Official CustoMac Mini 2011 Guide and Notes (in progress)

[That Guy]

Well firstly I would like to say a big THANK YOU to everyone who has helped me, I am now posting from my Mac Mini (Lion 10.7.2)

Couple of questions:

Question 1:
Is it normal for the DVD Drive Light to flash every 30 mins or so? Like the system is checking if there is a disc in the drive?

Question 2:
I have the keyboard set to European etc but when I press the " button I actually get @ and vise versa, can this be fixed? I am using a standard PC Keyboard.

Thanks in Advance!

Do you have a Sony Optiarc DVD player?

No was sold out so had to get an LG Drive. It works fine and only does it when the computers going into standby I think so no big problem.

Im more concerned about getting the Keyboard layout sorted if you have any ideas?

 

[Coldcutt]

Have you tried the trick with repairing disk permissions and rebuilding caches, then rebooting? I have to do it every time I change graphics settings and somtimes after installing new software. I'm sticking with the onboard gfx.

Edit: Also, try downloading the new MulitiBeast and install the latest Chimera and the tool that moves and removes /Extra/Extensions. So far I haven't been able to make the system generate artifacts, and I have tried.

Thanks very much for the tips, I will certainly try this out before I spend on another card.

 

[TreeMan2011]

Im more concerned about getting the Keyboard layout sorted if you have any ideas?

Try KeyRemap4MacBook - it loads as a preference pane under System Preferences and supports a whole bunch of different keyboard modifications. I don't know if it will fix your specific issue but it's definitely worth a look. I use it to make a PC keyboard work the way I want it to (particularly the directional keys on the numeric keypad). Don't let the name fool you, it's not just a "MacBook" program - it may have started out that way but it's gone through a series of revisions and now has many additional capabilities. I would highly recommend that you at least give it a try and see if it will resolve your issue.

The only caveat is to make sure you don't have any OTHER keyboard remappers running simultaneously or you may find your keyboard doesn't work at all. Should that happen, you may be up the proverbial creek... If you think there's even a slight chance you may have this issue, before you install KeyRemap4MacBook I suggest you enable the Keyboard & Character Viewer (in Lion that's found under the Input Sources section of Language & Text preferences) so at least you can use mouse clicks to send keystrokes until you can disable one of the conflicting programs (you may need to enter your password, for example).

 

[That Guy]

Im more concerned about getting the Keyboard layout sorted if you have any ideas?

Try KeyRemap4MacBook - it loads as a preference pane under System Preferences and supports a whole bunch of different keyboard modifications. I don't know if it will fix your specific issue but it's definitely worth a look. I use it to make a PC keyboard work the way I want it to (particularly the directional keys on the numeric keypad). Don't let the name fool you, it's not just a "MacBook" program - it may have started out that way but it's gone through a series of revisions and now has many additional capabilities. I would highly recommend that you at least give it a try and see if it will resolve your issue.

The only caveat is to make sure you don't have any OTHER keyboard remappers running simultaneously or you may find your keyboard doesn't work at all. Should that happen, you may be up the proverbial creek... If you think there's even a slight chance you may have this issue, before you install KeyRemap4MacBook I suggest you enable the Keyboard & Character Viewer (in Lion that's found under the Input Sources section of Language & Text preferences) so at least you can use mouse clicks to send keystrokes until you can disable one of the conflicting programs (you may need to enter your password, for example).

Thank You

KeyRemap4MacBook worked perfect, but going to save for an Apple keyboard next I think.

 

[gustave]

Just before I dump $200 on another SSD drive...
I have a corsair 128 meg SSD drive that is not appearing in the BIOS drive list now.
H67N board. Installed fine yesterday on the SSD, no problems. Recognized in the bios fine.
I have changed power cable, sata cable, sata port, and saw it show up in bios once.
Changed from AHCI to IDE, nothing.
Anyone else seen issues with SSD ( Mine is a sata2 corsair ) and this board? IDE shows up fine.

 

[That Guy]

Back Again. . . .

Just run the Tune up Kit v3 found in the second post but having problems, I followed these Instructions:

Installation
1. Copy dsdt.aml and org.chameleon.Boot.plist in Extra folder to Extra folder on your hard drive
2. Copy kexts in customac_mini_tuneup_kext Folder to Desktop
3. Run KextBeast
4. Restart

Everything went fine but when my HD TV is plugged in the computer will not boot, I get the Apple logo then comes up with the message saying "You need to Restart your Computer, hold down the power button...." on both screens.

If I unplug the TV my computer starts up just fine, I can also plug the TV in when the computer is loaded and it works fine (not sure how to enable sound)

Anyone know what the problem could be?

[EDIT]: Just tried switching the HDMI Cables round so they are plugged in the oposite HDMI Ports but then the system will not boot past Bootloader Screen (before Apple Logo)

So at the moment I can only boot successfully when using 1 HDMI Port

 

[tylermmoore]

That Guy, I had the same problem as well using a monitor. The only thing I came up with was that for some reason if the resolution of the screen is not consistent with what the bootloader is looking for it will give you an error. In order to boot on my monitor i have to unplug the hdmi cord then plug it back in once the computer is booted up. Seems strange but that is the only solution i could come up with. I have a dell 23 inch monitor with 2048x1152 resolution. I used my 720 tv to install osx which worked fine.

 

[That Guy]

That Guy, I had the same problem as well using a monitor. The only thing I came up with was that for some reason if the resolution of the screen is not consistent with what the bootloader is looking for it will give you an error. In order to boot on my monitor i have to unplug the hdmi cord then plug it back in once the computer is booted up. Seems strange but that is the only solution i could come up with. I have a dell 23 inch monitor with 2048x1152 resolution. I used my 720 tv to install osx which worked fine.

That really sucks

I wanted to use my TV to watch Online TV on. I have a new monitor I ordered with the parts for the Mac its a 24" LED Monitor running at 1020p (works perfect) but the TV I want to plug in too is only capable of 720p.

I hope this can be fixed as online TV is a big part of my daily routine. Also dont want the girlfriend playing with cables at the back of my machine.

 

[ripe_md]

Any suggestions/experience for a quiet CPU cooler/fan replacement for my boxed Intel i3 2105 on the GA-H67N-USB3-B3? As I'm using an additional PCIe-SATA card the available space is quite tight.

My current favorites are:
- Prolimatech Samuel 17 + additional fan
- Scythe Big Shuriken 2

I'm not sure if they fit.

 

[stryker]

I have my customac up and running. cheers.
I have the recommended components in here.

At this point I have a few questions:
USB3 doesn't work. I have seen references to that in this thread, but can't remember seeing a fix. Can it be fixed without the tuneup. I'm a bit leary of that. I don't need HDMI audio and have not seen artifacts on this current drive. Hope it stays that way.

Can I set up dual boot through chameleon with WIN7 and Lion? I see it works with SL, but I can't find where it works with Lion.

I will probably have to try the 5570 to get dual monitors, but if I can get all these, I'm a happy man.