Install snow leopard on mac mini mid 2011

The two Macs seem to be identical, but I'm afraid that there is something that I'm overlooking. Any ideas or observations regarding this idea? I have had the chance to see it myself, including some testing. The Mac Mini was the 2,3 GHz i5. To cut it short: The system was slow, flickering monitor, the cursor and the entire system was freezing occasionally, and only HDMI was working.

The Mini was booted from an external USB drive. System profiler has recognized all hardware in both cases. I have also checked some Hackintosh sites for tips. Having written this and noticing the silence in this thread, I would like to add, that I really don't want to discourage anybody trying this. I think, more has to happen, than my and other's naive efforts to get SL on this Mac Mini. Eventually, a hack will come out, or a system update will remedy the problems.

I will keep my eyes open. As it stands, I assume it is o. Steve Jolly. However, one Apple support rep said that he "heard" that it is possible — with perhaps some loss of functionality, but possible. Gotta wait a few days for this one to sort itself out and I, too, am waiting on proven Snow Leopard compatibility to buy the new Mini!

The reason why I am asking at ifixit is because maybe someone here knows how the Mini essentially differs in hardware from the "iMac early " or the "MacBook Pro early " both running SL originally. These Macs and the Mini have at least this in common: The high end models have different Radeon graphics or different RAM, though.

And here's a link to a German website where someone has successfully booted his Mini from a MBP in target mode: I'm not certain your preferred method of installation will work unless a retail copy of the OS was used on the MacBook Pro. Apple tends to be fussy that way. You can give it a try but no guarantees. Are you sure it works with a retail SL on this Mac? The new Mini comes with Lion. Based on the experience that usually only OSes upwards from the original system can be installed, I doubt that a regular installer DVD would work.

Besides, the Mini does not even have a DVD drive. Checking my references I find I cannot confirm If you should decide later you could upgrade to Perhaps someone has tried this and can enlighten both of us. If you do go with the please let us know how it turns out. Good luck. Apple requires Usually your can't install a system lessor than what comes with the machine.

So call and ask Apple before buying. I just got a new Mac Mini A Mac mini 2. I will test it with booting from a harddisk of a MBP 15" early , i7 quad 2. Thank you for posting this. I indeed have some questions.

Can you please keep us posted if you see any behaviour that's not normal? Another report came from "saugust", who has experienced graphical glitches after a while - he has apparently used a different system build than yours. Do you plan to upgrade your RAM or your harddrive? I know Thunderbolt hardware is rare, but if you have any chance to try it, a report would be very welcome. Can you do some benchmark tests? I'd be curious how the Mini's score in geekbench is. A free version can be downloaded here:. The also free Xbench doesn't offer this nice comparison, but also tests the graphics and internal harddrive:.

If I power cycle the LCD then the picture comes back. Well for me not such a problem but no way to explain this to a coworker me IT.

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And a no go to configure it as "never go to sleep" as this is not green at all. Then i decided to test this with an Apple 24" screen attached to the TB port directly as it sports a mini display port connector. Guess what: And the main screen is the one attached to HDMI. So if I would attach the Apple to the TB port So i went back to the internal harddisk with Lion and voila: So it is safe to say that one can get around somehow with SL I wish someone of this distris had made a clone of a virgin Mac Mini SL harddisk I will run the tests tomorrow and post them here running on external HD over FW external case.

I would like to bring this article to your attention this was written a few days and answers later:. Summary, as I have understood it: He has done this while booting from another Mac and connecting the Mini in firewire target mode. Then he has used a regular retail? He mentioned that he wasn't sure if Thunderbolt is working. There's really not much information in that article and almost no testing. I install Yes, I miss the testing too. If I would expend the effort, I'd use a system build that matches the Mini's hardware closer.

Apple says: The display image may appear to "shrink" with black bars around it, may appear tinted, or have other issues;. May not start up past the Apple logo. And by the way, the Mini in the article was the server model: I have it 'working' the graphics are screwy but it is passable. I used Super Duper! When using the HDMI two monitors show up and the cursor is on the 'other' screen ie the one not being displayed. If you set the two displays to 'mirror' things work pretty well - finger's crossed! Boot from the USB Drive.

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Lion is much more stable. Thank you. I see this as proof that you can't just use any Snow Leopard build. It is crucial to use a system build that matches the Minis hardware one that comes from a MBP. There is an Apple doc that helps distinguishing the different builds: If you like, you can post your SL build here, so we can mark it as not working for other people who want to try this.

See my post on the Apple Support Communities. Snow Leopard has no way to provide support for the graphics run natively. Ted Dively. The one thing I did do before cloning was repartition the disk to remove the Lion recovery data, then I enabled a RAID mirror on it and set the AutoRebuild key to true. I'm currently scrunching the pre-installed Lion Server volume into a disk image to be saved for possible future use, after which, I'll repartition that disk and add it to the RAID volume on the I have a new MacMini 2.

I purchased it for a special project to run all night on a regular basis. I erased the disc, clean of Lion. I used my Macbook Pro 2. It works until the re-start phase of the SL install so i waited and waited and when it restarts I eject the retail SL disc and insert my MacBook Pro SL disc so my macbook pro wont stall. This worked and I installed the update and I am now running Its not an easy fix and it is very time consuming Display - Pink in color can't adjust. Thunderbolt Port not recognized.

Display, after sleep won't come back - "No signal" is the message. These seems to be regular problems with this step backward to SL. Speed benchmarks not attempted yet. If I can fix the display so its not pink I will try that. Start up is not fast, but not deadly slow either.

My monitor type is recognized by the Mini in the status bar and in the system preferences so I do not fear its a monitor issue, but I am going to swap monitors to see if that helps. On another note, when i was loading SL onto the mini, performing system update and making sure it worked the display was my on my Macbook pro and it looked perfect. Not sure whats going on, but I wont stop till I fix this. Thanks for all the feedback and hints on how to do this in the first place. Without your upfront advice on how to accomplish I wouldn't be this far along yet. More updates to come. I also made the downgrade to Hello ajanky.

Let's suss this out.

Do you have the Mac OS on the internal drive? Or on USB? On a Firewire drive? It will not boot into a GUI. By the way, did you ever notice how similar the Firewire logo is to the radiation warning triform? Neither did I, until I started this little project:. Anyway, now that your new Mac is booted up and in target mode, boot up your old Mac.

I left the Firewire cable out of the old Mac, and just booted it up. Once the old Mac was booted, then I plugged in the Firewire cable, and the old Mac suddenly had the new Mac's drives on its desktop, just like any other external drives. The astute reader might have noticed I used the word drives plural. I'm doing video and the two faster drives will be a big help.

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The two-drive configuration makes this a much easier install. I merely installed Snow Leopard on one drive and left Lion on the other. If you only have one Lion drive, you may be able to partition it, and install Snow Leopard on the other partition, but that's a theory, only. I haven't tested it. To make things easier, once I'd booted up on the old Mac and saw the hard drives from the new Mac on the desktop, I renamed the drives. The Lion boot drive was renamed to "Lion Server".

Snow Leopard On Unsupported Macbook Air 11' Mid - MacMod of the Month - InsanelyMac Forum

The drive that would hold the back-rev Snow Leopard was renamed, creatively, "Snow Leopard". Put this somewhere you can find it on your old Mac's desktop. Finally, make sure your old Mac has a DVD drive. If it doesn't, go find an external USB drive and use that. I'm guessing you could run the Leopard installer from an image or a USB key, but that's also something I didn't try. Preparing to install Snow Leopard on Lion. Now you're ready to run the installer. The Snow Leopard installer will ask you where you want to install Snow Leopard.

Here's where you want to be careful, and select your previously renamed "Snow Leopard" destination drive remember, this is really the drive on the new Lion machine. Click next and let the install proceed. It took about forty minutes on my vintage iMac. Once that's done, run the Combo update. It'll look like the Combo update is starting to update your old Mac, but that's just a fancy splash screen. Wait until the splash graphics run out of steam, and once again select your "Snow Leopard" drive living on your new Lion machine as the destination.

This took about 20 minutes. Once this process is all done, shut down your old Mac and unplug the Firewire cable.

Snow leopard on the 2011 Mac mini now possible and working 100%!

You'll have to hold down the power button on your new Mac and let it shut down as well. Press the power button on your new Lion-based Mac and hold down the Option key. In a moment, you should see both the "Lion Server" and "Snow Leopard" drives or your locally-named equivalents. Click the arrow under the Snow Leopard drive and wait for the system to boot. If you followed all the steps I've outlined, you should find yourself booted into Snow Leopard.

If you want to boot into Snow Leopard by default, go to System Preferences and select Startup Disk, and choose your Snow Leopard drive as the start drive. I am extremely nervous about an OS that doesn't come with disks. It feels unnatural. It also feels fast and loose with the system's security.

What if, for example, you completely nuke your drives and the recovery partition? How do you recover?

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See also: Honestly, I'm guessing Apple's has a method beyond sending the machine back to the company for a warranty repair, but I haven't had a chance to research it. The bottom line is this: If you follow these instructions and something breaks, don't come crying to me. I can't guarantee this will all work and I've tried it on exactly one machine. Your attempt could always go horribly wrong. If it does, you were warned. You're on your own here. Be careful. If you're not comfortable futzing around with OS installs that could go very, very bad, get some help.

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