EQMac.com

Hello,
I just purchased a new mini mac specifically for playing eq mac. I have never used a mac before, but have been using pc's for over 20 years, so this the mac is taking a little adjusting to.

The mini mac that I purchased has their Lion OS, and unfortunately I did not realize that it would be an issue with playing eq mac until after I had already purchased. I do not want to wait for the binary version to come out, so I am hoping that someone can help me out. From reading it sounds like I can purchase an external hard drive http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6822149215 and purchase snow leopard http://store.apple.com/us/product/MC573Z/A and install snow leopard on the external hard drive and run Snowleopard & eq mac off of the external drive.

Can anyone confirm that this would work / give me an idea how to go about installing onto the external drive? Would I need to format the drive, or would the install CD automatically give me the option to?

Any help is appreciated.

Thank you,
Dammur

you don't need an external hard drive... installing an OS on the mac is the exact same as it is on a PC - you boot from the OS disk. aka you can just stick in the snow leopard CD, boot from the CD, wipe the hard drive, and install a fresh snow leopard

that said, if the particular model of the mac mini was manufactured less than 18 days ago (has any even come out since then? i am unsure), then it might not work. post more specific information about your computer, model number and so forth

Mac mini model no a1347
2.3 ghz intel core i5 3mb shared l2 cache
2g ddr3
Intel hd graphics 3000 processor with 288mb ddr3
Thunderbolt, firewire,
Not sure what other info would be needed. I have a mini display port to vga adapter running to one monitor, and hdmi to dvi adapter running to the second, if that matters. (I am planning on dual boxing so I can still exp when groups are not available at low / mid levels, dual monitors is nice)

Thanks again,
Dammur

The Mac Mini's were not updated with the release of Lion (like the MacBook Air) so you can just wipe lion off and install Snow Leopard if you can find the disk, though it might take a newer version found on the recovery CD's for your model.

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Yep Snow leopard will be on the backup disks you get with the mini. A clean install of Snow Leopard should be the first thing you do.

The mini should run eq great, just up the ram if you can. Not sure how easy it is to replace in those things but there should be plenty of tuts online.

Boxing is a great idea but I dont believe its easy to run an instance of eq on each monitor. Its a little buggy alt tabbing into a new instance as the mouse often gets lost. Most of us who box either have separate machines or use Spaces - which is totally fine.

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Back before Rhapsody (OSX) the window manager only understood application order, or when you brought an application to the front all of that applications windows came to the front. Somewhere along the way window order was added. EQMac is a carbon app, which means that for window behavior to work appropriately you have to do more than just define and create the window, you have to create some default callback procedures to enable default behavior. These callbacks weren't created when windowed mode was added to the client (the reason you can't drag the window with your mouse), and that has implications when using command-tab to switch the application order: The default behavior doesn't recognize the window in some instances and the window doesn't get keyboard focus.

It's a client issue, not a Mac or OS issue.

It's very easy to overcome this, you just need to use a macro program or other script that 'understands' both application order and window order to make the switch. That way you don't need spaces or any other virtual desktop arrangement (which decrease performance) and switches become near instantaneous.

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Are you all sure about this?? The Mac Mini was updated like the Air with Thunderbolt architecture. What is being discussed above does NOT boot on the Air so I would be skeptical that it would boot on the mini.

Tudo

The Air is not the Mini, obviously. It has already been proven that the Mini will accept 10.6.x just fine.

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If you do box on a mini, I couldn't do more than 2 boxes without silly lag, definitely get a fan control program and crank it up to avoid overheating.

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Please read this thread from Apple....this process (to load SL on the new mini) is not a trivial task for the non-technical folks.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/32 ... 0&tstart=0


Tudo

ps: Edited by the poster, because like a dumb*** he left out the link.

Fixed!

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Just like I said, and is discussed in that thread, you can do it if you have a newer Snow Leopard Disk that has 10.6.8 that contains the drivers for the 2011 MacBook Pro / Mac Mini.

Both were released initially with snow leopard, but cannot be installed with the retail disk as that is 10.6.3 that does not contain the drivers for newer hardware. I'm sure a little digging around in the "back alleys" of the internet can turn up some disk images of the restore disks you need.

The Air is an exception right now because it was ONLY released with Lion, thus no drivers for it's newer hardware exist on any Snow Leopard version.

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Much thanks so far. I got myself an external hard drive for the target disc booting, now to figure out the install. I am amazed at the research and help that you guys (and gals) have provided just to help one person out in joining your server. I look forward to joining you all within a couple weeks when I either figure this out, or worst case get fed up and get a g5

I am optimistic.

Thank you,
Dammur

Ok, I got myself a retail copy of Snow Leapord, as well as an external hard drive. I had the same issues that I was told I would about the retail copy being too low of a version for my mac. I tried looking at the 'back alleys' of the internet for a newer version, but did not really feel comfortable there... Yesterday inspiration hit me, my girlfriend bought a mac book a few months back, I used her mac book to install snow leapord on the external hard drive, did the updates from her mac book, and then attached the hdd to my minimac.

It works beautifully, eq is patching now.

Thank you all very much for your help getting me up and running. I cannot wait to see you all in game.

Thank you,
Dammur

Nice work Dammur!