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DIY Mac mini Overclocking
mirko writes "So, you wanted a 1,42GHz Mac mini but either because of some distribution woes or because of your tight budget you could just get a 1,25GHz ?
Don't worry : Leo Bodnar just found out how to overclock your machine. Of course, you'll have to open it prior to anything else but you already know how to do this."
I can't imagine that little box is all that great at cooling. I know the cube wasn't. :)
I wonder if there is going to be a surplus of dead mac minis hitting ebay soon.
Pretty Pictures!
...but then the warranty will be void, and any mistake will be fatal. Damn Apple.
Stewed apple.
So, you wanted a 1,42GHz Mac mini but either because of some distribution woes or because of your tight budget you could just get a 1,25GHz ?
No, not really. 1.42 GHz isn't really so much faster than 1.25 to justify voiding the warranty.
The G4 is crippled by its 167 MHz FSB, so how about overclocking that for some real performance boosts?
Is the jump from 1,25GHz to 1,42GHz that great an improvement. Yes I know how many operations are done in every Megahertz but in my mind, the point of the mini was not speed but rather using less power for simple things. My e-mail, browser, Word, soltaire, etc is not going to open that much noticably faster with this bump.
I like more speed as much as the next guy but the next guy didn't buy the Mac Mini for speed.
-Teiresias
- Help a college student get an iMac Mini, and then get one yourself
what problems do iPods have?
oh... users who think a battery lasts for ever.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
$300 bucks? let me guess you used a case you already had, a hard drive you already had.
The componets are similiar to new PC's.
Your case is about 12 times the size of the mini. Heck even mini-itx systems end up being nearly twice the size.
So you spent $300 for a motherboard and CPU, because you already had everything else, and you can 'build' a mini for cheaper?
Yep you are officially not the target audeince.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Did you check the jumpers? Good luck while playing with them.
If you can build a machine on practically a single PCB, that small, with DVD-reading and CD-RW capabilities, and sell it for under $500...
If you want the same specs as a Mac mini for less, go look on eBay or a second-hand reseller (try 2ndchancepc.co.uk). The point of the Mac mini isn't to have top-of-the-line components - it's to be a usable, cheap box for your Mum or Dad to just pick up and plug in.
And tomorrow the stock exchange will be the human race
Good point.
I bought a 512 MB 1.25 GHz Mac Mini last week. It's been a pretty sweet little machine. iMovie works great with MiniDV video, I don't have a HDV camcorder to try HD though.
Garage Band ROCKS! 18 tracks of audio of different formats and it keeps on trucking!
I haven't tried anything harder than Warcraft 3 or Sim City 4 on it yet though.
digitalgimpus: Do you regret asking that question ?
Who are the morons that modded this "interesting". Customers really want and need a computer that works, is stable, and provides the end users the functionality they need to either do what they want to do, or need to do. Bumping your cpu speed by 5% don't do squat for what a customer REALLY wants. Hell, I have a 20 yo computer in my garage that I can tweak the microcode for it's processor on, I got you way beat. Is that what users REALLY want, uh, NOT. You have it totally backwards my friend. Apple, on the other hand, absolutely "gets it".
I want one. badly. But the Mac mini is a perfect example.. I can't justify paying 500 dollars just for an operating system.
Actually, it's not just an OS. There's word processing, presentation, photo, video editing, and music creation applications provided as well. And I hear that they even throw in a cute little computer as a bonus.
That's what YOU Geeks want, not ordinary computer users. All they want is everything to WORK. Period. You think someone thats just getting into the computing world will want to overclock their processor? If every single computer user was a geek then you'd have a valid point, but you fail to realize 0% of the worlds computing population care about that stuff.
Why would they chose any other colour? Why green? Why not pink with yellow polka-dots?
This is for the electrical engineers:
Why is the MoBo blue? Is there a signifigance to the color of the board? Or did Apple just pick it because on the order sheet it was "aqua"?
Because Red mobos run the fastest, and Apple didn't want to make the Mac Mini too fast otherwise it would have killed G5 sales.
Heck, I used to do firewire/DV editing on an old 550MHz PIII with a half gig of ram. It did have a RAID-0 drive, but I doubt if that helped that much.
The only problem I see with using the Mini for video editing are the small hard drives. External Firewire drives are still pretty slow.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
The school district that I work for has been looking for a sub $500 video editing and DVD playback solution (budgets are REALLY tight these days). How does the Mac Mini stack up (with and without overclocking it)?
You can't get one for less than $480, and that's for the 256 MB combodrive version.
I bought a 512 MB superdrive Mac Mini last week. It works great for video editing, it's actually a pretty fast little machine.
BUT... transcoding from DV to MPEG2 takes awhile. Editing and even designing the buttons and menus for the DVD image is fast as can be, but be prepared to wait *at least* an hour before the finished DVD pops out after you click the burn button.
So let me get this straight...
Frequency doesn't matter when comparing processor performance because PPC chips do more per cycle _but_ frequency is important when comparing FSB's because doing more per per cycle is some how irrelevant?!
Yeah, but you still have to reboot the machine everytime you install a piece of software. ;)
That was the same issue in the cube. But as long as the cooling needs aren't too different from the higher cpu speed, there shouldn't be an issue.
:)
"shouldn't"
Pretty Pictures!
I find it a bit scarry that you can change these things from within windows rather than the BIOS. This seems like its more likely that an average user would modify the values and cause problems. Nothing like low core voltage or high FSB to give a nice stable system! Computer too loud? I'll just turn off the fan - much better.
Geez what's with all those advertisement here. Read up on pyramid schemes and don't post your spam here. Thanks
Why the hell not? Some engineers like to take a little pride in their work and make things look neat - have you never seen the inside of a PowerMac G5?
No wires.
Not one.
That was classic intercourse!
This is for the electrical engineers:
Why is the MoBo blue? Is there a signifigance to the color of the board? Or did Apple just pick it because on the order sheet it was "aqua"?
That is not a question for electrical engineers. It's more of a question for marketers or fashion designers. You can make the board any color you want. There are red boards, green boards, yellow boards, black boards, blue boards, etc. It's to look nice.
You're able to set those variables because your motherboard manufacturer added features to differentiate themselves from the other motherboard manufacturers. It's still what the company is willing to provide. If overclocking negatively affected motherboard makers, you can be sure that they wouldn't provide these features. Just look at AMD and Intel's practice of locking bus multipliers for proof.
i got excited for a second, then i took a look at these. http://www.lbodnar.dsl.pipex.com/macmini/macmini_r emoved_jumpers.jpg
my hands shake, frankly, this wont work for me. Gotta find someone to do it for me !
There Can Be Only One...
If you check your preferences you will notice that you can block stories from the homepage on various topics, including Apple stories. Any "hardcore computer nerd" worth his salt would have noticed this immediately.
Smeghead every day of the week.
I don't get the complaints about the news/market share ratio. The most interesting stuff is not what everyone's doing, but rather what's happening on the fringes. I mean, if that's the news you're looking for, try here.
That's not entirely true. I'm a Mac fan and I wouldn't mod you down for stating the obvious and I've seen more than one PC fan mod down a Mac zealot the exact same thing.
As I said I'm a Mac fan, bordering on being a zealot at times but I didn't much care about this one either. How could I? Macs can be overclocked. This is news? The Mac Mini can be overclocked. Again? What makes this news?
I agree with you about there being too many stories about trivial stuff that made the page simply because it was about an Apple product. Now if someone had pushed this thing up to 2.4Ghz with some freaky looking pipes full of liquid nitrogen hanging out the back of it through some rough cut holes in the case and it had steam coming out the sides while it ran that would have been interesting. "I overclocked my Mini" just doesn't cut it.
These days it seems to me like there are more Apple related stories on Slashdot than ever before but I'm enjoying them less. They just aren't anything special.
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
You can set your account to use filters so that Mac stories do not show up when you visit /.
That's what I did to try and weed out the leftist fascist political stuff here.
BC
The hard drive is only 4200RPM
While a faster hard drive will give you better scrubbing performance, you don't really *need* to have a fast drive for editing DV.
The DV codec that most of us use with our camcorders is DV25, which is 25 Mbits/sec = 3.125 MB/sec.
DV editing was fine on notebooks even 4 years ago on the original "toilet seat" iBook.
"...when you consider how small of a share of the market they have."
Yeah, same with all these Linux and Firefox stories!
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
they will always lack this aspect of providing what the customers REALLY want or need
Yes, but most customers don't really NEED those features. Just geeks. And the geeks who want to play with their hardware that way know they won't get that from Apple.
Basically what I'm saying is that, while it's true Apple doesn't let you play with FSB, voltage, etc, people don't buy Apple hardware to do that. And would they if Apple provided a means to make your system unstable in that way? Probably not.
I mean, the company motto is "It Just Works."
... I don't think it's a bad thing to overclock the 1,25 GHz. to 1,42 GHz., because the same case also holds the official 1,42 GHz. Technically speaking that is.
One big thing is that you are just throwing away your warranty, and I don't think that's worth the 170 MHz...
Then your iMac Mini will be about as valuable as a melted iMac Mini! This will give a whole new meaning to the Rip, Mix, Burn media campaign.
If every single computer user was a geek then you'd have a valid point, but you fail to realize 0% of the worlds computing population care about that stuff.
Surely geeks must make up some non-zero percentage of the computing population.
Well, they're RELATIVELY slow. DV only needs to use FW in 100 mode anyway, and it only uses around a third of THAT bandwidth running along at 1X. Modern external desktop FW drives give you pretty much continuous full FW 400 bandwidth, way more than enough for iMovie style usage.
That was classic intercourse!
Ten dollars to the company that makes the first tie-dye motherboard!
Mac Mini does come with some pretty nice software out of the box. To me this makes up the difference between the price of a Mini and the price of a low end PC ($300 Celeron/Semperon + Radeon 9200)
Mac OS X (Windows XP OEM costs at least $50)
iMovie - editing software, better than Avid FreeDV or Microsoft Movie Maker 2.0
iDVD - DVD mastering software for making menus, etc, and burning to DVD
Garage Band - compose, edit, and mix music
Also included, but not too useful for schools:
iPhoto - sort, edit, and print digital photos
iTunes
Xcode - software development suite for C/C++/Java
Quicken 2005
Nanosaur 2
Okay, I'll feed the troll...
Darwin on an Athlon 64..... sooooo sexy.
I've got good news. It's already happened/happening.
From the Darwin FAQ:
Q. What is Darwin?
A. Darwin is a version of the BSD UNIX operating system that offers advanced networking, services such as the Apache web server, and support for both Macintosh and UNIX file systems. It was originally released in March 1999. Darwin currently runs on PowerPC-based Macintosh computers, and is being ported to Intel processor-based computers and compatible systems by the Darwin community.
I see a bunch of posts discussing the fact that the mini will have problems cooling the overclocked CPU.
/. can answer anyways.
Too lazy/busy to do some real research here, I know that someone here on
The same case is used for the faster processor. How different are the processors themselves? ie, The mini has already been designed to handle the heat output of the 1.45GHz, so how much more heat (if any) would an overclocked lesser cpu generate?
Is cooling the overclocked chip even a concern?
Why is the MoBo blue?
They come in all colors depending on the shop that makes them.
If you would like, you can call this Steve's "blue period."
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
Or a rockhammer to the Pieta is what this sounds like.
People complaining that the hack is really not worth voiding the warranty are missing the whole point. It is just the coolness factor out here. Somebody, somewhere figured out that by setting those specific tiny little jumpers (I still can't believe how tiny they are), the Mac Mini could be overclocked and shared this info with the whole wide world. Appreciate that and just think about what *you* have figured out lately. Losers.
mirror here
I didn't mean to imply that external firewire hard drives wouldn't work. You're right, they'd certainly work. I would just find it annoying. I'm of the opinion that faster is always better. Uncompressed DV files are huge. I get about 12 gigs for one one-hour tape.
I think the Mini would be great for students to learn video editing.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
6% increase in the CPU speed merits voiding the warranty? (and this *will* void the warranty - good luck trying to explain any heat damages when the apple S/N says what was purchased was a 1.25 GHz, but the machine profile says 1.42 GHz.)
Funnily enough, the BMW Mini One can be 'overclocked' too. Like the CPU in the two Mac Mini models, both the One and the Cooper have the same 1.6 litre engine, the only difference being the engine management software. Must be something in the name 'Mini'...
You must think in Russian.
That's great assuming you have a need for any of those extra things.
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
Um, not really. If you hook up two drives to the same Firewire port and try to copy between them, then it will indeed be slower. But 400 mbits/sec is still faster than the sustained data rate of a single 7200rpm drive. Just because ATA-100 goes to 100 mbytes/sec doesn't mean your drive will go that fast. In fact, ATA-100 is that fast so you can hook up two drives.
All you lose is the burst speed of the drive cache, which doesn't help much if the OS is caching the data itself anyhow.
--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
I think this is a result of the open competition between manufacturers, and as longa s Mac's are the toy of a single company, they will always lack this aspect of providing what the customers REALLY want or need, but only what the company is willing to provide.
Actually, I think this is the result of Windows users who are emotionally insecure, and willing to clutch at any straws they can to reassure themselves their rig is "better" than a Mac.
--R.J.
Electric-Escape.net
Really the WHOLE point of having a real OS is that the interactive stuff is interactive and the batch stuff happens when you're not lookin'...
The MacMini will NOT make a good Doom3 machine. For interactive stuff (even, gasp, light video editing!) it's fine the way it is. For long term stuff (DVD encoding), background the app and do something else (even at the same time!) Who cares if it takes 25 minutes instead of 20 minutes?
Generally, 'make DVD' is the last thing I do befor e I go to bed...it's always done by morning.
If you wanted the last oomph of power, you shouldn't have bought apple's cheapest box!
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
Actually, this might be interesting to use for underclocking. Take your Mac Mini 1.42, underclock it a bit to 1.25, and it's even less likely that the included fan will turn on. Makes it all the more of a silent computing solution.
They do this type of thing all the time at silentpcreview, although they gain a bit more (by way of silence) because they can also adjust the CPU voltage down once the clockspeed is reduced. Just a thought. -- Paul
OpenSource.MathCancer.org: open source comp bio
Wow, discounts sure are backwards on the mini. I just checked, and the K-12 discount price on the base mini is indeed $480. The developer discount price is $475, and I am aware of a corporate discount price at $470. I know margins are slim on the mini, but this is completely backwards from their discounts on higher priced stuff.
--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
'I mean, the company motto is "It Just Works."'
To which Microsoft appended: "but only just".
Mmm... maybe my external firewire drive is set up improperly. Copying from one internal drive to another is faster than copying to or from my external.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
All this talk about saving money by overclocking it is goofy (not so goofy if you are just a nerd looking to play with it)
I find it interesting that all the comparisons I've read primarily compare the hardware of the mac mini to the hardware at a comparibly priced Pee Cee system.
The fact that one system runs OS X and the other runs Windoze always seems to be a secondary consideration when looking at the price tag and comparing it to a Dell/clone/ect...
The fact that you can buy an OS X system that "feels" just as fast or faster than a comparible Pee Cee system AND has all the advantages of OS X over Windoze (security, ease of use, ect..) is something you should factor in when evaluating the price. How much is it worth to you in $$$? Is saving $200 bucks on a Dell worth the heartache that living in the windoze world entails?
$199 gets you a PC, with everything you need except a keyboard, mouse, and monitor. It even has a decent speed processor (granted it is only a Semperon)
And before you ask -- yes, these sorts of deals are commonplace. PC hardware is damned cheap, Mac hardware is so much more it is really hard to compare it.
It's just you
Does anyone know if you can overclock a PowerBook? I know that overclocking notebooks is generally considered a bad idea (heat dissipation), but if you can overclock a mini, why not? I've got a much used and abused 12" 867 AlBook that I would love to get up to 1 Ghz.
That's due to a bug in Firefox. Bugzilla will tell you. Fixed in the trunk IIRC, but not in the Aviary branch that FF1.0's based on. FF1.1 will be fine.
/. or pay for subscription.
Of course, Slashdot's HTML does suck, but that particular problem isn't related.
The dupes and the editing? No-one's got a gun to their head forcing you to read
What's the frequency, Kenneth?
The $470 price is probably for volume purchases, and Apple does have some really nice setups for volume purchases for education institutions (remember the Apple Store for Eduction is for individual purchase, not institution buys). I would imaging that the 5 pack (or whatever Apple is doing these days) is a better price to educational institutions.
As an aside, back in the "gumdrop" iMac days the education channel was annoyed that the 5pack of iMacs had to be purchased with all 5 colors. I was working for a school that had red as our color, and we really wanted 5 packs of red iMacs, and we eve discussed opening them up to put school decals on the inside of the translucent case.
The mini really should be fast enough for most things. I have 1 ghz g4 tower. I do video editing/photoshop and dvd creation on it. The speed of that machine is good and the bus is about the same as the mini. I have 1.2 gigs of ram though.
DVD mastering and my degraining phtotoshop filter are the only things that make me wish a faster processor. I'm patient with the photoshop filter which can take 20 seconds or so, because my images are large (70 meg per file) (The DVD stuff which can take hours.)
Let's see. Low end Dells and Mac Minis are both sold as high-performance computing devices, there is that. Also, ":)" at the end of the message means the author is flamin' serious. Nope! Still something missing! If your head just didn't hurt so much when you were trying to think...
To find out, get an $725 Dell, download a 2 hour movie from your digital camcoder, add some music, watermark captions and video transitions and burn it to DVD. Report your experience here.
Solder mask is basically a paint that isolates the various 'pads', or landing areas for component pins, physically in space, so that the solder has much less tendency to bridge gaps and cause shorts. Usually, it is green, but it can be made in any color. Myself, I've made boards with black, red or transparent solder mask. Green is the traditional color, and afaik, there is no performance difference electrically or physically between the colors.
Just for completeness' sake, the lettering you sometimes see on a PCB is called silkscreen, and is usually white, but again can come in a variety of colors like yellow or black. Again, tradition says it should be white.
PS: I'm not an electrical engineer, and I never will be.
Mostly random stuff.
Apples aren't the cheapest machines. You can always get a slighty higher spec machine for less $ in the PC realm.
But the 199$ pc you point to has some real difference to the mini. I think they have significant differences in there target markets.
The PC--
No Dvd player.
No CD burner.
only 128 megs of ram (what century is this?)
Linshpere which is fine, but if you wanted windows add $$ (I think about 200$ if bought retail).
With mac your also paying for the applications they through in and OS X os and support.
Sorry, but if someone is going to tell me how to open my brand new computer and mess around with its internal workings, I don't want to read things like this:
Here is the bottom of the board. Or whatever you call it.
The next comment I write will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
with everything you need
Assuming you can live with integrated video, no DVD, 128M RAM, Lindows OS, no FireWire, no DVI, no iLife, ugly box, etc.
Come on, you're not really suggesting that that computer would be a good purchase are you?
So, unless you count TextEdit (yeah, I know some people do), there is no word processing included - and certainly no presentation programm.
Untrue.
The Mini comes with Appleworks 6, which has WP, Spreadsheet, Database and presentation (plus drawing and painting which I guess aren't too useful).
The color is not a characteristic of the board. All boards are a sort of yellow-tan in color (well, there are some materials that are closer to dark brown). The color that you see comes from the soldermask that is applied to the top and bottom of the board. So, the color of the soldermask is usually green, but it could be any color the manufacturer wants if they want to pay for it. So, it is simply a fashion statement, and there is no technical reason to choose one color over the other.
"-1 Troll" is the apparently the same as "-1 I disagree with you."
It certainly *IS* possible to get a decent PC for substantially less than a Mini. I just bought a Dell Dimension 3000 with a 2.4GHz Celly, 512MB RAM, 40GB hard drive, CDRW, and 17" LCD for $398 (after rebate). This was new, direct from Dell Small Business with no coupons or anything.
Still, I applaud Mac for entering the budget computer market. In fact I've got a Mac Mini on order, which I will use with a KVM along side my current PC rig. It will be my first Mac and I'm pretty excited about it. The Mini is far from cheapest, but it's still cheap enough for me.
iddqd
Thank you.
That was the answer I was looking for.
And thanks to the other goons who couldn't answer the question, so they decided it was invalid.
value of the software included with the Mini.
There are better hardware deals for sure. (I may actually pick one of these up for Linux actually.) However, the OS and nicely packaged and useable tools make up for a lot where the overall value proposition is concerned.
Blogging because I can...
Anandtech reported that some models came out with 5400 drives.
Raw DV isn't compressed. 12-13G/hour is about right as DV is 3.6Mb/sec.
To this and the other reply: Add $60 for a DVD+/-RW/CDR burner, $60 for 512MB RAM. $319 (without tax). The bundled applications can be an issue (but I thought the slashdot consensus was that bundling is bad, so I dunno).
Apple computers may be nice but I'll probably never know for sure. I'd have to repurchase my games (I really don't want to have two computers if I can avoid it) to play most of them -- the Mac would have to come down in price about 33% to get me in the door. Just my frank opinion.
Well first start with the CPU the G4 can crunch about 150% more than a x86 (it varies)
Price watch
tower 2 ghz on board network and video and windows $250
Video card (because a shared memory isn't equal to a nvidia$50
Upgrade the memory to 512mb ~$50(depends on type)
Total $350 Plus say an hour to assemble at $40/bucks an hour employee rate.
$390 and you have a comparable performace. Of course your still using a butt ugly case that is noisey, takes up 10 time the physical space.
Quality does matter, Apple isn't perfect, but I do prefer it over my dell everyday.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
If I ever get a car as a toy, I want *less* than that.
My old Superbeetle supposedly had 48. It was perfect to be just plain fun at reasonable speeds on windy mountain roads. It had the power to go up at a reasonable (though not blazing) speed, but not so much that it didn't take any effor, or that you could ignore the gear-flipping.
I say "supposedly" because it was notably quicker than my brother's regular bug of the same year, which supposedly had the same engine & transmission (but significantly different, less fun, suspension--I got a real surprise driving it one day around what was a routine turn in mine). Not just that, but because it died an unexplained heat death--that lead the dealer to accuse me of running it without a fanbelt.
hawk
I'm happy to see Slashdot posting more front page Apple stories. I guess the release of the Mac mini has intrigued the geek masses. For the most part, Apple really is a good company and the biggest competitor to Microsoft right now.
So why oh why does apple sell a 500 dollars computer with 2 year old components.
To meet a price point, while retaining the build quality they want.
It has occurred to me that making it so tiny DOES make it desirable, but it must push the price up. Would I be as tempted by a $400 Mac which is slightly larger than the Mini, about as powerful, with a cheaper full-size HDD?
My head says yes: all I want is a cheap way to try out Mac OS (because although I don't expect to like it, I'd like to have an informed opinion).
My heart says no: it's appealing because it's so small.
How would they know you overclocked it?
If the CPU fails, you just put the jumper back, remove the CPU fan, sitck some dust bunny in it big enough to clog it, and put it back.
The Mac Mini is very sensitive to airflow because it is so small. The fan not working for even a shirt period of time could be reason enough for the CPU to overheat and fail.
Dumb question.
Why don't you want to own two computers? I have for years, mainly windows or linux machines(I just bought my first Mac).
The number one reason why I like two computers, is when one fails, I have a way to get online to lookup information. I guess I have just had Windows destroy to many network drivers on me.
They don't run all the time, and Yes I still do run Windows. I just got tired of fixing it every week.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
On my computer, I can controll voltage, FSB, multiplier, fan speed, and so on from Windows, and don't even have to reboot to change those settings. I think this is a result of the open competition between manufacturers, and as longa s Mac's are the toy of a single company, they will always lack this aspect of providing what the customers REALLY want or need, but only what the company is willing to provide.
No, thats because you can buy a variety of different processors to put in that motherboard, so you need to be able to adjust these settings. The MacMini ships as a while unit so these settings aren't needed.
Why?
Apple colours its boards based on their classification.
Red boards are pre-production and prototype boards, blue ones are "customer ready" boards that will be shipped as the final product.
I think they use orange as well - the logic board in my iBook was orange.
I used to have 4 computers running 24x7. It was an obsession to have more and more. One day I recognized it and shut off all but 1, and I didn't miss the other three. My one computer runs Windows XP and I've only ever had problems with a particular piece of hardware (el-cheapo wireless card), so far.
My home is quieter now, I use less electricity, and I think I actually spend less on hardware since I'm only upgrading one box.
For backup Internet access, I have a Treo smartphone. It lets me get in to work, which is pretty much the only "emergency" situation I could have with regards to Internet access. I could even download small drivers to it (SD card), but I haven't had to do that yet.
But mauve has the most RAM!
Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known. -- Carl Sagan
Yeah, but we drop out through rounding errors.
I can understand most of that. when I bought my powerbook I took my second computer which and a bad motherboard, and about 4 video cards, three network cards, 2 sound cards,a monitor, etc to a computer shop who I traded all the good parts for a discount on an Apple USB keyboard, and the recycling fees for the bad hardware.
I gave out all my extra hardware, keeping only an 80gb drive, which went into an external firewire enclosure. Now my Dell tower only gets booted once every couple of days for games. Half the time the monitor for the dell is plugged into the Powerbook.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
While I have to use windows at work, since the original iMac came out I've used Macs at home exclusively. Now you notice, this was pre-OSX. Yes, MacOS 9x sucked, but I endured it out of principle (not that anyone does that for any modern x86 OS, right?). What I didn't do was complain that there were no Mac stories on slashdot. Why? Because the OS was deemed unfeasible for the sufficiently technically inclined (you, I'm guessing). Fast forward six years, and not only does Apple ship arguably the nicest 'nix out there, but they've also done some amazing things with their hardware from both an engineering and design standpoint. I'm sorry, but Apple is quite relevant to the
This assuming you are looking for an alternative to setting your prefs to block apple stories.
"You know why you do not see me styling wit my homies? Because I have no homies!!" -Mojo Jojo
I wonder if the pencil trick that was so successful on old Athlons (and on my Radeon 9500np) would work in place of soldering the little jumpers...
What monitor and keyboard are you guys using? Ones you have hanging around, or are you purchasing one with the mini? If you are going with the Apple displays, would you recommend 20" or 23" one? Just curious, I'm leaning towards a PB 15".
I'd like to know how high you can clock one of the 1.4Ghz models, though I doubt I'd do it myself if I had a Mini; those jumpers are tiny, and it's not like you can put a big ol' HSF on the CPU to compensate for the heat, at least not without ruining the Mini's appeal.
We apologize for the inconvenience.
Check out this hilarious Mac mini "review". It's tongue and cheek, written from the prospective of an MCSE. I couldn't stop laughing.
DV certainly IS compressed. Uncompressed it would be 270mbits/sec rather than the 25mbits/sec that it actually runs at.
That was classic intercourse!
Nope. Geeks do it for spite. Geek apathy is at an all time high.
So again... 0% of the worlds computing population care about that stuff.
The overclocked iMac
--
"I have also mastered pomposity, even if I do say so myself." -Kryten
I figure some Mac enthusiasts might respond.
I am considering getting a Mini Mac. I want to know how well a Mac works and plays with Windows computers on the network. Most important to me is the ability to move files among the various machines.
Proverbs 21:19
I'm a hardcore computer nerd, but this Apple news isn't the slightest bit interesting to me.
Let's see: the resurrection of NeXTSTEP, the blissful marriage of open source with corporate proprietary technology, a rallying point against the Microsoft hedgonomy, a desktop UNIX that your grandmother can use, a box with a groundbreaking price-point and footprint, and definite proof that geeks can have style, and you have zero interest whatsoever?
The definition of "hardcore computer nerd" must be very lax in your neck of the woods.
--R.J.
Electric-Escape.net
Well if you read freescale's product pages you'd see that they have a 'G4' series CPU that has a totally revamped front-side. I expect that this is what you'll see _instead_ of a PPC970-based PowerBook, you'll have a G4 with onboard memory controller (think Athlon FX). Check out this page:
e w. jsp?nodeId=018rH3bTdG7249
http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/site/overvi
for details. Basically, they have a pin-compatible PowerPC 7448, which is a drop-in replacement to the current 74xx line, and a much-awaited 8641 and 8641D, which are not pin-compatible, but fully instruction compatible, have 667MHz FSBs, and a dual-core model.
There's really almost no reason to have a PPC970 running on a laptop today, I don't think anyone can fit over 2GB of RAM into a portable anyway. Honestly, I'd RATHER have a 8641-based PowerBook than a 970-based one, the 8641 comes from a long line of portable-oriented CPUs, whereas the 970 will need massive cooling in a most un-Apple fashion.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
Yeah, I've already admitted I'm wrong on this point. When I get home I'm going to have to look into why my firewire drive is slow. It's not REAL slow. But it's noticeably slower than either a SATA or IDE connection.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
I'll quote the AC to get him more visible:
That metric is completely useless. The IPC for each processor must be considered separately, and each chipset and memory configuration used with the processor must also be taken into account. You also have to consider integer, fpu, and simd performance separately. A G4 application that makes use of AltiVec, will do considerably better than a comparably clocked AthlonXP or P4, but in other areas the performance characteristics will be much different.
Secondly, the Mini does not come with an nVidia GPU, it comes with an ATi Radeon 9200 which is basically slower than a GeForce 2 MX. Its integrated video is practically worthless, so throw in a $35 budget card.
This was gonna be my point. The processor/video is , I think, comparable, with an XP + and and GeForce 2 MX. I've USED a powerbook that has a faster G4 and it "feels" for the ordinary, everyday task about the same as my machine at home (which is an athlon XP 2100 + like above) and a Geforec2 MX. Maybe all of OSX's eye candy sucks up that much stuff.
DO NOT DISTURB THE SE
Maybe somebody there used to work for these guys.
What?
A laptop. It will be similarly unupgradeable, and even smaller, after you include the keyboard and mouse you'd need with the mini.
He said regular broadcast TV, which is analog and does require a fast hard drive. As to why someone would use a mac mini for this (not the least of which is that you would need to buy a USB analog capture device which all suck), is beyond me however.
A 4200 RPM hard drive is too slow to capture analog without dropping frames all over the place. Way too slow.
Someone should tell intel that 133*4=532. Looks like they still haven't fixed that multiplication bug from the original pentium...
The author of this post asserts his moral rights.
Isn't it
One of the first things you learn in microprocessor design is how to efficiently balance machine instructions vs. clock cycles to set your clock speed. To determine maximum clock speed you evaluate the longest path and highest possible propagation for an instruction based on what logical gates, adders, etc. the processor could use in an instruction. The designers make sure the processor can not physically end a clock cycle before the logic has been propagated. The more you overclock a processor the more you run the risk of getting bad data or in the case where error checking is in place the instruction will continue to process until it get the correct value drastically multiplying the number of clock cycles it should take to execute. Overclocking a white box AMD/Intel running XP/*nix might get you a few more fps encoding Xvids but for anything of a critical nature overclocking is technically a very bad idea. Why would you take an environment like Sun/Sparc or Apple/OSX where hardware and software are matched for stability and purposely give it a reason to fail?
P.S. You can cook you proc to!
Codeman
projects @ http://spectechnologies.net
Don't think extra 200 MHz are worth breaking your mac. As well as any other overclocking of any other computer.
BTW, has anyone tried things like LAPACK or LINPACK (or other numerical benchmarks) on mac mini?
Usually when you switch architectures, you have to re-purchase software for that architecture...if you don't own a Mac, how the hell are you going to get Office for Windows to run on it? I'm pretty sure you don't have Mac stuff sitting around, except for the dual cd games.
erm
Have a look at http://download.openoffice.org/1.1.4/index.html
(oh that article about the disadvantage of OSs you find here
"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they attack you, then you win." -- Mahatma Gandhi
You are right, woops. It never occurred to me that a hobbyist would edit on a different machine than they capture on, but I now see where you are coming from. I've done video editing, but quite a number of years ago before mythtv and the like. I have a friend who edits DV on a laptop with 4200RPM drive, and he doesn't complain, so I guess it's doable.
Nope, no apology needed. It appears I screwed up and I just wanted that clear.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
You can't just 'move the jumper back', because you have to solder it back. No way you can solder it back with so much precision that it can't be seen...
Mine melted into the face of a woman. I was about to toss it. But as I grabbed it by its side, there it was, the face of a woman staring at me. I've saved it by my bedside encased in cotton and plastic. It's never grown any mold and I've won thousands of dollars at casinos because the woman told me to do it (I have the receipts to prove it). Some may say a melted mac mini is worthless, but I've proven it otherwise.
Linux at home
As an MCSE (I know I know...) and an Apple Certified Technical Coordinator, it's my job to know how to answer this.
:D
Quite frankly, it's never been easier. When you want to connect to a windows server, in the URI field just type in smb:///
Your Mac will also have Samba running after checking one box in the system preferences. At that point, your windows boxes can either connect to home folder public / private folders, or with the admin password you'll get the whole hard disk.
Also, Mac OS X 10.3 will authenticate against Active Directory, and enable Single Sign-On through the use of AD's Kerberos keys. Setting that up is easy.
Setting up networked home folders using the AD auth is *not* easy, especially when moving from a NetInfo environment that has been operational for the last three years. That, however, is my issue to solve, and not yours.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Is your external possibly a 5400 RPM drive? A laptop drive in an external case is likely to be a 4500 or 5400 RPM drive. And a regular 3 1/2" drive will be either 5400 or 7200 RPM.
--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
As others have pointed out, basically it's no problem. A few weeks ago a PC laptop using friend visited and we needed to swap some files to my iBook. We both had wireless cards, but his was "broken", and hadn't worked for some time according to him. Luckily my wife knows Windows (I don't) and had it fixed in short order. Getting an ad-hoc wireless connection between the machines was then the work of about 2 minutes, mainly spent grappling with the arcane network settings on the XP machine, which turned out to be configured oddly - In the end it was much easier to simply change the Mac's settings to go with the PC's existing setup. From then on it was child's play to drag and drop files between the machines. My friend was impressed that it seemed so easy as he normally struggles with connecting his laptop anywhere (given its settings, probably no surprise), though to be fair he was an ex-Mac user forced to switch to a PC by his employer.
I'm a hardcore computer nerd, but this Apple news isn't the slightest bit interesting to me.
So, you saw the story on the front page, and thought "Oh, that's not the SLIGHTEST bit interesting to me. I think I'll open it." Or perhaps you suffer from an obsessive-compulsive disorder that forces you to read every single article on Slashdot regardless. Sorry to hear that mate, it must be torture.
Thats not Aqua. Thats a library that lets you compile programs using Apple's interface library for running under XFree86. It's not at all Apple's window manager. It's more comparable to WineLib.
Microsoft hedgonomy
The word you were looking for is 'hegemony' - but I really like hedgonomy! The science of bushes!
And hey, we can call the current U.S. administration a hedgocracy!
Free yourself. Everything else will follow.
I think there really is a HUGE difference in the "warranty experience" that isn't being taken into account when you compare a Dell or HP warranty to an Apple one.
... but the experience was much more pleasant, IMHO.
Call Dell, Compaq/HP or Gateway under their standard warranty and see what happens. I'm willing to bet it goes something like this: Wait on hold for 45 minutes or so, only to talk with a foreigner speaking poor English (Pakistani or Indian, most often) who basically reads off a card to "troubleshoot" your problem. If you successfully endure this whole procedure, you MAY be lucky enough to get the rep. to order a replacement part shipped out to you. (To their credit, they're typically very good nowdays about getting these replacement parts to your door quickly, once ordered.) But a good percentage of the time, a mistake is made (again, maybe due to the language barriers in many cases?), and either the wrong part is shipped or your issue isn't resolved properly at all by the rep. you spoke with. Then, you're on to hours more of frustration, trying to escalate the call. Fun, fun....
Apple, by contrast, has always answered their phones with a live human within no more than about 5-6 minutes when I called in, and it was a true English speaking citizen each time too. Yeah - they ask some of the "dummy questions" that the competition asks, and not everybody gets satisfaction
I realize that this type of setup is going to be more costly than outsourcing the whole thing - so I can understand the reason you have to pay extra for the Applecare 3-year warranty.
"$199 gets you a PC, with everything you need except a keyboard, mouse, and monitor."
Ultra-cheap PC's can be really, really crappy BTW, especially when you look at the PSU (and case). I don't have Mac's and have built many many PC's over the last twenty years and I can assure you I would never contemplate purchasing a super-cheap PC, so it is a bit unfair to compare the price of a PC based piece of crap to a Mac based PC which is probably built to a much higher quality standard.
It's like claiming a Trabant is a better option for car buyers than say a Toyota Corolla because they both have 4 wheels, four seats and a 1.6 litre engine.
"You can't fight in here, this is the war room!"
" DV certainly IS compressed."
This is correct
"You can't fight in here, this is the war room!"
" The solder was on the opposite side of the board. Its teeny tiny jumper. Read closer."
They are "zero ohm resistors", NOT fucking jumpers.
You need to "read closer" yourself.
"You can't fight in here, this is the war room!"
"YOU MOVE IT BACK BEFORE YOU TAKE IT TO THE SHOP!"
You can't move the "jumpers" back BECAUSE THEY ARE SOLDERED ON TO THE MOTHERBOARD!
"You can't fight in here, this is the war room!"
...does it run World of Warcraft at acceptable speeds?
Apple release new version of toilet paper
Posted by CowboyNeal on Friday February 04, @05:17PM
The first comments to be moderated to +5 insightful would be:
It just feels right.
It just works.
It comes off the roll with style, very pleasing.
Maybe this will get people to finally switch
I know it is more expensive and comes with less sheets per roll then the Dell brand toilet paper but IMHO, the lower sheet frequency is not a direct measure of wiping power.
I love the way it feels and it really makes the bathroom look so much nicer
The first troll post:
Steve Jobs, the king of ass wipes.
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
Built this for 500:
AMD 2800 xp
1 gig of pc2700 ram
60 gig harddrive
nvidia 5200
new case
new MB with integrated audio (5 channel) and lan
DVD+-RW
No monitor, keyboard or mouse. Machine runs pretty sweet... only issue is heat/noise and its not as sexy as the mini.
can't sleep slashdot will eat me
Actually, the first time I called in, it was to straighten out an Applecare issue with a Powerbook. I bought a new 15" at a local CompUSA and purchased Applecare on it at the same time. After I took it home, I discovered the latch didn't close properly on it. Since I just got it, CompUSA was willing to exchange it immediately for another unit - rather than making me send it back to Apple for service.
... and CompUSA couldn't change that themselves.
That was great, but I was stuck owning a laptop with a different serial # than the one I had the extended warranty on
3. There's no step 3. There's no step 3!!!
2.4 ghz... yum....
Where is my soldering Iron and my dry ice!
Personally I didn't see the "flame" in that post at all, but yours got modded that way. And, looking back, I'm trying to figure out what was "snooty" about the response.
What he's saying is that Apple isn't targeting people who would otherwise be building their own machines for $150 using a set of old shoelaces to stitch the case together. And you're basically right; Apple doesn't see its profit coming from trying to compete with bare bones, build-it-at-home types whose satisfaction in patching Linux would outweigh any sense of satisfaction at the "it just works" thing. I mean no offense at all, I relate to those people -- but you don't sell a cheap minimalist system to them. Because they won't buy it.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
Try the Apple support forums for the Mini -- the users who post there tend to be pretty helpful. On top of that you may also find some answers at Mac OS X Hints -- even if they can't help with this particular issue, you're bound to find some good info on other things there.
I have never used osX, but I would think that the logon banner would be /etc/issue (it is on my linux box)
The [Mac mini] DVI out plugs right into most modern HD televisons and projectors without the need for an adapter.
In my experience, this is often not the case. Even though high end telivisions have DVI jacks on them, they are using the YUV colourspace and not the RGB used for computer displays. I was annoyed to find this out, to say the least. Jacks are the same, but no-go. So the best video output you can do with the Mac mini is using the S-video dongle, which is not bad.
Another thing worth mentioning is that OS X does not need any extra software for this video display, and includes native controls for antialiasing levels and overscan on the fly. Makes a big difference for text on a television screen.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
OK. More information. If you login to a shell, the login banner is /etc/motd. If you want to add some text to the GUI in Mac OS X created by Loginwindow.app, then you need to add a couple of keys to /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow.plist. Add, for example:
...and you'll have a little login banner right in the GUI.
LoginwindowText
Official Use Only
Shoot. Those XML tags got stripped by /.
0 921074429845
Here's a site that documents the addition of graphical logon banners to Mac OS X.
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=2002