my PowerBooks or maybe the G4 or G5. This Mini was really relegated to the early 2010’s as far as software and usage goes, but the thing is, I never actually got around to setting it up with much of anything beyond the OS install!
Sure, there’s a ton I could do with it – even setting it up as its own server wouldn’t be bad. Hell, if I really wanted to I could drop the money on Mac OS Lion Server and give that a try, but I feel like I’d just be reverting it back to normal. Still, there’s remote tasks it can do, or I can set it up as another “always ready” Mac, but with the iMac system in my room what benefit does it have there? It’s a strange place for a computer to be in — it’s special enough to be useful, but I don’t know what I actually want to use it for.
Hell, I’ve considered taking it to work, but it’s so weak that it wouldn’t be all that useful in any real way for me in my actual job; especially when you consider how outdated software on an older version of MacOS is it would be more of a chore to use it than you may think. Sure, I could install Linux on it (which, incidentally, in talking with the old owner I found out he used it for that very thing for a while) and make it more current on that end, but it’d still be a bit of a weak system and at that point why don’t I just use any old other computer? This thing is special because it’s a Mac mini, running MacOS in some capacity.
So, for now, it just kind of sits there. I’ve used it a bit for Folding@Home recently, and it’s had the same upgrades as the other Mac mini (2GB RAM and now a 1TB HDD, previously 500GB after I got rid of its original 60GB drive) and is up to date with Mac OS Lion, following that recent re-install when the previous 500GB drive died, but otherwise it’s pretty much a clean system. The only complaint I have is that the locking tabs for the Ethernet cable are broken, so networking cables won’t stay in; this is part of why I chose not to use it as a replacement server, but WiFi via Airport works so it’s still able to go online without issue.
I’ll figure out some cool usage for it soon enough. It’s just funny to buy a machine, have such big goals, and then never actually go through with that original plan.