Hi all,
I have created an account here solely for this purpose, because I'm starting to become really desperate.
I recently bought a used Mac Mini 3,1 (A1283, Late 2009 model) in good condition. It has a 2.53 GHz Core 2 Duo (P8700), 4GB of RAM, a 320GB HDD and an NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics processor with 256 MB of memory. Not the best specs for today's standards, but good enough for my purposes to use it as a computer to try it different operating systems and play around a bit. OS X El Capitan was installed by the previous owner beforehand, and with that, everything seemed to work just fine.
So, these are the issues I have been running into for several days now:
The "installing Linux via USB" issue:
I at first tried to install Linux via a bootable USB. So I grabbed the most recent distro of Linux Mint MATE and flashed it onto the USB with BalenaEtcher. I plugged it into the Mac and pressed the "Option" key on the keyboard, selected the USB drive and all of a sudden it said something along the lines of "failed to boot". I simply pressed enter and then I was suddenly able to select various installation methods for Mint (just as usual). But here is where the problems start; when trying to do a clean install, it would try to do some sort of "tests" of the various components until the CPU stalls. After that, I tried to install Mint via "Secure Boot" and this would let me get into the live environment and install it from there. However, after the installation process was completed, the Mac wouldn't boot up anymore. The hard drive starts spinning up and the light of the Mac turns on (which means that it's receiving power and is "technically" working), but the screen stays blank and my monitor doesn't seem to receive any signal.
So I tried other distros (Debian, Ubuntu, AntiX, Xubuntu, etc.) and I more or less ran into the exact same issues (when trying out Ubuntu/Xubuntu/Lubuntu, instead of doing the "tests", it would give me an error message with something regarding "irqpoll". I tried googling the issue, however I couldn't find any helpful information). One thing I noticed though, was the fact that when I tried to install other distros over the live environment, it would warn me each time that a different distro of Linux was already installed, which would mean that the installations themselves were in fact successfull, but the Mac just didn't want to boot into the OS. So unfortunately, installing Linux via USB didn't seem to be working at all. I thought that it might be due to the USB, however, I received the same results with other USB, too.
The "installing an old Mac OS X version via the SuperDrive" issue:
So after all the hassle with Linux, I tried to install an old version of Mac OS X via the bulit-in DVD drive. I had some bootable Mac OS DVDs lying around, so I decided to give them a shot. I had an original Snow Leopard install DVD, a self-burned Lion DVD and another self-burned Mountain Lion DVD. I know for a fact that these DVDs work just fine, since I tried them out on my 2011 MacBook Pro multiple times and everything (even the Linux installations) worked like a dream. So, I put in the DVDs, one by one, but each time, the DVD drive would seemingly try to run for a couple of seconds and then just spit out the DVD. I even opened the device up to see whether the DVD drive might have collected some dust, but even that didn't help, so I assume the SuperDrive is just dead.
The "installing an old Mac OS X version via a bootable USB stick" issue:
After all these disappointing results, I tried to give the device one final chance by creating a bootable USB stick with a version of Mac OS X on it. I downloaded various supported OS X versions directly from Apple's website (Lion, Mountain Lion, Yosemite and El Capitan), created a bootable USB drive on my Windows Laptop via TransMac (I don't have my MacBook at hand at the moment) and plugged it into the Mac Mini. And at first glance, everything seemed to FINALLY work; I got into the Mac OS installation menu, deleted the HDD, went on to install the OS and guess what - it didn't work. Instead, an error message occured stating that "an error occured while preparing the installation". After some research, I found out that changing the date ove the terminal might help, but even that didn't do it for me. I took a look into the log by pressing command-L, and there it said something along the lines about the OS not being an App Store version and that my Mac wasn't found in the Apple database, so that it's validity couldn't be verified. After that, I gave up.
So here I am, stranded with an old Mac, which at first glance seemed to work just fine, but doesn't let me boot into any OS at all. If you've read everything so far, I'm really thankful and I appreciate any form of help.
Cheers!
I have created an account here solely for this purpose, because I'm starting to become really desperate.
I recently bought a used Mac Mini 3,1 (A1283, Late 2009 model) in good condition. It has a 2.53 GHz Core 2 Duo (P8700), 4GB of RAM, a 320GB HDD and an NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics processor with 256 MB of memory. Not the best specs for today's standards, but good enough for my purposes to use it as a computer to try it different operating systems and play around a bit. OS X El Capitan was installed by the previous owner beforehand, and with that, everything seemed to work just fine.
So, these are the issues I have been running into for several days now:
The "installing Linux via USB" issue:
I at first tried to install Linux via a bootable USB. So I grabbed the most recent distro of Linux Mint MATE and flashed it onto the USB with BalenaEtcher. I plugged it into the Mac and pressed the "Option" key on the keyboard, selected the USB drive and all of a sudden it said something along the lines of "failed to boot". I simply pressed enter and then I was suddenly able to select various installation methods for Mint (just as usual). But here is where the problems start; when trying to do a clean install, it would try to do some sort of "tests" of the various components until the CPU stalls. After that, I tried to install Mint via "Secure Boot" and this would let me get into the live environment and install it from there. However, after the installation process was completed, the Mac wouldn't boot up anymore. The hard drive starts spinning up and the light of the Mac turns on (which means that it's receiving power and is "technically" working), but the screen stays blank and my monitor doesn't seem to receive any signal.
So I tried other distros (Debian, Ubuntu, AntiX, Xubuntu, etc.) and I more or less ran into the exact same issues (when trying out Ubuntu/Xubuntu/Lubuntu, instead of doing the "tests", it would give me an error message with something regarding "irqpoll". I tried googling the issue, however I couldn't find any helpful information). One thing I noticed though, was the fact that when I tried to install other distros over the live environment, it would warn me each time that a different distro of Linux was already installed, which would mean that the installations themselves were in fact successfull, but the Mac just didn't want to boot into the OS. So unfortunately, installing Linux via USB didn't seem to be working at all. I thought that it might be due to the USB, however, I received the same results with other USB, too.
The "installing an old Mac OS X version via the SuperDrive" issue:
So after all the hassle with Linux, I tried to install an old version of Mac OS X via the bulit-in DVD drive. I had some bootable Mac OS DVDs lying around, so I decided to give them a shot. I had an original Snow Leopard install DVD, a self-burned Lion DVD and another self-burned Mountain Lion DVD. I know for a fact that these DVDs work just fine, since I tried them out on my 2011 MacBook Pro multiple times and everything (even the Linux installations) worked like a dream. So, I put in the DVDs, one by one, but each time, the DVD drive would seemingly try to run for a couple of seconds and then just spit out the DVD. I even opened the device up to see whether the DVD drive might have collected some dust, but even that didn't help, so I assume the SuperDrive is just dead.
The "installing an old Mac OS X version via a bootable USB stick" issue:
After all these disappointing results, I tried to give the device one final chance by creating a bootable USB stick with a version of Mac OS X on it. I downloaded various supported OS X versions directly from Apple's website (Lion, Mountain Lion, Yosemite and El Capitan), created a bootable USB drive on my Windows Laptop via TransMac (I don't have my MacBook at hand at the moment) and plugged it into the Mac Mini. And at first glance, everything seemed to FINALLY work; I got into the Mac OS installation menu, deleted the HDD, went on to install the OS and guess what - it didn't work. Instead, an error message occured stating that "an error occured while preparing the installation". After some research, I found out that changing the date ove the terminal might help, but even that didn't do it for me. I took a look into the log by pressing command-L, and there it said something along the lines about the OS not being an App Store version and that my Mac wasn't found in the Apple database, so that it's validity couldn't be verified. After that, I gave up.
So here I am, stranded with an old Mac, which at first glance seemed to work just fine, but doesn't let me boot into any OS at all. If you've read everything so far, I'm really thankful and I appreciate any form of help.
Cheers!
