I've Retired My 2009 27" iMac

The iMac that I bought in 2009 has been retired.

A few months ago, we had a power outage and it didn't recover itself when the we regained power.  I could not determine why it was having issues, but it would never fully boot up.  It would take forever trying to get to the login screen and IF it would reach that point, would show the desktop but never fully log into the user account (beach ball was spinning and never stopped).

I was even having difficulty getting it into recovery mode.  When it finally reached recovery mode, I found that a file was corrupted and wouldn't repair itself.  I performed a drive check and it stated that there were errors and the errors were hindering the drive check.  I opted to reinstall the disk using the recovery drive and it worked.  There are no longer drive issues, but the drive has nothing on it.  

I couldn't use it as it was and had an extremely difficult time even getting a copy of Mac OS.  High Sierra was the highest supported version for that particular hardware, and since the system wasn't working properly, I couldn't use recovery mode to pull and reinstall any OS versions.  It wouldn't see my older disks (I had two optical disks of Snow Leopard), either.  I was not successful with creating a USB install disk using High Sierra, either.  I tried creating a USB recovery disk using the App Store, but needed an Intel version of Mac OS, which I wasn't allowed to download using my Apple siliconed Macs (I tried with both the Mac Mini M1 and my Macbook Air M1 - it wouldn't work).

Since I was at my wit's end and since the system was 14 years old, I retired it.  I've removed it's hard drive (a 1-TB Western Digital HDD) and will be putting it on the curb for rubbish removal this coming Monday.  I'll put it within it's box in case anyone that wants to try to get it working can just take it home.

Macbook Air M1 & Multiple External Displays

 I saw several folks on Reddit complaining that the new M2 Macbook Air only supports one external monitor.  Technical specifications state that one 6K display is supported but I saw several posts over the past 30 days stating folks have been using multiple external displays with the M1 Mac Minis, which uses the exact same SoC as the M1 Macbook Air.

I decided to check with my Mac Mini M1to see what it would handle and if it could see more than one external monitor.

My Mac Mini is currently connected to an iMac 27" Late 2009 using a Thunderbolt-to-miniDisplayPort cable.  I switch between it and the iMac using Target Display Mode, which I posted about a few weeks ago.  My gaming PC uses a Samsung 34" UltraWQHD screen.  I disconnected it from my gaming PC and connected the display to the Mac Mini using and HDMI-to-HDMI cable, connecting it to the Mini's HDMI port.  The result is that the Mini is able to use both screens without issue, with both rendering in  1440p.

I then attempted to use the same two displays with my MBA M1.  Since the MBA M1 only has the two TB ports on the left side of the system, I had to use my Anker hub, which has an HDMI port.  I found that the MBA M1 can only use one of the two 1440p displays at a time, not both at the same time.  I did not alter the resolution.  NOTE - since the MBA only allows the usage of one external display, using a hub isn't necessary; you can use the aforementioned Thunderbolt-to-miniDisplayPort cable, which will give you the option of 1440p with the 27" iMac.

I think that two 4k monitors is a too much for the bandwidth of the MBA M1 and I've seen articles mentioning that two 4K displays was too much.  I need to test to determine if it'll detect both displays if one is not 4K or if I have to lower the resolution on both for them to be detected.

There are solutions that will allow the usage of multiple displays with the MBA M1, but you've to install DisplayLink.  I haven't tried that yet.

To be honest, the 34" as an external (or second) display is extremely large...it's like having two screens when in 1440p.  That's actually quite enough space for me, but I'll make it a project of trying to get the two 1440p displays to work with the MBA M1.