❌

Reading view

Vintage Computer Festival Mid-West 2026 – Part 1

This was the absolute best weekend I’ve had in a really long time, and I can’t wait to have more of these adventures (I’m smiling on the inside)! VCF Midwest was an absolute blast (and even a bit overwhelming with how much there was!), met some acquaintances and familiar faces. Β  Β  Also met up […]

The post Vintage Computer Festival Mid-West 2026 – Part 1 appeared first on Low End Mac.

  •  

A20 Pro vs A19 Pro Benchmarks

The average width of a human hair is around 50 to 120 micrometers (Β΅m), or anywhere between three and five thousandths of an inch. Now let’s take five thousandths (0.005) of an inch and divide it by 63,500, which equals 2 nanometers – that is the transistor size inside the A20 Pro chip powering iPhone […]

The post A20 Pro vs A19 Pro Benchmarks appeared first on Low End Mac.

  •  

Getting a 4K60 display going on a Mac Pro 2,1

On March 6th 2014, Apple released Mac OS X 10.9.3 Mavericks Beta, which included built-in support for several new display options at the time: 4K displays can now have a β€œretina” resolution, and now there’s an option to enable 60 Hz. Prior to this update, 4K support was spotty. Β  (Pictured: Mac Pro 2,1 using […]

The post Getting a 4K60 display going on a Mac Pro 2,1 appeared first on Low End Mac.

  •  

Adapting a cMP SAS/SATA drive bay wire harness for RAID cards

So you have a spare set of Mac Pro parts laying around, or wanna trick-out a Mac Pro with some modifications? While in the process of building my own Mac Pro 1,1 -> 2,1 project working on getting a RocketRAID 2720SGL going in El Capitan, I realized I didn’t really have a spare SFF-8087 (36-pin […]

The post Adapting a cMP SAS/SATA drive bay wire harness for RAID cards appeared first on Low End Mac.

  •  

Site Update – Language support added

In a continued effort of looking at all the different odds and ends of our website, one of the issues gnawing at me was how non-latin alphabet letters suddenly disappeared off of Low End Mac, instantly converting text from multiple languages into β€œ????”. Today, Low End Mac restores/converted all posts dating back to 1997, over […]

The post Site Update – Language support added appeared first on Low End Mac.

  •  

Building a Vintage Quadra 605 for my Collection

Crack! Dammit. Another piece of brittle ’90s Apple plastic bites theΒ turns to dust. Last week, I finally assembled enough parts to build a working Quadra 605. I know, I know.. the 605 is one of Apple’s more boring machines, but there was a hole in my collection that needed filling. The little 605 fits perfectly […]

The post Building a Vintage Quadra 605 for my Collection appeared first on Low End Mac.

  •  

Fun with a Quadra 950 and a Whole Lot of RAM

A Little History My first experience with a Quadra 950 was back when they were new. Mike Bean, then president of the Arizona Macintosh User’s Group, had one. It was big. It was loud. It was fast… and it was beige. I loved it! Mike also had a Workgroup Server 95, the Unix-based file-server version […]

The post Fun with a Quadra 950 and a Whole Lot of RAM appeared first on Low End Mac.

  •  

Repacking a 20-Inch 2006 iMac onto an open air case

By this point this iMac had seen many iterations of items used as a computer case for one length of time or another: a wooden board, a shelf, and then a drawer from a tossed out table. Why not a proper open air style case? Β  Β  There’s nothing particular which makes this case more […]

The post Repacking a 20-Inch 2006 iMac onto an open air case appeared first on Low End Mac.

  •  

The X, a Pro, and Air: 10 Years of iPhone design

The iPhone X is a testament to device longevity, and durability. I gave mine to a family member when upgrading to an Xs Max in Late 2018, who held onto it all these years through a few different protective cases. Today I got it back where it’ll remain in my collection, after they upgraded to […]

The post The X, a Pro, and Air: 10 Years of iPhone design appeared first on Low End Mac.

  •  

Install 64 GB of RAM in your Mac Pro 1,1 or 2,1 – 2026 Edition

Back in early 2018 I wrote one of my first articles as a writer for Low End Mac, covering how to get 64 GB of RAM working in your Mac Pro 1,1 (2006) or Mac Pro 2,1 (2007). At the time, the project felt like a massive risk considering the cost of the RAM, and […]

The post Install 64 GB of RAM in your Mac Pro 1,1 or 2,1 – 2026 Edition appeared first on Low End Mac.

  •  

Village Tronic VTBook: a whole GPU on a PCMCIA card

You heard that right, an entire GPU crammed into a compact PCMCIA card. What looks like an unassuming adapter for PowerBooks and PCs to hook up an external monitor, turns out to have an entire Trident Cyberblade XP2 chip crammed in there. Β  Β  Featuring many supported resolutions including up to 2048 x 1280 @60Hz […]

The post Village Tronic VTBook: a whole GPU on a PCMCIA card appeared first on Low End Mac.

  •  

Trying out Photoshop in an OS X Tiger VM

It seems like I may have stumbled into a solution for getting Photoshop on the M2 Air sooner rather than later. Initially the idea was to get Photoshop CS4 working in a Leopard VM on UTM, downsizing it somehow, and fitting it onto my Mac’s tiny 256 GB SSD. After trying out the β€œreclaim space” […]

The post Trying out Photoshop in an OS X Tiger VM appeared first on Low End Mac.

  •  

The 15-Inch M2 MacBook Air Value Equation

There’s the brand-new MacBook Neo, there’s the M1 MacBook Pro, the M1 MacBook Air.. and then there are the M2 MacBook Airs. While they may stand apart in shape, size and even age, what they mostly have in common in Mid-2026 is their value to performance. Today we’re taking a look at a Mid-2023 15-Inch […]

The post The 15-Inch M2 MacBook Air Value Equation appeared first on Low End Mac.

  •  

β€œWidescreen” UI view mode v1.0 now complete

While the project started back in February and was attempted to be finished then, it has finally been done in its first iteration. This means mostly every navigation page (including everything on the navigation bar, tech specs, software index, etc;) can be displayed from bezel to shining bezel, without pinching to zoom. See: Introducing – […]

The post β€œWidescreen” UI view mode v1.0 now complete appeared first on Low End Mac.

  •  

The different types of SSDs in your computer

Whether you’re dropping an OWC Mercury Accelsior AHCI into an old Mac Pro, are replacing a 2.5β€³ SATA HDD with an SSD, or deal with mostly any Mac made after 2012, Solid State Drives have become the predominant choice as the primary boot drive in nearly every modern computer. Flash storage has been used for […]

The post The different types of SSDs in your computer appeared first on Low End Mac.

  •  
❌