2006/2007 Mac Pro (1,1/2,1) and OS X El Capitan

[rthpjm]

What about the GPU? Do they work "out of the box"? I was thinking something like this instead if it doesn't need to be flashed.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/For-Fit-NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX960-GDDR5-128Bit-PCI-Express-Video-Graphics-Card-4GB/382304719502?_trkparms=aid=222007&algo=SIM.MBE&ao=2&asc=41375&meid=3d45e83efbfe467982238e030bed0948&pid=100005&rk=6&rkt=6&sd=162791132623&_trksid=p2047675.c100005.m1851

“Most” PC flavored GPUs work out of the box yes, without the ability to show the initial boot screens.

References to flashing are usually to restore the boot screens over the native digital interfaces. This is done by “stitching” an EFI section of code into the GPU firmware. Adding the EFI code to the GPU generally allows the Mac EFI pre-boot environment to properly initialize the card during the Pre-boot. Once Mac OS launches it can use the kernel extensions (kexts also known as drivers) to talk to the GPU.

If you buy a PC flavored card it usually does not have the EFI code in its firmware. Hence no boot screen on a Mac Pro. This might change over time as commodity PCs start to implement EFI rather than legacy BIOS.

There’s lots of other issues to consider for the Mac Pro 1,1 and 2,1. Read this forum if you’re interested I’ve written endlessly about it...

In summary, if you’re not bothered about boot screens, then yes, most PC Cards work out of the box.

 

[humann]

Anyone install the latest security update 2017-005 10.11.6? Is it safe to do so?

I installed it (2,1, 500G Samsung SSD, 20G RAM, flashed PowerColor R9 280 X) and it worked fine. The last one gave me a few fits a little over a month ago so I was expecting to have to zap the PRAM but all's well.

 

[SuperMatt]

When flashing the Mac Pro from 1,1 to 2,1 - would I have more luck if I booted Lion instead of El Cap? I can get a Lion boot disk made if I need to - found an old installer. I can't get it to work running El Capitan.

 

[humann]

When flashing the Mac Pro from 1,1 to 2,1 - would I have more luck if I booted Lion instead of El Cap? I can get a Lion boot disk made if I need to - found an old installer. I can't get it to work running El Capitan.

No guarantees but yeah, that would be something I’d try if the El Capitan install won’t run the firmware patch. I can’t remember exactly but I’m pretty sure I did the 1,1->2,1 firmware flash before I Pikified anything.

 

[Ant3000]

I think I did this with Snow Leopard and it worked OK. I seem to remember having to reboot twice to get the update to register both CPUs on System Profiler information.

 

[jbarley]

When flashing the Mac Pro from 1,1 to 2,1 - would I have more luck if I booted Lion instead of El Cap? I can get a Lion boot disk made if I need to - found an old installer. I can't get it to work running El Capitan.

I used this firmware updater from "netkas", worked like a charm, and yes it did require 2 reboots to recognize the CPU's.
http://forum.netkas.org/index.php?P...5np9lg54pp0b33qf0s&topic=1094.msg6585#msg6585

 

[SuperMatt]

I used this firmware updater from "netkas", worked like a charm, and yes it did require 2 reboots to recognize the CPU's.
http://forum.netkas.org/index.php?P...5np9lg54pp0b33qf0s&topic=1094.msg6585#msg6585

Thanks. I tried this booting under Lion two times with no success. Followed the instructions exactly. The 2nd reboot it still shows as 1,1. I haven't bought replacement CPUs yet, and won't unless I can get this working I don't think.

I do have a graphics card that doesn't show boot screens, but I did notice that although the instructions say it can take a few minutes to do the firmware upgrade, the machine does the flashy-light, long tone thing, and restarts, but then after just a few seconds it restarts again and goes to the login screen. Doesn't seem like enough time between restarts for it to have done a firmware upgrade.

One other thing I noticed. My Boot ROM version is showing as: MP11.005D.B00 - Apple has a version .B08 - should I install that first before trying the 2,1 firmware update or will it stop my machine from running El Cap? My SMC version is 1.7f10.

 

[SuperMatt]

Thanks. I tried this booting under Lion two times with no success. Followed the instructions exactly. The 2nd reboot it still shows as 1,1. I haven't bought replacement CPUs yet, and won't unless I can get this working I don't think.

UPDATE: I just got this working. Went onto the netkas forum you mentioned and searched the whole 32 page thread. Page 13 had info on how to deal with the exact issue I was having - a weird boot ROM version. A special version of the firmware upgrade tool was uploaded to the post. I ran it under 10.7.5 and my computer reports as Mac Pro 2,1 now! Thanks for directing me to netkas!

Now to figure out how much I want to upgrade the system. I got it free on craigslist, and it works pretty darn well for the price!

 

[jbarley]

Glad it worked out for you.

 

[Ant3000]

UPDATE: I just got this working. Went onto the netkas forum you mentioned and searched the whole 32 page thread. Page 13 had info on how to deal with the exact issue I was having - a weird boot ROM version. A special version of the firmware upgrade tool was uploaded to the post. I ran it under 10.7.5 and my computer reports as Mac Pro 2,1 now! Thanks for directing me to netkas!

Now to figure out how much I want to upgrade the system. I got it free on craigslist, and it works pretty darn well for the price!

I upgraded the CPUs but perhaps the best options to start with are more RAM and an SSD. CPU upgrade isn't too difficult if you follow some of the excellent vids of how to do it. Just get all the gear together (thermal paste, cleaner etc) before you take the thing apart. Obviously the upgrades will depend on what you want to use the machine for.

 

[GibbyNLA]

Hey All,
Are we supposed to be able to boot from the recovery volume after installing El Cap on 2,1 Mac? I installed TotalFinder on newer Mac Pro and old 2,1 one. You have to turn off SIP to install then turn back on after installation via terminal in recovery volume, but I can't seem to boot from the recovery volume, it just blinks a bit and goes onto the full bootup volume. Any ideas, remedies?

Thanks,
J

 

[jbarley]

Hey All,
Are we supposed to be able to boot from the recovery volume after installing El Cap on 2,1 Mac? I installed TotalFinder on newer Mac Pro and old 2,1 one. You have to turn off SIP to install then turn back on after installation via terminal in recovery volume, but I can't seem to boot from the recovery volume, it just blinks a bit and goes onto the full bootup volume. Any ideas, remedies?

Thanks,
J

The Recovery volume needs to have the modified "boot.efi" installed just as the main boot volume did.
Once this change is made the Recovery Volume will boot as normal.
-------------------
Modification of the Recovery HD partition so that it will be bootable on the Old Mac Pro

Finally, within El Capitan itself, open the Terminal and enter
diskutil list
You will see a list of disks and partitions. One of them, of the type “Apple_Boot”, will be named “Recovery HD” and it will be located on the same disk as your new El Capitan partition (possibly called “Macintosh HD”). Notice its disk identifier in the last column to the right. Let’s suppose the identifier is “disk3s3”. Using the Terminal, enter the following:
diskutil mount disk3s3
The El Capitan Recovery HD will appear on your desktop. Using the Terminal, you’ll have to replace the boot.efi file located in /com.apple.recovery.boot with Pike’s boot.efi that you previously downloaded as indicated earlier. Notice that this modified Recovery HD will now boot the old Mac Pro, but, if you were to use it to reinstall El Capitan, you would still need to use the Terminal to replace both copies of the stock boot.efi with Pike’s modified version. Finally, using the Terminal, enter:
diskutil unmount disk3s3
----------------------------------
The tidbit above was gleaned from this thread, post #19.
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/boot-efi-developers-thread.1924434/

 

[SuperMatt]

I hope somebody has experience with this: I want to clone my current boot disk with SuperDuper to a new drive. Will this cloned drive boot, or does SuperDuper exclude things like the boot.efi?

I recently got a faster hard drive from somebody's discarded Time Capsule 2TB (The Time Capsule overheated and no longer works, but I extracted its hard drive and it works just fine)... it's 7200RPM and quite fast compared to what I have. Measured between 175 and 200MB/s read and write on the BlackMagic test.
[doublepost=1513910510][/doublepost]

I upgraded the CPUs but perhaps the best options to start with are more RAM and an SSD. CPU upgrade isn't too difficult if you follow some of the excellent vids of how to do it. Just get all the gear together (thermal paste, cleaner etc) before you take the thing apart. Obviously the upgrades will depend on what you want to use the machine for.

Thanks. I found really cheap RAM on NewEgg ($45 for 16GB). I will try that first and I just got a used 2TB 7200RPM drive that is quite fast.

 

[jbarley]

I hope somebody has experience with this: I want to clone my current boot disk with SuperDuper to a new drive. Will this cloned drive boot, or does SuperDuper exclude things like the boot.efi?

A clone made with either SuperDuper or Carbon Copy will boot just fine.
I have both but prefer Carbon Copy because it also handles the Recovery Partition, which the last time I checked SuperDuper did not.
Keeping in mind that any Recovery Partition created will need the "boot.efi" modified as noted in Post #3712

 

[rthpjm]

The Recovery volume needs to have the modified "boot.efi" installed just as the main boot volume did.
Once this change is made the Recovery Volume will boot as normal.
-------------------
Modification of the Recovery HD partition so that it will be bootable on the Old Mac Pro

Finally, within El Capitan itself, open the Terminal and enter
diskutil list
You will see a list of disks and partitions. One of them, of the type “Apple_Boot”, will be named “Recovery HD” and it will be located on the same disk as your new El Capitan partition (possibly called “Macintosh HD”). Notice its disk identifier in the last column to the right. Let’s suppose the identifier is “disk3s3”. Using the Terminal, enter the following:
diskutil mount disk3s3
The El Capitan Recovery HD will appear on your desktop. Using the Terminal, you’ll have to replace the boot.efi file located in /com.apple.recovery.boot with Pike’s boot.efi that you previously downloaded as indicated earlier. Notice that this modified Recovery HD will now boot the old Mac Pro, but, if you were to use it to reinstall El Capitan, you would still need to use the Terminal to replace both copies of the stock boot.efi with Pike’s modified version. Finally, using the Terminal, enter:
diskutil unmount disk3s3
----------------------------------
The tidbit above was gleaned from this thread, post #19.
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/boot-efi-developers-thread.1924434/

I also wrote a script for this, based on the script version of Pikify, I call it “Recover the Recovery HD” but because we’re on a Unix derivative the script is named rrhd

Search this thread for rrhd...

Found it! Post #1607nn

Caveat: Your Recovery HD should be a 10.11 version to start with. This will depend on how you built your El Capitan disk; if you connected to a newer supported Mac, ran the install from there, and then manually changed to the two boot.efi files, then your Recovery HD will be version 10.11 without the modifications required to boot/use it.

 

[SuperMatt]

Thanks very much for the info. The wealth of knowledge among MacRumors forum users is always impressive. I left out the recovery partition when I made my current boot disk. I will remedy that on the new hard drive.

 

[alaska man]

Thanks to all, after much reading and research of this forum i was successful in installing El Capitan 10.11.04 and upgrading to 10.11.06 on my macpro.
MacPro 1,1 with upgrade processors, ati radeon hd 5770, 16 g ram ( 2 x 8 )
I have been using it for a couple of days and all was well but today i had an issue i need help with.
I have two monitors run off the mini display ports of my 5770 and third ( my 55" vizio ) run off the third port ( dvi i believe ) the the cable is a dvi to hdmi and it runs into my denon avr.
The vizio worked fine before as a third monitor when i was running os x Lion but today when i fired up my denon My other monitors flashed, the resolution change on one and the desktop background photo of the other was replaced with the one that was set to be on the vizio.
NOW i am not getting a signal to the vizio, i have checked the connections, turned on and off the denon, set the display pref to default but i can not get the vizio to receive a signal from the macpro even though the vizio is recognized ( as denon ) in system pref > displays pref i can move it and set pref for it.
No signal received by the vizio/denon Any thoughts?

Edit: i unplugged my dvi cable agian, waited a while and then ran through the pref again and plugged it back in and it worked, I do not think i did anything different this time but ? Anyway it is working now. i will test is t a few times by turning it on and off and see what happens.

 

[AL1630]

I got El Capitan to run successfully, but it recognizes my Quadro FX 4500 as 'Quadro FX4500 5MB', and isn't running very well. Is there something I can do about the graphics, like drivers?​

 

[Ant3000]

I got El Capitan to run successfully, but it recognizes my Quadro FX 4500 as 'Quadro FX4500 5MB', and isn't running very well. Is there something I can do about the graphics, like drivers?​

Have you looked on the Nvidia website for the most recent driver download? There is info earlier on this thread mentioning issues with some graphics cards not having all of their capacity recognised, so could be worth searching for this too.

 

[AL1630]

I haven't found drivers for this specific card yet, but I'll keep looking. I'll also dig through the thread a bit more to see if I can find anything.

 

[Ant3000]

There appears to be drivers available on the Nvidia website for El Cap (and beyond). Hopefully this will work unless there is something specific in the architecture of a 1.1 that prevents it doing so.

 

[AL1630]

I put in that info, but it said it couldn't find drivers for any version of OS X, even back to leopard. That's strange, considering this card is from around the leopard era.

 

[Ant3000]

Just looked again and I realise it allows the spec to be entered but doesn't offer an actual driver - my mistake.
P1 of this thread has the info on unsupported graphics card - unfortunately it looks like it may need to be changed to get everything working properly.

 

[AL1630]

Ah, that's too bad. I guess I'll just have to pick up a better card.

 

[Ant3000]

I have no first hand experience of your card, so double check it can't be made to work. Alternatives are not too expensive (depending on choice) but do a bit of research if you want boot screens - not all cards will provide this. Some can be flashed to be able to do this though. The Radeon 5770 was available from Apple and works well out of the box as does the 7950 Mac edition - although at a higher price.