[michaelcly]

I have BIOS A01and wonder if a bios upgrade makes sense. I've looked through threads that indicate BIOS 5 or above is not good with SL. Does it make sense to upgrade to A04? What would be the advantage? I have Mini 9, 10.6.7, 32gb stec, 1gb ram.

I have had my mini 9 for about three weeks. I love it. I put OSX 10.6.7 on it, ordered a 32gb runcore ssd, 2gb ram, and a camera w/cable. So far everything works perfectly...display out, sleep, etc. The only thing that I don't like is the occasional
L O N G delay when handling large files.

What would upgrading the bios do for me?

[rrfranczak3]

possibly give you a nice paperweight or very expensive doorstop...personally if all is good LEAVE IT ALONE......

[michaelcly]

Originally Posted by rrfranczak3

possibly give you a nice paperweight or very expensive doorstop...personally if all is good LEAVE IT ALONE......

Thanks! I'll pass on the paperweight.

Thanks for the fast reply.

[holmes4]

While I don't share Rich's antipathy to BIOS updates, I would say that if you don't have any problems, leave it be. BIOS A02 adds support for F11 and F12 function keys. I had no problem with Snow Leopard with BIOS A06.

[michaelcly]

Originally Posted by holmes4

While I don't share Rich's antipathy to BIOS updates, I would say that if you don't have any problems, leave it be. BIOS A02 adds support for F11 and F12 function keys. I had no problem with Snow Leopard with BIOS A06.

I don't care to much about f1 and f12, but I'm curious what the other bios upgrades do.

I'm more concerned about the new Runcore 32 I just got. I thought maybe the upgraded bios might address the ability to use secure erase. I've read several threads and concluded the pro light I ordered supports it and so does 10.6.7. At least I see it in the file menu. I tried it and it seems to work... It behaves just like my Mac mini when I use secure erase. I was thinking my new SSD drive might last longer. But then I also learned after reading several threads the mini 9 can't really secure erase anyway. So I don't know. Really, 10.6.7 runs so well on this little mini9 as it is. I just use it to browse, pay bills, you tube, facebook, email and tinker with. But I am going to add a camera and microphone and try skype.

Getting off the BIOS topic now but I'll ask any way; when I upgrade the the ssd, If I do a disk image, won't I be moving a bunch of garbage left by old operating systems? Wouldn't it be better to format a single guid partition and then use Time Machine?

[michaelcly]

never mind...just being lazy. Did some digging and got the answers I needed.

[holmes4]

Whether you can use secure erase really depends on the drive. The controller and the BIOS should be able to handle it. All of the tools I have seen insist that one needs to be able to set a drive password, and my old RunCore can't.