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Question Profile
| DATE | Oct 19, 2007 |
| TICKET | #334767 |
| STATUS | Closed |
| SUBJECT | OSX install on USB DVD Intel Mini |
| CAT | Computers, Operating Systems, Applications or Connected Devices |
| TYPE | Operating System Features, Bugs and Problems |
| DESC | Apple |
| DESC | 10.4.X (Tiger) |
| PLATFORM | Apple Macintosh (Intel) |
| MODEL | Mini |
| PROC | 1.5 |
| RAM | 2 gb |
| DRIVE | 300 |
| NAME | Robin |
| USERNAME | RobinS |
| TECHNICAL | Little Experience |
| ISSUE | Need Advice |
Question Details
TICKET ARCHIVE -> OSX install on USB DVD Intel Mini
RobinS - Oct 19, 2007 - 7:34 pm
Is it possible to install OS X with a USB 2.0 external DVD drive? I tried holding Option down, as well as a few other shortcuts but it won't boot off the drive or won't see it. Yet when it starts the drive is there working fine. Using a 1.5 ghz Intel Mini. I realize that Apple used to require firewire on the PPC models, but I thought USB was possible with USB with the Intel machines.
DeltaMac - Oct 19, 2007 - 9:09 pm
If you are using your original (grey) restore disk that came with your mini, then I think it should work - USB booting is usable on the Intel Macs.
If, on the other hand, you are trying to boot with a commercial OS X installer (black DVD with the big X), then that can't boot an Intel Mac. There is no other legitimate OS X install disk (until Oct 26 and Leopard) that will boot your Intel Mac. Apple has not released one (other than OS X Tiger Server, which is not terribly useful on the mini....)
Has your internal optical drive stopped working?
-Dale
If, on the other hand, you are trying to boot with a commercial OS X installer (black DVD with the big X), then that can't boot an Intel Mac. There is no other legitimate OS X install disk (until Oct 26 and Leopard) that will boot your Intel Mac. Apple has not released one (other than OS X Tiger Server, which is not terribly useful on the mini....)
Has your internal optical drive stopped working?
-Dale
RobinS - Oct 19, 2007 - 9:51 pm
I have both discs but I tried the commercial one. I'll try the Mini disc next. What should I press to force it to seek the USB drive? There are quite a few possibilities.
Is it possible to use the drive of another Mini (PPC) in target mode with a firewire cable?
The internal optical drive has been removed as I'm having some fun and using a 3.5" Sata 7200 rpm hard drive now and later a 10,000 rpm Raptor. Getting the male to male Sata adapter was one pain in the rear! 99.9999% of all Sata cables are female to female.
I want to have the ram area accessible as I need to use the machine to test 512mb, 1gb and 2gb sticks of ram. Also I'd like to try connecting a high gain (coffee or Pringle can I think) high gain antenna to the little wireless chip in front of the daughterboard.
Do you happen to know if the Mini could accept a Sata port replicator? That would allow me to hook up multiple sata hard drives and optical drives. Like this:
http://www.addonics.com/products/hos...ad5sahpm-e.asp
If it could do raid 0 that would be amazing. 2 years ago who would have scarcely believed the lowly Mini could blossom into such a machine.
Is it possible to use the drive of another Mini (PPC) in target mode with a firewire cable?
The internal optical drive has been removed as I'm having some fun and using a 3.5" Sata 7200 rpm hard drive now and later a 10,000 rpm Raptor. Getting the male to male Sata adapter was one pain in the rear! 99.9999% of all Sata cables are female to female.
I want to have the ram area accessible as I need to use the machine to test 512mb, 1gb and 2gb sticks of ram. Also I'd like to try connecting a high gain (coffee or Pringle can I think) high gain antenna to the little wireless chip in front of the daughterboard.
Do you happen to know if the Mini could accept a Sata port replicator? That would allow me to hook up multiple sata hard drives and optical drives. Like this:
http://www.addonics.com/products/hos...ad5sahpm-e.asp
If it could do raid 0 that would be amazing. 2 years ago who would have scarcely believed the lowly Mini could blossom into such a machine.
DeltaMac - Oct 20, 2007 - 8:47 am
Yes, the commercial OS X install can't boot your Intel mini no matter what you do, and will not show up as a bootable drive. The grey restore DVD _should_ show up as a choice from the Option key boot manager. You should already know how to use that.
Yes, you could do this in Target Disk mode from your older mini. The commercial install still won't work, and you have to use the grey, intel restore disk, but certainly will work. FireWire will likely be the better choice, as it's almost always faster than USB 2.0
I don't know about the SATA replicator. Looks like you need an eSATA port to use it. If you have an adaptor for SATA to eSATA, then I suppose that box should work.
Have you thought about upgrading the processor in your mini? The processor is in a standard socket, and can be replaced with a core2duo mobile proc.
- Dale
Yes, you could do this in Target Disk mode from your older mini. The commercial install still won't work, and you have to use the grey, intel restore disk, but certainly will work. FireWire will likely be the better choice, as it's almost always faster than USB 2.0
I don't know about the SATA replicator. Looks like you need an eSATA port to use it. If you have an adaptor for SATA to eSATA, then I suppose that box should work.
Have you thought about upgrading the processor in your mini? The processor is in a standard socket, and can be replaced with a core2duo mobile proc.
- Dale
RobinS - Oct 21, 2007 - 1:41 pm
The Mini restore disc was detected!
Is there any way of telling (on a copied disc) if the OS X version is from the Mini or the generic one from the files present? I had a genuine disc from my PPC, made a copy and also have a generic copy. I wonder which is which? I also have the genuine Intel Mini disc that came with the Intel Mini which I can use if all else fails. I'd rather not use the real one in case of an accident. I'm sort of a doofus sometimes
I was reading about the Sata replicator - it looks like it needs some sort of support on the Mini's board - not there yet. Maybe in the future. It would be amazing. Apple should sell them. It would open up the Mini to a whole new market if they upped the ram to a max of 2 x 2 gb (dual channel). Imagine a little machine with 4 gb 667mhz, 4 tb full speed Sata2 7200 rpm storage and a swift Core 2 Duo processor. Nothing to sneeze at.
> Have you thought about upgrading the processor in your mini?
Yes I have thought about it - used prices are all over the place right now. I did miss a 1.8 or 2 ghz model that went for about $60 a while back. That would have been nice. Typical prices are $100-200 now I think. But I'm not familiar with the different versions. More reading to do.
Question: Is there a market for a used 1.5 ghz CPU? In what kind of situation would it be used since its a mobile CPU? Do people upgrade their notebook CPU's? I've never heard of that before. If I can't sell the original 1.5 gbz CPU, it makes the upgrade a lot more expensive.
Is there any way of telling (on a copied disc) if the OS X version is from the Mini or the generic one from the files present? I had a genuine disc from my PPC, made a copy and also have a generic copy. I wonder which is which? I also have the genuine Intel Mini disc that came with the Intel Mini which I can use if all else fails. I'd rather not use the real one in case of an accident. I'm sort of a doofus sometimes
I was reading about the Sata replicator - it looks like it needs some sort of support on the Mini's board - not there yet. Maybe in the future. It would be amazing. Apple should sell them. It would open up the Mini to a whole new market if they upped the ram to a max of 2 x 2 gb (dual channel). Imagine a little machine with 4 gb 667mhz, 4 tb full speed Sata2 7200 rpm storage and a swift Core 2 Duo processor. Nothing to sneeze at.
> Have you thought about upgrading the processor in your mini?
Yes I have thought about it - used prices are all over the place right now. I did miss a 1.8 or 2 ghz model that went for about $60 a while back. That would have been nice. Typical prices are $100-200 now I think. But I'm not familiar with the different versions. More reading to do.
Question: Is there a market for a used 1.5 ghz CPU? In what kind of situation would it be used since its a mobile CPU? Do people upgrade their notebook CPU's? I've never heard of that before. If I can't sell the original 1.5 gbz CPU, it makes the upgrade a lot more expensive.
DeltaMac - Oct 21, 2007 - 3:07 pm
There's no way to tell on the disk, which it will boot.
I try to mark burned copies, and now with the differences of the Intel and PPC types, it saves time if you know where the disk came from.
Right now, a copy of a black disk will only boot PPC Macs. A copy of a grey restore disk will boot whichever type it came from.
My opinion abut the market for a 1.5 GHz solo core Intel chip? Not too likely, but eBay might sell...
I think most laptops don't have a socketed processor, but soldered to the main board, leaving an upgrade as a very challenging job, needing specialized tools. The mini, on the other hand, is a fairly simple upgrade, especially if it is normally mostly in pieces - (like yours are )
- Dale
I try to mark burned copies, and now with the differences of the Intel and PPC types, it saves time if you know where the disk came from.
Right now, a copy of a black disk will only boot PPC Macs. A copy of a grey restore disk will boot whichever type it came from.
My opinion abut the market for a 1.5 GHz solo core Intel chip? Not too likely, but eBay might sell...
I think most laptops don't have a socketed processor, but soldered to the main board, leaving an upgrade as a very challenging job, needing specialized tools. The mini, on the other hand, is a fairly simple upgrade, especially if it is normally mostly in pieces - (like yours are
)- Dale
RobinS - Oct 21, 2007 - 9:53 pm
So it installed fine. What was interesting is that when it said 50 minutes left, 49 minutes would appear a few seconds later. I wonder if Apple purposely takes a worst case scenario in estimating time or the 7200 rpm drive is that much faster?
I really wanted to use my 10k Raptor but its only 36 gb so its kind of useless.
So I got reading about Sata Multipliers/Replicators and found this:
http://www.123macmini.com/forums/vie...4eb561b1996877
scroll half way down and you'll see a photo of a desk with drives strewn all over with red cables connecting them. He says he got 4 10k Raptors working on this Mini with a Audionics device! Then later he says it didn't work. This explains why:
http://forums.macrumors.com/showpost...49&postcount=3
What would be great is to find an IDE adaptor that allows one to plug in IDE devices to the Mini daughterboard. That might be hard to find.
If Apple would wake up and include a bloody eSata plug with replicator support on all Minis and iMacs all of this fiddling could stop. They could sell cute little enclosures that matched the Mini's too. For the iMac it could attach to the back, off the desk, out of the way.
Anyway I'm happy. Just have to find a 400gb+ drive and that should hold me for a while. For video I will probably have to use FW400 drives.
I really wanted to use my 10k Raptor but its only 36 gb so its kind of useless.
So I got reading about Sata Multipliers/Replicators and found this:
http://www.123macmini.com/forums/vie...4eb561b1996877
scroll half way down and you'll see a photo of a desk with drives strewn all over with red cables connecting them. He says he got 4 10k Raptors working on this Mini with a Audionics device! Then later he says it didn't work. This explains why:
http://forums.macrumors.com/showpost...49&postcount=3
What would be great is to find an IDE adaptor that allows one to plug in IDE devices to the Mini daughterboard. That might be hard to find.
If Apple would wake up and include a bloody eSata plug with replicator support on all Minis and iMacs all of this fiddling could stop. They could sell cute little enclosures that matched the Mini's too. For the iMac it could attach to the back, off the desk, out of the way.
Anyway I'm happy. Just have to find a 400gb+ drive and that should hold me for a while. For video I will probably have to use FW400 drives.
RobinS - Oct 21, 2007 - 10:06 pm
Forgot to mention something: People are talking about an adapter being brought out that goes from the Intel Mini's board (Mini-PCI I think) to mini PCI-E. The trouble is I don't see anything except what the Airport Extreme is plugged into right in front of the daughterboard.
http://flickr.com/photos/jsnell/1069...ool-macintosh/
Do you know if there are different versions of the Mini? I don't remember anybody saying they had to remove the Airport Extreme to use it.
http://flickr.com/photos/jsnell/1069...ool-macintosh/
Do you know if there are different versions of the Mini? I don't remember anybody saying they had to remove the Airport Extreme to use it.
DeltaMac - Oct 21, 2007 - 10:38 pm
Apple shows 5 different models of the mini, mostly differentiated by processor type and speed - 2 PPC, and 3 Intel generations. Each would have different logic boards, I expect.
The mini is in 3 different versions, as far as the wireless card is concerned. The original PPC had a daughter card (mezzanine card) for both the bluetooth, and Airport extreme cards. A later version, still PPC, has a combination Airport Extreme/Bluetooth card, still mounted on much the same mezzanine card. They can't be interchanged, as far as I know.
Then the Intel minis go back to separate Bluetooth and Airport extreme cards, with no mezzanine card. The AE card mounts directly on the logic board, and the Bluetooth is a separate module close to the drive interconnect board.
The adapter that you refer to, must use that mezzanine slot, which would leave it for only the PPC mini. The intel does not have that slot. I could be wrong about that, but that adapter is probably only for the PPC mini. Most early minis did not come with the Airport card standard. It could be added later as a kit. This could be why someone does not need to remove that card if it is not installed...
The mini is in 3 different versions, as far as the wireless card is concerned. The original PPC had a daughter card (mezzanine card) for both the bluetooth, and Airport extreme cards. A later version, still PPC, has a combination Airport Extreme/Bluetooth card, still mounted on much the same mezzanine card. They can't be interchanged, as far as I know.
Then the Intel minis go back to separate Bluetooth and Airport extreme cards, with no mezzanine card. The AE card mounts directly on the logic board, and the Bluetooth is a separate module close to the drive interconnect board.
The adapter that you refer to, must use that mezzanine slot, which would leave it for only the PPC mini. The intel does not have that slot. I could be wrong about that, but that adapter is probably only for the PPC mini. Most early minis did not come with the Airport card standard. It could be added later as a kit. This could be why someone does not need to remove that card if it is not installed...
RobinS - Oct 23, 2007 - 2:09 pm
Any idea where there may be pictures of the 3 different Intel versions?
The Mini-PCI to PCI-E adapter they were talking about was for the Intel Mini I think though I don't know if its only adaptable to the latest versions. That would be unbelievable: esata with multiplier support and a high end video card. Combined with firewire (for high end audio) and you have a very competitive machine. Soon the max ram will probably be 4 gb which is great as 2 gb sticks have fallen in price a lot lately.
4 gb 667 mhz ram
4+ TB Sata 2 storage with Raid 0.
High end video card.
High end Firewire audio adapter.
Fast and cool running Core 2 Duo CPU's.
What a combo.
Also the eSata with multiplier could support multiple, full size DVD dual layer burners. No more toy slot loading garbage that dies so fast.
The Mini-PCI to PCI-E adapter they were talking about was for the Intel Mini I think though I don't know if its only adaptable to the latest versions. That would be unbelievable: esata with multiplier support and a high end video card. Combined with firewire (for high end audio) and you have a very competitive machine. Soon the max ram will probably be 4 gb which is great as 2 gb sticks have fallen in price a lot lately.
4 gb 667 mhz ram
4+ TB Sata 2 storage with Raid 0.
High end video card.
High end Firewire audio adapter.
Fast and cool running Core 2 Duo CPU's.
What a combo.
Also the eSata with multiplier could support multiple, full size DVD dual layer burners. No more toy slot loading garbage that dies so fast.
DeltaMac - Oct 23, 2007 - 10:12 pm
"Any idea where there may be pictures of the 3 different Intel versions? "
AFAIK, there's no visible difference in the minis, and the logic board would only be different in some markings. The specifications have not changed in any significant way, other than processor speed. Not likely you could look at one and decide which one you have.
AFAIK, there's no visible difference in the minis, and the logic board would only be different in some markings. The specifications have not changed in any significant way, other than processor speed. Not likely you could look at one and decide which one you have.
RobinS - Oct 24, 2007 - 2:22 pm
It must be on the Airport card. Strange: they never mentioned removing it. Here are my pics of my setup.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/9433215@N03/
IMG_4857 shows the silver Airport Extreme I think.
I'm experimenting with using a 120mm fan instead of that 2" toy fan in the stock set. It may work. I need to download some temperature monitoring software and check out the numbers as I'm pushing it.
I had to dremel the male to male SATA adapter quite a bit. Its only a 5 minute job.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/9433215@N03/
IMG_4857 shows the silver Airport Extreme I think.
I'm experimenting with using a 120mm fan instead of that 2" toy fan in the stock set. It may work. I need to download some temperature monitoring software and check out the numbers as I'm pushing it.
I had to dremel the male to male SATA adapter quite a bit. Its only a 5 minute job.
RobinS - Oct 26, 2007 - 5:31 pm
The system keeps on sending me notifications of a response when there hasn't been one for 4 days. I remember the same thing last year.
RobinS - Oct 28, 2007 - 6:35 am
I give up. Having to log in over and over to a system that is not working is just plain tedious. Also, its just plain stupid to have to log in when I just got the notification in my email. The email link should log me in. Or at least that should be an option. Its not as if we're talking about high security here.
If the owner of this website wants to be taken seriously he really needs to fix the many problems on it.
If the owner of this website wants to be taken seriously he really needs to fix the many problems on it.
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