So after writing the post yesterday about old Commodore computers and magazines, I actually dug into my closet to see if I had the issue of Compute!’s Gazette that Tech Shepherd mentioned (I do not, at least not at this cursory review).
I did, however, find the Mac Mini that I’d recently (well, a couple years ago, recent in old-timer years) replaced because it would not update. And it had it’s power cord right atop it. So I wondered…. Could I put Linux on it?
I have two USBs on my desk with bootable Linux distros for installation. Mint and Ubuntu. Because we retired a couple of laptops, and when I got my new big box (what, almost a year ago?), I put Mint on the old box (and solved its cranky sound and it needing 45 minutes to boot, so undoubtedly some crypto mining was lost in this event). And I had Kubuntu on a USB drive because we had a finicky HP laptop…. Where has that gone?
At any rate, I went into the storeroom and its cable bins, and, brushing aside the tangles of VGA cables, DVI cables, KVM cables, PS/2 extenders, and other assorted cables and many, many video switchers and KVM switches, I found an HDMI cable to plug it in. So I…. Installed Linux on it.
Well, mostly. I’ve swapped a wireless keyboard and mouse combo from another machine (I need to get a couple more wireless laptop/mouse combos, or I need to find a wireless KVM switch somewhere–I probably have enough adapters to use a PS/2 and VGA KVM, actually…. Let me go back into the store room….) But! The old Mac Mini does not have a wireless networking… chip? Too small for a card.
So I will have to go back into the store room for a networking cable to stretch to the hub. I do have a couple, and maybe a crossover cable or two, but, ah! I have given up the kilometer box of Cat5 cable and the connectors I bought around the turn of the century when I thought I might go into networking. Given the nature of the QA job market, I still might. But the network cables I have are probably a little out-of-date. Ah, but so is my equipment! And, maybe, so am I!
