Mac Mini (circa 2006/2007) upgrade options
I recently discovered 2 Mac Minis in my basement during a purge. These used to be the ones used by my kids eons ago. I'm looking to make them into headless servers (because I'm bored and it's cold outside) but investigating upgrades before I decide. I will mostly likely use them as web development boxes or local file servers.
I couldn't find the DVI to VGA adapters so all the info I have so far is that one is an Intel model (a1176) and the other is a PPC model (a1103). They should be stock as far as RAM, HDD, etc. I lurked about looking for upgrade info and there was some good information but I'm still a little unclear as to what my best options are. Therefore, my questions are as follows:
1) Is there any value to upgrading or repurposing theA1103 or should I just scavenge the storage?
2) Is a motherboard upgrade possible, required, or simply unnecessary?
3) As for the A1176, what is the fastest processor I can safely install? Some of the threads provided conflicting info (one guy had no problems with processor X but another said his box ran excessively hot using same) so I was left confused as to how to use the advice presented.
3a) How much RAM can these babies hold and is there any specific config I should be aware of? For example, don't bother going to 8GB because the architecture can only address 3, etc.
3b) Similarly, are SSDs an option and how much disk space can I realistically hope to expand to?
4) If there are no "stock answers" to the above then what are the critical specs I need to take into consideration for each when trying to identify which motherboards (potentially), processors, RAM, and storage options I should be looking at?
Thanks in advance to you all for your help and guidance.
Rob
Is this a good question?
1 Comment
Rob,
1. Ditch the g4, pata drive so salvage the storage is not viable.
2. A1176 will support max T7600 2.33 Ghz
3. 3gb, if you have mini1,1 you can flash to mini2,1 and use 3gb. Dont be fooled by those telling you that you can use 4gb, it is not true. System may report it as 4gb but you can only acces just over 3gb.
3b, yes an ssd works super in these machines but only up to 3gbps rate
Phunguss
by phunguss