Hello everyone,
Having visited this forum many times through google search I thought it's time to register here myself and share a story or two about my Mac computers.
As per topic headline, this is a thread about my Mac Pro 2,1, which was collecting dust for just a bit more than a year that I decided to turn into some sort of "Time Machine". I decided to name it "Outatime" just for the sake of making it stand out a little bit among many other marvellous machines here on forum.
Quick specs:
- Mac Pro 2,1;
- 2 x 3.0 GHz Quad Core Xeon X5365
-5GB 8GB RAM
- Nvidia Geforce 7300 GT
- No HDD at the moment.
- No display
- No add-ons.
- Mac OS X 10.6.8 (coming soon)
This Mac ended up with me as an impulse purchase. Being quite a fan of the Apple products' design from the beginning of Intel era, I just wanted to buy a Mac Pro shell and make some sort of a shelf out of it for my little iPod collection.
I wasn't looking for anything more than £50 worth, so it took me a couple of days of research before I came across an advert posted on local marketplace website about this Mac. It was fully working, with some SSD inside also. No keyboard, no extras, just the Mac. And only £25. Less than an hour later after I found the advert I was on my way to collect it. Luckily, seller was less than 20-minute drive away from me. It didn't bother me what model it was. All I wanted to do is to gut it and use it as a fancy shelf. When I brought it home, to my surprise I found a relatively new Samsung Evo SSD inside with only a couple of terabytes written on it. So essentially, considering average Samsung SSD price, I bought a decent used SSD and got a free Mac with it. That SSD is now used in my everyday Dell Precision machine.
Out of curiosity, I decided to fire it up and remind myself of what classic Mac OS X 10.5 used to be like.
And boy, did it bring me back some memories or what!
I got my very first iMac back in the beginning of 2007, it was an 21.5 inch iMac shipped with Mac OS X Tiger on it. Soon enough it was upgraded to 10.5, then 10.6 just before selling it. After that, probably around 2011, I got a macbook pro, which I ran with Mavericks on until it became pretty much obsolete around 2016. But I rarely used it anyway, because my university studies and workplace were all revolving around the Windows. So, nostalgia factor was pretty strong, given that I wasn't a frequent Mac OS X user for around 10 years now.
For some reason, I decided against gutting it and use it as a piece of heavy furniture for the time being, thanks to lots of free space in my room. I just put all my iPods inside of it and left it like that without side cover.
Until recently, all it was doing is just sitting there and being pretty. One day, I came across Dexter's Lab DVD on ebay and surely decided to order it (Cartoon Network shows used to be my favourite).
Having lost a few rare DVD's previously, I developed a habit of saving images of rare or expensive DVD's, so I knew that I would make a backup image of it as soon as it would arrive in the post. And that's how the idea of classic Outatime Mac Pro (cOMP) was first born.
Even such an old machine as MP 2,1 is still perfectly capable of playing music and videos. Having quickly checked VLC Media Player system requirements, I discovered that even 10.6 OS X version still supports VLC 2. something, which is more than enough for playing modern types of media files and DVD's.
It's a no brainer. Can't think of a better way of storing all of my favourite shows, music and movies in one pretty (although fairly bulky) case that is capable of playing content and media back also. And obviously, bringing back all those memories from the past in one punch.
However, there are now a few relatively easy challenges ahead. Now that this Mac is declared as a project, I quickly found a few things I would like to do to it.
Mac Pro 2,1: £25; Kingston DDR2 4GB RAM: £12;
Fine print:
This project is not aimed at squeezing every single bit of performance out of the machine or adapting it for use with the modern software. It's a cheap (or at least I hope it is going to be) project aimed at bringing back one individual's good memories every once in a while through means of storing and playing video and audio files and maybe a little bit more along the way. It may also show that owning a piece of Apple's history should not be expensive and may even be fun too look after.
I hope this thread will inspire someone else to do something similar or even more fun. But if not, then happy reading.
Having visited this forum many times through google search I thought it's time to register here myself and share a story or two about my Mac computers.
As per topic headline, this is a thread about my Mac Pro 2,1, which was collecting dust for just a bit more than a year that I decided to turn into some sort of "Time Machine". I decided to name it "Outatime" just for the sake of making it stand out a little bit among many other marvellous machines here on forum.
Quick specs:
- Mac Pro 2,1;
- 2 x 3.0 GHz Quad Core Xeon X5365
-
- Nvidia Geforce 7300 GT
- No HDD at the moment.
- No display
- No add-ons.
- Mac OS X 10.6.8 (coming soon)
This Mac ended up with me as an impulse purchase. Being quite a fan of the Apple products' design from the beginning of Intel era, I just wanted to buy a Mac Pro shell and make some sort of a shelf out of it for my little iPod collection.
I wasn't looking for anything more than £50 worth, so it took me a couple of days of research before I came across an advert posted on local marketplace website about this Mac. It was fully working, with some SSD inside also. No keyboard, no extras, just the Mac. And only £25. Less than an hour later after I found the advert I was on my way to collect it. Luckily, seller was less than 20-minute drive away from me. It didn't bother me what model it was. All I wanted to do is to gut it and use it as a fancy shelf. When I brought it home, to my surprise I found a relatively new Samsung Evo SSD inside with only a couple of terabytes written on it. So essentially, considering average Samsung SSD price, I bought a decent used SSD and got a free Mac with it. That SSD is now used in my everyday Dell Precision machine.
And boy, did it bring me back some memories or what!
I got my very first iMac back in the beginning of 2007, it was an 21.5 inch iMac shipped with Mac OS X Tiger on it. Soon enough it was upgraded to 10.5, then 10.6 just before selling it. After that, probably around 2011, I got a macbook pro, which I ran with Mavericks on until it became pretty much obsolete around 2016. But I rarely used it anyway, because my university studies and workplace were all revolving around the Windows. So, nostalgia factor was pretty strong, given that I wasn't a frequent Mac OS X user for around 10 years now.For some reason, I decided against gutting it and use it as a piece of heavy furniture for the time being, thanks to lots of free space in my room. I just put all my iPods inside of it and left it like that without side cover.
Until recently, all it was doing is just sitting there and being pretty. One day, I came across Dexter's Lab DVD on ebay and surely decided to order it (Cartoon Network shows used to be my favourite).
Having lost a few rare DVD's previously, I developed a habit of saving images of rare or expensive DVD's, so I knew that I would make a backup image of it as soon as it would arrive in the post. And that's how the idea of classic Outatime Mac Pro (cOMP) was first born.
Even such an old machine as MP 2,1 is still perfectly capable of playing music and videos. Having quickly checked VLC Media Player system requirements, I discovered that even 10.6 OS X version still supports VLC 2. something, which is more than enough for playing modern types of media files and DVD's.
It's a no brainer. Can't think of a better way of storing all of my favourite shows, music and movies in one pretty (although fairly bulky) case that is capable of playing content and media back also. And obviously, bringing back all those memories from the past in one punch.
However, there are now a few relatively easy challenges ahead. Now that this Mac is declared as a project, I quickly found a few things I would like to do to it.
- Add more RAM.
Quite self-explanatory. Ram inside is Kingston. I'll try to have a matching set of Kingston sticks in every slot, since the machine already came with 4 x 1GB Kingston sticks. - Upgrade videocard to bring the performance up a notch.
GeForce 7300 is not a snail, but I think it may be slightly underperforming. Plus, passive cooling makes me feel slightly uncomfortable. - Obtain a period-correct display.
Machine like a Mac Pro should be paired with Apple Cinema. For best experience. No less. - Obtain period-correct keyboard and mouse (or trackpad).
- Put Airport & Bluetooth card in.
Might as well. - Find decent-looking speakers from the same period.
Still debating whether I should find some portable Bose Speakers or retire my set of Harman Kardon Soundsticks and use it occasionaly with cOMP. - Purchase a hard drive for storage and SSD for OS.
Debating on whether I shall buy one 240GB SSD and split it between Mac OS X and Windows, or buy two separate 120GB SSDs and use one 2TB hard drive as a main storage. - Install Windows XP on it also for even more nostalgia.
Because why not? - Clean it up where possible to maintain it's mint condition.
Cleaning inside and blowing all the dust out, re-applying thermal paste, re-cleaning GPU heatsink, getting rid of small scratches etc. - Do all steps above without paying more than the price of the Mac for each upgrade or purchase where possible.
Mac Pro 2,1: £25; Kingston DDR2 4GB RAM: £12;
Fine print:
This project is not aimed at squeezing every single bit of performance out of the machine or adapting it for use with the modern software. It's a cheap (or at least I hope it is going to be) project aimed at bringing back one individual's good memories every once in a while through means of storing and playing video and audio files and maybe a little bit more along the way. It may also show that owning a piece of Apple's history should not be expensive and may even be fun too look after.
I hope this thread will inspire someone else to do something similar or even more fun. But if not, then happy reading.
Last edited: