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  • Old Mac Mini

    From gtr@xxx@yyy.zzz to comp.sys.mac.system on Saturday, February 20, 2021 21:01:08
    From Newsgroup: comp.sys.mac.system

    I have an old old mac mini that's been sitting in the closet for a
    year. I don't need it, but I figure I can find a use for it.

    Have any of the local crew found a useful and mundane task for
    perfectly functional older mac's like this?

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  • From gtr@xxx@yyy.zzz to comp.sys.mac.system on Saturday, February 20, 2021 21:01:53
    From Newsgroup: comp.sys.mac.system

    On 2021-02-21 05:01:08 +0000, gtr said:

    I have an old old mac mini that's been sitting in the closet for a
    year. I don't need it, but I figure I can find a use for it.

    Have any of the local crew found a useful and mundane task for
    perfectly functional older mac's like this?

    It's from 2009.

    --- Synchronet 3.18b-Win32 NewsLink 1.113
  • From Lewis@g.kreme@kreme.dont-email.me to comp.sys.mac.system on Sunday, February 21, 2021 05:41:55
    From Newsgroup: comp.sys.mac.system

    In message <s0spek$7rc$1@dont-email.me> gtr <xxx@yyy.zzz> wrote:
    I have an old old mac mini that's been sitting in the closet for a
    year. I don't need it, but I figure I can find a use for it.

    Depends on how old it is and what sort of things you want to do. It
    could be a file server for loud drives you don't want being loud in your workspace if you have somewhere else to put the machine and loud
    drives, for example.

    I have a late 2012 running Mojave (no reason to upgrade to Catalina)
    that sits in my Garage with 40TB of spinning rust connected to it. My M1
    mounts those drives, and only has its internal SSD, two external SSDs,
    and one spinning rust Time Machine drive which I have positioned so that
    I can't hear it. But then again, having no drive noise and fan noise is important to me.

    I will almost certainly replace it with an M1 mini in the next year or
    so since I will be able to move Plex to an M1 and still be able to
    process HEVC and 4K video for my LAN.

    Have any of the local crew found a useful and mundane task for
    perfectly functional older mac's like this?

    Sure, but how useful it is and for what depends a lot on how old it
    is. Pre-2010 (anything with an optical drive) I would not bother with as
    a rPi4 would be more useful for general tasks and it's too old to be
    especially useful for Mac tasks and you're dealing with an OS that is
    at best half a decade old. Also, the power draw on those machines is considerably poor compared to a current model.

    Also, a brand new M1 mini that would be a fantastic server for
    everything, including serving h.265 4K video to your house can be bought
    for US$600 from various vendors.

    I wouldn't use an old Mac (anything that cannot run at least 10.14) for
    light web browsing duties as there are too many security issues with
    running old system software. It might be a decent backup machine for
    running older software, but that isn't something I need to do, so not
    something I've really looked into.

    --
    Abandoned robot teams up with outlaws to help kill his creator after
    more than 20 years
    (Star Wars ep I through VI)
    --- Synchronet 3.18b-Win32 NewsLink 1.113
  • From Your Name@YourName@YourISP.com to comp.sys.mac.system on Sunday, February 21, 2021 19:21:37
    From Newsgroup: comp.sys.mac.system

    On 2021-02-21 05:01:53 +0000, gtr said:
    On 2021-02-21 05:01:08 +0000, gtr said:

    I have an old old mac mini that's been sitting in the closet for a
    year. I don't need it, but I figure I can find a use for it.

    Have any of the local crew found a useful and mundane task for
    perfectly functional older mac's like this?

    It's from 2009.

    File server. Network backup drive. TV set-top box / video server.
    Audio system with a good set extra of speakers.


    --- Synchronet 3.18b-Win32 NewsLink 1.113