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What have you done with an early Intel recently?

B S Magnet said:
Before this forum was launched, I argued how an early Intel Mac forum absolutely should include any Mac which natively could boot into Snow Leopard (and consequently, could also run Rosetta) — of which the Sandy Bridge i5/i7s would certainly qualify. Another reason I argued for this is Apple were still selling Core 2 Duo Macs (which automatically count as included here) alongside the Sandy Bridge Macs through 2012.

These days, probably even the Ivy Bridge Macs could be mentioned from time to time, if for no other reason beyond sharing the same form factor and parts modularity in the 13 and 15-inch 2012 unibody MacBook Pros as their Sandy Bridge and even Core 2 Duo forebears in the unibody line. A similar could be made for the 2012 Mac mini and 2012 Mac Pro, as well.
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I've got some pretty solid Ivy Macs. The MBP 9,2 I am typing this on is still super awesome. I have a 2TB SSD, 16GB ram and 11.6.2 running perfectly. This MacBook is champ and I will keep using it until it breaks. Such a shame it didn't support past 10.15 because it runs much better with macOS 11.
 
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Jack Neill said:
I've got some pretty solid Ivy Macs. The MBP 9,2 I am typing this on is still super awesome. I have a 2TB SSD, 16GB ram and 11.6.2 running perfectly. This MacBook is champ and I will keep using it until it breaks. Such a shame it didn't support past 10.15 because it runs much better with macOS 11.
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The reason why I omitted the 2012s is because they won’t boot Snow Leopard. For Macs in the 2011–2012 window, that’s the deal-breaker for me.
 
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Wiped the dual boot 10.6/10.7 from my mini after i cloned them to the mac pro, and gave it new life with MX Linux. Everything worked out of the box.

mx-mini.png
 
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Installed Monterey 12.1 on my 2009 Mini yesterday because apparently I just can't help myself when it comes to trying out new macOS versions on this thing. It feels slower to boot than Mojave and the graphical artifacts from Big Sur are still present (I believe this is due to not having a Metal-capable GPU). The Wifi icon disappeared from the menu bar and I can't get it back no matter how many times I check/uncheck the box to do so and I can't apply changes I make to the Network preference pane because the apply button is grayed out, so that's annoying. One positive thing though, is that the dock showed up the first time Monterey booted to the desktop (which wasn't the case with Big Sur 11.4). I like Monterey, but at the same time I know I got better performance from Mojave and older as well as Ubuntu 20. I'm curious what Monterey would be like on something newer like the mid-2012 non-Retina MBP I keep wanting to buy, yet never do.
 
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MacFoxG4 said:
Installed Monterey 12.1 on my 2009 Mini yesterday because apparently I just can't help myself when it comes to trying out new macOS versions on this thing. It feels slower to boot than Mojave and the graphical artifacts from Big Sur are still present (I believe this is due to not having a Metal-capable GPU). The Wifi icon disappeared from the menu bar and I can't get it back no matter how many times I check/uncheck the box to do so and I can't apply changes I make to the Network preference pane because the apply button is grayed out, so that's annoying. One positive thing though, is that the dock showed up the first time Monterey booted to the desktop (which wasn't the case with Big Sur 11.4). I like Monterey, but at the same time I know I got better performance from Mojave and older as well as Ubuntu 20. I'm curious what Monterey would be like on something newer like the mid-2012 non-Retina MBP I keep wanting to buy, yet never do.
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Monterey runs great on the 2014 dual-core 2.6 GHz i5 Mac mini with 8 GB RAM and Intel Iris, fully supported. That's the machine I'm currently using for this post. The macOS UI is smooth, and performance for general mainstream usage like surfing and business applications is decent. Just don't try to edit 4K video or something on this machine.

The 2012 Mac mini would have the advantage of quad-core and more RAM, but I don't know how glitch-free it would run with patched Monterey. As for the 2012 non-Retina MBP I suspect the performance would be fine too, but again it's a matter of how well the patch works. I decided to skip the patching and bought a 2015 Retina MacBook Pro instead, as that is fully supported.

In contrast, even Catalina felt sluggish on my 2009 Core 2 Duo 2.26 GHz MacBook Pro, and my 2008 Core 2 Duo 2.0 GHz MacBook was worse.
 
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image.jpg

Recently I’ve been messing around with Windows 7 again. I remembered I had never tried 7 on here after I had installed an SSD. Only with an HDD and performance was pretty bad. However now that I tried it again I can safely say that Windows 7 64bit works really really well on this machine. Chrome is even faster than with Mavericks and I can play 720p60 YouTube without issues.

Due to the fact that I went with 64 bit, the Bootcamp drivers work partially. No utilities menu, but I do have fully working graphics drivers and my Apple bluetooth keyboard works fine.

This is perfectly usable in 2022 in my opinion and it even is fully up to date with a.. ahem.. less than legal workaround to keep getting security updates until 2023. :p

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MacFoxG4 said:
I'm curious what Monterey would be like on something newer like the mid-2012 non-Retina MBP I keep wanting to buy, yet never do.
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Haven't tried 12.x yet because it requires a system root patch on HD4000 and I don't want to mess with it after every update, but 11.6.2 works fantastic on my 2012 9,2. Much smoother than 15.x
 
EugW said:
The 2012 Mac mini would have the advantage of quad-core and more RAM, but I don't know how glitch-free it would run with patched Monterey.
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i might install that OS on an extra drive this week.
i don't know if i could use any features on that OS as Mojave.
 
Reinstalled rEFInd like I usually do after changing my OS configuration on the Mini, but this time I had to run the install script from Recovery Mode because SIP was enabled in Monterey. Usually SIP is disabled in patched OSes, but I guess the latest version of OCLP leaves SIP enabled even after patching the system to enable graphics acceleration.

Tried to run Parallels on here because I heard the latest version will still run on a C2D, but the installer app keeps crashing, generating a "prl_client_app has quit unexpectedly" message. I looked around online and I saw someone had the same issue when Monterey was in beta, but the reply was something along the lines of "wait for an update." Haven't found anything more recent than that.
 
Played a bit with my latest acquisition that came from the UK: a fat and heavy 21.3-inch 1024-level greyscale LCD.

IMG_0160.jpg


So what's the deal with this thing that can't even show colours?!?!?!

Firstly, it's almost as bright as the sun (up to 1,100 nits).

And secondly...

ROAR.png


Ladies and gentlemen, meet QSXGA. That's 4× 1280×1024 = 5,242,880 pixels.

Who says you can't get high-rez non-widescreen monitors anymore? :D
 
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Today I succesfully setup a dual boot of the latest Debian 11 64 bit and Mac OS X 10.4.11 on my 32 bit EFI Early 2007 Mac mini.

Everything is perfect in Debian 11, it can even do 1080p YouTube streaming with FireFox. And it's fast, like Tiger. This mini does not feel obsolete at all.
 
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alex_free said:
Today I succesfully setup a dual boot of the latest Debian 11 64 bit and Mac OS X 10.4.11 on my 32 bit EFI Early 2007 Mac mini.

Everything is perfect in Debian 11, it can even do 1080p YouTube streaming with FireFox. And it's fast, like Tiger. This mini does not feel obsolete at all.
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Update (Debian 11 on 07 mini):

Unreal Tournament '99 GOTY Windows runs perfect in Wine using the OpenGL renderer.

Also, I have been wanting to implement a specific idea into a program for years and I think I finally figured out how to do it.
 
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I managed to get OS X Tiger onto my iMac 5,1 (C2D 2 Ghz). Had to use the 10.4.8 installer to make it work, as the 10.4.6 install had a blocked logo.
Man, I'm so impressed at the speed of Tiger on these Intel Macs. Only, there's a few problems.
For one, for some reason Bluetooth in Tiger breaks compatibility with some of my bluetooth keyboards. It detects and connects to them, but then the key inputs don't work.

Also, there's problems with available software. Since not many people care about Tiger on Intel, there seems to be a general lack of support. At least I have PPCMC and an Intel TFF :) – still, TFF can't beat Arctic Fox for speed and compatibility. Arctic Fox can still stream Youtube at 720p from the browser.
 
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mectojic said:
Also, there's problems with available software. Since not many people care about Tiger on Intel, there seems to be a general lack of support. At least I have PPCMC and an Intel TFF :) – still, TFF can't beat Arctic Fox for speed and compatibility. Arctic Fox can still stream Youtube at 720p from the browser.
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Don't forget that you can also run PPC software via Rosetta: I certainly do. ;)
 
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Recently, I upgraded my 2010 MacBook to 4GB of RAM and installed macOS Catalina through the dosdude1 patcher.
IMG_0076.JPG
The patcher was really easy to install, once I woke up and realised that my USB had been formatted in APFS.
Side-note: You can't boot off APFS partitions on a MacBook7,1 - Use HFS+ instead

Catalina runs nearly as fast as El Capitan did, however I needed it for newer software support. 4GB of RAM was not my first choice, which was 8GB or 16GB but I got it for free after exchanging my original 4GB kit which didn't work on the MacBook.
 
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Jack Neill said:
I haven't tried, doesn't really seem worth the effort to register a 2.5" Sata drive in 2022. They are basically free with shipping.
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they offer a 3 year warrantee, and i purchased the one for the macmini at walmart, so I'm concerned.
the online registration did not work, kept stating a field error, so i contacted WD.
 
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