Can I install Snow Leopard on the new Mac Mini

Actually the Dual Core i5 does not have the HD3000 card but the ATI 6630M card. I have that same model, and the TB port works fine on that one as well, even on the 30 inch ACD.

The server version however does not recognize the 30 inch ACD. I did use a OS X installation from a 2011 MacBook Pro for both mini's.

Hi Vincent. According to the apple site the are two i5 minis (http://www.apple.com/macmini/specs.html).

The base 2.3 has the HD3000, the 2.5 has the ATI card. Can I confirm that the working TB port you have is the 2.5?

It is not clear whst Colacin's i5 is, but given these results I suspect it is the 2.5 i5 too.

That points to the missing driver being the one for the HD3000 which in newfoundglory's method is addedd correctly, but not in the method myself and others have used.

I wonder if others can chime in: Has everyone with display anomolies got a mini with the HD3000? i.e. either the server model or the 2.3 i5.

Actually You Can. Use any late Macintosh that will run Snow Leopard and either boot from a 10.6.3 universal installer that been intalled on a hard drive (quickest) or boot from the UNIVERSAL OS X 10.6.3 DVD. The new Mac Mini should be connected via FireWire in TARGET MODE to the host Macintosh.

Use disk Uitility to format the Mac Mini Hard Drive and install 10.6.3 on it. When it boots (still in target mode) it will be the boot drive for the host macintosh.

Then install 10.6.8 update and iLife 11 and Applejack (this will fix the install in the end).

Then run software update and carry out all updates that it indicates.

After that shut down and take the Mini off Target Mode and disconnect the firewire cable.

Restart the Mini and run software update again. Note - the cursor may take any number of shapes at this stage but continue on. Certainly you wil be asked to run software update OS X 10.6.8 supplemental which should fix the cursor problem.

Restart and hold dowm <Command><S> until a black screen with white writing appears. Wait for it to scroll down to the end and at the prompt type applejack AUTO restart and then press <Enter>

Applejack will run 5 routines which may take some time and at the finish it will restart.

That should be it!

One codicil. If you read the stuff that Applejack brings up you will see that half the processors are not working. I'm not sure if this is as a result of being in Single User Mode or wheteher SL Doesn't recognise the other half of the processors. This is no big deal and does not seem to affect the operation at all.

The good news is that SL will run on a new Mac Mini which should satisfy a lot of users who have apps that are not yet Lion Compatible.

Happy to communicatewith anyone having problems.

<Email Edited by Host>

Dear Desmond, if you look through the whole thread you will see that Newfoundglory discovered a way to increase SL performance by using specific kext files from Lion.

Question: In your method (which is ostensibly what I did) what are the operations that AppleJack performs? And why are they needed?

WIthout the AppleJack step, I have a SL installation that runs fast (with the added Lion kexts), but lacks support for the DP output. HDMI works but is limited to 1920x1080. Also, in my installation (i7 quad core HD3000 graphics) expose works but is VERY choppy, suggesting to me that underlying video drivers are missing.

Thanks for the response. I'll look up Newfoundglory and add that to my KB. In regard to Applejack - in my work as a technician I have made it standard operating procedure to install Applejack on all my clients computers as it just goes through and corrects many errors saving me much time and clients, money. I suggest that you go to macupdate.com and follow through it to Applejack and read up the projects notes. Disappointingly, the Author has not updated Applejack for 17 months , so some functionality is lost in Lion, which is a great shame, but the same thing happened between Leopard and Snow Leopard so I suppose that eventually he will get A into G. My interset in this is that I have a Doctors Rooms who have a specific medical application that is not yet updated to Lion (another tardy developer) and needs Snow Leopard for a few months before thar developer gets A into G.

SUCCESS!

As noted in an earlier posts, I used the newfoundglory method on a quad mac mini based on osx 10.6.3 dvd (intel HD3000 graphics). I had the ghost display and mouse issue.

Tried applejack and it did not help.

Googled for "kexts for HD3000" and found AppleIntelHDGraphics.kext and AppleIntelSNBGraphicsFB.kext dated june 24 2011 which is different from the LS 10.6.8 dated march 27 2010.

Replaced AppleIntelHDGraphics.kext and AppleIntelSNBGraphicsFB.kext, rebooted and the ghost display is gone and now only showing one display. The HDMI output is working but not the minidisplayport. I can unplug and the screen comes back on.

So:

download AppleIntelHDGraphics.kext and AppleIntelSNBGraphicsFB.kext

Copy AppleIntelHDGraphics.kext and AppleIntelSNBGraphicsFB.kext to /Sy*/Li*/Ex*/

Change ownership and permissions on the new kexts:
chown root:wheel *
chmod 644 *

This solved my last problems of snow leopard on the 2011 Mac Mini quad server (geekbench =8867).

A thought: Maybe the lion AppleIntelHDGraphics.kext and AppleIntelSNBGraphicsFB.kext will work too, they are dated september 28 2011. Let us know if you try it.

Hope this can help some of you guys.

best wishes,

Kasper

Do you get any errors or warnings when updating the prelinked kernel?

(run kextcache -system-prelinked-kernel as root)

wow, all these infos in this thread here are wonderful to hear, especially since i get my mini server yesterday!

i'm still confused which snow leo version is working on which mac to get a working one on the mini with both monitor outs working?!

what i've got are a mac pro 3,1 (early08) with 10.6.8 already installed, a mini (end06) with 10.6.7, a macbook air (late11) with lion, a 10.6.0 retail dvd, a 10.6.3 retail image, enough hd enclosures and the untouched new mini server.

can someone plz guide me step by step to get the server running under snow leo?

plzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

if i later want to go back to lion, do i need to make a recovery stick, or only needed when i want to download the offical lion version (which is linked to my mini) from the app store?

@Kasper:

Kasper E wrote:

Googled for "kexts for HD3000" and found AppleIntelHDGraphics.kext and AppleIntelSNBGraphicsFB.kext dated june 24 2011 which is different from the LS 10.6.8 dated march 27 2010.

where did you find the newer versions plz?

@all:

isn't it possible that the lucky user who had already a fully working snow leo on their minis, uploading an image to elsewhere? it'll be only three different images, two for the non server ones with intel and amd graphics and one the server with intel graphics ...

thanx a lot to all contributers!!!

the last time i've got all these trouble was to run tiger on the mac pro, but any time, it was working and we've seed these special image via old school postal services through the world ;-)

Question for Newfoundglory: Does the DP output work on your mini server? (i thought I read one of your posts where you reported that it does). For Vincent (above) even doing an install from a 2011 MBPro did not enable the DP to work for the mini server model.

I wonder: With your MBPro, did you incrementally update to 10.6.7 using the MBPro-specific release of 10.6.7? I was searching recently and saw that there was a general 10.6.7 release and two "model-specific" releases - for the early 2011 MBPro and the early 2011 iMac (both of these are Sandy Bridge computers with Thunderbolt).

http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1368

http://support.apple.com/kb/dl1383

I had an idea that if I could install the 10.6.7 MBPro update onto the mini server it might contain the necessary DP drivers (that you may have). Of course it failed because my host machine for the Target disk mode is a 2008 MBPro and the installer refuses to run the model-specific 10.6.7 update (even when targetting the mini server's hard-drive via target disk mode).

Interestingly enough, the 10.6.7 general update is not sufficient to boot the mini server (even though the MBPro-specific 10.6.7 can run a very similar set of hardware). Does this suggest that the MBPro 10.6.7 release is substantially different from the general 10.6.7 release?

I did not try to prelink.

However - after playing around alot getting my stuff installed I have realized that this approach has a serious drawback: It appears that graphics performance really *****. I think hardware acceleration is disabled/not working or what not. Watching movies is not smooth and running OpenGL test in Cinebench returns an error. (Clean install and NFG with updatede kexts runs fine).

So, while the output is detected correctly, no ghosting and the mouse pointer is good graphics performance is bad.

Ive decided to start from scratch again and not pursue this further. Sorry for the noise.

/Kasper

Found the drivers here: http://www.osx86.net/view/1537-drivers_for_intel_hd3000.html

But as I replied to Newfoundglory, they solve one problem but creates an even bigger one 😟

/Kasper

You have to try these things - but its important to update the prelinked kernel on the root volume used for startup. Otherwise, you have no idea if there are going to be problems with kext's. Often if you delete extensions from /System/Library/Extensions folder, and add some new ones, Mac OS X will detect that new kexts have been added and update the system caches automatically by starting the kextcache process in the background.

But its not always clear whether this process works - sometimes you get a message on screen that the extensions have not been correctly installed.

Well I think I have tracked the problem down - are you using version 1.6.36 of AppleIntelHDGraphics and AppleIntelSNBGraphicsFB under Snow Leopard when you get the extra detected display?

If so, you need 1.6.42

If you look here: http://www.mediafire.com/?hb77kh4q65abye9,yyictmsfvs59msx you might just the files you need 😉

Oh, install instructions:

1. Download and extact each kext

2. Go to /System/Library/Extensions and delete the existing AppleIntelHDGraphics and AppleIntelSNBGraphicsFB (eg. move to trash)

3. Copy the ones you extracted into /System/Library/Extensions (you might get a warning after kextcache kicks in automatically, ignore this)

4. Using terminal do:

sudo su -

cd /Sys*/Lib*/Ext*

chown -R root:wheel AppleIntelHDGraphics.kext

chown -R root:wheel AppleIntelSNBGraphicsFB.kext

chmod -R 644 AppleIntelHDGraphics.kext

chmod -R 644 AppleIntelSNBGraphicsFB.kext

kextcache -system-prelinked-kernel

kextcache -system-caches

(then restart the mac)

Second display should be gone, and version of those kexts should be 1.6.42

since your first advice a month ago everything works fine mith my i7 Mini and SnowLeopard,

Thanks for your continious work!

Why is your Level still 1 (0 points)? It should grow!