Linux & Retro Gaming On a 15 Year Old Mac Mini 

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Always amazes me to think that this was, at one point, the cutting edge of technology… and now today it struggles to even decode RU-vid 😂 As always, great stuff dude!

The boot problems you had are likely because the original Mac Mini used EFI, not UEFI. After you upgrade it to a Core2 Duo CPU, you can update the firmware to UEFI 2.x with a program that dosdude1 created -- his channel also has a how-to video. The update will also let the system access more than 2GB RAM. Great shoutout to rEFInd. I've been using it (and its predecessor rEFIt) on multiple Macs with multi-boot setups for forever!

Hey bro nice vid and congrats on the sponsorship, although your "opinions" in the sponsor segment seems manufactured. These VPN scripts you guys get are pretty scummy imo. Anyways, no drama, great vid.

I got mine for $50 came with 8 gigs and 120 hard drive I was going upgrade the drive but it’s quick enough for now. Nice video

This just gave me the idea of trying to install a light weight linux distro on my wife's old 2011 MacBook Pro. She hardly uses it anymore and is no longer supported by Apple.

This is really freaking cool tbh, and congrats on the sponsorship

Nice video, i like to play around with old hardware also a lot. I feel this pc is so weak, that it should really end up with batocera or similar. Batocera is based on buildroot and should be most hardware effective. No idea how to get it work though. Did you try several images, e.g. there is an intel atom image also for low spec computers?!

Great video! I first got into computers through emulation, now I can’t go back!

Great video man!

512 gb of ram?!?!? Wow, must have been one heck of a downgrade if someone tinkered it down to a measly 2 gb

You’re smashing it brother. This is a great vid.

I don't know about this Mac mini, but my late 2009 iMac can boot to my USB thumb drive by holding ALT (or Option) when turning on my Mac... Also, did you tried any more lightweight distros like AntiX? Maybe it could work a little bit faster...

VPNs only encrypt data from the user to VPNs server. So after the VPN server man in the middle attacks are possible.

You do EXACTLY what I do. Get older computers and fix them up then ask "what can I use this for?" This content makes me think that I could film my tech escapades as well, maybe I'll start wnjoying content creation again because of it.

Thanks for the video. I have the same model Mac mini and plan to run emulators on it, but the good playability on this “old” Mac should be no surprise at all. I started using SNES emulators, which ran perfectly, on my 1ghz AMD Duron laptop with 128MB of RAM. That thing was already old and slow before this Mac mini was even released.

I have a 2009 version of one of these. Getting linux running is a pain. I had Mint running at some point with the nvidia drivers, but I swapped the old 60gb SSD for a better256GB SSD, but haven't been able to run Mint again. Right now it's running Windows 7 which is... Kinda cool, actually. using a classic OS just for classic games? Can't complain! Just needed to get a legacy nvidia driver and the bizarre Realtek drivers, then it's fully game.

Most Satisfying videos on the RU-vid universe if u r a hardware lover 👍

I don’t know how to get lakka running on this Mac mini, but I did get it working on the 1st gen Apple TV. I’d imagine they are very similar. I used a tool called ATV-USBcreator

Can you try some server stuff? Maybe using it as a simple pfsense box

I have been gaming on Linux Kubuntu (20.04 LTS) for a couple years now and it has been working great!

bro you make such cool videos you deserve more subs

did you try old versions of Batocera? V5.25 works on old netbooks and I'd think it would boot on this. And in case you missed it, there is a 32 bit cpu version in case you had used the 64

This has been helpful. Thanks for sharing.

Yaaaaay a new haven upload!

2:57 mb not gb lol

i just got 4 mac mini’s from 2014 for free. they were going to recycling. although newer, i had to connect to the correct usb to get batocera to work.

Fun perspective on using older Mac hardware. While I will out myself as an older Apple enthusiast, I freely admit there are many, many, many issues with Apple and their devices. That said, Linux/Retropie/Batocera are definitely the way to go for a more console-ish experience. If you’re willing to stay within the original OS, however, emulators contemporary to the device should run equally well. I have an old iBook (circa 2004, pre-Intel) running OS X 10.5 that uses a nifty little front end running a few different emus all the way up to N64 without issues (so basically a native OS X method for doing what Retropie/Batocera does automatgically). Pretty neat what even these older devices can do. If you want a lead on what the native software experience can do, let me know. I still have everything setup and happy to share notes.

2:59 love your videos but just wanted to say I think you meant 512 megabytes of memory. You accidentally said gigabytes.

amazing video 👍

Interesting and will test son 😊 What is the music ID @ 10:26 please ? Thanks 😊

Any chance you could make a copy of your hard drive available to download to help save a few steps? Thanks !

Not sure if this will help, but when I turn on my 2015 MacBook Pro while holding left alt, it goes into a menu where I can choose my boot drive. I have used Ubuntu and Batocera without issues.

Hi dude, Batocera should work flawlessly on that, you can have installed on your harddrive using different PC, and put back the harddrive in that Mac

ReFind boot loader, install this to os and then reset nv ram, restart and choose linux distro.

Linux, in my opinion, is something still a normal thing for this setup. For a normal expectation of mine, a 32 bit version of windows 10 to "bench" the graphics and power capability of this T2400 CPU, and a 64bit version later for the better Core 2 SKU you can find

nice video👍, can you make nas with this mac mini?

You should have repasted the gpu too mine was very dry

I have found that Sparky Linux gives a new lease of life to 32 bit computers.

hello haven i want to ask if you can do a nas on core-i5 3rd gen ang 4 gigs ddr3

Should i get one also for nitendo emulation?I can get one used 2009 model full with the box for 30bucks or 3500rsd.

Haven't you upgraded the CPU yet? I am waiting for the next video…

what other emulators did you try? and up to what generation does it handle ok? n64 and ps1? I wonder if steam OS would run on it. but I bet you could get some good in home streaming going with a client like Moonlight (if your gaming server uses nvidia) or steamlink

$15, not bad. They go for around $50 on ebay

zsnes is for running "snes" (super nintendo) games. Not "NES".

8:10 "Modern Web browser" Uses firefox version that's 25 versions out of date

Hey, I'm sure someone already told you this, but zsnes is actually a super nintendo emulator Great video anyway

Nice bro. I about to make a 150$ "gaming" pc.

2:56 512 gigabytes?

I use ventoy and installed mint, it works great but i want either batocera or lakka, and idea how to get those to install? Mine is a 2008 a1283 with 4g and 2.25ghz so it would be a great gaming console. Has anyone figured this out since the video? I have mint running in mine and it runs good but emulating is hard 2to configure

Why do you don't use that board with e350 apu for emulation it's perfect for that instead of that mac?

512 GB of DDR2? WoW 🙂

Hey hey hey sir I have 2 pc's laying around but I don't know what to do with them I can't make them home server bcoz they are less powerful and my router is not working from a decade 😂 any suggestions?

I think this video puts the MacMini in an unfair bad daylight. The G4 Mini's and the first gen Intels are solely for museum purposes, and absolutely STINK for anything else. If you get a 2009 2,26Ghz Core2Duo with 9400M, everything is different. It runs 10.14, snappy 1080p playback, 3-4 times the performance, silent, low energy use, better ports. And MacMini's DON'T have Apple Tax. A 2009 is like 25€. That is a crate of beers. Bag of hand roasted peanuts. That sort of money. Since Apple moved to ARM with the Mini's, the Intel ones have junk status, so go grab them!

Cooll

Interesting

What a weird druaga1 video

ZSNES is a SNES emulator lol

FIRSTTT

2:54 aw yup a core 2 duo machine usually comes with 512 GIGAbytes of ram

It was a bit surreal to hear how expensive you thought $15 was for a known-working MacMini with 2GB RAM and an AC adapter..... Should it have been $2.50 or something? =)

Hey, I've spent way too much time messing with those old 2006-2007 Mac! 1- As someone mentionned, the boot issue is probably due to the weird implementation of 32 bits EFI from Apple instead of UEFI or BIOS, Linux don't really know what to do wth that. I think Fedora is one of the few distribution that natively support that weird setup (mainly because early Windows tablets did the same thing) and Ubuntu / Debian can be patched, but yeah, replacing the Core Duo with a Core 2 Duo (I used a 7200 in my iMac 2006, it was stupidly cheap) helps a lot. 2- zSNES, as the name implies, is an SNES emulator, not NES. Higan is also mainly a SNES emulator, but it can run a few other systems, there's just no reason to do it because it's not particularly great for that. 3- RetroPie, Batocera, Lakka and all those distributions are simply frontend for RetroArch, which is available as a PPA on Debian, as a Flatpack and on Steam. The frontend is called Emulation Station and it hides a lot of the settings, but you can still see a few of them like emulators choice by using the Select button (by default) on the console of your choice, you can also make different configurations for each games. The emulators I usually recommand for low-end PCs are FCEUmm for NES, SNES9x for SNES, Gambatte for GB / GBC, gpsp for GBA, Genesis Plus GX for everything Sega and PCSX Reloaded for PS1. N64 is weird, the first I would try is ParaLLEl N64, but it has a lot of problems on some hardware, the GMA 950 probably won't work very well with it, so Mupen64Plus is probably the better choice. 4- That Mac should be able to run PS1 games with no problems, at least with PCSX in 1x resolution. N64 is probably gonna be a hit-and-miss, but that's the case with basically every machine, N64 emulation is just not very good.

You Said Half GB Or RAM Not 512GB!

Great SNES Emulation on that machine. I have one.

I make sweet MacMini & iMac BATOCERA Systems

running a similar CPU in my thinkpad! although it is a faster 64bit version, runs well with linux though!

Thanks for this. I had one of these, donated it, but still have some 2012 era Minis. :-D If you ever do one of these again, one suggestion would be to run GeekBench on your upgrades, just so we can relate our systems. Did anything more advanced than NES work out? cheers.

Heads up, you can upgrade that thing from a Core 2 Duo t2400 to a t5600, managed to squeeze out 30fps on Minecraft 1.8.9 with a few performance mods and Debian 12. It’s well worth the upgrade if you make another follow up.

Nice video, you deserve like and a subscribe. I want you good luck with your channel.

I came here for bench mark consoles FAIL 😅 for me

I am playing on G4-cube with full speed :)

Great vid!

I just found great deal with that Mac Mini. But If it can't run Netflix and RU-vid that is hardly a device i want. Also I don't think it could run Snes games well. Soo I will skip on that.

Mini on the hdd seems fitting.

My phone did emulation better than this

Can you do a start to finish Batocera install on your Mac including ROMS and Bios’s? What keyboard did you use when you had to use the F1 key to locate games? Thank you.

I love the idea of giving Apple (or any other anti-consumer tech company for that matter) the finger and buying one of their devices second hand and installing Linux on it. Not like they care but I like the idea anyway.

Crazy. I was just about to try and get a suitable retropie box that looks good in the living room AND i have an old mac mini in a box somewhere. Thanks a lot for the tip!

I have that same Mac mini. (I also had the G4 version) I never thought to retro game on this machine. RaspberryOS works well on those macs with no problems, (at least the live iso did). Nice video.

Nice video

For the batocera issue I'm not sure of the culprit, but the problem seems to be that it can't mount the runtime directories, like /proc (used by the kernel for process control afaik) and /dev (interface for kernel drivers in userspace, usually controlled by udev). It might be an issue with program compatibility because I know that Apple likes to make running intel code on an Intel cpu unbearable, but don't quote me on that.

Hmm, with this PGA socket I wondering how high you can go up with mobile Core 2 CPUs,