What to do with an older Mac

The Lounge Other Gear
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My trusty old Hexacore Trashcan Mac is now sitting mostly idle.

Just wondering if anyone has suggestions for what I could do with it?

I could use one of the hacky solutions to bring its OS up-to-date (whilst Apple still support Intel silicon). I could maybe turn it into a Linux dev box. I could even install Windows on it I suppose.

…but are there any audio applications I haven’t thought of? Offline processing type stuff maybe? Any thoughts?

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i run Ubuntu on my 2012 Mac Mini.
works perfectly, so i think about getting spare one.

1 Like
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Some options:

  1. If you’re using a newer computer with a DAW like Logic or ProTools, run Ableton on the trashcan Mac and sync the two together for a powerful sampler/sequencer/plugin host. If your audio interface has ADAT, buy a second hand interface with ADAT (or something like USB streamer) and connect the two computers together for 8 ins and outs with no need for DA/AD conversion.
  2. If you’re using a hardware sequencer (e.g. OT), pick up an old interface and use the trashcan as an external FX unit or synth platform, particularly for older plugins that don’t work on newer MacOS versions.

FYI I’ve done this on a (really) old Titanium PowerBook running MacOS 9 and Rebirth.

2 Likes
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Yeah - this is the kind of thing I’m considering. Guess I’m partly wondering what’s out there on Linux I could integrate?

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If you want to stick with MacOS then OpenCore is pretty good. I’ve used it to install Monterey on my mid-2012 MacBook Pro so I can run the latest version of Logic. It’s still my main computer and hasn’t skipped a beat since the upgrade (and feels faster than Mojave).

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This machine runs Monterey anyhow, so that’s not so much of a concern.

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Could you elaborate on this a bit more? How would you connect the two computers? What would the advantage be compared to connecting an ADAT to the interface that’s connected to your main Mac?

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The idea is to use the ADAT ports of both interfaces for lossless digital audio transfer between computers like this:

Computer 1 > Interface 1 (ADAT OUT) >>> Interface 2 (ADAT IN) > Computer 2

Computer 2 > Interface 2 (ADAT OUT) >>> Interface 1 (ADAT IN) > Computer 1

In this example computer 1 is sending audio to computer 2 for processing and then receiving the processed audio back again with no DA/DA signal degradation. It doesn’t make sense to do this if computer 1 is a new machine that already has enough power to run whatever computer 2 is doing, but if computer 2 is an old Mac that can run software that no longer works on (new) computer 1, then it has some value.

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then you can easily have dual boot configuration if you want to keep MacOS as well.
just install a 3rd party EFI boot loader (likely rEFInd Plus) and you’re done.

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It might be a good way to explore ancestor worship.