I'm thinking about getting an old Mac mini for nostalgia purposes. In particular, I'm looking at something that will run at a minimum Snow Leopard, ideally Tiger (since it was the first Mac OS I used). I don't want to go beyond Snow Leopard since I'd lose Rosetta. What are your thoughts or experiences with a 2006-2007 Mac mini? Trying not to spend much at all, like $20-30 tops and I got a 2017 MacBook Pro + a PC, so it's not something I'd be using online or anything.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Thoughts on an early Mac mini?
- Thread starter ricketysquire
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
I use mine (Snow Leopard max) to stream music. I can stream to any Mac in the house via AirServer. Or I can stream to my BT soundbar. Additionally, it has Adobe CS2 on it so if I need to scan something it can communicate with my 2001 era USB scanner via TWAIN.
But it's primary purpose (right now) is as the depository for downloads from all my Macs and PCs.
I'm running it headless (although it is connected to my HDTV). 4GB Ram, 320GB HD.
I don't have a 06/07 Mini, but I do have a 2006 17" MBP which has the max-supported CPU for a 06/07 Mini (Core 2 Duo T7600).
It's dual-booting Mavericks and Windows 7. Mavericks won't work on a Mini as there aren't any GPU patches for the Intel GMA950 but as you said you wanted Tiger or Snow Leopard that won't be a problem. It will run really well, especially with a cheap SSD and 3GB of RAM (if you have a 2007 or 2006 with a flashed firmware and a 2007 CPU)
Snow Leopard is still useable, however, some modern webpages will be slower to run. ArcticWeb, Firefox Legacy and Chromium Legacy are good browsers for SL.
It's dual-booting Mavericks and Windows 7. Mavericks won't work on a Mini as there aren't any GPU patches for the Intel GMA950 but as you said you wanted Tiger or Snow Leopard that won't be a problem. It will run really well, especially with a cheap SSD and 3GB of RAM (if you have a 2007 or 2006 with a flashed firmware and a 2007 CPU)
Snow Leopard is still useable, however, some modern webpages will be slower to run. ArcticWeb, Firefox Legacy and Chromium Legacy are good browsers for SL.
I have a 2006 Mac mini, outfitted with a 2.33 GHz Core Duo, 2 GB RAM and a 240 GB Crucial BX500 SSD. It runs Tiger and Snow Leopard really well but the GMA 950 GPU is the worst piece of garbage I've ever seen.
Nope, in practice, even if yes, in theory:
The reason why is the person who compiles these Chromium builds for operability in Lion through Yosemite is someone who daily drives Lion on their own Macs. Consequently, they lack the incentive or motivation to prepare a build environment which might also work in, say, 10.6.8.
It is what it is, and gift horses…
Are you asking for feedback on the hardware itself or what you can do with it? At $20 - $30 I say buy it and give it a try. What you can do with it depends on what you want to do.
As a collector of old computers myself I have a collection of old systems (for example an Apple II) which are primarily nostalgia systems. These systems cost considerably more than $20 - $30 so what you're doing is a bargain in comparison. I tinker with them here and there but I don't even try to do anything "productive" with them (even my old G5 which is capable of doing so much more).
IOW buy one and give it a try. It's such a low cost of entry there's no reason not to.
As a collector of old computers myself I have a collection of old systems (for example an Apple II) which are primarily nostalgia systems. These systems cost considerably more than $20 - $30 so what you're doing is a bargain in comparison. I tinker with them here and there but I don't even try to do anything "productive" with them (even my old G5 which is capable of doing so much more).
IOW buy one and give it a try. It's such a low cost of entry there's no reason not to.
Not a gift horse, but rather getting what you paid for. Same with those old PowerPC Linux builds. You get what you pay for, mostly. EXCEPTIONS EXIST SO DON'T GET FUSSY
Just wanting to get feedback from others who might have one in their collection. Also if there’s any gotchas with such old hardware, for example I know with some older hardware of the mid-2000s there’s a risk of capacitors going bad
It’s OK, personally: I haven’t used a Chromium-based product on any of my devices (not even my Android phone) in several years.
I am not familiar with any capacitors issues with the 2006 - 2007 Mac Mini's. I guess if I were to make any comments about the hardware I would say to avoid the Core Solo or Core Duo models. Not that they were bad systems but rather you may want more cores than the Core Solo offers or 64-bit support offered by the Core 2 Duo models.
Indeed. I lavished love, care and, yes, real money on that thing and rescued it from a life of drudgery struggling on a lowly Core Solo and a mere 2GB of RAM by bestowing upon it a luxury Core 2 Duo processor out of the goodness of my heart. I nursed it through Firmware school until it was ready to deal with 4GB of RAM and how did it repay me? By becoming rude and uncooperative. It had better shape up soon or it's going to taste landfill quicker than it can KP.
While the early Intel Mac Minis are fine for Snow Leopard, they do have crippled graphics (as does the MacBook of that period), which struggle with anything but the lightest workloads. You will hear the fans. A lot.
This. For 20-30 just do it and worse case scenario sit it on your bookshelf as a cool Apple logo book end. 🙂
I have a g4 mini. This was free to me but if I was paying for it, I’d shoot for an early intel unit for sure over the ppc derivative.
Oh wait, this is the early intel forum. I thought I was in the PowerPC forums. Oops.
Turns out it’s really difficult to find one at the price I want. I’m seeing listings going upwards of $50 for a nearly 10-15 year old computer.
One could buy a Core Solo/Duo model and drop in a Core 2 Duo, if that were cheaper than getting a Core 2 Duo model. Not that I think it would be these days...
https://www.ebay.com/itm/225008693973
https://www.ebay.com/itm/125343539922
FYI, if the Mac doesn't come with the original (grey) restore discs for Tiger, you'll have to track them, or an image of them, down as well. A retail (black) Tiger client DVD (or image) is PowerPC-only and will not work on Intel Macs.
Last edited:
It depends. If running SL is your goal, by all means. If surfing the web is a must, that too. For games, I would get the G4. It has a better discrete graphics chip than the useless integrated one in its successor. That and the fact that you can run OS9 directly on it opens up a heap of legacy games that either aren't available on the Intel box or won't run as well despite its having a much better processor.
Bolt an eGPU to the Intel mini using the AirPort slot and watch it run circles around the G4's Radeon 9200
If you dual-booted a G4 Mini with a Linux Distro like Void (or ran Sorbet Leopard) the G4 mini could also be good for simple web browsing as well.
Then you could have a 2007 Mac mini with a 5870 if you wanted to!Bolt an eGPU to the Intel mini using the AirPort slot and watch it run circles around the G4's Radeon 9200
On Snow Leopard, the 6870 is known to work OOTB.
On Yosemite/El Cap, the TITAN X is boss for non-SSE4 CPUs IIRC.
Last edited: