August 2007

Aug 24 2007

Is the Mac Mini’s firmware broken?

I’ve just bought a new (2GHz Core2 Duo 😉 ) Mac Mini to run as a Media Centre hooked up to my (720p) projector.

One problem I’ve encountered here is that the Mac tries to determine the optimal resolution for the connected display (via I2C/DDC for VGA, DVI, and HDMI connections), and uses this in preference to all else the the initial login screen. And this is usually fine. The projector, however, can accept 1080p input – it just scales it to 720p (the native resolution) for display. The Mac partially sees this, and sets it’s resolution to 1920×1080 – which makes it a pain to log in as the mouse sensitivity isn’t adjusted to match the enormous resolution (so moving around takes too long) and at this size, the integrated Intel graphics really seem to suffer.

This, however, is only Apple’s fault insomuch as Mac OS gives very little control over the login screen, and doesn’t allow the resolution to be manually specified.

The problems, though, really show up when trying to install Vista via Bootcamp…

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Aug 7 2007

Oxymoron of the day

Vacuum–packed.

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Aug 7 2007

Reduced updates

Currently, the server hosting this blog (a 300MHz Silicon Graphics O2 with two SCSI discs) is sitting on a shelf in my bedroom, where it’s been housed since I moved house in December. This’d be fine, except the discs are so damned noisy! So basically, for the past 8 or 8 months, the server’s only been switched on whilst I’m not there (and even then, only when I remember to turn it on before leaving) and so there have been long outages, and few updates.

The good news is that, as of tomorrow, this should all be a thing of the past: The electrician is coming back, and is fitting the power sockets, network sockets, and a light under my stairs, so that I can finally move all of the computers into here, where they can run all day long without disturbing anyone!

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