Newbie Questions.. Sorry :(

[Dieseltown]

Hi All,

Here's the situation. I bought a mac mini A1176 - but it was updated with a core 2 duo and 4GB of memory. It has Lion on it, and it came with it.. Lion isn't running as good as I expected the system to run, so i want to put Snow Leopard on this.. I've got the disc coming in the mail next week. From what I read SL may make this run a little better than lion does.

With that said, is it just a simple format/install SL and everything will still work? Do I need to do any type of modifications for SL to see my 4GB of memory or anything?

Sorry - very new to macs and I just got this one over a week ago so I don't have any clue what I am doing yet. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

PS. I know I wont be able to go back to Lion since its technically not supported without some modifications and I am okay with that.

 

[Gjwilly]

When you click the Apple logo in the upper left corner and then select About This Mac, what years' model does it say your Mac Mini is?
The A1176 was used for many Mac Minis so knowing exactly which one you have will help.

 

[Dieseltown]

When you click the Apple logo in the upper left corner and then select About This Mac, what years' model does it say your Mac Mini is?
The A1176 was used for many Mac Minis so knowing exactly which one you have will help.

Thanks for the post.

It's an Early 2006 - 1.83 GHZ Intel Core 2 Duo
4GB 667 Mhz Ddr2 Ram
Intel GMA 950 64MB



I don't see a model # - just a model name.. What else do you need?

 

[DeltaMac]

There was no early 2006 Mac mini model released with that processor. ...

Agree, but the OP stated that the mini had an upgraded processor, which is very doable on the early intel minis.

 

[Gjwilly]

Well everymac says the max ram offered on that machine was 2GB.
It looks like 4GB could be installed but the chipset itself is limited to 3GB.
I've also seen some saying that the entire 4GB could be utilized after a firmware update so I'm not sure which is true.
If you do want to switch back to Lion the instructions are here:
http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/to...on-on-any-coreduo-mac-upgraded-to-a-core2duo/

 

[poiihy]

For the install all you need to do is erase the disk and install and it would work. These old machines have a 32-bit EFI so they can't allocate more than 3.1GB or so. There may be a workaround to this.

 

[Dieseltown]

I could always just install it to an external drive first, just to see what the activity monitor reports the ram @ right? I think I may do that just to see..