- #PLEX MEDIA SERVER FOR MAC OS X 10.7.5 720P#
- #PLEX MEDIA SERVER FOR MAC OS X 10.7.5 UPGRADE#
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- #PLEX MEDIA SERVER FOR MAC OS X 10.7.5 TV#
- #PLEX MEDIA SERVER FOR MAC OS X 10.7.5 MAC#
#PLEX MEDIA SERVER FOR MAC OS X 10.7.5 MAC#
These Mac Minis really did fall into a generational gap. The only issue was booting it… it seems they don’t support booting from USB flash drives. Given I want them to run as servers, GNU/Linux is the only logical choice. You can’t go past Lion however, since the support for the Intel GMA 950 GPU was dropped in later versions of MacOS.
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This CPU upgrade opens up new options for MacOS fans, if you hack the installer a bit you can get MacOS X 10.7.5 “Lion” on there which gives you a 64-bit OS that can still run much of the current software that’s available. The next problem was getting an OS on there. The end result is an upgrade from a 1.5 Ghz single core 32bit CPU to 2.17 Ghz dual core 64bit CPU – whilst it won’t hold much to a modern i7, it will certainly be able to crunch video and server tasks quite happily.
Recommend testing this things *before* putting the main case back together, they’re a pain to open back up if it doesn’t work first run. But I guess this is what you get for buying decade old CPUs from a mysterious internet trader. One of my CPUs also arrived with a bent pin, so there was some rather cold sweat moments straightening the tiny pin with a screw driver. It took a while to get here, I used this seller after the first seller never delivered the item and refunded me when asked about it. And at 2.177Ghz it’s no slouch, especially when compared to the original 1.5Ghz single core CPU. However moving down slightly to the T7400, the second hand price drops to around ~$20NZD per CPU with international shipping included. I found a great writeup of the process at iFixit which covers the process of replacing the CPU with a newer model.Įssentially you can replace the CPUs in the Macmini1,1 (2006) or Macmini2,1 (2007) models with any chip compatible with Intel Socket M, the highest spec model available being the Intel Core 2 Duo 2.33 Ghz T7600.Īt ~$60NZD for the T7600, it was a bit more than I wanted to spend for a decade old CPU.
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On the plus side, this earlier generation of Apple machines was before Apple decided to start soldering everything together which means not only can you replace the RAM, storage, drives, WiFi card, you can also replace the CPU itself since it’s socketed!
Some distributions now only ship 64-bit builds and proprietary software vendors don’t always bother releasing 32-bit builds of their apps limiting what you can run on them. Basically OS X Snow Leopard is the Win XP of the MacOS world.Įven running 32-bit GNU/Linux can be an exercise in frustration. Whilst GNU/Linux *can* run on this, supported versions of MacOS X certainly can’t. The last MacOS version supported on these devices is Mac OS X 10.6.8 “Snow Leopard” 32-bit and the majority of app developers for MacOS have decided to set their minimum supported platform at 64-bit MacOS X 10.7.5 “Lion” so they can drop the old 32-bit stuff – this includes the popular Chrome browser which now only provides 64-built builds.
Unfortunately this isn’t as simple as it sounds. The first gen Intel Mac Minis arrived on the scene just a bit too soon for 64-bit CPUs and so are packing the original Intel Core Solo or Intel Core Duo (1 or 2 cores respectively) which aren’t clocked particularly high and are only 32bit capable.
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Given we had recently obtained something that the people at Samsung consider a “Smart” TV, I decided to replace the Mac Mini with the Plex client running natively on the TV and recycle the Mac Mini into a new role as a small server to potentially replace a much more power hungry AMD Phenom II system that performs somewhat basic storage and network tasks. But neither of these will help much with the video decoding performance. I bumped it from the original 512MB RAM to 2GB (the max) years ago and it’s had it’s 60GB hard drive replaced with a more modern 500GB model. It’s previously undergone a few upgrades.
#PLEX MEDIA SERVER FOR MAC OS X 10.7.5 720P#
Whilst it handles 720p content without an issue, it’s now hit and miss whether 1080p H264 content will work without unacceptable jitter. Having now reached it’s 10th birthday, it’s started to show it’s age. My long term relationship on the left and a more recent stray I obtained. Clearly mine takes after it’s owner and hasn’t seen the sun much.