What have you done with an early Intel recently?

[Amethyst1]

Forgot to mention I also tried the UltraFine with my 2007 MBP directly, with the output from an Atlona DP400 going into the Wacom Link Plus. Nuffin'.

Also have a GTX 660 Ti on the way for more eGPU shenanigans. Really want to see this baby driven at full resolution in Mavericks! 3840x2160 is boring!

 

[joevt]

Forgot to mention I also tried the UltraFine with my 2007 MBP directly, with the output from an Atlona DP400 going into the Wacom Link Plus. Nuffin'.

Also have a GTX 660 Ti on the way for more eGPU shenanigans. Really want to see this baby driven at full resolution in Mavericks! 3840x2160 is boring!

I tried Macmini1,1 -> Gefen GTV-DVIDL-2-MDP -> Wacom Link Plus -> XV273K. I didn't get a signal because the Macmini1,1 is running in FireWire Target Disk Mode (I'm trying to ddrescue from Linux the HD before I replace it with an SSD). While in FireWire Target Disk Mode (which is an EFI app), the Macmini1,1 is outputting only VGA. I think the Macmini1,1 doesn't switch to digital output until macOS loads.

So I tried with a Macmini8,1 -> Club-3d CAC-1510. It works with certain resolutions using mode 1 and mode 2 of the Gefen. Mode 3 is EDID passthrough but I couldn't get a signal even while using modes that match those in mode 1 and mode 2:
√ 1792x1008 144Hz 303MHz
√ 3840x2160 30Hz 262MHz
√ 3840x2160 35Hz 307MHz
√ 2560x1440 60Hz 242MHz
√ 2560x1600 60Hz 268MHz
etc.

It appear the Wacom Link Plus can handle higher pixels clocks from the Mini DisplayPort 1.2 input compared to the HDMI 1.4 input, as expected.
https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...indows-computers-via-dp.2227756/post-29770491

I expect the setup to handle pixel clocks up to 330MHz since that's the limit of Dual Link DVI.

 

[Amethyst1]

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!

My GTX 660 Ti came in today - and the setup "just works". Full resolution on the UltraFine... on Mavericks!

 

[eyoungren]

Integrated a new NAS, a ZyXEL NSA 320. I use this brand for my GB Powerline adapters that give me internet in the garage and they have been solid so I decided to take a chance on this NAS. Pretty easy to set up once I got it reset. I have two WD Red 3TBs in there. Transferring my backups off Dropbox over to it so my CCC backups have diskimages to work with for daily backups.

The previous NAS seems to have had one drive bay die on me which is why I got this one. It's got AFP, which makes me very happy.

 

[Amethyst1]

Broke out the 2007 MBP and upped the ante on my eGPU setup...

Holy ****, this is just ri-di-cu-lous. I feel like my head's gonna explode

Here's a desktop screenshot at full resolution:

 

[Riviera122]

Today - Teams video conferences and one-to-one meetings, worked on large Excel databases, emails. All from my 2009 MacBook. My daily driver for work!

 

[mortlocli]

Integrated a new NAS, a ZyXEL NSA 320. I use this brand for my GB Powerline adapters that give me internet in the garage and they have been solid so I decided to take a chance on this NAS. Pretty easy to set up once I got it reset. I have two WD Red 3TBs in there. Transferring my backups off Dropbox over to it so my CCC backups have diskimages to work with for daily backups.

The previous NAS seems to have had one drive bay die on me which is why I got this one. It's got AFP, which makes me very happy.

View attachment 1759224

View attachment 1759225

Geez!!!
...that looks bloody good!!!

 

[eyoungren]

Geez!!!
...that looks bloody good!!!

It's got a few quirks, but it works pretty well. The best part is that it seems to be stable. The jury is still out on that though. I've learned not to depend fully on things until they've been around for a while without problems.

That said, the drive has a dual set of WD Reds and that's a brand I have come to rely on. I have a pair of WD Reds in my 2TB RAID that I got when they were only a month old. It's about five or six years now and they are still going.

 

[bobesch]

Today spring-cleaning for two "late" early-intel mid-2012 quad-i7 2,x GHz 15" MBP with my favorite tools: cosmetic brush and kind of politzer-balloon (which comes close to compressed-air).

The MBPs are meant as backup/replacement for my 2008/09 24" iMacs at work, if the iMacs should start to struggle with Win10pro & additional software (unfortunately they prooved to be at their limit just now).
If the MBPs happen to replace the iMacs, they will be Velcro-fixed upon an mStand and inherit the iMacs small USB-keyboard & mouse and both MBP and USB-keyboard get a TPU-cover to stay clean, which is mission-critical.
One of the MBPs came in in fair condition, but the display is flickering for a short period after waking up from sleeping mode. The other one is a bit bruised and battered, but display, logic-board, optical drive and all i/o are ok.
So I swapped displays and found out, that the problem is related to the display assembly, now leaving an MBP in a nearly prestine condition and another, battered one, with a (temporarily) flickering screen, which is otherwise ok.
Guess I'm gonna look for a defective late-2011 15" MBP (there are a lot of them due to the common GPU-failure) to get a replacement display-assembly.

Quintessence:
- I'd like this place also be a place for the "late" early-intels (aka "pre-Retina" Macbooks) too.
- now's time to look/go for a mid-2012 15" MBP (and replacement-parts from late-2011 15" MBP, that suffer from GPU failure)

Anyone here has an idea about that flickering display?
I thinks it's the cable or the inverter. Probably hard to fix ...

 

[Amethyst1]

- I'd like this place also be a place for the "late" early-intels (aka "pre-Retina" Macbooks) too.

Agreed. My 2011 MBP also needs a place to hang out.

 

[bobesch]

Agreed. My 2011 MBP also needs a place to hang out.

Do you take any measures to prevent it from GPU-failure?
Or any thoughts about circumventin the GPU at all?

 

[Amethyst1]

Do you take any measures to prevent it from GPU-failure?

Mine is a 13". No discrete GPU to fail. (But only a dual-core...) As for disabling the GPU...

Permanently Disable 2011 15"/17" MacBook Pro Dedicated GPU - gMux IC Bypass

UPDATE: The solution detailed below is more or less out of date at this point, as I have recently developed a custom gMux IC firmware that not only permanently disables the AMD GPU, but also retains full native software-controlled display backlight brightness. Documentation explaining the...

forums.macrumors.com

 

[Pinkie Pie]

I played The Sims on my early '08 MacBook!

 

[reukiodo]

Today I disposed the battery from my early 2008 Macbook Pro
Was clearing some stuff yesterday, and found it had ballooned to enormous size...
Glad it didn't burn my house down.
Check your old batteries!

Best to store them mostly drained...

 

[jouster]

I played Xevious through MacMame on my '06 Core 2 Duo iMac. Long term goal is to beat my 80s arcade high score, which was something in the 400,000s (though I don't know the difficulty level my local arcade set). Going to need to get an arcade-style joystick, though.

 

[Jack Neill]

My MBA 5,2 and MBP 9,2 are pre retina and need a place to hang out too. I just upped both to 11.3.1 using OCLP. I love that the 9,2 is still user upgradeable and I have a 2 TB MX500 with all my life accumulated photos and music on a laptop. While not powerful, compared to newer machines, the 9,2 still really whips the llamas ass.

In other news I dropped Yosemite on a true "early Intel" MB 5,2 yesterday because reasons..

 

[Amethyst1]

Finally ponied up the dough to register my copy of SwitchResX. And tested the scaled resolution (framebuffer) limits on a Kepler card (GTX 660 Ti)... Voila, Mavericks at 8192×4096.

 

[eyoungren]

Finally ponied up the dough to register my copy of SwitchResX. And tested the scaled resolution (framebuffer) limits on a Kepler card (GTX 660 Ti)... Voila, Mavericks at 8192×4096.

One of these days I'm going to hook my Mac up to one of those movie theatre screens, maybe an IMAX screen. That'd be cool!

 

[Amethyst1]

Played a bit with arbitrary scaling factors that were a thing in Tiger, Leo and Snowy (HiDPI modes are fixed at 2×). Text is super-sharp but on the whole it's very unfinished and glitchy.

I gotta say, this would be just perfect for the 13.4" 3840×2400 LCD you can get in the current Dell XPS 13

 

[bobesch]

Today my jumble-sale collection of harddrives is getting some attention ...
(To be honest: all-USB3 or Thunderbolt would be appreciated!)

 

[joevt]

Finally ponied up the dough to register my copy of SwitchResX. And tested the scaled resolution (framebuffer) limits on a Kepler card (GTX 660 Ti)... Voila, Mavericks at 8192×4096.

I've got that on my 680 Mac Edition (connected to a 30" Apple Cinema Display).
AMD GPUs will do 8Kx8K. I don't remember all the details, but if you connect a dual tile display (eg. iMac 5K or Dell UP2715K) then you can get something like 14K (on RX580). Actually, I just tried a W5700 in Big Sur 11.3.1 and it can do 16Kx16K. SwitchResX won't let me enter anything greater than 16K. So I tried editing it directly. I can enter 32Kx32K and macOS will accept it, but when I try to use it, the display goes black and macOS enters a loop trying to initialize the display. I have to disconnect the display, connect a different display and re log in. So I tried 16K+32 and that also fails, so I guess the limit for now is 16K.

Played a bit with arbitrary scaling factors that were a thing in Tiger, Leo and Snowy (HiDPI modes are fixed at 2×). Text is super-sharp but on the whole it's very unfinished and glitchy.

I gotta say, this would be just perfect for the 13.4" 3840×2400 LCD you can get in the current Dell XPS 13 (no, I don't need a new laptop - no, no, no!)

It works on PPC Macs too (same OSes except Snow Leopard of course). It's weird that PPC Macs have capabilities that don't exist on current Macs. I haven't ruled out the possibility of getting arbitrary scaled modes in later macOS versions - just need to find the API (in CoreDisplay or whatever) and change the x2 to x3 or whatever. 3x would be nice for 8K displays (8K/3 = 2560x1440)

 

[Amethyst1]

AMD GPUs will do 8Kx8K.

Do you know if that also applies to GPUs supported in Mavericks (10.9.5)?

Also, is 16Kx16K on the W5700 for dual-cable displays only?

7680x4320 works on Intel Iris Pro 5200 (Haswell) on Mavericks but I haven't checked the actual limit yet.

It's weird that PPC Macs have capabilities that don't exist on current Macs.

Newer isn't always better

 

[Wowfunhappy]

One of these days I'm going to hook my Mac up to one of those movie theatre screens, maybe an IMAX screen. That'd be cool!

I use my Mavericks Mac with my projector most evenings. Not IMAX of course, but almost feels like it because of how close I sit. Before COVID when I could actually go to movie theaters, the screens always felt smaller.

Last night I used Dolphin to play Mario Galaxy 2 in stereoscopic 3D. 😎

I'd post pictures but there's kind of nothing to see, since the lights have to be off and all.

 

[joevt]

Do you know if that also applies to GPUs supported in Mavericks (10.9.5)?

I don't have such GPU's to test.

Also, is 16Kx16K on the W5700 for dual-cable displays only?

This is a single cable display. 16384x16384 is the equivalent of 32 3840*2160 displays.... I'll try a dual cable display later.

7680x4320 works on Intel Iris Pro 5200 (Haswell) on Mavericks but I haven't checked the actual limit yet.

That's already beyond the 4K vertical limit of Kepler.

 

[Wowfunhappy]

Kepler has a hard limit at 4K? :/

Edit: Oh, *vertical* so effectively 8K. That’s okay I guess.