Snow leopard on the 2011 Mac mini now possible and working 100%!

[newfoundglory]

Well... It "feels" faster than Lion... Unfortunately! But thats the same with my MBP anyway. There are a few really good Lion innovations, but its just not worth the trouble at the moment is it?

I ran Xbench as well (non-raid, screenshot attached) for those interested.

I only really use it for web browsing and recently purchased it because it will be the last mini to support Snow Leopard - I have a 40mb broadband (VDSL2). If the website can spit the page out fast enough, it renders/downloads instantly (BBC News, Apple.com)

 

[philipma1957]

I now have improved my snow score from 2700 to 6500 on geek bench 32 bit. I followed the thread on the apple site and have to say it is nice but I must be doing something wrong as I have scores of 8500 for lion. Still 6500 speed is nice.

 

[URHD]

Snow Leopard On New Mac Mini 2011

100% Working its True , There's A Trick To It But I Installed It With No Problem , Everything Works !! New Mac Mini Os 10.6.8 8GB Ram

The Way I Did It Did Not Even Involve The Target Disk Mode Some People Are Talking About

Loving The Extra Ram And man It's A big Step!

 

[busdgmg]

100% Working its True , There's A Trick To It But I Installed It With No Problem , Everything Works !! New Mac Mini Os 10.6.8 8GB Ram

The Way I Did It Did Not Even Involve The Target Disk Mode Some People Are Talking About

Loving The Extra Ram And man It's A big Step!

What's the trick? I need to replace an ancient 10.6.8 server with newer hardware,
and I would -love- to avoid having to migrate everything to Lion server.

Please share.

 

[philipma1957]

What's the trick? I need to replace an ancient 10.6.8 server with newer hardware,
and I would -love- to avoid having to migrate everything to Lion server.

Please share.

here is a 31 page thread on apple forums


https://discussions.apple.com/message/17978084?ac_cid=142432#17978084

 

[MichaelLAX]

here is a 31 page thread on apple forums

Here is a link to an instructional method to do this without having to read all 31 pages:

https://discussions.apple.com/message/29633640#29633640

 

[Celerondon]

Wow MichaelLAX, you just did a double-necropost! If we add up both threads, you jumped a total of 63 months of dormant time with no thread activity.

There is a weird Frankenstein quality to this threads of this topic. It seems dead but then...

The early posts talk about issues like "many folks having lots of trouble with Lion..." and the new 2011 mini but you are stoking the embers (of both threads) in an effort to restore the flames. This topic is mostly dead. Perhaps newfoundglory summed this issue up with this post from 4 years ago.

Are people still trying to do this? I managed to fix the performance problems with the 2011 mini under 10.6.8:

 

[dogslobber]

Careful, according to that thread the other Mac needs to have a similar hardware configuration (i-core, similar GPU, Thunderbolt) in order for this procedure to work. The guy who found the solution used a 2011 MBP.

Isn't it simply installing the missing device drivers? Why not manually do that with a tool such as Pacifist?

 

[Celerondon]

Isn't it simply installing the missing device drivers? Why not manually do that with a tool such as Pacifist?

That might work but...

Considering that the quoted comment was made 4½ years ago, the original problem is probably a non-issue now. The point of installing a pre-Lion operating system was to avoid OS X 10.7 issues on hardware that was shipped with the newer system. Now in 2016 there have been 4 newer OS X versions and years of updates to the original Lion operating system that shipped with their hardware. Is it not reasonable to assume that by now the 2011 mini users should have solved their problems(or the problems have solved themselves with OS X updates)?

 

[Midgetinabikini]

I had El capitan on my 2009MM, I don't see what's the big deal.

 

[ActionableMango]

I had El capitan on my 2009MM, I don't see what's the big deal.

Well unless ElCap secretly brought back Rosetta, then Snow Leopard will always be a big deal to those needing to run PPC apps. I stayed on Snow for a looooooooooooooooooooooong time.

 

[MichaelLAX]

As the last poster suggests, running Snow Leopard continues to be an issue for many, given the lack of Rosetta in OS X Lion 10.7 and thereafter.

A recent post on the Apple Community Support Forum asked the question about the last Mac Mini to run Snow Leopard, so the OP could access Rosetta to continue to run an orphaned PowerPC applications (such as Appleworks databases). While the "official" answer is the 2010 Mac Mini, I made the reply there to show that the 2011 Mac Mini can run Snow Leopard as well.

I also noted a reference on this board to the "31 page" thread that includes the work of newfoundglory and decided to make it easy to access his work without reading through 31 pages.

Since most of my research on the issue of running Snow Leopard in Parallels (as a method to restore access to Rosetta and run PowerPC apps) has been hosted on this forum since 2012 (as the first post can be continuously updated, a feature not available on the Apple forum), I thought the information might be helpful here as well (inspite of the risk of offending the one or two members who have nothing better to do than criticize the work of others...)

 

[Celerondon]

I thought the information might be helpful here as well (inspite of the risk of offending the one or two members who have nothing better to do than criticize the work of others...)

There was no offense taken MichaelLAX. I am sure that your work has value to those who are trying to run PowerPC apps on newer hardware. Don't deceive yourself, although we have better things to do there is still plenty of time for you.

I can see how someone who was running Appleworks or similar software could be prompted to search for your solution by a hardware failure or some other problem. A solution that will allow PowerPC apps to run on newer hardware should have value for a select group of users.

I ran the original Appleworks and Appleworks GS back in the day. It is interesting to see the progress of the WYSIWYG DTP concepts in the last thirty years.

 

[MichaelLAX]

It never fails to amaze me that someone who has never made any positive contribution in the past to a particular thread, with no understanding of what that thread is all about, and will jump in just to make an a** of himself!

 

[arkieboy72472]

Would it be possible to have someone have a disk image of a working install that can be restored onto a drive and then implanted into a Mini. I will even compress it and host it on my G-Drive.

 

[MichaelLAX]

Let me see what my Snow Leopard partition compresses to.

 

[arkieboy72472]

Let me see what my Snow Leopard partition compresses to.

Thanks. I already host a el captain disk image with every installer from Lion to Monterey on it. I figure maybe someone has an install all set up and prepared and instead of using the commands, just make a disk image and then compress it. Then, once it is uncompressed and restored, you can extend it (I think) to the rest of the disk. I don’t have a 2011 MBP or all of the files sitting around.

BTW, LEM website article is the reason for the necro post. I may snag a 2010/2011 just for this reason for my kids room.

One thing I have not stopped to even ask: Why Snow Leopard? PPC apps?

 

[MichaelLAX]

Yes the last OS to include Rosetta with its ability to run PPC software.

LEM?

 

[MichaelLAX]

My 2011 Mac Mini Snow Leopard partition is about 103Gb large, but has personal information of mine in it, so it is not appropriate to share with others.

It is one of three partitions that are backed up to my Time Machine external drive, but I have never attempted to do a restore of this partition; High Sierra, yes now many times.

Something is going wrong with my HS partition and I might upgrade to a SSD and restore all 3 partitions (the other partition is the original Lion startup, later upgraded to Mt. Lion.