[Uncle_Tubbie]

I got carried away, before doing enough research. This is my HTPC:

Mac mini (late 2006), Firmware 2.1, T7200 - 2.00GHz CPU C2D, 4GB Ram,
240GB SSD, CrystalHD card, Mac OS X 10.9.5.

My original question was going to be, how do I know if the CrystalHD card is working or not with XBMC (Gotham)?

Before I posted, I did a search in the OS X section of the forum. From that reading I am wondering if I gone too far by installing OS X 10.9.5. So at this time what changes should I make to get the best performance from XBMC with this hardware? I did install XCode last night too but I’m not at home now so I cannot say if it was Xcode 3 or 4

Any thoughts or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

PS – My wife abandoned the Mini after buying a new apple laptop. Getting this rig up and running will replace my current Raspberry Pi set up.

Thank you in advance.

My set up:

Mac mini (late 2006)
Firmware 2.1
T7200 - 2.00GHz CPU C2D
4GB Ram
240GB SSD
Mac OS X 10.9.5

[Ned Scott]

I'm honestly not sure how it would run on 10.9.5. You can see if it's being used or not by hooking up a keyboard and pressing "o" during playback. It should either say something like "ff-h.264", which is software decoding/not using BCHD, or it will say something like "chd-something", which is when it is using the BCHD.

However, if you can't get the BCHD working then you can probably get away with software decoding alone by enabling multi-thread decoding under XBMC -> Settings -> Videos -> Acceleration

Even that older CPU might just have enough power for 1080 with multithread decoding on :)

[Uncle_Tubbie]

Thank you.

I don't mind going back to something like Mountain Lion or lower. This rig will only be used for XBMC. Installing Mavericks on it was just to see if I could do it.

[Uncle_Tubbie]

Just thought I'd circle back and say "no the Crystal HD card is not working, but the CPU is doing and excellent job" While trying to install xbmcubuntu I accidently wiped my entire hard drive. So now I am running on OSX 10.6.8

[DBMandrake]

I don't even see how you could have been running 10.9.5 on a 2006 Mac mini in the first place unless you were running a hacked version with a hacked installer...and all bets are off then about whether it could be made to work properly...

I have a mid 2007 Mac mini and the latest supported OS version is 10.7 Lion.

For XBMC there is no reason to run anything later than 10.6.8 on these old Core 2 Duo Mini's unless XBMC eventually requires a minimum of Lion.

[DBMandrake]

However, if you can't get the BCHD working then you can probably get away with software decoding alone by enabling multi-thread decoding under XBMC -> Settings -> Videos -> Acceleration

Even that older CPU might just have enough power for 1080 with multithread decoding on

On my 1.83Ghz Core 2 Duo Mac Mini with multithreaded software decode enabled and video files stored on a new internal 2TB SATA drive I've found it will now play 1080p H.264 video of up to 60Mbps! I'm quite stunned really, for a 7 year old machine. That's using the jellyfish test clips which don't have any audio, but I reckon it could manage 50Mbps including audio. (I don't have any real videos of that bitrate...)

On an external USB drive it could only manage 50Mbps and without multithreaded decode that drops to about 25Mbps. It's important to note that software decoding has to be explicitly chosen otherwise the multithreaded decode option is ignored...

[Soli]

These Minis run best on 10.6.8. They will support 10.7 but I cant imagine anyone running that when 10.6.8 is a better option. With the EFI boot hack these Macs can run 10.8 and 10.9 and I guess Yosemite too. Problem is (and that is literally the only problem) there is no 64bit video driver availabe. I guess you could build a new crystal hd driver from source to get it working in later OS than 10.6.8 (or 10.7), but it won't solve the problem with the missing 64bit video driver. I remember running crystal hd on 10.7 Lion, and it did need a Lion specific driver, but XBMC worked fine with it.

Although a 2ghz will decode 1080p easily in software, the fan could become a bit loud without crystal hd.