{"id":1701,"date":"2005-09-03T21:59:35","date_gmt":"2005-09-03T21:59:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sunpig.com\/mt-entry-1701.html"},"modified":"2006-09-23T19:30:11","modified_gmt":"2006-09-23T19:30:11","slug":"preparing-for-a-mac-mini","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/2005\/09\/03\/preparing-for-a-mac-mini\/","title":{"rendered":"Preparing for a Mac Mini"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>With apologies to those of you who think I should just SHUT UP AND BUY THE DAMN THING ALREADY, it&#8217;s much more complicated than that.  For a start, there&#8217;s the whole issue of peripheral devices: keyboards, mice, monitors, external drives, iPods, printers, etc.  It struck me the other day that the Mac Mini only has <em>two<\/em> USB ports, and <em>one<\/em> firewire port.  It also only has an audio out jack, with no way to simply connect a 3.5mm-plug microphone.  Given that I&#8217;m aiming for a dual PC\/Mac setup, this is going to require some thought and planning.<\/p>\n<p>My current plan involves the acquisition of three new items:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nonliteral.com\/articles\/usb-share-switch-review\/\">4-port USB switching hub<\/a>.  There are several models on the market, and they&#8217;re substantially cheaper than a decent <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/KVM_switch\">KVM switch<\/a>.  Also, my monitor is a widescreen LCD panel running at 1680 x 1050.  Most analog KVM switches will handle a video signal of that resolution, but analog KVM switches also make your picture look like shit.  And reasonably priced digital switches currently don&#8217;t do more than 1600 x 1200.<\/li>\n<li>Either a PS2-to-USB adapter for my current (PS2) keyboard, or a new USB keyboard.  The adapters aren&#8217;t cheap, and buying a new keyboard might even cost less.  The problem with this is <a href=\"http:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/archives\/2002\/12\/30\/new_keyboard\/\">finding a keyboard I like<\/a>.  (Also, the question of whether to get a <em>Mac<\/em> or a <em>PC<\/em> keyboard comes into play. because they use different command and option keys to the left and right of the keyboard.  Which option will be less confusing?)<\/li>\n<li>A USB microphone.  The Labtec mike I bought last month is a 3.5mm job, and that&#8217;s not gonna fly any more.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>And they all fit together thusly:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Big (300GB) external hard drive:  stays connected to PC via FireWire.  PC will act as a file server over the network.<\/li>\n<li>Printer:  stays connected to PC via USB.  PC will also act as a print server.<\/li>\n<li>Audio out:  I run the stereo output from my PC to an amp under my desk which drives my desk speakers.  The Mac&#8217;s audio output will just go to another set of inputs on the amp.  Switching audio between machines will require changing the dial on the amp.<\/p>\n<li>External DVD writer (LG GSA-5163D):  this has one FireWire connector, and two USB connectors.  I <em>think<\/em> I can have this connected to the Mac and the PC at the same time.  It&#8217;ll go to a free FW port on the PC, and directly to one of the Mac Mini&#8217;s two USB ports.  Burning DVDs reliably requires good data throughput, and I don&#8217;t want any it to hiccup on any USB hubs in the middle.<\/li>\n<li>USB switching hub connects to a free USB port on the PC, and the second USB port on the Mini.<\/li>\n<li>Mouse, keyboard, and microphone:  these all connect directly to the USB switching hub, so they flip back and forth between the Mac and PC.<\/li>\n<li>Monitor:  the Dell 2005 FPW has lots of different inputs, so it&#8217;s going to get a VGA cable from the PC, and a DVI cable from the Mini.  (This may change depending on the signal quality from each machine, and which one I end up using more often.)  Switching between video signals will be a matter of toggling a button on the monitor.  The monitor is also a 4-port USB hub, so its upstream eand gets plugged into the remaining port on the USB switch.  That way everything connected to the monitor can <em>also<\/em> flip between Mac and PC.<\/li>\n<li>Media card reader, USB flash memory hard drives, and phone:  will all plug into a USB port on the monitor when needed.<\/li>\n<li>iPod:  will connect to the FireWire port on the Mac Mini.  For some reason, my iPod refuses to charge from a USB  cable.  And before you say it, yes, it&#8217;s definitely a <em>powered<\/em> USB cable I&#8217;ve been trying.  I&#8217;ve tried it on several different machines, in fact, and it barfed on all of them.  This is doubly annoying because (for noise reduction reasons) my PC is in a different <em>room<\/em> than my desk, and the FireWire cable that comes with an iPod doesn&#8217;t stretch that far.  The Mini, however, will sit on my desk, and the iPod can snuggle up to it when it&#8217;s feeling lonesome.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&#8230;And all of this is before I&#8217;ve even got started on the new software I&#8217;ll need&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>With apologies to those of you who think I should just SHUT UP AND BUY THE DAMN THING ALREADY, it&#8217;s much more complicated than that. For a start, there&#8217;s the whole issue of peripheral devices: keyboards, mice, monitors, external drives, iPods, printers, etc. It struck me the other day that the Mac Mini only has &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/2005\/09\/03\/preparing-for-a-mac-mini\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Preparing for a Mac Mini&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[132,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-apple","category-techie"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1701"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1701\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}