⟐ Comment deleted 1月 13, 2019 at 8:30 GMT-7

thanks

john

⟐ Edited 2月 29, 2016 at 16:40 GMT-7

here is pictures

Hey man

Thanks Dan, I thought I had screwed the board as well, lucky for me I missed all the important parts.

I've fixed it, problem Solved. Well to start with I noticed I had pulled the wires out the other day from the little plastic fan connector, as I told you these popped back in easy enough. trouble was though I had put 2 of them wrong way round. instead of A.B.C.D, I DONE A.C.D.B, easy swap. My fan is as quiet as a mouse now Excellent, Fair enough still have that loose screw but it aint doing any harm, as it was a clean snap, and lucky for me it isn't a main connection, just a prop apple said, so they could work around the fan. I am going to leave it as Dan said, as it will be easier to work with later need I change fan in future. All 3rd party stuff is uninstalled, and its amazing how quiet it is. trouble is before I put it back in I spent hours tiring to get that screw out the metal standoff no way it s budging, so if I ever getnew fan I will saw it off and make a home made stand off. Thanks to Everybody on here for help. I need to post this fix, as it is so easy to pull them wires out, if you think you pull it out, instead of lifting it out, out wedging it out. Pew Glad that's over. On to MacBook Pro now, Who know what that will throw at me.

All the best for now

soundman johns

⟐ Edited 8月 06, 2015 at 9:50 GMT-7

I have a Mac Mini 2011 running OS X 10.10.3. I was watching a YouTube video when the machine suddenly froze and "rebooted". However, there was no startup sound (chime), nothing at all from the HDMI output and the fan starting spinning on high.

I've tried resetting the SMC but nothing has changed. Just a solid power light, no chimes/beeps and the fan spinning on high.

Any ideas?

⟐ Edited 4月 11, 2015 at 18:27 GMT-7

The only concern I have, is there is a contact tab of some sort on the hard drive assembly that may have been bent slightly during the process. It looks as though it should either be contacting the outside case, or NOT contacting the mini case itself as some sort of ground, or shock resistance? I'm not sure, just very frustrated at this point.

I encountered a very odd problem recently while trying to upgrade my mothers Mac Mini. I wanted to install a SSD drive and first purchased a Crucial M4 128 GB. Following the excellent manual provided on this website it took me just 15min to do so. Mac OS installed perfectly but the Mini would always shut down while installing Windows 7 via Boot Camp. Thinking this was an issue with the Crucial SSD, I exchanged it for a Samsung 840. The installation of Windows 7 worked, but once I wanted to install drivers, the Mini shut down again.

I discovered that when the SSD is in the Mini, the fan won't work and the sensor correctly reads 0 rpm. Bootcamp seems to have a higher cpu load so that it shuts down quicker. When I did a quick stress test in Mac OS, the mini would shut down after a few minutes too. (Apple Hardware Test (AHT) also tells me that the Fan Motor does not work)

Now comes the strange part. First I assumed I broke a cable or the temp sensor (although I used extreme caution and would describe myself as experienced with these kind of tasks).

However, when I reinstall the old 160GB HDD, the Fan will work perfectly, without any errors in AHT.

Does anyone have a clue why the fan spins normally with the original HDD installed and won't even start with 2 different SSDs? I want my mom to profit from the superior SSD speed, but when the fan simply won't work, this is not an option.

Kind regards from Germany,

Daniel

⟐ Commented 8月 11, 2020 at 18:50 GMT-7

It was a different model. Does this apply to mine also?

crucial.com only shows a 2GB kit (1GB x2).

Thanks in advance.

David

⟐ Commented 11月 12, 2018 at 15:00 GMT-7

I would like to know if I buy the hard drive Replacement kit from you guys will it be with the MacOS preinstalled

⟐ Answer accepted 7月 22, 2017 at 9:52 GMT-7

I got frustrated and installed a fresh hard disk and tried to boot the mac into a bootable mac OS X usb which I made using transmac on windows as I do not have access to any other mac. When I tried to boot into the usb, it would again load to the end and just get stuck there and would not go past it. At that point I gave up and left it for 2 years. I tried to fix it again this year and I tried various other things like creating a bootable usb from a mac os virtual machine which did not work. I got fed up and tried to install a different OS, like windows which would not work. The only OS I got to work on my mac mini was Ubuntu. I have no idea what I can do anymore.

Is this the only apple product which refuses to boot into Mac OS? I would really appreciate any help I can get because honestly.. I am in a limbo with this machine.

⟐ Commented 10月 27, 2024 at 8:13 GMT-7

I upgraded my Mac Mini (late 2014) with a SSD. The problem is it won't boot. Only the sleep light indicator blinks every 5 seconds. On this model the RAM is soldered to the logic board so it is well seated.

Any ideas?

Thank you in advance.

⟐ Answered 11月 04, 2021 at 23:19 GMT-7

I hope you're all doing great. Here's my problem :

The situation :

I tried to change many components in my mac mini a1283 to boost its performance. I followed the guides to install those followings:

Hard drive : intel ssd 520 series 120GB

RAM : 2x 204-pin SODIMM ¤ DDR3 1066MHz CL7 (2 x 4GB, product from Corsair )

Unfortunately as i couldn't follow the instructions but on my smartphone i didn't notice the part where it said not to touch the thermal cable (now it's not broken but apart of the circuit, i'll be able to fix it).

The results for now:

Now the computer won't turn on, i just have the lights on the device and a beep that repeat itself. So I looked on the internet and found it meant that there was no RAM (but the new RAM is inside). Thinking that 8GB was too much i tried to put the old ones again (with the old ATA hard-drive too), still the same result. Nothing on the screen just the one beep that repeat itself. Despite the old RAM that were working before the manipulation, there's just nothing at all for the mac.

What can I do?

⟐ Commented 9月 09, 2020 at 8:29 GMT-7

I have a Mac Mini Late 2014 and I add a PCIe ssd ( Trascend 820 ) with the flex cable, but when I turn on the mac and go to About this mac -> Storage the ssd does not appear. how can I do to install MacOS on the ssd if my mac does not recognise the drive?

any thoughts about what could be the problem?

Thank you!

⟐ Commented 6月 15, 2020 at 6:38 GMT-7

I couldn't find the DVI to VGA adapters so all the info I have so far is that one is an Intel model (a1176) and the other is a PPC model (a1103). They should be stock as far as RAM, HDD, etc. I lurked about looking for upgrade info and there was some good information but I'm still a little unclear as to what my best options are. Therefore, my questions are as follows:

1) Is there any value to upgrading or repurposing theA1103 or should I just scavenge the storage?

2) Is a motherboard upgrade possible, required, or simply unnecessary?

3) As for the A1176, what is the fastest processor I can safely install? Some of the threads provided conflicting info (one guy had no problems with processor X but another said his box ran excessively hot using same) so I was left confused as to how to use the advice presented.

3a) How much RAM can these babies hold and is there any specific config I should be aware of? For example, don't bother going to 8GB because the architecture can only address 3, etc.

3b) Similarly, are SSDs an option and how much disk space can I realistically hope to expand to?

4) If there are no "stock answers" to the above then what are the critical specs I need to take into consideration for each when trying to identify which motherboards (potentially), processors, RAM, and storage options I should be looking at?

Thanks in advance to you all for your help and guidance.

Rob

⟐ Answered 1月 31, 2020 at 1:07 GMT-7

When I went to remove said screw, it's not going anywhere. It spins, but won't go in or out. I'm assuming it's stripped badly on the inside. I tried the old tricks of using a putty knife to apply upward pressure when unscrewing and needle nose pliers, but it's not budging.

As a result of this, I can't get the power supply back in until I find a remedy. I suppose I can cut it off, but I'd prefer a less drastic method to get the screw out. Anyone seen this before or have a suggestion? Thanks for any help.

https://s18.postimg.org/et6m0bxvt/Screw....

⟐ Commented 2月 14, 2019 at 19:23 GMT-7

Many thanks

⟐ Commented 7月 08, 2017 at 22:16 GMT-7

⟐ Answer accepted 4月 02, 2014 at 3:54 GMT-7

So this is what it looks like should I clear all this test the board etc it’s doing a full spin now. Hopefully these are easily fixed.

this is after a clean

this is what I get after all the steps I’m guessing there’s a much bigger issue there’s a longer spin with the fan now though

⟐ Commented 7月 03, 2025 at 4:25 GMT-7

⟐ Answered 11月 13, 2024 at 15:56 GMT-7

I successfully installed ChromeOS Flex on a four-core Mac mini Intel Core i7. This OS will run on almost any 64-bit PC or Mac hardware. It even works very well on my ancient but heavily upgraded Mid 2007 Core2Duo iMac, because after all that is an AMD64-based machine too. That is not the issue here and I have no complaints about how ChromeOS works. It is what it is and that’s just fine, and if you don’t like it then there are many other fine operating systems out there. I like ChromeOS quite a lot because it is so simple, secure and wicked fast.

ChromeOS has ONE MAJOR FLAW, however, and it is really serious and also remarkably stupid. Unlike almost every other operating system that has ever existed in the world, yes, even the Devil’s own OS, Windows, the ChromeOS installer DOES NOT let you pick which hard drive or partition you want to use! If you proceed, and your computer has only a single internal SSD or hard drive, the installer will simply erase that and wipe out any partitions and destroy every bit of information you may have on it and greedily, ruthlessly, gobble up the entire drive. And, of course, unlike every other OS, it won’t let you use external drives either.

In addition, ChromeOS uses a very funky partitioning scheme that not even the best Linux, Windows or Mac partitioning tools can handle properly. It uses a number of overlapping, unknown, home made, nonstandard partitions and other crazy things just to be extremely difficult. And while it is possible to clone a ChromeOS drive (and I have done it) it is not at all easy. Google REALLY does not want you to be free and will not allow you to make your own choices.

To make things a little clearer, below is the original drive configuration of that computer:

disk0 / APPLE SSD / Lower / SM 128E. This is an SSD made by Samsung.

disk1 / APPLE HDD / Upper / 1 TB HTS… and then some long and tedious number or other. This is a hard drive made by Hitachi.

These two form a logical “Hybrid Drive” that may have been a good idea in the summer of 2012 but a ridiculous thing today.

Now, when I installed ChromeOS Flex on this Mac mini, for some reason the installer picked the much slower disk1, wiped it squeaky clean and took it over. This worked very well, but the installer did not even bother to ask: “Now then, citizen, dear customer, do you want to use disk1 or disk0 for ChromeOS? Or perhaps some external drive of your choice?” Oh, nooooooo…. Freedom of choice… We can’t have that, can we?

This disk1 is a regular, old style, very worn, mechanical, spinning 1 TB Hitachi hard drive, and it’s in the “upper” and almost inaccessible slot, the drive bay closest to the Mac mini’s metal enclosure… but the lower drive when you see it from the perspective of most of us. To pull out disk1 you have to basically disassemble the whole Mac mini and even pull out the logic board. It is below the more accessible disk0, the drive bay that is located directly under the metal antenna plate and in this case holds a 128 GB Samsung SSD drive… This is the “lower” slot…

OK, so finally, after all this talking (and I apologize for boring you numb and senseless with my dreary blah), here is my absolutely fascinating question to you. Do any of you good people out there in the known universe happen to know how ChromeOS auto-magically picks the install drive? (And if there is a way to manually FORCE it to use either disk.) Why did it grab the slow disk1 and not the much faster disk0 in this case?

I will replace the old Hitachi hard drive and install a new SSD there as disk1, or move the existing 128 GB SSD to this position. Will the ChromeOS installer pick disk1 again or will it use disk0?

It will be interesting to see what your responses will be. I am very thankful for any advice or information you might have. :D

Thanks in advance!

skjell, new member

⟐ Answer edited 1月 18, 2024 at 8:27 GMT-7

• It was working when i bought it ( 2,5 ghz processor, 8go Ram, Apple keyboard)
• carefully switched the internal 1To HDD with a samsung Evo SSD ( 500 gb)
• Did start the mac and heard the POST " chime" sound once. Did shut down ( I had no screen nor keyboard connected).
• After that , on next startup the "chime" POST sound never came back. I assumedthere was connection fault so I've checked everything and teardown/ remount several times since...
• connected it to a display with hdmi or mini display to vga ( both working with another mac) : no display whatsoever
• The power LED is working, no blinking
• The MAc mini heats but the Fan doesn't start
• caps lock of the USB apple keyboard doesn't work
• USB wired mouse does get power from usb and blnks
• external HDD mounted on a SATA / Usb 3 adaptor does get power and blinks
• no way to reinstall mac Os or to boot on the recovery , as I get no display and no keyboard access.
• did tryed to clone my MBP SSD to the internal SSD ( one more disassembly / assembly) , but no result.
• and now I just can't put the WI fi antenna back , maybe I've pinched the small connectors.. but I can live without WIFI :)
• 
  So I've heard about bootloader damaged or something like this, that could be helped with another mac and target disk mode start the Mac mini... That could work using a generic wired keyboard rather than the Apple USB wired keyboard, but it sounds weird.

* Does somebody know how I could fix that mess , or did i have bricked this cheap mac mini ? Is there another way to restore the system ?

• by the way thanks your for your helps and toolkit and advices.

⟐ Commented 12月 05, 2023 at 8:22 GMT-7