How best to DIY refurbish A1176?

[bungiefan89]

I've happened upon two A1176 Mac Minis plundered from my workplace's E-waste bin (I got permission to take them) along with their power cables and even a DVI-VGA adapter.

My ultimate goal here is to clean up one of these machines so my mother can use it for viewing photos, playing DVDs, and maybe even surfing the web if that can still be done safely on a device this old. I want to know how best to go about wiping the hard drives clean and getting them in the best working order they can be for my mother to use.

For reference, the two A1176s are a little different, so here's some information about each:

Mac Mini 1
Name: SD
OS: 10.4.11
HDD: 60GB
Processor: 1.66 GHz Intel Core Duo
RAM: 1GB

Mac Mini 2
Name: SUN
OS: 10.5.8
HDD: 120GB
Processor: 2 GHz Intel Core Duo
RAM: 2GB​

Both machines boot up fine to administrator accounts without any password protection (yay!) so I was able to get both of them to their respective desktops. Obviously SUN is the preferred candidate for providing to my mother, but I also want to know if I could (or should) upgrade either of these machines to OS 10.6 with the install disk I have for that.

 

[Partron22]

Can you run OS 9 on mini 1 in emulation mode? There are some nice apps from that era. Works on my 2005 mini, but that's got a ppc rather than intel.
If that doesn't interest you, I'd take them both up to Snow Leopard.
10.6 was widely liked for its stabilty. Things really did just work.
Be certain to get every security update you can.
Also, research older browsers for security. I would not trust ancient Safari. Firefox 38 might be OK, but you'd best look into the issue before Mom starts getting calls that "her computer is infected". If she bites, that scam can be expensive.