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Will This Old Mac mini Core Solo Even Boot?

12:35 video

This nasty, gross, bug-infested thing is the first Intel Mac mini Apple sold, with an Intel Core Solo processor. It’s been in my garage for four years, so I decided to clean it up and see if it works.

The Mac mini

I bought it in 2007 at CompUSA (do you remember CompUSA?) for my grandma, who used it for about 10 years before she could no longer use a computer. It shipped with a 1.5 GHz Core Solo, 512 MB of RAM and a 60 GB hard drive, with four USB ports, DVI, FireWire, Ethernet and audio ports. It had a short life for OS support: it shipped with 10.4 Tiger and was supported only up to 10.6 Snow Leopard.

I was afraid to power it on before cleaning it because I had no idea what had gotten in, and I didn’t want to fry it or chop up something with the fan. For the job I used canned air, a little cleaner, a putty knife, a brush and a new iFixit Protech toolkit (I ended up using only the spudger and tweezers).

Inside

I was shocked at how clean it was: very little debris, almost as if it hadn’t sat for 14 years after 10 years of household use and four in a hot, dusty garage. Electrical tape inside is from the 2011 upgrades, when I broke the clip that holds the audio cable. In 2011 I upgraded:

  • The processor to a T7600 2.33 GHz Core 2 Duo, extending its life.
  • The RAM from 512 MB to 2 GB.
  • The 60 GB hard drive to an 80 GB Intel SSD, my first SSD, which really improved performance.

The moment of truth

Connected with a DVI to HDMI cable (to a 4K display, hopefully without issues), a USB keyboard and a Logitech M510 mouse: I plugged it in and pressed the power button, and heard the chime. The fan whirred up, loud compared to the M1s, and it booted. The Keyboard Assistant didn’t recognize the keyboard, but my password worked and I was in. The date was wrong, so I’d changed the CR2032 clock battery earlier, and it hadn’t been online in years. I opened the case again because the fan was driving me nuts, and found I hadn’t reconnected the front temperature sensor (“I’m no Luke Miani”).

Snow Leopard

About This Mac shows 10.6.8 Snow Leopard with the 2.33 GHz Core 2 Duo and 2 GB. Snow Leopard (2009) didn’t add much: Exchange support, better PDF support, Dock Exposé, and mostly internal optimizations. In 2021 it isn’t very productive: Safari 5 has real tab-looking tabs, but apple.com doesn’t load correctly, Google looks okay and Amazon loads but I’d expect issues. I found aja System Test, Carbon Copy Cloner, Chess, CrashPlan (the best peer-to-peer encrypted backup, with no fees, until they killed it), Dashboard (I miss the widgets), Flip4Mac, Chrome (version 49, no updates), iPhoto, iTunes Producer, Picasa (the better photo app at the time), Skype, TeamViewer and XBench, which gave a total of 189.84 (I don’t know if that’s good).

Lion

When Apple released Lion, it dropped support for the Core Solo mini, but because I upgraded to the Core 2 Duo, I can run it (there’s a link in the description to the video that helped me install it). I booted from an external drive in safe mode (it wasn’t booting correctly otherwise) and got Mac OS X Lion (10.7). Lion brought big changes: the integrated App Store, Launchpad (ironically part of the “iOS-ification” of the Mac that drove me away at the time), Mission Control, AirDrop and, I think, Auto Save and Versions.

I’m really surprised it booted and runs as well as it does after 10 years of use and four in a garage. It will probably end up on a shelf as a display piece in my office. It was a fun little project, and I’m glad I finally got it out of the garage. Do you have questions about the Mac mini, the processor upgrade or Lion and Snow Leopard?

In this video

  • 0:00 an old dirty Mac mini
  • 1:26 open it up to see how nasty it is
  • 3:48 upgrades
  • 4:50 moment of truth
  • 7:04 Snow Leopard
  • 10:09 Lion

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