I tried really hard to find work for my 2007 Mac Mini tonight.
I first thought of running Plex on it, but realized I’d have a hard time finding a copy of Plex that could run. Then, I thought it could work as a DVD player because it’s one of the rare devices we have with a DVD drive.
However, it can’t connect to my fairly modern display, nor to my TV, which would actually take a VGA connection, but instead of VGA or DVI or S-Video, it has a Mini-DVI output. No combination of adapters I have can connect it to a display.
So, I thought I’d put it out to pasture after seeing what was on it and cleaning it out. I tried to screen share to it from my other really old Mac, but that didn’t work. Only when I connected them directly via Ethernet, could I screen share.
I then saw that there were photos from 2007-2010 that I’m not sure I had backed up elsewhere. So, I tried to rsync them to my archival Pi, but I kept losing the wireless connection.
After trying to hook up an old external hard drive without much success, I remembered that old photos are much smaller. I fit it all on a thumb drive, and tomorrow, I can wipe it and dump it.
I did think about still keeping it around to rip CDs, but if the only way to connect to it is going to by using another old Mac connected to it by cable, that would be painful.
It still somehow seems like a waste of computing power!