New Mac Mini or Old ?

[twist222]

Just a quick update for anyone interested.

 

I have gone with the older (October 2009) version of the Mac Mini with the external power supply. Purchased a new base model 2.26 GHz with 2 GB of ram and the 120GB hard drive.

I have already picked a 50GB OCZ Vertex 2 series SSD and 8G of memory to put into the mini.

I will certainly go with an external linear power supply but these take a little longer to organise.

 

There are a few nice improvements on the new model wrt to video etc but as my interest is purely as a dedicated music server I have gone with the old model. I still don't know if the older model with an upgraded power supply is the way go. May be one day I will find someone in Brisbane (the city where I live) with a new model and we can run a comparison.

 

I do note on a separate post on this forum that Gordon Rankin has gone down a similar path (mac mini, 8GB ram, SSD) but with the new model.

 

Maybe I should slip over to the other thread and ask why he went with the new model.

 

The other thing I will try is the 64 bit kernel and see if it makes any difference in my system.

 

As for now I have to go to work today (again) and have not even had time to plug the Mac Mini in in its standard form to check it works before pulling it apart to change the HD and Ram.

 

 

Regards

 

Mark

 

[barrows]

the previous version of the Mini could only use 4 Gb RAM?

 

[wgscott]

I think that is right. I have 4 gigs in one I have at work. (I thought I could swap it around if I ever seemed to need it on my one at home, but I never bothered.)

 

[twist222]

Just make sure you have updated to Mac mini EFI Firmware Update 1.2

 

here is a couple of links that will tell you a bit more

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2138175&start=15&tstart=0

 

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=784083&page=1

 

Hope this helps

Mark

 

[twist222]

Wgscott from the screen shot attached to your post above can I assume you have been able to get your current model Mac Mini running in 64 bit mode ?

 

This is great. Where you able to achieve this by (a) holding down the 6 and 4 keys when you booted ? (b) using the K64 enabler you provided link to in your earlier post or © some other method ?

 

If you used some other method could you share what you did to get your Mac Mini running in 64 bit mode ?

 

Whilst it may. or may not. achieve any benefit it seems to have become a bit of a quest of mine to get the Mac Mini running in 64 bit mode.

 

Regards

 

Mark

 

[wgscott]

I just used the K64 enabler, which I believe just does an in-line edit on the plist file. It says "not a supported machine, do you want to do this anyway?" or something like that, so I said yes, and it booted, and I took that screen-shot and then put it back to 32-bit (only because I didn't have time to play with it properly -- I was in the middle of writing an NIH renewal, which also accounts for my bad mood -- sorry!).

 

Anyway, I don't see any advantage if iTunes (or Play.app or Snowbird.app) are only compiled as 32-bit. Am I missing something?

 

I have a lot of 64-bit scientific programs (that I compile myself) running with the 32-bit kernel. I should probably try with 64-bit to see if it makes a significant difference.

 

As far as I know, the only reason not to boot into 64-bit kernel is because of third-party kernel extension incompatibilities.

 

I haven't tried it on the 1.5 year old mini, but I will if you want.

 

 

[twist222]

I did try the K64 enabler on my older (late 2009 model) Mac Mini without any success. I ignored the warning etc and ran the K64 with no effect. Rebooted with the 6 and 4 keys held down and ... still 32 bit.

 

Ended up going with the terminal command option I put the link to previously. Plenty of trepidation on my part as I very little experience with terminal commands. Yes it works. I can now boot to either 64 or 32 bit kernel depending on what keys I hold down during start up.

 

I haven't had any time to see if it makes any difference but I am happy that at least now I have the choice.

 

Regards

 

Mark

 

[wgscott]

Glad to hear it works. The terminal, and the unix level of the operating system, are potentially powerful allies. If you want to get more comfortable using it, I put together a list of some resources.

 

[twist222]

Wgscott

 

I would be great to learn enough to try and undo the process. Whilst there is probably no reason to undo the changes it is always good to be able to return it to standard if necessary.

 

Regards

 

Mark

 

[wgscott]

The easiest way is if you made a backup copy, to just re-copy that on top of the modified file and reboot, i.e.,

 

 

sudo cp /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.Boot.plist.bak /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.Boot.plist

 

 

Otherwise you can just re-edit the file and make it look like this (apart from the line numbers):

 

(I can't get the formatting from displaying:

 

 

 

[twist222]

WGSCOTT

 

That was a lot of work to help me out. And yes you guessed it right I did not make a back up copy of the original file.

 

To be honest I still don't know where the original file was. But I am fairly sure I will be able to follow your instructions and edit the new file which is currently on the desktop.

 

Could I trouble you for one more question ?

My next job is to replace the original HD with a SS HD.

 

Do I just need to copy the file from the desktop to an external backup and put it back onto the desktop after the fresh install on the new hard drive or is it more complicated than that because I have removed the original file ?

 

Sorry if I no so little about this.

 

Regards

Mark

 

 

[wgscott]

Hi Mark:

 

I just got out of a mind-numbing meeting, so it is probably my fault, but I'm not clear on what you are asking. You want to swap out drives?

 

If it were me, and I didn't have a whole lot of stuff on the old drive, I would put in the new drive and then install OS X onto the new solid-state one, and keep the old drive as a backup in case the new drive fails (which it probably won't, being solid state).

 

Fee free to email me at wgscott1 at gmail dot com and I can probably help you out more. We have an 8 hour time difference and it is hit or miss whether I look at a thread (I don't get email notification).

 

Bill

 

 

[twist222]

Bill,

 

Sorry if I was not very clear. That would have been because I did not understand what I was asking.

I have now done a little research and have it figured out. (well I think I have)

I found out that the file I changed over - boot.efi for boot64.efi is only part of OS an lives in system/Library/CoreServices/

 

So I now understand that the changes are not really permanent and if I formated the hard drive the changes would be gone. As far as the Mac Mini is concerned changing the hard drive (to a freshly formated SS HD) has the same effect.

What I needed to understand was that the hack had not changed the firmware (ie the bios on a PC). It had only changed the firmware interface ie EFI

 

Regards

 

Mark

 

[wgscott]

I wouldn't have known that.

 

[nrwatson]

Bill you mentioned solid state is less likely to fail is this the case I have a sony SS disk computer and have been warned that the SSDrive is more likely to fail

 

 

[wgscott]

I don't have one, and I am certainly not an expert, but my understanding was that since the drive had no moving parts, it was more stable.

 

[jonmarsh]

Flash cells have a finite read/write cycle lifetime, and in fact the best flash drives (Intel, OWC) come with functionality like Sandforce load leveling, and backup redundant memory areas that can be switched in to replace blocks that go bad.

 

Current SSD technology is a lot better than 2-3 years ago, but I'd be careful about making generalizations, particularly compared with enterprise class hard drives, which is what I mostly use in my Macs.

 

[twist222]

Just in case anyone following the thread is not sure I have installed the 8GB of memory in my late 2009 model Mac Mini and it recognizes it fine and reports it correctly as 2 x 4GB sticks.

 

Of course how much of that memory gets utilized during music playback....

 

Regards

 

Mark

 

[wgscott]

As per the subject heading has anybody tried using the 64 bit kernel under Snow Leopard with the Mac Mini. There seems to be a few reports that it works works well with Amarra ?

 

Well, the mini version at least is not 64-bit:

 

 

% file Amarra Mini

Amarra Mini: Mach-O universal binary with 2 architectures

Amarra Mini (for architecture i386): Mach-O executable i386

Amarra Mini (for architecture ppc7400): Mach-O executable ppc

 

 

You would think for what they charge, they could compile it again.

 

(Same for the full version.)