Hooking up your mac mini to the Xbox 360 and a few other upgrade linkies

so... i'd have been done days ago setting this up if i knew how to read (or interpret a very simple picture denoting a mouse needing AAs). with a little help from mai friends, i put in 4 gigs of ram (btw, almost all of the tutorials are outdated and/or mislabeled and with this early 2009 model you only need to remove four black screws at the corners and that's IT). I got the 2x2 sticks of RAM from Crucial off of Amazon.

 

videos here:

 

RAM-

www.123macmini.com/videos/video/140.html

 

Hard drive:

www.123macmini.com/videos/video/141.html

 

I got the screen share set up over the wireless network so that I don't need a keyboard or mouse (um, other than for the initial set up) me thinks this isn't exact but it was simple enough that i stumbled through without notes.

 

-Turn Screen Sharing on both computers. (System Preferences=> Sharing.)

-Assuming you're running all macs, you should see your mini pop up in the sidebar of your controlling computer. Double click on it and then it will ask you to share screens.

 

Remote: since I have this all hooked up via screen share, the only thing i'd really like to do remotely is TURN IT ON. apparently this is not possible. the logitech harmony xbox remote might be able to wake it from sleep as an alternative to shutting it down.. or i might have to buy an apple remote to do this.

 

I hooked the audio up via mini tosslink to tosslink on my stereo (cablestogo off of Amazon www.amazon.com/Cables-Go-Velocity-Toslink-27016/dp/B0002J..., which is something I've never used before. because i am a certified idiot and can't read, did not realize the headphone jack also serves as an optical audio out. the picture and words were not enough for me. the optical jack is only optical IN, not out. a mllion times over, thank you to shep for interpreting the very difficult to comprehend (optical in, optical out) words and drawing. and by very difficult i mean painfully obvious. painfully, painfully obvious.

 

And I got my Xbox live hooked up so that I can stream my netflix.

 

This i did have to do some legit digging for, so i'm reposting the breadcrumbs. and would you believe i read the directions right on this the first time? I wanted to hook up my Xbox 360 using the mac mini's built in airport extreme as a router, as neither machine is near the wired source. thanks to the original unknown OP.

 

Some of the steps were not exactly as it appears on my mac mini but if i can figure it out, you should be able to figure it out. also, in the last steps where it said to set your PPPoE settings to Off and your Advanced to Automatic, I saw those things listed in network menu but didn't have those exact options- left it alone it worked fine for me.

 

good luck.

 

First off, get all the hardware setup. This is probably the easiest part. Take the cable that comes with your Xbox (or any network cable that fits) and connect it to the back of your Xbox and your Mac. Turn on the Mac and the Xbox (not necessarily simultaneously; probably turn on your Mac first). When your Xbox is on, head to the Xbox dashboard.

 

On your Mac, head over to the System Preferences and click on “Network.” From the “Show” menu, select “Built-in Ethernet” and set “Configure IPv4″ to “Off.” (note, I didn't see this part on my mac.. )

 

Now head back to System Preferences (click “Show All”) and then go to “Sharing.” Click on the “Internet” button and check the box next to “Built-in Ethernet.” Make sure “Share your connection from: Airport” is selected as well.

 

Open Terminal (if you can’t find it, just type “Terminal” in Spotlight) and type in the following exactly: ifconfig en0. Hit enter, and it should return something like inet 192.168.2.1 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.168.2.255. If the first IP is something other than 192.168.2.1 make note of it, and don’t close Terminal.

 

Now, turn around and grab your Xbox controller. Go to the Network settings, and set the IP Configuration to Manual, the IP to 192.168.2.2, the Mask to 255.255.255.0, and the router/gateway to 192.168.2.1 (the IP that I told you to make note of earlier — if yours is different, input that IP instead). **Make sure to hit DONE not just on the keyboard but also on the menu or it won't save your settings.

 

Get back on your Mac, go to Terminal, and type in "dig" and hit enter. There will be a lot of data, but you need to pay attention to only one line. Near the end of the output, a line will begin with SERVER. That’s the line you need to look at. Find the IP address in that line, and highlight it.

 

Go to the Xbox and go to DNS Configuration. Set it to Manual, and input the IP that you just found in Terminal as the primary DNS server. Set your PPPoE settings to Off and your Advanced to Automatic. (didn't see where this was an option)

 

Test your Xbox Live connection. Provided you followed all the steps properly, you should have a connection.

 

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Remaining Step.. Finding an external storage solution. There is a modification that can be done to replace the optical drive, which has an esata connection to allow an esata hard drive.

 

Mod is here:

 

www.123macmini.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=22618&highl...

 

Problem.. the mini does not support a port multiplier, so only one drive can be hooked up. the OP of this mod had an enclosure that had all of the circuitry on board (Wiebetech RTX400-QR) and had it either spanned or RAID 5 so that it was presented to the mini as one disc. the enclosure is not cheap, and to me, mind as well buy a mac pro. he did state that the OWC Mercury Al-pro elite x2 had the right guts to work, but he hadn't tested it. I'm tempted to try it out when my finances are in better shape. it's also a relatively new product so don't know how reliable it is. that's all i have on this topic for now.

 

Done