opening and upgrading the minimac?? help

Hey guys for those of you who have the mini mac already and have upgrade the ram.. could you take some pictures of the mac opened? and like instructions on how to do it, i wanna do it but im scared that ill mess it up. Please! post some pics and instructions

I took one picture of my MacMini opened up, but thought a couple links to guides from Macworld would be more useful than anything I could post.

http//www.macworld.com/weblogs/editors/2005/01/macminiinside/index.php[]http//www.macworld.com/weblogs/editors/2005/01/macminiinside/index.php

http//www.smashsworld.com/2005/01/taking-apart-mac-mini-how-to.php[]http//www.smashsworld.com/2005/01/taking-apart-mac-mini-how-to.php

I went out and bought a flexible putty knife (get the thinnest one they have) to do the upgrade. There is definitely more force involved than you would think, but after a couple unsuccessful attempts I was able to finally crack it open. Hope this stuff helps!

My main worry is damaging the oh so pretty case in the process... ~_~ but it must be done - WoW calls to me!

you guys screw around too early...i'm waiting until the case gets scratched up (i heard it gets scrathes faster than an iPod) then I crack it open so I wont freak out if i damaged the case.

The top probably could scratch up just as easily as the iPod and iBooks, but the sides are anodized aluminum (believe or not I didn't even realize that until I got it!) so that won't scratch easily at all. I actually don't think there's that much risk to opening it as long as you're careful but I'm a bit paranoid. Can't be as bad as opening an iPod though. Something I refuse to even try.

a putty knife is all you need. Apples service source guide even uses it.

Yeah but it just seems so messy. But I realize the official guide for Apple Store employees even has it and I'll definitely be doing it.

i didnt mar my case. it wasnt that hard once you get the hang of it. the putty knife slides in there real easy but its the force you have to pry up with that is hard.

Yeah I upgraded mine already too and it really isn't that hard. I just followed the instructions from the macworld guide. For me I would say the hardest part was getting the case back on after I did the upgrade. No scratches and still looks brand new.

Once more this site gives me hope. D

[quote7a9ae85e6d="new2scene"]Yeah I upgraded mine already too and it really isn't that hard. I just followed the instructions from the macworld guide. For me I would say the hardest part was getting the case back on after I did the upgrade. No scratches and still looks brand new.[/quote7a9ae85e6d]what do you mean by that being the hardest part?

i think im gonna get a putty knife tomorrow and open up my Mac Mini and pop in the RAM...256MB isn't cutting it I opened up Activity Monitor and it said I only have 5.89MB of RAM left after running Adiun (AIM client), Apple Mail, and Safari.

You should judge your ram usage by a way other than activity monitor. OS X will "use" all your ram no matter how much you give it really. Open up a terminal and run "top" for a break down of your memory usage. For example right now I've got
PhysMem 53.9M wired, 83.1M active, 74.5M inactive, 211M used, 44.4M free

~75MB are part of the used group right now but still free for an app to make use of. You should still probably upgrade as more ram is always better, like I KNOW I need to for WoW. But you should keep in mind that OS X will use everything you give it.

[quoteceab68025d="NeoWolf"]You should judge your ram usage by a way other than activity monitor. OS X will "use" all your ram no matter how much you give it really. Open up a terminal and run "top" for a break down of your memory usage. For example right now I've got
PhysMem 53.9M wired, 83.1M active, 74.5M inactive, 211M used, 44.4M free

~75MB are part of the used group right now but still free for an app to make use of. You should still probably upgrade as more ram is always better, like I KNOW I need to for WoW. But you should keep in mind that OS X will use everything you give it.[/quoteceab68025d]does OS X just chomp up the RAM (in your scenario, the 211MB used) and then feed the inactive RAM (74.5MB here) to apps when the leftover RAM (44.4MB) is gone?

Both the 74 and the 44 are free for apps, the 74's just already allocated. You should update the ram if you're having heavy virtual memory usage - which you'll recognize just like on any other OS when the hard driver - and everything else for the matter sputters and stalls for a bit.