Apple Core Solo to Core Duo upgrade.

[Charles Wirth]

Yep, lap top hard drive.

There is a few performance laptop drives available.

Around the screw you will see lock/unlock as well

[vapb400]

Yep their is a laptop HD in there, so your current limit is 160GB, unlike the 250GB Fugger had planned earlier. You can always go with external storage via the firewire 400 or usb.

I am really hoping to set up a couple of these for web server use. Windows XP is having some issues, but can most linux distros run on it? What about Win2K3?

[Charles Wirth]

I tried ubuntu and it will not autoboot from CD.

[irev210]

fugger: The S3 IS is coming out in may!


I suggest a canon Digital rebel 300D with an EF-S 60mm macro lens.

I have a 20D and a 60mm macro, love it for taking shots of PCB

[antipop]

Yep their is a laptop HD in there, so your current limit is 160GB, unlike the 250GB Fugger had planned earlier. You can always go with external storage via the firewire 400 or usb.

I am really hoping to set up a couple of these for web server use. Windows XP is having some issues, but can most linux distros run on it? What about Win2K3?

You can install linux on a mac, you just have to look for it on the web.

anyway i don't understand why people are trying to install XP on a mac, it doesn't make sense The other way around is way more interesting

[antipop]

One thing I haven't seen mentioned yet anywhere: it should be useful to find out what kind of clock generator the mobo is using, to check if it supports FSB changes in realtime, using one of the clockgen-type programs under Windows. Porting it to OSX (or even better writing an ad-hoc utility from scratch) should be relatively trivial, and my guess is that the lower clocked parts, both solo and duo, have great overclocking potential, like centrinos do. Come to think of it, I haven't seen any material on core duo overclocking so far on the web. Got any cool links?

AFAIK apple has used the standard intel mobo and except for the EFI which i don't know how standard it is.

If we could get a clockgen that would be awesome, but i'm worried about the heat generated by this and how far we can go with an unmodded mini (no xtra cooling added)

[Charles Wirth]

http://db.xbench.com/merge.xhtml?doc1=160009

updated xbench with D9 fat body SODIMM (stock Mini memory on mine)

[Paul Stamatiou]

Fugger, do you think you could do a complete Xbench, I want to see how it does with the stock hard drive.

[tonyl]

Good point! But if I only want to upgrade the mini one year later, Core Solo may be a good choice.

This is truly awesome stuff!! Congrats Fugger!! BTW to those who were saying that it wasn't really worth buying a 1.5Ghz Solo Mini and then upgrading to a 1.66Ghz Core Duo you forgot to factor in the superdrive (DVDRW-DL) that you get for the $800 package.

Getting Windows XP running is going to prove to be pretty tricky since these things use an EFI implementation that does not have the CSM bios compatibility module. There's been a contest that's reached over $10000 worth of price money to the first person to get Windows XP installed on an Apple Intel based Mac.

For those considering getting a mini out there I'd recommend you pony up for the Core Duo model now since the Core Solo chip will get you next to nothing when it comes to upgrading. Since the core solo 1.5Ghz part is the cheapest and slowest chip you can use on this platform its resale value will be very low. If you get a Core Duo 1.66Ghz model, however, there will be quite a bit of demand from people who want to upgrade from a core solo part. Do you see what I'm getting at?

[tonyl]

You can install linux on a mac, you just have to look for it on the web.

anyway i don't understand why people are trying to install XP on a mac, it doesn't make sense The other way around is way more interesting

Since you install mac on pc, you voilate apple's rules. But the other way, apple doesn't care. Lots of PC guys want use windows applications on mac sometimes.

[panaman]

Does the new and old mac mini use ata-6 hard drives or do they have a serial ata150 controller...

Either way there are some decsent 7200RPM ones on newegg with 8mb cache

[down8]

Welcome to XS,

Thanks for the linkage.

Dwon8, question,
What was wrong with the images??

There was a space between "http://" and "fugger", so all the links were http://%20fugger....

I've browsed here a lot lately, following your progress with the new Preslers, mostly. Anyhow, finally registered, hope my first post was worthwhile.

-bZj

[Magnj]

Great Job, I posted it on my blog...but it seems to be down for the moment...I'll link it soon

[AmpliFuzz]

AFAIK apple has used the standard intel mobo and except for the EFI which i don't know how standard it is.

If we could get a clockgen that would be awesome, but i'm worried about the heat generated by this and how far we can go with an unmodded mini (no xtra cooling added)

If you check out the clockgen site, it'll show that Intel mobos use different clock generators from model to model, and different manufacturers use different clock gens on mobos using the same chipset. While I guess that the Mini mobo is fairly close to a commercial Intel 945G mobo design-wise that doesn't mean that everything onboard must be identical.

Since the Mini handles a 2.16 part well - as it should - I don't think heat will be a problem overclocking parts in the 1.5-1.6 range to 2.0 or so, provided one is reasonable with expectations. I'm more worried about SO-DIMMs not allowing decent FSB boosts. The way I look at it, it would be a cool way to squeeze that extra 'free' performance without major surgery, extra noise or drawbacks - just some Arctic Silver in place of that black blob of lameness

Plus, this would be applicable to iMacs, MacBooks and future iBooks too, they should be eminently overclockable as well.

[Charles Wirth]

Dont worry about SODIMM, the Mini has the best possible modules possible, fat body D9.

ISL clock gen, as soon as I can get a PLL dump it will be posted.

[mhunter]

Hello Fugger,

It has come to my attention that Intel does not produce a 1.5 GHz CoreSolo CPU (only a 1.6 GHz CoreSolo).

The only 1.5 GHz CPU in the "Core" line is a 1.5 GHz CoreDuo.

So, since you are the only one I know who has their 1.5 GHz CoreSolo removed from their system, I thought I would ask you to look at the CPU and see if you can determine if it is really a CoreDuo.

The part numbers I saw on the top of the CPU didn't seem to correspond to the part numbers Intel has provided for their CPU's (unless I misread something there). So, I thought perhaps the real part numbers might be on the bottom???

Anyway, this should be an interesting find.

I suspect that Apple is really using CoreDuo chips and disabling the 2nd core either in the EFI / Firmware or in OS X itself.

It would be interesting to find out for sure if this is the case.

Another possibility is that the 1.5 GHz CoreDuo has had it's 2nd core disabled internally. But, that seems a more remote possibility. I guess one could always install a 1.5 GHz CoreSolo in a PC and see if it suddenly became a CoreDuo :-)

As a side-note, many users have reported that the "About this Mac" window reports the 1.5 GHz CoreSolo as a CoreDuo. But, the same users report that the System Profiler identifies the chip as a CoreSolo.

From conversations with others, and limited information available on the Internet, it is my speculation that the 1.5 GHz CoreSolo is really a 1.5 GHz CoreDuo with a core disabled.

Either that, or it could possibly be a 1.6 GHz CoreSolo running at a reduced clock-speed.

Either way, it would be interesting to find out for sure.

[[XC] mysticmerlin]

109,084 views! Wow the Mac is alive and well.

[antipop]

If you check out the clockgen site, it'll show that Intel mobos use different clock generators from model to model, and different manufacturers use different clock gens on mobos using the same chipset. While I guess that the Mini mobo is fairly close to a commercial Intel 945G mobo design-wise that doesn't mean that everything onboard must be identical.

Since the Mini handles a 2.16 part well - as it should - I don't think heat will be a problem overclocking parts in the 1.5-1.6 range to 2.0 or so, provided one is reasonable with expectations. I'm more worried about SO-DIMMs not allowing decent FSB boosts. The way I look at it, it would be a cool way to squeeze that extra 'free' performance without major surgery, extra noise or drawbacks - just some Arctic Silver in place of that black blob of lameness

Plus, this would be applicable to iMacs, MacBooks and future iBooks too, they should be eminently overclockable as well.

I'm not worried about the cpu cooling but rather with the NB, I don't know how hot the intel chipset can get. Anyway I'm up to try I agree with the SODIMM, I wonder how far the standard apple can go

[JeffTracy]

An interesting thread, much kudos points to the Fuggster for braving the innards of a Mactel!

Plenty of questions, and I've got quite a few answers that should help clear a few things up for people.

no put some xfire /sli action and ln2 or cascade and have fun :P

No can do. No slots, apart from the pair for RAM. GPU is fixed, non-changeable, and shares main memory.

Waiting for WinXP results!

Won't see them for a loooong long time. Just because a Mac uses an Intel, does not mean it can boot Windows -- and nor will a Mac boot Windows until some enterprising hacker codes up a bootx which provides what Apple left out of their version of EFI on purpose - the BIOS Compatibility Module. No BIOS CSM in the EFI = no booting XP.

I am hoping that the OS is somehow linked to the CPU and a cpu switch could give XP access

Nope. See above.

In fact, see this post I did earlier, it should fill in a few holes:

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...1&postcount=31

it should be useful to find out what kind of clock generator the mobo is using, to check if it supports FSB changes in realtime

No, it doesn't. Fixed dynamic, SRD polled by EFI during POST ... which is just as well, because the machine's geared around 667 MHz. Running 533 MHz RAM in it for extended periods will result in data hiccups.

And before you all go "Awww, why?" remember that Apple is a closed-hardware shop by nature, and one of the main reasons why their OS works so smoothly is because they have total control over both the hard and the soft, making integration smooth and maintenance (and design) easier. Macs are not a tweaker's platform, in fact they go out of their way to make it not a tweaker's platform. Think about who Macs are aimed at. Right, average joes & janes who want something they can plug in, surf the net, point & click, shoot & print, fill up the ol' iPod at ITMS, and that's it. Not even their big towers are tweakable. Because that's their target market, they've also made OSX self-maintaining -- they're designed to be left on 24/7, so they'll do some pretty low level maintenance during the wee hours. Mac geeks, of course, can patch cron (or launchd, depending on the OS rev) as they wish, or run a GUI app such as MacJanitor that'd force the scheduled maintenance jobs to run.

The Mac Mini uses a 2.5" SATA laptop hard drive.

That's right, the Mini is based more on laptop technologies, so most of the architecture is "locked down" to make it all fit into the teensy form-factor.

That said, when the original G4 Minis were released, a few enterprising souls figured out ways of 'breaking out' the Mini's onboard IDE interface, as is shown in this article here:

http://www.appletalk.com.au/articles...p?article=4433

I myself used a similar approach, and squeezed a G4 Mac Mini into an old Apple LC630 case, adding a 7200rpm WD120 in place of the 4200rpm Samsung HD, and a bog-standard DVR-109 that replaced the slot-load combo-drive. Here are the work-in-progress shots:

http://madchat.tv/apple/frankenmini

Windows XP is having some issues, but can most linux distros run on it? What about Win2K3?

No, no and no. Sadly. All x86 *nix builds still expect the machine to have a BIOS to tap into. The Intel Macs have none, nor a BIOS CSM (see above). The Knoppix boot experiment required some serious jiggery-pokery with bootloaders before it'd go. You can digg it here:

http://digg.com/linux_unix/Knoppix_(...ntel-based_Mac

You can install linux on a mac, you just have to look for it on the web.

You sure can, but they're all geared to boot on machines with PowerPC chips and OpenFirmware instead of a BIOS. We're yet to see a 'real' build of any *nix for the Mactels.

(But then, why bother when OS X is effectively Unix anyway )

i don't understand why people are trying to install XP on a mac, it doesn't make sense

Heh, it makes perfect sense to me -- have one machine that can dual or even triple boot cleanly is very appealing. Boot into XP for some gaming, boot back into OS X for everything else.

Does the new and old mac mini use ata-6 hard drives or do they have a serial ata150 controller?

Standard 44-pin ATA-6 class. Nothing to stop you swapping out the 4200 & 5400 rpm slowpokes & dropping in a nice fast 7KT6 or other hot little 7200rpm 2.5-incher ... or case-modding it, and using a 2.5-to-3.5 adaptor to feed it to some standard 40-way devices (see above).


I hope this somewhat lengthy post has helped a few people


FAB

[w2ed]

Great Job Fugger - Though I'd rather see that hack done on a new iMac. (an iMac trhat shares the TOL Macbook core would be awesome...)

JEff, just want to make a correction for you: Up until the G5 line, the Mac was more upgradeable than you realize - in fact, it's only this latest batch of G5 Towers that has litttle to no upgradebaility. The previous G5's before that had PCI-X, which allowed useers to plug in PCI cards, such as TV tuners and other cards - The last-Gen G5 would be great to have as an entertainment PC.

Up until the G5 line, however, the G4 and G3 models were processor-upgradable as well. (In fact, almost all of the PCI-based Macs were.) Granted, overclocking, if and when possible, was difficult, but in many cases could be done. It was Apple switching to IBM that put a stop to that.

You can go to www.xlr8yourmac.com.

Other than that, cool little posting. Hope mine helped a little.

[JeffTracy]

Expandable? Most definitely. Plenty of PCI cards around, and it's even possible to 'flash' some PC cards so they worked in a Mac -- although when Apple decided to be smart & go "Yahh, let's go fast with PCI-X!", the x86 camp went "ha, another Nubus, PCI-e is better"

Upgradable? Certainly, especially from third parties like FastMac, Daystar, and NewerTech / OWC. You could even get CPU upgrades for most of the PowerBooks, and their seven year old 'Pismo' can still run 10.4, be bumped with a G4/550 or a G3/900, take AirPort and a DVD burner.

Hackable? Sure can, if you can find what jumpers to move, or which traces to cut, or which software to load. (Did you ever hear of the 25 MHz 68040 Mac that managed to boot OS X? Debian 68k and a build of PearPC ... it booted, kinda, it got as far as the blue welcome screen before the hard drive finally died after eleven days of non-stop paging )

Tweakable, like we can with 'generic' x86 machines, with access to BIOS-level FSB and clockspeeds and voltages & overclocking goodness & monster heatsinks & nine dozen 3D cards? Not a chance

Otherwise, yes


FAB

[elec999]

Looks amazing. Great job. Do I see any cooler.
Thanks

[Sparkstack]

Does the new and old mac mini use ata-6 hard drives or do they have a serial ata150 controller?

Standard 44-pin ATA-6 class. Nothing to stop you swapping out the 4200 & 5400 rpm slowpokes & dropping in a nice fast 7KT6 or other hot little 7200rpm 2.5-incher ... or case-modding it, and using a 2.5-to-3.5 adaptor to feed it to some standard 40-way devices (see above).

Yes and no.

The original (powerPC) Mac mini uses a regular 44-pin ATA Drive. But the New (intel) Mac mini uses Serial ATA hard drives...

[tonyl]

Standard 44-pin ATA-6 class. Nothing to stop you swapping out the 4200 & 5400 rpm slowpokes & dropping in a nice fast 7KT6 or other hot little 7200rpm 2.5-incher ... or case-modding it, and using a 2.5-to-3.5 adaptor to feed it to some standard 40-way devices (see above).


I hope this somewhat lengthy post has helped a few people


FAB

Hi Jeff, do you have link to make the adaptor for 3.5" HD in mac mini? THanks

[Charles Wirth]

Update.

The plastic clips that retain the CPU bracket will break after the third removal even if you are very careful. New ones can be found on chipset heatsink or old mobo's if you can find the right diameter ones.

I tested a Dothan CPU in the Napa motherboard and it did not fire up or even attempt to power on.

The motherboard is made by Apple and outputs 1.9v for VDIMM. I was expecting 1.8v