# Please, help me to make my old Mac Mini useful



## paddy84 (Aug 22, 2012)

I have a first generation Mac Mini (PPC G4) in working order but with no work to do. I inherited it from my brother who passed away in January 2008 and even at that time I don't think it had seen any use for some years before because his work had supplied him with a windows laptop which was more up-to-date and capable.

It has OS X 10.3 Panther on it. It also dual boots with Debian for PPC, if I remember correctly, which was a short lived experiment I went through a couple of years ago just to see if I could. It hasn't been used since.

Being small, quiet and relatively low-power I had hoped I could persuade it to work as a HTPC. To be useful to me in this regard I wanted it to be able to access BBC iPlayer as well as stream SD movies from my server. OS X 10.3 won't run current builds of Firefox or Flash player making this a non-starter. Putting Debian Linux on it was an attempt to get around the whole "Apple and consequently everybody else won't support this any more" problem. Unfortunately although Flash for Linux exists and works, there's no build for PPC available and being closed source, there never will be.

I'd hate to have to consign a still functional and well-built small, quiet machine to land-fill so my question is:

Does anyone have any ideas for a way I could make this machine useful?


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## cl-scott (Jul 5, 2012)

It could probably make for a decent small server, but unfortunately not much else. You could connect a few external HDDs with copies of your DVD collection, or music collection, and then be able to stream those to other computers in your house or flat. Then you could just stuff it away somewhere out of sight and let it run for extended periods of time without having to mess with it.

Unfortunately you can't even use it as like an AppleTV type set top box, because there's no hardware based decoding of video formats, so you'd be limited to standard definition files. So, file server, or possibly like a guest terminal people could use to check email and do some basic web browsing if staying the night is about all I can come up with.


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## paddy84 (Aug 22, 2012)

Thanks for the suggestions. 

Unfortunately for the Mac Mini, the file and print server role is already filled by an old desktop machine which has much more physical space for disks. When that's not in use (most of the time) it's switched off to save power but I also have a router with OpenWRT on it and a USB disk plugged in to act as a basic NAS device which uses very little power and is left on all the time. 

The guest terminal idea is nice, but these days any guest that we have who'll want to use the internet is likely to have brought a smart-phone with them and will probably just join our local WiFi network and use that. 

We have an Asus O!Play media streamer and a Virgin-Media HD cable box to deliver content to the TV so even if I could get the Mac Mini working as a HTPC, it would be pretty well redundant.
This is all starting to look rather bleak for the old machine now, isn't it?

There is one last glimmer of hope for it, though. I keep an old HiFi in the shed so I can listen to music while I'm out there attempting to fix things and often breaking them in the process. If I get a proper power supply out there (not just an extension lead) I could also run a length of cat5/6 and set up the Mac Mini with a small screen to act as a media streamer so I can listen to my MP3 collection. That setup could also be good for outside parties.
We're hoping to move house quite soon so I think I'll put this on hold a while longer and see if it's practical to set up like that once we've moved.

In the meantime I'm still open to ideas if anyone has any others!


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## sinclair_tm (Mar 11, 2005)

Media streaming/basic HTPC gets my vote. If I can get my hands on an Intel based mini, that's what I'm going to do using Front Row on it.


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## Technoob164 (Jun 30, 2011)

Hello. Not a very useful way but, take it apart and scatter the parts in a picture frame and make it an art piece. Even though it may not be able to stream, you could use it as a CD/DVD player on a TV. The other thing you could do is sell it. It wouldn't be going to a landfill and many people are looking for a cheap Mac to use. I'm not sure of exact specs but, you could possibly get around $40 for it.


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## sinclair_tm (Mar 11, 2005)

You can still get a couple hundred for it on ebay. Macs key their value for a lot longer than other brands.


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## Technoob164 (Jun 30, 2011)

Macs do hold a longer value. Asking a few hundred is way too much. A brand new mini that is at least 8 times as fast is $600. I've sold many perfectly working iMac G4s for $50 each. I tried to sell at $70 each initially and I had no buyers after two weeks. $40 is about the max price you could receive from it.


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## paddy84 (Aug 22, 2012)

That's what I thought. The buyer would probably have to pay more for the postage than for the actual machine.


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## Technoob164 (Jun 30, 2011)

Do not mail it. Adds a shipping cost and likely to be damaged during shipment processes. Post it on Craigslist with images of it on and functioning. You should be able to find a buyer that can happily find a purpose for it.


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