So I have this 1.66GHz Core Duo Mac Mini (1,1), and it was a bit slow for my new TV tuner, just barely keeping up. Given than Core 2 Duo is so vastly superior, and they’re old enough now to be (relatively) cheap on eBay, I decided to upgrade.

I found a T7400 on eBay for about $150 shipped, which runs at 2.16GHz and is the next-to-best processor that will fit in a current Mac Mini. (Any Intel mini will do, even the old skool Core Solos) You need a pinned model, but I found that I could get the other (solder-type) model from Kaga with “aftermarket” pins for a bit cheaper, (something like this) so I did. It works great.

There are instructions on how to do the upgrade all over the place, but here are three very important notes:

1. Buy a 4-40 bolt set. The nylon fasteners on your Mac Mini are fragile, and even if they don’t break, probably shouldn’t be reused. Most people recommend nylon nuts/bolts, but I could only find metal at my local hobby shop (RC planes and cars use this kind of thing), and they’re working fine. There’s limited clearance underneath your Mini’s mobo, and you don’t want large nuts touching any of the circuitry underneath, so put your bolts in upside-down. Buying bolts that are “too long” will make it much easier to get the nuts on over the springs that hold your heatsink in place. Since I used metal screws, I put a piece of 3M electrical tape (the good 33 stuff) on the metal mobo tray underneath them, just to eliminate any possible electrical oddities.
2. Get your thermal paste right Clean the HS off well with Rubbing Alcohol. Put a small glob (like 2 grains of rice worth) of Arctic Silver 5 (or whatever goo you’re using) on the center of the die. Don’t spread it out, just put the HS on top and fasten ‘er down. If you spread it out yourself, you could get air bubbles and crud in there, which is not good. I did this wrong the first time and found that even with my fan set to 1900, my Mini would idle in the mid-to-high 50s. By reapplying, now my fan is at 1800 and I’m idling in the mid-to-high 40s.
3. Use smcFanControl. Set your minimum fan speed to 1800, because the Core 2 Duos run a little hotter than the Core Duos.

That’s it! My “new” Mac Mini (now with 2GB of RAM and the 2.16GHz processor) just flies, and it benched at somewhere around 30%+ better with XBench. The real story though is in how it “feels,” which is about twice as fast–I don’t hit that ceiling anymore where everything just starts acting like crap.

So… if you’ve got an Intel Mac Mini, upgrade already! You won’t regret it! (Just make sure you get your thermal paste right…)

So I was looking for great mac software, and I stumbled upon a site that I had visited way back when: iusethis.com.

This time around, I felt that I had some experience, so I made my own list. What does Andy use on his mac? Find out at http://osx.iusethis.com/user/apull.

What do you use? Make your own profile and leave the address in the comments!

Just last night I figured out how to take my new EyeTV Hybrid and turn it into a video-streaming machine. In other words, it plugs into my cable feed and makes live TV (and recorded shows) available to any computer on my local network, and conceivably to any computer anywhere if I set up my router properly.

So…when Lisa’s having Trinity Wives Bible Study in the living room, I can watch TV in my office, on my computer. (That would mean Prison Break live!) Or, if I go somewhere and need to keep an eye on what’s going on during March Madness (like, um, class?), I can be right there. (Not that I would ever do that!)

Anyways, if you’re still reading this, you want to know how.

1. Install EyeTV
2. Install CyTV
3. Run CyTV and use the menu to Install the EyeTV plugin
4. If you have your firewall turned on, add an exception for port 8001 (It’s in your System Preferences under Sharing)
5. Install VLC on any OS of your choice
6. In VLC, “File > Open Network…” and enter http://192.168.0.199:8001/stream/live (use the IP address of the computer running CyTV)

That’s it! If you want to change the channel, or watch an old recording, simply open up a web browser to http://192.168.0.199:8001/gui/index.html and use the options there. Enjoy your network streaming from EyeTV, a la HDHomeRun, but without the $170 box and with Analog support!

So today I installed Windows 7 on a 5-year-old Compaq Presario 2175us with an IGP 320 M graphics card. If you have no idea what that means–it means there’s hope for Windows. Lots of it.

This laptop has an ancient AMD Athlon XP Mobile 2400+ processor (1.79 GHz). (Though it does have 1GB Ram) ATI stopped making drivers for its graphics card years ago. You could never install Vista on this thing, and XP wasn’t even that snappy.

But Windows 7? Somehow it’s putting right along. The average Joe would never pull this one off due to trying to find compatible graphics drivers, but it is possible. And if this computer can run it, probably so can yours. Are you suffering through laggy Vista? Windows 7 will probably fix your problems.

If you’re trying to do the same thing, with the IGP 320 M, and can’t get out of 640×480 plus 16 colors, here’s what I had to do:

• Download the wxp-w2k-8-082-041130a-019577c.exe file from ATI. (Look under Legacy XP drivers)
• Install it, but after it extracts itself, cancel.
• Under Devices, right-click your video card to update the driver
• Manually select the driver, navigating to the place you unzipped your ATI stuff to (Usually C:\ATI\Support\…).
• Select one of those drivers (not sure if they both work, but the first one I grabbed did)
• From the list, find Radeon IGP 320
• Install and Reboot
• Windows 7 keeps the same HAL issue as Vista, so if you can’t find a BIOS update to fix this (I couldn’t, but if you do, let me know!) go into Devices again and disable the PCI-PCI bridge. (under “System devices”)
• Reboot, go to display settings, and kick those up

Pretty sweet, huh? I haven’t gotten my audio drivers to work yet (haven’t tried), but things look promising. It floors me how well this runs on such ancient hardware.

Sorry, can’t help you get a hold of the Win 7 pre-beta. I will say though, that if you happen to have your old Vista Beta or RC activation code from Microsoft, it will work with the Win 7 iso you might find lying around under that, um, torrent of dirty socks in your closet. Ya feel me?

Oh, yeah, and the System Experience Index rating? Couldn’t even complete the test Impressive…

Update: Comcast now offers ESPN360. So, if your neighbor has Comcast and you don’t, they can also now provide the initial connection goodness you’ll need to get it running on a different provider (instructions below).

Update: Cox now offers ESPN360 as well!

Have Comcast (or Cox, or other non-participating internet provider) and hate them (yet, secretly love them) for not caving in to ESPN and paying licensing fees for ESPN360.com? (ESPN is the real villain here)

You have a few choices:
#1) Change providers. Lame, and in many cases impossible.
#2) Convince a friend who has a participating provider to set up Dynamic DNS, OpenSSH, and Port Forwarding, then set up Putty so you can tunnel your traffic over a Socks Proxy through their connection. (WAY too complicated, and puts a huge strain on their connection, if it’s even fast enough to handle it!)
#3) Load and switch.

Alex, I choose ‘Load and Switch’ for $800.

The idea is simple: ESPN360 only authenticates your network provider’s IP when loading their player. So as long as you boot up the service on a supported provider, you’re all set! There’s a few ways you can do this:

#1) Take your laptop to Starbucks (or some other AT&T hotspot), start the player in your browser, put your computer to sleep (browser still open) and go home.
#2) Get permission from your neighbor who has slow AT&T DSL to use his wireless connection to connect and load the player. Then switch back to your connection.
#3) Wardrive. (I do not recommend this one!)

I happen to live on a campus where I can use my school’s slow, highly-restricted network to connect, (all .edu or .mil providers get access!) and then toggle over to Comcast for the real streaming.

Now, combine that with Fullscreen viewing on Mac OS X and you’re all set!

How many KU Jayhawks games did I have to miss before I discovered all this? Far too many. Thankfully, that problem has now been rectified. Rock Chalk Jayhawk!

I finally got some satisfaction to a longstanding annoyance today. You see, with Firefox on Windows, you can view webpages in full screen–no taskbar, no chrome, just full view web. On a Mac? No dice. I’m serious, it’s just plain impossible to do…or it was. Some online video services make your browser magically take over the whole screen (like hulu.com), but many don’t. Today, the problem was ESPN360.com.

Given that Apple is totally lame in not giving Safari a fullscreen mode, and that Firefox still hasn’t implemented it yet, I went looking for other solutions. After all, I wanted to watch ESPN360.com on my TV, hooked up to my Mac Mini, and all that chrome was annoying as heck.

So I did some searching once before and found…nothing. Today, somehow I got the Google Query right, or found the right forum, and ended up with megazoomer. That’s right, no more lame zooming tricks (like this), although those are ok for sites that don’t offer a ‘fake’ fullscreen mode.

The only drawback is that this only works for Cocoa apps, so you’ll have to use Safari. The plus is that it works for ANY Cocoa app! Wohoo, no more permanent, unmoveable, unhidable toolbar!

What are you waiting for? Go start watching free online TV in real fullscreen today!

If you have comcast, like me, and thus can’t watch ESPN360 at all…there is a way around it: watch ESPN360 on Comcast.