Can I install Snow Leopard on the new Mac Mini

Works perfectly for me, too! We need to find mikethebook, who began this thread, to get him to pop some SOLVED! points onto newfoundglory's account!

FYI -- obviously, my months of optimism that Apple would allow a sensible solution didn't work out. And, VMWare sources say that they got a complete sign-off from Apple on the virtualization option for Snow Leopard client, but that someone higher up ultimately zapped it after release with no warning; this was not a simple misunderstanding. Ah, well!

Anyway, GREAT WORK, newfoundglory! A good, elegant hack is always the best answer, anyway, because it looks for the best outcome, not just a kludgy workaround for an obstacle. Also from Dimoe, Cathy, Baltwo (I had resolution concerns, too!), Layne and other for pointers that made this very nice hack not-exactly-a-no-brainer but even more straightforward!

Since I've been the "speedometer keeper" -- if you haven't noticed, this thread has now logged just under 40,000 views.

We've had a surge of visits, again, since newfoundglory found a way to convince the 2011 Minis to play well with others!!

Also, if someone has the time and knowledge to package these steps and resources, drivers, etc. into an installer or a patcher -- or can ghost that "best" working system into an uploadable form, you might want to post it somewhere on a forum, a tech site or a newsgroup, to make it widely available and easily usable for Mini owners who don't know root from soundflower.

I don't have the knowledge to pull that off and make it actually deliverable and workable, but from what I can see it ought to be do-able.

Thanks - this is only really a half hack, if it is in fact a hack at all - those plists would have been added to the kext had Apple released Snow Leopard for the 2011 mini. I'm convinced with this you are getting what Apple would have given you!

Its also possible (but maybe unlikely), that a future 10.6.8 security update or 10.6.9 (if it exists!) could break this and you'd have to repeat the process.

If you still need Rosetta or PowerPC apps, NOW IS THE TIME to start investigating other options - I can't see this working well for future Apple and Intel hardware.

Anyway, consider this newfoundglory's christmas present to everyone!!! 😀

Steve Jolly wrote:

Also, if someone has the time and knowledge to package these steps and resources, drivers, etc. into an installer or a patcher -- or can ghost that "best" working system into an uploadable form, you might want to post it somewhere on a forum, a tech site or a newsgroup, to make it widely available and easily usable for Mini owners who don't know root from soundflower.

I don't have the knowledge to pull that off and make it actually deliverable and workable, but from what I can see it ought to be do-able.

I think there might be legal issues... shall we say... with this. But, technically I see no reason why you couldnt take a MBP restore DVD and make it "installable" on a Mac mini; I reckon you could even bake in the kext modifications making the whole thing pain free.

newfoundglory wrote:

Steve Jolly wrote:

Also, if someone has the time and knowledge to package these steps and resources, drivers, etc. into an installer or a patcher -- or can ghost that "best" working system into an uploadable form, you might want to post it somewhere on a forum, a tech site or a newsgroup, to make it widely available and easily usable for Mini owners who don't know root from soundflower.

I don't have the knowledge to pull that off and make it actually deliverable and workable, but from what I can see it ought to be do-able.

I think there might be legal issues... shall we say... with this. But, technically I see no reason why you couldnt take a MBP restore DVD and make it "installable" on a Mac mini; I reckon you could even bake in the kext modifications making the whole thing pain free.

If you could restate the step by step instructions, with the addition or two suggested after your original post, it would help those of us who get easily confused!

I still want to be able to have Lion and Snow Leopard side by side so that I can run my Rosetta applications (primarily Quicken Deluxe 2002 and yes, I will have to investigate an alternative; but not now) and Lion (which is required for iCloud, for example. So I would like to install your patched Snow Leopard into Parallels 7 and see what the Geekscore is...

newfoundglory wrote:

Anyway, consider this newfoundglory's christmas present to everyone!!! 😀

Not only is this a major christmas present to me, but for Apple as well. You are the reason why I just picked up the Mini Server this evening (again....I returned my first one after the first week). I am looking forward in replacing my old electric hogging MacPro 8 core and going to the i7 server which has about the same performance and with a 6gb/s interface for my SSD.

Thank you Thank you Thank you!!! 😁

MichaelLAX wrote:

I still want to be able to have Lion and Snow Leopard side by side so that I can run my Rosetta applications (primarily Quicken Deluxe 2002 and yes, I will have to investigate an alternative; but not now) and Lion (which is required for iCloud, for example. So I would like to install your patched Snow Leopard into Parallels 7 and see what the Geekscore is...

One reasonable way to get this is to have the i7 with the 2 disk drives, and have Lion on one and SnowLeopard on the other one. When you are booted from either disk you have access to all of the data on both disks. to choose boot disks, hold down the option key while powering on. If you do that, one thing you will have to do is to make sure that the accounts on both OSes have exactly the same names and user numbers, otherwise you will screw up ownership and permissions on files.

Thanks, Cathy. I considered partions on my i5 Mac Mini, but I need access to Quicken "quickenly!" So rebooting is not an option for me.

Parallels gives me exactly what I need: immediate access to Rosetta when I have the need.

Now I have made some more tests with my Mini i7, 2.7GHz and a modified Snow-Leopard-System:

Everything is faster with SnowLeopard!

Geekbench: 5%

Cinebench 11.5: 5-13%

Artlantis Rendering: 13%

http://forum.macsofa.net/download/file.php?id=59166

I am absolutely certain that there would be legal issues with what I suggested, above. I can't imagine that I actually suggested it.

I'm going to turn off my monitor and stare into the bleak "no-Snow-Leopard" blackness and ponder.

"What would Steve Jobs do?"

😟🙂

(Psssst -- Don't tell anyone about this. As I sat in front of my monitor, after a few minutes I heard a gentle, sort of nasally voice that whispered "I would run the patched Snow Leopard. Doh!" -- and then, before I could turn and look, a door quietly closed behind me. Hey, it sounded like the voice of one of my co-workers, but... d'you think it's possible...that...naw!)

...and to all, a good night!

newfoundglory wrote:

...But, technically I see no reason why you couldnt take a MBP restore DVD and make it "installable" on a Mac mini; I reckon you could even bake in the kext modifications making the whole thing pain free.

Exactly! Of course, we can't actually facilitate this kind of thing (the mysterious whispering voice notwithstanding).

But perhaps someone, somewhere has an "in" with Santa, and one of his elves has a Mac and some code-editing chops. They have long, boring winters at the North Pole.

Meanwhile, I'm continuing to work with (not against!) Apple on this issue. Who knows?...

I never really fully gave up on Santa and the Easter Bunny, or on Tim Cook!

I didn't made other changes.

Today I used a clone of my Macbook pro 5.2 (2009) with 10.6.8. with all applications and preferences and users as the external Start-Volume.

Before I copied the MacMini 5.* Resources Geekbench was 1733

just after rebooting (and exited Spotlight) I made my tests

I've tried installing 10.6.8 using newfoundglory's method, or close to it, but I'm having a problem with cursors and the second monitor connection. I can tell exactly what the problem is: the system has problems counting connected displays and separating the two ports.

I have one monitor connected via the DVI (and the included adapter) to the HDMI port. When I go to System Preferences->Displays, and click on the Arrangement tab, I see two identical displays. So, the system thinks there are two copies of the same display. The cursor problems make sense: the system is sending cursor updates to both displays, so the cursor can get confused. intel HD graphics 3000, like all graphics chips, has a hardware cursor, so the system just updates some registers with the cursor position and image as necessary.

If you plug and unplug displays on the two ports, part of the system recognizes the connections and disconnections, but I can't find a way to delete the phantom extra display. I can get the spanned second display to show. Mirroring doesn't help. It seems like there should be a way to do this. I've looked at IORegistryExplorer and booted into UEFI with rEFIt, but I haven't found anything.

So, for those who've successfully installed 10.6, can you verify that you don't have the phantom display? If not, then there must be some difference from what I've done.

I have:

Mac Mini 2011 2.3, Firmware update applied.

I don't have a 100% answer yet I can tell you you're doing something wrong. You need to make sure you start with an OS X build that has all the drivers for your machine. Simply installing from any SL build didnt work for me. I had to use a 10.6.8 v1.1 image installed from the same general hardware (for me it was a 2010 mini with Thunderbolt and HDMI. For others it was a similarly configured laptop image). I then used that image on the 2011 mini and followed newfoundglory's directions to add the corresponding kext files and it all worked.

When I used just the plain 10.6.3 retail image (which I was able to install on the 2011 Mini) I had exactly the same graphical glitch symptoms you are having - I believe you are missing drivers for your hardware. Hope that helps.

Here is how I installed 10.6.8 on a Mac Mini, in more detail than earlier descriptions:

1. Start Mini in Target Disk Mode (TDM), connect to 2011 MBP 13" 2.7 with a Firewire 800 cable.

2. Boot MBP from the Mac OS X install disc it came with, 10.6.6.

3. Use disk Utility to erase the Mini's HD.

4. Install 10.6.6 on Mini's HD (including Rosetta and QT7, of course).

I found the Mac Mini can't boot 10.6.6, so:

5. Reboot with option key, now boot MBT from Mini's HD.

6. Create a new user, again still on MBP.

7. Install 10.6.8 combo update v1.1.

8. Shut down MBP and Mini.

9. Now connect Mini to a monitor and boot from its own HD.

10. For good measure, and to make sure no drivers were missed, Install 10.6.8 combo update v1.1 again.

11. Add the Macmini5,* files as detailed by newfoundglory, adding the chmod 644.

(and have the phantom display issue)