Mac Mini (Mid 2010) Optical Drive Stopped Working. Anyone else?

A month out of Applecare, my optical drive stopped accepting media. Took it to the Apple store and they said it either needs the ODD cabling replaced (roughly $50) or the entire drive is shot and needs to be replaced (roughly $170 repair).
While I wait for the parts to come in, I'm curious if this is a common issue and if anyone has any tips before I throw down almost $200 for an optical drive.

Mr.C UK wrote:
As far as I'm aware any form of DD or DTS whether it be 5.1, 6.1, 7.1 or indeed 7.2 is discrete by nature.
They contain discrete sound channels, but all are contained within one bitstream. They are encapsulated, if you will.
To my understanding, multi-channel PCM is not encapsulated in the same manner.
David.Austin.Allen wrote:
It was my understanding from the posts from others that this would carry digital audio.
Yes DisplayPort can provide audio. But you have to either be using an displayport-to-displayport connection, or using an appropriate adapter.
But a typical MDP to DVI adapter is not going to pass audio.
Mr.C UK wrote:
...DVI does not pass through sound...
This is correct insofar as the fact that the DVI spec does not include audio. And as you said, a typical MDP adapter does not pass audio.
But just so you know, the DVI interface can actually carry audio, if it is present. When I had my 2010 Mini's HDMI port connected to my DVI Detective (via HDMI-DVI adapter) and then the DVI detective was connected to my HDMI reciever (via DVI-HDMI cable), I was receiving the HDMI audio stream at the receiver.

Similar Messages

Mac Mini (Mid 2010) Optical Audio Annoyance / Issue

Hi,
I just purchased a new Mac Mini a few days ago and got it up and running with HDMI to my TV and optical audio to my AVR. I have bitstream passthrough working in DVD player and VLC / Quicktime with Perian installed. Happy camper on that end.
My issue lies that I am unable to change my speaker configuration from 2ch stereo in Audio MIDI Setup. This means that I can not use my 7.1 AVR to monitor 8 channels of audio out of the pro apps I'm trying to use! (Final Cut/Soundtrack)
I even wen as far as to take the HDMI out of the mix thinking that it was affecting the amount of audio channels available to me and switched to using a MDP->DVI adaptor with a DVI->HDMI cable so that audio is not passed. No dice.
Is there some kind of magic mojo that is needed to get Audio MIDI Setup to allow me to select more than 2 channels when using an optical connection? I really would like to use my pro apps and monitor my mixes as well as watch
Look forward to hearing from the Apple guru's here! Thanks.

Mr.C UK wrote:
As far as I'm aware any form of DD or DTS whether it be 5.1, 6.1, 7.1 or indeed 7.2 is discrete by nature.
They contain discrete sound channels, but all are contained within one bitstream. They are encapsulated, if you will.
To my understanding, multi-channel PCM is not encapsulated in the same manner.
David.Austin.Allen wrote:
It was my understanding from the posts from others that this would carry digital audio.
Yes DisplayPort can provide audio. But you have to either be using an displayport-to-displayport connection, or using an appropriate adapter.
But a typical MDP to DVI adapter is not going to pass audio.
Mr.C UK wrote:
...DVI does not pass through sound...
This is correct insofar as the fact that the DVI spec does not include audio. And as you said, a typical MDP adapter does not pass audio.
But just so you know, the DVI interface can actually carry audio, if it is present. When I had my 2010 Mini's HDMI port connected to my DVI Detective (via HDMI-DVI adapter) and then the DVI detective was connected to my HDMI reciever (via DVI-HDMI cable), I was receiving the HDMI audio stream at the receiver.

Mac Mini (Mid 2010) CD Drive problem

Hi all! I can't insert a CD into the drive on my Mini. The CD goes in about half way but then it won't go any further and the drive doesn't grab the disk and inject it like normal. I hardly ever use the CD drive on this machine so I thought perhaps I left a disk in the drive a while back, but if I did, it's not ejecting it. I tried holding down the left mouse button after restarting the computer, but it didn't work. I also just noticed that the drive does not have an eject hole for a paper clip. I don't know if there's a disk in there or not. If there is, it's not being recognized. I also just realized the drive doesn't make that odd whir whir sound before the start-up chime when you first turn on the computer. Any help would be appreciated!

Reset the SMC > Intel-based Macs: Resetting the System Management Controller (SMC)
Shut down the computer.
Unplug the computer's power cord.
Wait fifteen seconds.
Attach the computer's power cord.
Wait five seconds, then press the power
the PRAM > Resetting your Mac's PRAM and NVRAM
Shut down the computer.
Locate the following keys on the keyboard: Command, Option, P, and R. You will need to hold these keys down simultaneously in step 4.
Turn on the computer.
Press and hold the Command-Option-P-R keys. You must press this key combination before the gray screen appears.
Hold the keys down until the computer restarts and you hear the startup sound for the second time.
Release the keys.
and then try the CD again.

Mac mini (Mid 2010) GPU driver for XP.

For some reasons, I need to use and virtual XP. And for some reasons, I contacted nVidia but it seems they don't know anything about it either. It has a GeForce 320M video card. I hope you could help me. Tia.

You need to check with the company that makes the virtual software. They have the driver packages available to use their product with a given Guest OS on a given Host OS.
Dah•veed

Macbook Pro optical drive stopped working after upgrading from Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard to OS X Mavericks.

My Macbook Pro optical drive stopped working after upgrading from Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard to OS X Mavericks.. I wonder what's the work around or troubleshooting to fix this. Thanks!

try and Reset the System Management Controller (SMC)

Caught in a conundrum while trying to upgrade a Mac Mini (mid 2010) from Snow Leopard to Mountain Lion

Hi gang,
I am in a very frustrating position as I try to upgrade my Mac Mini (mid 2010) from OS X 10.6.8 Snow Leopard to whatever the latest version of Mountain lion is. The reason I am doing this is because the original hard drive died and the Mini sat there for 6 months before we decided to get a new hard drive and revive it.
I installed a new 500GB 7200rpm SATA drive and the problems began.
First I couldn't get Mountain Lion installed as a fresh OS installation (using both a USB drive and a DVD to no avail). It just wouldn't go. The grey Apple logo/loading screen would come up and just sit there doing nothing while the loading icon spun.
I then tried installing Snow Leopard (the OS that the Mini came with when it was new). After some messing around, that got done.
However, a peculiar thing happens when the Mini boots. Everything loads up into Snow Leopard, but although the mouse curser moves, I cannot click on anything or use the keyboard for 4-5 minutes. Then it just work (I am typing this on the Mini). This happens every time.
Now, when I updated to 10.6.8, I was able to load up the App Store and download the Mountain Lion install app. I clicked it and went through the initial copying of files and then the restart, but after the reboot, the grey loading screen would not progress. I rebooted again and held down the Option key to check out the available boot volumes, and all I saw was the installation DVD I had in there for Snow Leopard and a hard disk volume called "Mac OS X Installer."
So I booted into the Snow Leopard install DVD and opened Disk Utility to check things out. I did a verify disk and a permissions repair. Interestingly, the first repair I did gave me the message that the ACL was missing from Volumes and that is was fixed. I read something somewhere which talked about the Access Control List and mouse/keyboard issues. But who knows. When I boot back into the Mini as normal I am returned to the fully-functioning Snow Leopard installation, like nothing happened.
And now here is the kicker: it appears that the Firewire bus is hooped. In the Profiler, when I view the FireWire settings I get the message, "Warning: Unable to list FireWire devices." So I am pretty sure the one thing I cannot do is boot the Mini into target disk mode attached to my Mac Pro and installed Mountain Lion that way.
So to recap: I can't finish the Mountain Lion installation because the install won't continue after rebooting because there is something wrong with the underlying base system, which might be hardware (FW bus) related. I think.
Some things I have tried:
Resetting the SMC
Resetting the PRAM
Reparing permissions
Booting into Safe Mode (doesn't work)
Booting into Verbose Mode to observe what happens (I get the "Can't load the Bootcache.playlist" error, which I suspect is related to the screwed up FW bus)
Trying to boot using Internet Recovery (doesn't work)
Booting into Single User Mode and attempting the "fsck -y" etc. sequence to try and repair the ACL that way
So I am stuck.
I guess the question is, should I get an external HD enclosure and install Mountain Lion onto the hard drive that way and hope it works when I put it back into the Mini?
Any other ideas? I have spent a couple days ******* around with this is am running out of ideas...
Any advice would be appreciated!

Addendum: I read on a post here (http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=420169) about removing some kext files in order to trick OSX into thinking that there were no FireWire ports.
I followed the instructions and removed from /System/Library/Extensions/ the following files:
IOFireWireSerialBusProtocolTransport.kext
IOFireWireAVC.kext
IOFireWireFamily.kext
IOFireWireIP.kext
IOFireWireSBP2.kext
I restarted and BAM...Snow Leopard booted crazy fast and the mouse and keyboard worked instantly.
The System Profiler says "No FireWire ports were found."
So this tells me that the FW port is probably the culprit and is messing up the installation.
So how do I hack the Mountain Lion installer and tell it to ignore the FW port, which is obviously quite dead? Or is there something I can do to the Base system that is similar?

Mac mini mid 2010, graphic ghosts

*Mac mini mid 2010 2,4 Ghz 4 GB ram, Mac OSX 10.6.4*
*Hi everyone, please help me because here in Italy also the Apple's technicians don't know what to say about this problem that I have.*
I connect usb keys but also firewire ext drives and when I open one of them from the desktop doing 2 clicks the usb key/firewire ext drive open but during the opening of the file there is a video fake (I don't know how to explain), as like as the graphic card can not open easily and quickly the files and does a sort of graphic ghost.
Then when I open many files and I try to close all from the keybord the graphic card will work slow to close them all.
Please help me because for me is the first time since 1997 that I watch a thing like that, it seems that I have bought a very old Mac and not a brand new one!!
I have another Mac mini (previous version 2009) and it works very nice and fast without this problem!!
Thank you all for your replies
ps: This machine soffered of a problem to the sd card reader and the main logic board has been replaced but the problem continues.

You can't upgrade the graphics card on a Mini. As far as I'm aware it is part of the logic board and also uses shared memory with the main RAM.
As to which of those is the best card that is going to be hard to answer. I suspect it may be a toss up between the 320M and the 8800GTX although I suspect that even with less memory the 320M is probably the best.

Mac mini (Mid 2010) Internet issues

Hi everyone!
I recently replaced three older Mac minis with new Mac mini (Mid 2010) computers. The new computers all work well, but they each exhibit the same problem wherein Java and Flash content on certain sites will fail to run properly.
The problem occurs right out of the box and with any browser I try to use, i.e. Safari, Firefox, Chrome, etc. In every case, I'm able to load Java and Flash web content without any difficulties on other Apple computers, including the older Mac minis I replaced.
Each of the new Mac minis came preinstalled with Mac OS 10.6, and installing the requisite system and Flash updates didn't resolve the problem.
What is it about these computers that's causing them all to load and run these web sites so poorly? I purchased them separately and from different vendors over the course of a few months, so it's almost impossible that they all have the same defect.
Any advice on how to correct this problem would be greatly appreciated. A few of the sites wherein I've encountered this problem are as follows:
1. Cogeco speedtest: speedtest.cogeco.net
2. www.speedtest.net
3. the Skype download page
Thanks in advance!
Pietro

Platactico, a couple of things come to mind when I read your post. First question is about the length of the HDMI cable in use. Is is more than 2 meters long? Once a cable gets past 2 m, and certainly by 5 m, the quality of the cable can play a role, and you see cases where one device can drive that length, like your PS3, but another device cannot. So if the cable is longer than 2 m, consider its quality and try a better one, or a shorter one.
Another point I would like to make about something that is different between a PS3 and a Mac, there is embedded in both a DVI and HDMI cable something called the Display Data Channel (DDC). The data moving across this channel is critical to a Mac in its operation with a display. With other types of consumer electronics devices, it is not used in the same way, or not used at all. So just because your HDMI cable is proven to pass video data using a PS3, there could still be problems with the cable relative to the DDC. So that's another reason to be trying a different HDMI cable.

Max capacity for sd card slot Mac Mini mid 2010

Has anyone with a MAC Mini mid 2010 tried using the SD card slot for an extended drive? I'm wondering what the max size is for the slot, and if I put a 64-128 gig SD Card in, would OS X 10.8.2 be able to combine that with an internal HD to create a "fusion drive"?

Your Mid 2010 Mac mini doesn't support SDXC, so you can't use this type of cards. Fusion Drive needs an SSD and a hard drive on the same Mac mini, so an SD won't work with this

Does the Mac mini mid-2010 have an active PFC power supply?

I'm about to buy a UPS unit to run my NAS, and I'd like to connect my Mac mini to it as well. Does the Mac mini mid-2010 model have an active PFC (power factor correction) PSU (power supply unit)?
I've read that if it does (as the Dell XPS series do), then one of the cheaper UPS units won't work because those typically have modified/simulated sine wave outputs (you'll only notice when the power is out and the UPS is feeding power from its battery). It would mean I'd have to buy one of the more expensive UPS units like APC Smart-UPS SC620 or CyberPower CP1000PFCLCD.
I can't seem to find any resources that explain this. Please?

FWIW, I use one of these:
http://www.cyberpowersystems.com/products/ups-systems/soho-ups/cp425slg.html?sel ectedTabId=overview&imageI=#tab-box
for my HTPC setup. I have a 2010 Mini with a couple of USB drives plugged
into it, my 42" Samsung LCD TV, cable modem, cable box, and an Airport Extreme
Base Station running off of the backup power ports (not my 5.1 receiver for obvious
power reasons). With all on, I get enough time to gracefully power down the Mini with
time to spare when power goes out. When not watching TV or listening to music,
the cable modem and AEBS can run a long time during a power outage.
I have had this setup for around 2 years and have had no ill effects on any of
the gear and I do periodically have everthing powered then yank the AC
cord to cycle the battery.

Why is not Mac Mini mid 2010 airplay supported in Mountain Lion?

I am really disappointed that a two year old computer mac mini mid 2010 is not supported for airplay in the new OS release Mountain Lion.
I do not think it can be HW related, I think it is the marketing people at apple who are greedy. I am willing to pay for the software upgrade but I don't want to buy a new computer every year. Bought mac for premium price since I thought it would last longer and have HW that is supported.

Actually I was not after the video part in Airplay more the Airtunes part which is working on my machine in Itunes. I hoped there now would be support for the audio part of Airplay in any program so that I could play spotify from my mac to my airplay capable airport express. Today I am using my Ipad or Iphone to airplay spotify which is working great, but say I want to have some music on my stereo while watching a youtube video on the Ipad then the spotify stream is stopped and the video i airplayed instead, anoying. Yes I now there is a third pary solution for this http://rogueamoeba.com/airfoil/mac/ but why is not this built right into the OS?
Regarding the video part of Airplay you are probably right that the Mac Mini mid 2010 may not have the on the fly HW encoding. But what about using the processor DualCore 2,66MHz and perhaps some reduction in video quality if needed.
I have already tested this with this open source program that turns your mac mini into an apple tv http://ericasadun.com/category/airplayer/
There is now a commercial program available http://bananatv.net/ , again I expected this to be built right into the OS by apple but maybe I should not compare apples and bananas :-)

I have a Mac mini mid 2010. I have ML installed on one of the 500GB disks. I want to install Boot Camp on the 2nd 500GB disk. Mine is XP Professional.

I have a Mac mini mid 2010. I recently installed ML on one of the 500GB disks. I want to install Boot Camp on the 2nd 500GB disk. Mine is XP Professional. My original OS was Snow Leopard Server edition. Please let me have your suggestions and advice. Thank you. I am in India.

Mountain Lion Boot Camp no longer supports Windows XP, it would also only prepare the same physical disk you run the Boot Camp Utility from i.e. the Mountain Lion disk.
See http://support.apple.com/kb/ht4818#3
I suggest you start off with the second drive formatted as a single HFS+ volume with a GUID partition scheme, then install Snow Leopard on it. Then boot with Snow Leopard and run its version of Boot Camp utility, when you tell it to prepare the (second) drive you can tell it to allocate the minimum to Snow Leopard and the maximum to Windows. Then you can install Windows XP.
Note: Boot Camp Utility was not included with Snow Leopard Server.

How do I download pictures from a Canon 5D Mark III to my Mac mini (mid 2010)

Got a Canon 5D Mark III and I was wondering how I'm going to download the pictures to my Mac mini (mid 2010). Would I need any special software and a card reader? Saw a 3.0 USB card reader for sale but didn't think that would work on my Mac mini. Please confirm.

If the USB 3 card reader states that it is backwards compatible with USB 2, it should work. Otherwise, purchase a USB 2 card reader.

Mac mini (Mid 2010) HDMI & DTS-HD

Hello to everyone,
I'm using Mac mini (Early 2009) as HTPC.
With Mac OS X 10.6.4 and Plex, I watch MKV with DTS.
I have connected my mac with my Harman/Kardon.
My problem is when I want to play Blu-Ray (iso files).
I boot Win 7 (Boot Camp), and I use as a player the ArcSoft TotalMedia Theatre 3 Platinum.
So I get the Audio from SPDIF and I have a DTS signal.
Because of the limitation of the SPDIF it is not possible to get the DTS-HD, the SPDIF dose not support bitstream.
Does the new Mac mini (Mid 2010) pass the DTS-HD throu the HDMI?
thanks.

Completed my testing.. My mission was to watch a non ripped blu ray on my mac using a USB external blu ray player, Sony/NEC JV edition.
:confused:
*Short Version - There appears no way to play a blu ray on a mac unless you rip it.* Period ... but I tried really.
*Detailed Version*
Did some testing today, on a new 4gb mac mini w/ snow leopard and a USB External mac friendly 'labeled' external sony/nec blu ray player. I use the mac mini as a media extender connected to my 52" plasma and back to my 'PC Config'
The 'PC config' is cat5 connected via GIGe from the mac mini back to a Apple Extreme that acts as a network hub connecting to my NAS, (2x2tb raid) & PC (Windows 7 on Quad core 8gb ram 20TB HD (5x 2TB internal and 5 x 2TB external) NAS and ADSL2+ Internet (got all that).
Here are my results; no surprises.
Litmus Test : On a windows 7 PC it lets you play a blu ray disc on it (go figure) or dvd/cd of course.
Test 2 On the Mac it plays a dvd only
Test 3 On the Mac running window 7 in parallels it plays a dvd only
Test 4 On the Mac running windows 7 in boot camp it plays a dvd only
Test 5 On the Mac networked to a PC with the blu ray drive shared it plays a dvd only
Test 6 On the Mac networked to a PC with the blu ray drive shared it plays a dvd only in Parallels 5 and Windows 7
Test 7 On the Mac networked to a PC with the blu ray drive shared it plays a dvd only in boot camp running Windows 7
Software used for windows 7 (pc and in MAC vm) VLC, and Cyberlink Power DVD 10. The mac will run an MKV file (ripped blu ray no problem), too mcuh trouble, I just want to play a blu ray.
Hope to avoid buying another blu ray player.

Mac Mini Mid 2010 windows won't boot

After using boot camp to install and run Windows 7 on a Mac Mini Mid 2010, I restarted the machine to boot OSX. Now I can't boot back to Windows. Boot Camp seems to be working fine, but the partition I created doesn't appear to be bootable. I don't know what to do or how to solve the issue. How can I solve this issue?

I will venture that you were unlucky. Twice could be a coincidence. However, if it were to occur again, then you have a pattern and I would imagine that Apple would think something in your home/office is causing the issue and be less likely to want to swap for another.
Dah•veed

Mac Mini (Mid 2010) Optical Drive Stopped Working. Anyone else?

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