Choose between 2 hobbled Minis. Which one??!

Macaholic · Mar 7th, 2009, 01:52 PM

Hi gang. I am really unsure of what to do with the following long story. I have two Mac Minis:

One is a 1.25GHzG4/1GB/80GB/SD. Will refer to as G4.

The other is a 1.66GHzCoreDuo/2GB/80GB/SD. Will refer as Intel.

The G4 is our living room web portal/iWork/media server hooked to our 32" TV. It is running Leopard and seems fine -- could be faster of course -- and does stutter on even 720 HD QT streams.

The Intel (running Tiger) was obtained for my wife through a trade over a year ago for my old Sawtooth Frankenmac (dual1.3GHzG4/2GB/320GB/SD/Radeon 9000 64MB). One day it just would not boot, getting stuck at the grey Apple logo. At that point, with the Mini out of warranty, happening to have some money at the time and anticipating more work for my wife that would benefit from portability anyway, we used this convenient excuse to buy her a MacBook and shelved the Intel Mini.

All this time that Mini has sat there on the shelf STARING at me while the G4 laboured on under the TV upstairs. A couple of weeks ago I finally pulled it off the shelf and tried an erase and install of Leopard. The Mini would not boot off the Leopard installer. Then I gave the Mini's restore disk a whirl. IT BOOTED! I did a full restore and it ran fine! Then, I did a full software update. It would NOT BOOT upon restart (this is STILL TIGER). I did an archive and install back using the restore disk then went with the combo updater for the NEXT Tiger patch (10.4.6-->10.4.7). It booted and ran fine. Then, I went to 10.4.8. It did NOT reboot. I suspected that there was some patch in the 10.4.8 kernel that the Intel did not like. Took it to a Genius and, upon unsuccessfully booting off the FW port, and finding that the FW port was not functioning, determined that the Intel needs a new logic board.

As the price of an Intel Mini logic board is a lot of dough and the Mini is not mission critical for me I have decided to leave it at 10.4.7. problem with 10.4.7 is that it is one Tiger sub-release shy of iLife 08 and iWork 09. Plus, it will probably not run Snow Leopard. It will always be stuck at Tiger 10.4.7.

OTOH, the G4 Mini is running Leopard which I much prefer over Tiger. As the G4 is used under the TV, I don't really need Time Machine for it, but networking is sooooo much easier on Leopard (including screen sharing which I use frequently). But the G4 is much slower than the Intel and will probably not be supported by Snow Leopard. Also, I have a USB-based 8092.11n adaptor on the G4 that needs manual connection to the network, whereas the Intel has Airport and is of course automatic.

So, the question is, what would you choose or do? G4/Leopard? Or Intel/Tiger? Both forever on their respective OSes (unless I luck out finding a cheap logic board for the Intel -- MacDoc said he couldn't help me). I have a brother who would appreciate either the G4/Leopard or the Intel/Tiger as a hand-me-down and I could swap the Minis on him at any time... but which one would you keep under the TV?

monokitty · Mar 7th, 2009, 02:03 PM

Keep the G4 under the TV unless you need to steam HD content through it which the PPC Mac mini cannot properly handle.

eMacMan · Mar 7th, 2009, 02:07 PM

The Intel is Core Duo. For about the same price as the logic board you can probably find a used or refurbished Core2Duo. So personally I recommend the recycle bin. If you must give it away make sure the victim fully understands the faulty logic board issue, as it may continue to deteriorate. Maybe have them sign a CYA release lest they end up losing data.

As to the G4 you can tell by my handle that I tend to keep using computers as long as they continue to function for whatever it is I happen to use them for.

fyrefly · Mar 7th, 2009, 04:52 PM

HAve you searched eBay for the logicboard? Not sure how cheap they are, but when I upgraded the processor on my mini - there were lots of places selling Mini parts....

Macaholic · Mar 7th, 2009, 06:02 PM

	Quote:			Originally Posted by fyrefly
	HAve you searched eBay for the logicboard? Not sure how cheap they are, but when I upgraded the processor on my mini - there were lots of places selling Mini parts....

Yeah but those have "Buy It Now" prices starting at CA$386:
New and used mini core duo logic board on eBay.ca

Apple refurb site has no Minis at this time

Nothing on Craigslist, locally, that is an option.

No I think I will take the prevailing advice and stick with the G4 for now and give my bro the Intel one. He'll still at least be able to do Word compatibility via Pages and there's iLife 06. He wanted to buy a crappy consumer keyboard and I steered him away from it hoping a G3 iMac hand-me-down I have could have handled Garageband v.1. But it could not so I've felt bad ever since. This way he can definitely start tinkling the ivories again.

HowEver · Mar 7th, 2009, 06:17 PM

	Quote:			Originally Posted by Macaholic
	Yeah but those have "Buy It Now" prices starting at CA$386: New and used mini core duo logic board on eBay.ca Apple refurb site has no Minis at this time Nothing on Craigslist, locally, that is an option. No I think I will take the prevailing advice and stick with the G4 for now and give my bro the Intel one. He'll still at least be able to do Word compatibility via Pages and there's iLife 06. He wanted to buy a crappy consumer keyboard and I steered him away from it hoping a G3 iMac hand-me-down I have could have handled Garageband v.1. But it could not so I've felt bad ever since. This way he can definitely start tinkling the ivories again.

Apple refurb Mac minis come and go, depends on time of day, how many are buying, etc. Still, as long as yours is working, seems good to keep using it.

btw I think it's "tickling the ivories." If he's "tinkling," things are going to get messy...

SINC · Mar 7th, 2009, 06:24 PM

As an aside, I have a friend who just upgraded to an iMac and has a G4 Mini for sale. I know nothing about it as far as specs go, but he did ask me what it is worth, but I could not tell him. It is the last of the G4s bought a while before the intel models came out. Anyone have a suggested price range in mind for one of those? (It's a baby as he hardly ever used it.)