Partition MacMini HD for PowerPC Aaps

The only way to do that on your Mac model is to run Mac OS X 10.5 or 10.6 Server inside a product such as VirtualBox or Parallels Desktop.

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1. Those OS versions don’t have the drivers needed to boot newer Macs.

2. Apple doesn’t allow the regular one to be run in emulation.

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You cannot install an older operating system than the one the machine came with directly.

Hardware and driver differences make it impossible to do so functionally. In other words OSx 10.3 would not contain the drivers required to work with the hardware in your 2014 computer.

Also yes, PPC is the old Apple architecture which was replaced by the more universally compatible Intel architecture. 10.3 is written for PPC architecture / hardware, which means it's addressing commands, functions and hardware that do not exist on an Intel Mac.

Intel architecture cannot on its own run PPC software or PPC based OSes like 10.3, it requires a Translator so to speak. This used to be for OSx versions up to 10.6 a built in application called Rosetta . It has since been dropped and no longer supported in newer OSx versions since 10.7.

You need to run it virtually, so you can recreate an old PPC type platform with the Virtual computer manager such as Parallels or VirtualBox

Due to licensing, only server versions of OSx can be run virtually on a Mac.

stovetopchicago wrote:

Sounds a little above my paygrade.

So even though this photoshop software works fine on an old Ibook I have running 10.3, there is something fundamentally different about the Mac mini hardware that prevents it from working without a virtualization program?

And why the server OS? For the file sharing? Thanks!

The Mac mini 2014 model now comes with El Capitan, however when it was launched in 2014 it came with Yosemite, it is therefore unofficially possible to run Yosemite on it still. It cannot run versions older than Yosemite because older versions do not have the drivers included to support this model of Mac, this is why as a general rule you cannot run an older version of the operating system than what comes with the computer.

To run PowerPC software you need to run either MacOS 10.4.11 (Tiger) which was a full-blown PowerPC version, or run MacOS 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard) which was the last version that included the Rosetta emulator to allow running PowerPC code on an Intel Mac. Neither of these versions will work on your 2014 model Mac as explained above because they do not have the drivers required.

Running Snow Leopard inside a virtual machine environment is potentially possible.

However if your PhotoShop dates back to Mac OS X 10.3 then your PhotoShop is so old that you really have no excuse for not upgrading. MacOS 10.3 was launched in 2003 and replaced by 10.4 in 2005. So this implies your PhotoShop is now a decade old!

stovetopchicago wrote:

And why the server OS? For the file sharing? Thanks!

The reasons are historical, but now that Apple has reduced the price of Snow Leopard Server by 95% to the same $20 as Snow Leopard client, the differences are largely moot. It has nothing to do with file sharing.

The historical reasons can be traced through discussions starting here:

http://forums.macrumors.com/threads/installing-snow-leopard-and-rosetta-into-par allels-7-in-lion.1365439/

stovetopchicago wrote:

Imagine if a gasoline company did somethinglike apple did. "Oh, sorry, you can't use that old car anymore because we upgraded the gas to support a bunch of features you don't care about and most consumers don't use." Imagine the reaction?

But they don't,

Another angle is to retain older Apple Mac hardware that natively runs

the older OS X systems & can handily use vintage software applications.

Then try to keep a spare cache of parts, & original service manuals, too. 😉

stovetopchicago wrote:

"That version of photoshop still serves my limited needs...

I'm a non-geek user, and I'm sure they had good reasons in their minds not to work harder to keep old customers happy, but it completely changed the way I thought about Apple. Why pay the premium if my experience isn't easy?

As noted, you have two choices:

1) Continue to operate an older Mac that will run your version of Photoshop, but know that one day it will fail and Apple will not assist you in repairing it. Snow Leopard could run up through the 2010 Macs and can be made to easily run on the 2011 Mac Mini; or

2) Install Snow Leopard Server into a virtualization program such as Parallels (I am assuming that your version of Photoshop continued to run in Snow Leopard, which was first released in 2009). An additional advantage to this method is that given the newer and faster CPU's in modern Macs, your version of Photoshop will probably run faster now than it did on a PowerPC Mac.

Photoshop CS running in Snow Leopard Server for use in OS X Lion through El Capitan:

[click on image to enlarge]

Installing Snow Leopard Server into Parallels for DUMMIES:

http://forums.macrumors.com/threads/installing-snow-leopard-and-rosetta-into-par allels-7-in-lion.1365439/page-23#post-17285039