Ideas to use 2 mac minis for maximum effect

I just bought the new mac mini model and I plan on keeping my older model and use them both together. Any ideas on how best to set them up and put them to good use?
Thanks,
Richard

in addition to what D/FW said, my suggestion would be to turn the old mini into a headless media and/or file server for your local network.
put it in a (still well ventilated) far away spot in the house, connect all your externals, and admin it via screen sharing from the new mini.
JGG

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Using a Mac Mini for DSP

Hello!
I am wondering how many users are there out there using a Mac Mini for DSP to allow for more processing power.
wondering what types of experiences people have had out there/how well the machines work together. and if you would or would not recommend doing so
i would assume that it would help out with all of the processing and makes things sound better in the end?

I don't do it on a regular basis, but I tested out using an intel mini as a node on a G5, and it worked fine. Probably added about an additional 25% of what the quad could do (so if the quad did 100 of a plugin, the mini added 25 more).

Can i use my mac mini for some users at the same time?

can i use my mac mini for some users at the same time? i mean with their own screen, mouse, and keyboard

If you're asking whether more than one user can use the computer at the same time with multiple displays, the answer is no. Other users can log in over a network with Screen Sharing, but each one will need his own computer (not necessarily a Mac.)

Can i use my mac mini for a cd drive for my macbook

I am going to purchase a macbook to replace my old mac mini. Can I use my old macmini as a cd drive for it?

Yes. You need to visit this support site:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5287?viewlocale=en_US

Using Mac mini for storage

Hello Folks,
Quick question: can I use the mac mini for storage only? I have loads of movies, music and tv shows that I want to store.
How would this work if at all possible?
Alternative advice on EHD that I should rather use?
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JDT

Yes, and target disk mode, or firewire over IP or setting it up as a file server are all possibilities. But given there are faster more capacious hard drives for less, I would get that instead unless there is some feature of the Mac Mini that a simple hard drive can't do that you need. I.e. Front Row, Media Central or other software can be used to see your data on a TV. An external hard drive attached to your desktop Mac together with an AppleTV can do the same thing but the media formats are more limited.

Using Mac-Mini for movie / TV entertainment center

Hi all,
Can someone steer me into right direction? I'd like to use my MacMini as my main entertainment center to view my movies, music,TV, etc. and would like to know what will I need to make viewing pleasurable? I'd like to get a 42" display. I'd also like to add 5.1 digital surround sound. I'll also be using my Mac mini for web surfing and emails. Thanks for your help
Web dude

I just finished my setup, and I'm quite satisfied. I bought a Mac Mini to use as the media center and bought the Elgato EyeTV 250+ to get digital television over the antenna, which also allows you to use your mac as a DVR. I send the video to a Sony projector via DVI to HDMI cable, and the audio goes to my old surround sound receiver via the headphone jack to RCA. If you don't have a receiver yet, I'd get one that has optical audio input since the headphone jack on the mini also has optical out. I also use a firewire external hard drive to store video.
I continue to use my DVD player to play DVD's instead of the mini, simply because if there are any scratches (especially on rentals) the mini doesn't work through them as well as my DVD player. I plan on ripping my collection to the external drive so that I don't have to deal with disks at all though.
For the keyboard and mouse, I got the logitech dinovo mini keyboard because it has a trackpad integrated in the keyboard. While some of the buttons lack functionality, I will probably use ControllerMate to program them as well as difficult keyboard shortcuts. The other nice thing is if you have a "learning" programable remote because you can program it with the apple remote signal as well as the EyeTV remote and reduce the amount of clutter on the couch.

Using iMac6,1 Intel Core 2 Duo with Mac mini for Mavericks?

Hello,
I am using iMac6,1 (white) Intel Core 2 Duo which works perfectlly fine and I hope to keep using this machine as long as I can.
I've learned, however, that OS Mavericks does not run on my iMac6,1 and Apple will no longer support it.
I am very attached to this machine and am not ready to face a new iMac display with a bold black frame...I just don't find it very attractive.
So I came up with an idea to buy a Mac mini and use my white iMac as a display.
Does this idea work?
I know nothing about computer so please laugh if I am being silly.
Now here's the specs of my beautiful white iMac if it helps;
Model Name:
iMac
Model Identifier:
iMac6,1
Processor Name:
Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed:
2.33 GHz
Number Of Processors:
1
Total Number Of Cores:
2
L2 Cache:
4 MB
Memory:
2 GB
Bus Speed:
667 MHz
Boot ROM Version:
IM61.0093.B07
SMC Version (system):
1.10f
I recall having added memory and replaced a graphic board at a local Apple Store five years ago but I am not sure if it's shown here.
Thank you everyone always for this awesome communities.

I am very attached to this machine and am not ready to face a new iMac display with a bold black frame...I just don't find it very attractive.
So I came up with an idea to buy a Mac mini and use my white iMac as a display.
Does this idea work?
I know nothing about computer so please laugh if I am being silly.
No, however there is an app you can try if you want. It's called ScreenRecycler

Can you use logic express on a mac mini for recording

Can i use logic exprees on a mac mini for recording? Ive seen alot of 8,12, and 16 track recorders with a cd burner and it seems like a logical and more productive gues for me to buy a macmini for the same thing of recording and then I can uses logic express, a far better program for recording. can the mac mini handle the load of processing tracks and how much ram should I uses? thanks tim

sorry, I'd like to butt in here:
I would like to do the same thing, so I am curious about this forum and rather than starting a new one, can I get some advice on this possibility:
Mac Mini
1.83GHz Intel Core Duo
2GB 667 DDR2 SDRAM - 2x1GB
80GB Serial ATA drive
Glyph External HD 250 Gig
Mackie Onyx 1620 w/Firewire
Logic Pro 7.2
thoughts?
The most number of tracks I could see at once would be 16.
Here is something I am most curious about...
Firewire Hard drive
Firewire Interface/mixer
Firewire camera for FCP
to much firewire?
Please let me know if you have other thoughts aswell...
Shuke
thanks guys, this forum is fantastic!

I want to use a mac mini as a server supporting storage. Can I pair my macair to it for when I need to perform updates and maintenance ?

I want to use a mac mini as a server supporting storage. I have other devices such as an iMac and iPad that will access information from the server. I do not want to purchase a monitor and keyboard as the unit will sit in a cupboard out of sight. Can I pair my macair to it for when I need to perform updates and maintenance ?

I have a 2010 Mac Mini running Yosemite and Server which I use
as a headless home server.
I have is set up to allow screen sharing and can connect to it and
control it with my iMac, Macbook Pro, iPhone, and a 2011 Mini Server
that I use as an HTPC.
You can check this out for all the Yosemite Server capabilities:
https://help.apple.com/advancedserveradmin/mac/4.0/
I have iTunes Home Sharing set up on it and have my entire iTunes
library on it. I can then use any of my Macs to play Movies or Songs
from it and only keep locally a select subset of that on my individual
devices.
Rather than and update server, I utilize Server's Caching Service. The caching
server will duplicate any update download (system or MacApp Store purchases)
any time a device that is connected to my network down loads one. The update will
then be stored locally and all other devices will download the update from it which
can be faster than from Apple directly. This has the advantage of only having to download
once with limited bandwidth internet connections. There is also an Update Server service
available, but it is some what more involved in setting up. However, it will download
and store all available updates.
There is another thing as well if you do not care for syncing things like Contacts, Calendar, etc.
to iCloud, you can set Server up to sync these items across devices locally.

I am considering purchasing the Mac mini for home studio audio production using Adobe Audition and a USB microphone. Will the base mini model run these programs?

I am considering purchasing the Mac mini for home studio audio production using Adobe Audition and a USB microphone. Will the base mini model run these programs?

The base mini has 4GB and a 5400 RPM hard drive. It is slow to start up and slow to launch large application such as Word (and I'd assume Adobe Audition) due to the slow drive. I've not used a new 4GB model, just the 8GB model, and the 8GB model (except for the slow drive) handles everything I've thrown at it, including running Photoshop, Word, Safari, and Mail at the same time but there is sometimes a delay switching between programs as the swapfile is updated. Overall I was not happy with the 5400 RPM drive (perhaps because I have MBA and iMac with Fusion drive) so I eventually upgraded it with an SSD. Now the mini is truly a warrior.

Mac Mini for audio recording using LOGIC X

Has anyone had experience using the latest Mac mini for audio recording? I'm thinking of purchasing the 2.6GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7 16GB 1600MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 2x8GB 1TB Serial ATA Drive @ 5400 rpm model. I'll be using Logic X along with Reasons, Wave, UA plugins with a Apollo I/O I'd appreciate any feedback and or suggestions.

I'd work off of another hard drive as much as possible. Install the applications to your boot drive, but keep your data on a separate external hard drive. If you try to run OS, apps and big audio data off of that 5400, I foresee performance issues even with 16GB of RAM. Also, don't forget a second external hard drive for your backups.

Using mac mini for windows server vpn

I'd like to use a Mac Mini with 16GB (might wait on the new one), to run a virtual Windows Server 2012 with Exchange and a virtual Windows Server 2012 with SQL Server.
Anyone doing that successfully?

Yes, you can upgrade the ram, harddrive and optical drive yourself. There are several websites that show how to do it. I've done it twice, it is really no big deal. Flip the mini over, use the right size putty knife(s) and carefully lift the lid off...from there it's a matter of removing some screws, and then reversing the procedure.
I returned my mini 2.53 because I decided I really wanted to stick with laptop for this year. But for the 2 weeks I had it, I had Logic on it. Used a USB interface, and had some Firewire drives hooked up to it. It was excellent. It's so small that it can sit right on the desk where you can get at everything.
I left the 5400 drive in it, and had zero problems. It's a rare day when someone maxes out their harddrive speed. If you check your meters in Logic, the cpu has always been maxed long, long before the HD I/O has been. If you are running 96K 30+ track creations, a mini isn't even going to be on your radar. Yet, many people use nothing but a Macbook Pro to do some very complicated tracks...and a mini is really just a macbook pro without screen/keyboard/trackpad and jammed in a small box.
I think they are fantastic values.

Using a Mac Mini with my Panasonic CT-30WC14J

Please excuse the length of this question, but theres a lot of info that may be relevant.
I have a Widescreen HDTV, Panasonic CRT 30 inch Model CT-30WC14J, and have been using it connected to my iMac for a while to watch TV shows etc. For Christmas I decided to get a Mac Mini for this TV so we didn't need to constantly bother whoever was using the iMac to watch TV or whatnot. Anyway, I hooked the Mini up using the same cable I've been using for the iMac and although it is the same TV, OS (Leopard), and HDMI cable, the Mac Mini only offers 3 resolutions. 640x480 720X480 and 1920x1080. The first two being way too small the last being an insanely high resolution. The on the iMac I had it running in 1280x720 (and had the choice of a few dozen other resolutions if I'd wished it) . However I can't get the Mini to show any but those 3 resolutions. I found a program (SwitchResX) that can change the Mac to a resolution that is not normally selectable but any of the resolutions I need are not default. When I try to use it's custom resolution I'm way in over my head because I need timing parameters for my TV. I decided to install the program on my iMac and see if it could show the correct parameters for the resolution when the TV is hooked up to the iMac but that does not seem to work when I use those numbers on the Mac Mini, so that was a dead end.
I doubt anyone could help me but is there anyone who thinks they might have an idea on what I can do, like what would be all of the timing parameters etc to input for 720p/i for the Panasonic CT-30WC14J? Maybe any other suggestions?
Thanks for looking.

Here is one thing I recommend trying since it has worked for other people under Leopard. Go into Displays preferences and click on the "Show displays in menu bar" checkbox. Go to the menu bar and click on the display icon. In the resulting drop down menu, scroll to "Number of recent items" and select 5 (or possibly try 10 if 5 doesn't work) and then restart the Mac. Hopefully this will expand the list of choices and you will see the 1280 x 720 timing that shows up on your iMac.

How do I restrict use of mac mini to one website only?

Hi Geniuses!
I want to set up a Mac Mini in my office that can only be used to browse 1 website and nothing else. I don't want any user other than Admin to have the ability to change any settings, download any apps, install any software or browse the net other than to the specified website we have restricted Safari or Firefox or what to.
The website is an online testing site for my staff training program, so the user logs onto the website with his/her username and password and then can write tests online.
I hope there are some very simple ways to achieve the above. I will be using a Mac Mini which has been set up as a server somehow and running OSX10.6.8.
The startup disk says Server HD so not sure if I should change this machine to not be a server? Or is there a way to log into the second partition which is labelled Macintosh HD2?
I hope to hear back from some of you soon.
Thanks very much all.

Thanks for that advice andyBall_uk I did look in the Library under System and found the ParentalControls.prefPane and when trying to open with System Preferences I got an error message stating:
"You can't open the "Parental Controls" preferences pane because it is not available to you at this time.
To see this preferences pane, you may need to connect a device to your computer."
Any ideas as to what I may have to connect to my computer? I did not download Workgroup Manager as yet.
Hope to hear from someone soon. Thanks, Jason

Mac Mini for the Home

Hello,
This question has been posted many times all over the internet but the responses are not specific to what I need to know. I have a MBP 2010 that is my main workhorse for everything. I was thinking of adding a Mac Mini to my network to host iTunes so that when I take my MBP away from my network I can still stream media from iTunes. I also do not want to worry about having to remebert to turn on my MBP if I decide to stream from iTunes. Basically, I want a dedicated iTunes server.
The price of a Mac Mini is not cheap and I could build a windows platform to handle the iTunes service but I do not want to deal with cross platform issues.
I want to know what other things can I do with the Mac Mini besides have it host my iTunes library. I have a drobo fs and was going to hook that up to it for storage.
I have been reading online that I can access shared folders with the Mac Mini so I can still access the drobo from my MBP. I might want to host my own website later and thought that was a cool feature of Server.
I dont have any other Macs in my ecosystem. Could I access the Mac Mini remotely and share files that way if I want to. I am thinking if I get the Mac Mini I can off load some contnet off my MBP and some tasks to the Mac Mini. Im not sure what else I can use it for. I guess Im asking how can I get the most out of a Mac Mini?
Sorry if this thread is sort of inconsistent with asking for help. I went into the Apple store to take to someone about it and they were fixated on my Drobo thinking that it could do all the work that I wanted to do. They had no idea of what a drobo was.

OS X Server does address iOS devices through Profile Manager. I'm not versed on that because I don't use it.
Yes, with VPN you can share files and Screen sharing remotely when not on your Local Area Network (LAN).
A Mac Mini can be "the brains" if that's what you want. I use my Mac Mini as a home server. I keep files for Macs and PCs on it so those computers don't have to store them on their local computer. I use VPN so I can access files when away from my LAN. I have a USB 3.0 drive I use with the Time Machine service to back up my MBP Retina over the network. I have my iTunes files on the server and use iTunes Home Sharing to share THAT iTunes library to all computers on the network.
I purchased the base model ($599) which I feel is inexpensive for a home server. It has the base RAM of 4GB which works perfectly for me since it's not using CPU/Memory resources like my Retina does which is my day-to-day computer.

Ideas to use 2 mac minis for maximum effect

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