Setup upgrades: Moving into a new place

I recently got my own space for a “home office” after moving into a new place, marking the perfect time to make some much-needed improvements to my main computer setup.

The setup for my 2020 M1 Mac mini has hardly changed since I bought the computer in 2021. When the computer arrived, I went out and bought the only HDMI display in stock at my local Walmart: a 24-inch HP 24m. The next year, I bought a Satechi USB-C stand hub that adds three additional USB-A ports, a front 3.5mm headphone jack, an additional USB-C port, and internal microSD and SD card readers to your Mac mini while matching the appearance of the computer that it sits under. At the same time as the hub, I also replaced the standard Dell keyboard, obviously meant for use with Windows, with a wired (USB-C) Keychron C1 mechanical keyboard featuring Gateron G Pro Blue switches to improve the typing experience. To supplement the Mac mini’s meager 256 GB internal storage, I continued using the 2 TB Western Digital external hard drive I had been using since my sophomore year of college in 2018.

However, the setup wasn’t optimal. While I initially wanted a slightly larger monitor and/or a dual display setup, the HP 24m was all our local Walmart had at the time as the supply chain was still recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic. As time went on, I began to grow more concerned about the long-term reliability of the Western Digital external drive. While I had my most important documents and projects backed up using a cloud storage solution, there were still tons of files that were only on that drive. I’ve had multiple hard drives die in my lifetime, such as the one in the Asus Essentio Series (the original “MintTin”) desktop, and each time have lost a lot of data that could never be recovered.

And, the Mac mini’s internal 256 GB storage continued to fill up. Even after moving a lot of my files to the external drive, I was only left with ~20 GB of free space. There was such little space remaining that I couldn’t update macOS, and there were times the amount of free space on the Mac mini fell below 1 GB and even 500 MB, causing other strange issues. For instance, Audacity would crash, being unable to write temporary cache files.

The entire setup was located on a desk that was never meant for computers, at least not with ergonomics in mind. There was barely enough room for a single display, keyboard and mouse.

Moving into a bigger place, where I’d have my own home office just for all my computer stuff, was the perfect opportunity to upgrade parts of the setup and make things optimal for years to come.

Main computer setup upgrades

My original priority was on upgrading the computer itself. I was originally going to custom build a decently-spec’d machine to run Debian on as the successor to the Mac mini, replacing macOS with Debian (Linux) as my daily driver. However, it was going to be quite expensive — especially in terms of RAM and solid-state NVMe storage as the price on those components continue to rapidly increase. I then scaled back my expectations to a slightly cheaper option, a M4 Mac mini with nearly every specification upgraded to future proof it. However, the lead time on new Macs — especially custom upgraded Mac minis — are in the territory of several months at the least.

I eventually decided to forego replacing the M1 Mac mini at this point in time. The M1 Mac mini still does everything I need it to and then some. It’s still snappy, even while running the latest macOS version — Tahoe 26. While meager compared to the memory I was going to put into the M4 Mac mini or the Debian box, the M1 Mac mini’s 16 GB “unified memory” is more than enough for every task I’ve thrown at it — from video editing in DaVinci Resolve to playing Minecraft to manipulating graphics in Affinity Photo or audio editing with Audacity.

However, I turned my focus to upgrading parts of the infrastructure surrounding the Mac mini.

First was internet service. Our old location only had standard high-speed internet fed through coaxial lines, limiting speeds to around 45 Mbps down and 5 Mbps up on a good day. We now have fiber internet through a local provider. Testing using speedtest.net measured 900 Mbps down and 800 Mbps up with the fiber provider. Uploads that used to take several minutes to an hour to complete now can be done in seconds to minutes. While the provider had service in the neighborhood, they still had to run a fiber optic line from our location to the main fiber branch along the street.

I also purchased not one, but two, desks from my local Walmart. While I looked at more expensive desks online, they were much more expensive and would take longer to arrive. The Walmart desks — the “Mainstays two-way convertible desk” — were in stock at the local store and half the price of the other desk I was really eyeing from Staples’ website. Assembly of the desks was rather easy, as all the parts were labeled and the instructions pretty clear. One desk is for my main computer setup (the M1 Mac mini) while the other is used for my vintage Macs, currently the SuperSE and Performa 6200CD. I like that both desks match aesthetically, bringing the room together.

The desk is accompanied by a heavy-duty office chair I bought online, which is extremely comfortable and should last a while.

Peripherals

I then revisited a Micro Center, not to buy a new computer or parts to build one, but instead just peripherals: A UPS to keep internet service going even during power outages. A NAS device to allow locally-stored files to be accessed from any device on the network. A new, larger monitor to improve display quality and hopefully implement a dual-display setup.

Power

The biggest setup upgrade was the addition of an uninterruptible power supply. I’ve never had a UPS before, so when the power went out so did all my equipment — including the internet equipment. Now, thanks to the APC Back UPS I picked up, the internet stays on reliably even during power outages. Just a couple days after getting the internet installed, the power did go out during a thunderstorm. While I lost power to the Mac mini (which is plugged into a surge protector plug on the UPS, as all the backup plugs are in use) and my other desktop computers, the internet equipment continued going and I was still able to access the internet through my phone and laptops using WiFi.

The model I purchased, the APC Back-UPS 1000 Pro BX1000M, has a 1kVA output that can support 600 watts. Four backup (or “keep alive”) outlets are truly uninterruptible, as when a power failure occurs the UPS nearly instantly switches over to battery power — so quickly that the load doesn’t notice a thing. The battery is a sealed lead acid battery, which is common for UPS systems. The networking equipment — modem, router and NAS (more on that later) — are all fed by the backup outlets. A LCD on the front of the UPS provides an estimated remaining runtime during power outages. When our power failed during the thunderstorm, it estimated around 90 minutes of runtime from a full battery. Instead of dangerously depleting the battery, the UPS will automatically shut down once the battery has been discharged to a certain point.

Unfortunately, output from the BMX100M’s inverter has an inverted sine waveform, making it OK for basic electronics like networking equipment but unsuitable for loads that require a standard (or “pure”) 60 Hz sine wave such as computers or appliances. However, UPS models that can produce pure sine waves are much more expensive but can be worth the cost — especially if you’re in an area where you will likely be running on the backup more often.

Four other outlets are provided but are not uninterruptible. These outlets lose power when the main power fails. Those power my computer and its monitor. However, there is an advantage to using those four “traditional” outlets over a standard power strip.

The UPS offers surge protection, and Schneider Electric (the company behind American Power Conversion, and also the company behind other well-known names like Square D) backs it up with a $250,000 lifetime guarantee. There’s more, though. The UPS provides automatic voltage regulation and has overcurrent protection built in, including an easily-resettable circuit breaker.

Data storage

A major issue I intended to solve was storage. In addition to the Mac mini’s meager internal storage, I wanted a local solution that would allow me to easily access and work with my files from any computer — or device — connected to the network. While I’ve had Linux-based servers in the past from old computers (such as the “MintTin,” Inspiron 620/”MintTin II,” and the ThinkPad W541 when it still ran OpenIndiana), I wanted a dedicated network-attached storage (NAS) device that would make it reliable and easy to configure.

I went into Micro Center looking to get a bare Synology NAS chassis, which would have required me to purchase the hard drives separately. However, I found a better deal once at the store. I walked out with a Buffalo LinkStation LS220 that comes with two 2 TB Toshiba hard drives already installed … all for roughly the same cost as the bare Synology chassis I was looking at.

Once home, the LinkStation LS220 was easy to configure right from the Mac mini. It took about a day to transfer all 1 TB of files from the external Western Digital hard drive to the NAS using the Mac mini. Now I’m able to access my files from any device on the network. I no longer have to be tied down to my Mac mini or move the Western Digital external drive around. I can begin working on a document on the Mac mini, save it to the NAS, and finish working on it with the MacBook Neo and vice versa. I no longer have to break out USB thumb drives to transfer files from one computer to another, either.

The NAS device, Mac mini and printer all have hardwired Ethernet connections to the wireless router for speed and reliability.

Printer

All my life I’ve dealt with inkjet printers with increasing levels of frustration.

They’re fine if you print frequently and/or need an ink printer, such as for printing on photo paper or other surfaces. However, the following cycle has been my personal experience with inkjet printers: Spend more than $50 to buy all the ink cartridges (cyan, magenta, yellow and black), install them, print what you need to. Two weeks later when you need to print again, you power on the printer to find that all four cartridges are “empty” because the ink has conveniently dried up. Go out and buy more ink cartridges to rinse and repeat the process.

That has been my experience with HP inkjet printers and, somehow, even more so with my Canon Pixma MX922 printer. I’ve lost count of how many hundreds of dollars spent I’ve wasted on ink cartridges for that printer since buying it in 2017, especially during college. And in many cases I was still forced to use one of the many “pay to print” kiosks our college set up around campus so I could print something.

It has got to a point where printer manufacturers, most infamously HP, have created subscription services to use your printer. I can understand that being convenient for those that use their printer on a daily basis and are constantly printing things (such as a business owner) but for someone who only occasionally prints, it’s overkill. And those companies, like HP, won’t let you use said printer unless you have one of their “genuine” cartridges installed. (Dare to install a recycled/remanufactured or third-party cartridge in your HP printer? Uh-oh, printer bricked and the Printer Police are on their way to haul you off to printing prison.)

Short aside: This subject has been a frustrating one for years, to the level that I’ve contemplated writing a “rant” piece about it on numerous occasions. Hewlett-Packard used to be a respectable company and their printers were the de facto standard of printing technology. However, they tarnished their reputation over dumb decisions like locking functionality of your hardware — a printer you paid hundreds for — behind a subscription model. Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard would be ashamed to have their names on such junk. My Canon was no better, as ink would dry up so quickly that in just a week or two the cartridges were already unusable. Yet they wanted a premium for their cartridges, and even the remanufactured cartridges weren’t any better. Interestingly, the most reliable printer I had — and could always depend on to get the job done, no matter how long between print jobs — was my Apple ImageWriter II. Modern inkjet printers are somehow less reliable and worse in many ways than a 40-year-old noisy, low-quality yet reliable dot-matrix printer. /rant

Thankfully, that hassle will be over. I finally made the splurge and upgraded to the amazing world of laser printing. (And no, I’m not referring to my long-forgotten LaserWriter IISC that I have for my vintage Macs.) Laser printing has many benefits over inkjet technology. The print capacity for toner cartridges are often far higher than standard ink cartridges, and the toner never dries up. (In fact, I’ve been told the 1992 toner cartridge in the LaserWriter IISC should still work … if the rest of the printer functioned.) Laser printers also have much better print quality than the inkjet counterparts.

I went for the Brother MFC-L2900DW, which thankfully was in stock at the Micro Center. I know several people who have had really good luck with Brother printers, and the MFC-L2900DW was a decent balance of low price while maintaining the functionality I was looking for.

What functionality? Print (obviously), scan and copy. A standalone laser printer can be purchased rather inexpensively, but for a multifunction model you’re going to pay more. Brother offers cheaper multifunction models, too, but I wanted one that had both duplex printing and duplex scanning. (A lot of documents I scan are double-sided, so having a duplex automatic document feeder was a must.) The MFC-L2900DW had all that and, like most multifunction printers sold, still has built-in facsimile capabilities that can be used with a standard telephone line.

There are some drawbacks of the MFC-L2900DW, and laser printers in general, compared to the Canon Pixma MX922 printer it replaces. The biggest is no more color printing. The MFC-L2900DW, like most laser printers, is monochrome grayscale. For a color laser printer, you’ll spend around $1,000 for a basic model and will spend an equally insane amount on the four toner cartridges it will require. But for printing color graphics and photographs, it’s a must! Thankfully I don’t print a lot of graphics or photographs myself anymore, so most of my printing needs are basic documents where a grayscale model will suffice.

Toner cartridges are far more expensive than ink cartridges, but as previously mentioned they will last much longer and you don’t have to worry about them drying up. The five (CMYK, “K XL”) cartridges in the Pixma MX920 will set you back $88 if you go with Canon’s genuine “Value Pack” through B&H. The individual cartridges cost $20-$25. A standard toner cartridge for the MFC-L2900DW will cost $61 through B&H, but you can get a high-yield model for $98 or a twin pack of the high-yield model for $177.

On the software side, I actually prefer Brother’s “iPrint&Scan” app as settings are right there without having open a second dialog box to configure them in Canon’s “IJ Scan Utility” app. However, the Canon app has preset configurations for photos and documents. In Brother’s app you have to configure those each time.

While the Pixma MX922 could be configured as part of a network, it was much easier to have a direct USB connection to the Mac mini because of the setup of our old place. Here, though, I have the MFC-L2900DW connected to the network. I’m able to print from any device connected to the network — even all my laptops. I can also scan to any device, and I can scan documents to be automatically saved to the NAS for retrieval by any device on the network.

Display

Despite my hatred for modern HP and its dubious business practices, I didn’t have much of a choice when I went shopping for a display to connect to my then-new M1 Mac mini back in November 2021. The world was still recovering from supply chain issues caused by a global pandemic that was just starting to come under control. Monitors sold online would take weeks to arrive, if not longer due to the supply chain issues, and I wanted to use the new Mac right then. Of course, the old Dell display I was using with the W541 only had a VGA input — no HDMI or DisplayPort.

Out of impulsivity, I went to the local Walmart to see what was in stock. There wasn’t much to pick from. There were some smaller, cheaper house brand displays but I wanted something larger with better image quality that wasn’t overly expensive. The only model in stock that somewhat fit the bill was an HP 24m, a 24-inch-class display that had both HDMI and VGA inputs. I bought it, and ended up using it as my only display with the Mac mini for the next five years.

With more space to play with, I wanted to expand the Mac mini setup to have two displays. While a single display works fine most of the time, there are many instances where I wish I had two displays side by side. For instance, video editing on one display while I have information from the Internet pulled up on the second display. Or playing video games, like Minecraft, on one while listening to music or watching videos on the second.

However, I was going to need to find a better monitor to use as the primary display for the Mac mini. The HP 24m would be sidelined to secondary spot.

The Dell 27 Plus S2725QS display would fill the role as my new primary display. It is a 27-inch-class 4K display (with a 3840×2160 native resolution) that can support a refresh rate of up to 120 Hz, whereas the old HP 24m only supported a 60 Hz refresh rate. The 27 Plus supports DisplayPort and HDMI inputs, though no USB-C inputs.

There’s a lot to like about the 27 Plus so far. It is aesthetically pleasing. The back has a cover that hides the main HDMI input. (Unfortunately Dell didn’t continue that trend with the power, DisplayPort and other HDMI connections so those are out in plain view.) The stand goes together easy and allows for easy adjustment of height, tilt, swivel and pivot of the display. That stand also features a convenient detachable cable management bracket for keeping all the cables nice and tidy. As for the display itself, it is bright and vivid. There is no flicker, which was sometimes a slight issue with the HP 24m.

It did not take long, however, to discover a major problem with my dual-display aspirations. Every single port on the Mac mini is in use. The only one that is freed up, thanks to the NAS, is a single USB-A port that does nothing to help with adding a second display. Both USB-C ports are in use: one for the wired keyboard, and the other for the Satechi stand hub. The Mac Mini’s lone HDMI port is obviously occupied. The only solution I can see would be to move the keyboard to the lone USB-C port on the stand hub, freeing up one on the Mac mini itself for a HDMI converter dongle.

That might be something I eventually try, even though keeping the USB-C port on the stand hub open would be nice so that it can be used for other purposes such as connecting devices like my phone. Another option, while suboptimal, could be to replace the Keychron wired keyboard for a wireless Bluetooth model that won’t use any ports on the Mac.

Vintage computer setups

Two of my old computers — the “SuperSE” and Macintosh Performa 6200CD — have been set up for use in the new office.

The SuperSE is joined by the ImageWriter II dot-matrix printer. For decoration, I’ve placed my grandparents’ old Stromberg-Carlson 500D rotary dial telephone next to the ImageWriter II. The coffee mug I bought from the Apple Muzeum Polska, which I purchased as part of a fundraiser for the former Polish museum that followed Apple’s history from 1976 to the present, is also nearby.

On the opposite side of the desk is the Performa 6200CD, which is connected to newer, more period-appropriate ADB peripherals. While not functional, an Apple Color StyleWriter 2500 inkjet (or “bubblejet”) printer joins the Performa. (Fun fact: That Color StyleWriter 2500 is the newest Apple product in my collection from the 20th century. It went on sale in February 1996 and was one of the last printers Apple ever made, as it was among the many products cancelled by Steve Jobs upon his return to the company to save it from sinking.)

Future plans

The office is far from complete, as I do have lots of ideas to make it more comfortable and functional.

Because the entire basement is “semi-finished” (as in rooms are studded off but, with the exception of the garage and bathroom, there is no dry wall so things like electrical, plumbing and insulation are completely exposed), I intend to invest in some wall art. I’d like to make some prints of my AT&T Long Lines photographs from over the years of various sites to create a collage of sorts. For the wall behind my vintage Macs, I’d like to get some old Apple or Macintosh (or other retro computing) posters to cover the studs and insulation backdrop.

Next to the vintage computer desk will be a shelving unit to be inherited from my late grandparent’s house. The shelves will feature computers and other technology not in use or nonfunctional — like the Macintosh Classic that I’m trying to bring back to life, my old computers (such as the early 2014 MacBook Air that just got retired for a MacBook Neo, the late 2014 Mac mini, my first laptop — an Acer Aspire One netbook) with their packaging, cell phones and the Rheem Califone AV80 cassette player. The old Western Electric J99262AA-L2 TL test set and its matching J99296K meter unit, both from 1968 that I found discarded outside a former Illinois Bell microwave relay site, will also be displayed. A topic for a future post — an IBM Selectric II that was randomly found in my grandparent’s house — would also be right at home on that shelving unit.

I intend to also create a network for my classic Macs. However, instead of Ethernet that none of them support without extra hardware, it will be a standard AppleTalk network. My goal is to be able to transfer files between my Mac mini and the SuperSE over the serial connection, then have the SuperSE act as a host for the newer (but just as slow) Performa 6200CD or Classic and any other Macs or hardware that might join the mix in the future.

That brings me to another point: With more space, I can resume collecting old computers and related gear as my budget, time and ultimately the remaining space allows. While the 68k Macintosh platform is my bread and butter (I’d like to eventually get a stock SE again, just like the dual-floppy model I had until I sold it in 2021), there are other platforms I’ve wanted to explore. One that has been on my want list for nearly forever is an old PC with MS-DOS (or PC-DOS). Having an i486-powered Gateway 2000 akin the one I had my first computer experiences with would put me over the moon, especially if I could track down all the original Gateway 2000 peripherals we had with it. I’ve long wanted an IBM PC or IBM PS/2. While MIDI playback on the Performa 6200CD is far superior, I’ve also wanted a Creative Labs’ SoundBlaster 16 sound card — or any other sound card built around Yamaha’s venerable OPL FM synthesis chips — for MIDI playback with that unique FM synthesis sound that defined gaming and computer music of a bygone era.

Furthermore, the office has a large closet that can be used as ample storage for computers, peripherals and other devices not in use, along with boxes and other things.

The new office allows for a better experience not just with my modern computer setup, but also my old computer and other hobbies. It will be interesting to see how it evolves over time. •