Old AirPort Extreme time capsule

A Time Capsule is not a general purpose computer. It runs a stripped down embedded OS that lets it function as a wifi router and a rather poor NAS server that only support Time Machine backups and simple file transfer.

A Time Capsule is never going to run any program, let alone a LLM for which it really needs a specialized neural engine.

Any recent Raspberry Pi will seriously outrun the embedded processor* found in a Time Capsule, and the Pi with far better development support, connectivity, and documentation.

Particularly given the TC has no support and no available documentation for your proposed endeavor, and nowhere near the selection of available mounts and cases, HATs, shields, displays, GPIO, and other such. Like, TC has none of that. (Info)

Not only will you need to port your target OS and toolchain onto the TC, and integrate whatever expansions and GPIO connections you might want or need, you’ll also need to contend with the lack of compute resources for the ML or LLM algorithms you plan to run.

*The ARMv5 Marvell Ferocean SoC was a common choice for TC, though there may well be other SoCs used. That’s really old, really slow, and limited. (ARMv8 and ARMv9 designs are common choices now, and can be rather better equipped for running ML, or LLMs)

LuckyLine wrote:

Thanks l- just feel bad throwing it out but I guess it can’t last forever ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Shut off the Wi-Fi, and it still can be a small SMB NAS for the remainder of its service.

Its SMB support (SMBv1) is very old, and wildly insecure, though.

Even the most recent "tower" version of the Time Capsule was discontinued in mid 2018, so it is at least 6 years old and likely much older.

If your Time Capsule was an older "flat" version, the 1 TB model was discontinued in 2013, so the product is well over 10 years old. Remarkable if the product is still operating.