endless problems

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Hi all,

Sorry to toss a bunch of problems at you all, but I guess that's what forums are for, eh?

The last mac I owned was about 11 years ago, when I was in middle school, so things have changed a wee bit since my mac days. I recently decided to buy a mac mini because I have been interested in developing some iphone ideas (yes I'm in that group)

So #1: I booted up, and was happy to see that os 10.4 detected my logitech mouse, but despite this, I felt like my mouse pad was made of honey when moving the pointer around. Mouse acceleration? I don't understand how anyone could prefer this, and have been struggling to disable the thing. I even found a script which was run from the command terminal, and though making a slight difference, I still feel I have more control wielding a windows based cursor with my foot then pushing the uncontrollable pointer across the screen. I was also unable to find a way to enable my 2 side buttons, even resorting to "usb overdrive" Any help on this would be greatly appreciated!

#2 I realized that 10.4 is unable to handle the iphone sdk. Fun. After buying an upgrade disc, I'm attempting to install the new os with little luck. The disc tells me to restart and it will begin installing. The computer then restarts. Nothing boots from the disc. I've tried holding down 'c' to no avail, and am not too sure where to go from there. Looks like time to call support, but this seemed like a good time to vent nonetheless. :eek:

on a side note: I made an attempt to transfer some music files to the mac drive via dvd, and lo and behold the disc stuck itself in the computer with no means of eject. Why is there no eject button on the drive? Again, I resorted to the command terminal, and had to use a one-liner to do something as simple as eject a disc. Anyway, a hassle but concluded.

I really want to like macs, I do. Yet even a hopeful statement of "well at least nothing crashes" is false in my case, for even garageband is consistently crashing on me. (yes I updated it)

Anyway, sorry for being negative and thanks for listening!
 

bobtomay

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Your Mac's Specs
15" MBP '06 2.33 C2D 4GB 10.7; 13" MBA '14 1.8 i7 8GB 10.11; 21" iMac '13 2.9 i5 8GB 10.11; 6S
#1 Have you gone and looked for Logitech drivers. They have worked well for me, though others have had different results. Or get Steermouse - have not heard anything but positive from it's users.

#2 You'll more than likely not be able to use an upgrade disc or a disc from another Mac. Those discs are machine specific. You need a full retail disc of Leopard or Snow Leopard.

Welcome to the world of slot drives. There is no eject button and no pinhole. When a disc gets stuck, boot the machine while holding down the trackpad/mouse button to force eject.

Don't know, but purchasing a 3-4 year old machine, you may well have purchased someone else's headaches. First thing to do would be a clean install - assuming you did get the original install discs with that machine.
 
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Your Mac's Specs
2GHz Mac Mini 2GB RAM 160GB 10.6.2 | MDD DP 1.25GHz G4 1.5GB RAM 10.4.11 | 233MHz iMac G3 10.3.9
After buying an upgrade disc, I'm attempting to install the new os with little luck. The disc tells me to restart and it will begin installing. The computer then restarts. Nothing boots from the disc. I've tried holding down 'c' to no avail, and am not too sure where to go from there. Looks like time to call support, but this seemed like a good time to vent nonetheless. :eek:

holding down 'Option' can also give you a selection of boot devices.
Here's some things you can try Post if you have any questions regarding the procedures.
 
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Your Mac's Specs
Silver M1 iMac 512/16/8/8 macOS 11.6
1. Try an Apple mouse until you can get the correct drivers. Minis came complete with keyboard and mouse, so trust you got the keyboard, mouse and original system discs which include Apple Hardware Test?

2. The disc you purchased for Leopard one assumes is a silver grey system restore disc from a different machine. These discs are extremely model specific. You need a full install black coloured DVD.

3. To eject the stuck DVD, hold down the mouse button on reboot, another reason for using the Apple mouse. The Apple keyboard has an eject button on the top right, an arrow with a base.
 
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woo thanks guys. I got all virtually all my problems solved. Steermouse worked like a charm, thanks for the info! I ended up wiping my drive, and got the cd to work correctly, so all issues solved there too!

I decided to get one of these sweet aluminum mac keyboards, and a monitor/usb switch to pop back and forth between my mac/windows hardware and it's working very smoothly. The only thing I'd love to do to put the candles on the cake would be to get these fn uses on the aluminum keyboard to work on windows (play/next/volume control) and if possible reorder the command/option keys to keep the original windows setup (I think just swapping the inputs of these two keys somehow would do it?)

Thanks for the help guys! Good forum you got going here.
 

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