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

[DrDee7]

Please excuse my ignorance, but under #1390 downloads from rthpjm, apart from pikify3.1.v.14.zip, is found the file PikifyAppV1-9.zip.
Where does this second file which unzips as "Install Piked OS X El Capitan" fit into the picture?

Sorry if this is a dumb question

Also, I meant to ask, If I am using pikify3.1.v.14, do I need to install this PikifyAppV1-9 (Install Piked OS X El Capitan) ? and if so, at what stage?

 

[rthpjm]

Please excuse my ignorance, but under #1390 downloads from rthpjm, apart from pikify3.1.v.14.zip, is found the file PikifyAppV1-9.zip.
Where does this second file which unzips as "Install Piked OS X El Capitan" fit into the picture?

Sorry if this is a dumb question

Also, I meant to ask, If I am using pikify3.1.v.14, do I need to install this PikifyAppV1-9 (Install Piked OS X El Capitan) ? and if so, at what stage?

The original Pikify toolset is written as a set of “scripts”.
Later, I decided to make it more “Mac-like” and made an App.

It’s your choice. They both do the same thing.

If you’re comfortable using the Terminal, or if you want to see the details of what gets done, then the script-based version is for you.

If you prefer the simple get it done approach, then use the App.

 

[jonbarh]

Hi the mac pro community!

First, let's salute the amazing job being done here for these old machines!

Here is my issue I can't tackle alone... being a complete newbie to such matters.

System config:

Mac Pro 1,1 (upgraded to a 2,1 firmeware version)
Quad core intell xeon
16Gb RAM
Original Nvidia graphic card installed.

I've successfully managed to install EC on my 2nd internal HD with the pikify3.1.v.14 app and everything seems to reboot just fine (black screen boot). However, as soon as the OS config "welcome" page pops up, no mouse nor keyboard will react, thus preventing me to go further through the install process. The keyboard is a wired one.

Steps I've followed to install EC on the machine:

1. Downloaded EC and added it in the application folder (I had to download it from a 3rd party since I don't have any other ways to get it (App store solution won't work for me)
2. Followed the step-by-step video process amazingly well described by @rthpjm on that post #1390
3. The reboot functioned just as described in the video.
4. Once the "welcome" page pops up, unable to use keyboard/mouse to go any further.

Did anyone faced that issue? It seems that USB ports are not recognized at all?

Many, many thanks in advance

 

[jbarley]

Is this MP1,1 new to you or have you had it running before using a supported version of OSX?
Only asking to confirm that the USB ports were known to be working before and after the firmware upgrade.

 

[SuperMatt]

Doesn’t El Cap have trouble running with the original video card? I don’t know if that would cause mouse and keyboard to fail, but I think a better video card is recommended, if not required for El Cap.

 

[jonbarh]

Is this MP1,1 new to you or have you had it running before using a supported version of OSX?
Only asking to confirm that the USB ports were known to be working before and after the firmware upgrade.

Lion is [still] running on the SSD drive which allows me to use it. All ports (USB, BT, EThernet and Wifi) are fine under Lion. A detail perhaps: when I boot alternatively with the alt key, the boot menu (allowing boot drive selection) responds to mouse and keyboards. As soon as EC installer loads, both keyboard and mouse are not functioning anymore. Changing ports did not help… So I'm being stuck at the "welcome" EC introduction message...
[doublepost=1543189466][/doublepost]

Doesn’t El Cap have trouble running with the original video card? I don’t know if that would cause mouse and keyboard to fail, but I think a better video card is recommended, if not required for El Cap.

True. But I'd much prefer to know that this machine can run EC before spending money on a Graphic cards… Unless it is a critical prerequisite for EC installation. I read about graphic instabilities though but nothing near to what happens here… Any idea?

 

[Rocketman83]

Are your mouse and keyboard both plugged into the built-in USB ports on the Mac Pro tower, or instead into USB ports on an installed PCI card? If the latter, those ports won't be recognized until the OS is fully loaded.

 

[jonbarh]

Are your mouse and keyboard both plugged into the built-in USB ports on the Mac Pro tower, or instead into USB ports on an installed PCI card? If the latter, those ports won't be recognized until the OS is fully loaded.

Plugged into the built-in USB ports (the rear panel's ones)

[Edit] keyboard is plugged. Mouse is on bluetooth.

 

[Rocketman83]

Well, those ports should work then. Must be a different issue.

 

[SuperMatt]

There is a thread on this forum with a link to a disk image of a working El Cap system that’s already setup for the 1,1 or 2,1. You might want to try creating a boot drive from that image and see if your USB works with it.

 

[rthpjm]

Plugged into the built-in USB ports (the rear panel's ones)

[Edit] keyboard is plugged. Mouse is on bluetooth.

How is your El Capitan disk drive connected? Internal drive sled, external FireWire, external USB?

There are no common reports of issues with USB on Mac Pro 1,1/2,1 with El Capitan installed with Pikify.

Having said that, you could try an SMC reset (links in my signature below).

If that doesn’t help try booting into your Lion partition then navigate to /Volumes/yourElCapitanPartitionName/var/log have a look at the system.log file found there. Look for any obvious entries referring to USB.

Just out of interest, where did you get your copy of Install OS X El Capitan from? Is it an Apple sourced version, or did you pick it up off the general Internet? There are some versions floating around that are intended for the mobile-based systems (early minis, iMacs, MacBooks etc). Those systems that are based on the mobile motherboard are known to have issues with USB drivers and El C. There are some “patches” for those systems. It would be good to rule this out as a potential issue.

Do you have another machine you can use? If so, boot your MacPro into the El C partition. Use your other machine to remotely access the Mac Pro.

If your other machine is a Mac, you could use Screen Sharing, or secure shell (ssh) from the Terminal. Once you’re on the MacPro, use a Terminal to run the dmesg command (it’s the low-level kernel log output). See if you can spot any obvious USB messages here too.

Have you tried holding down the ALT key during boot (immediately after you hear the startup chime)? Does that do what it’s supposed to and put you into the boot partition chooser? Can you then use the arrow keys to move the selector around?

(You say the keyboard is okay in the Lion boot, which seems to rule out a hardware issue).

You could try booting El Capitan in “safe mode”. This will disable any none Apple Extensions. Boot into El Capitan, hold down the shift key immediately after you hear the boot chime.

 

[Bacian]

Hello, first of all thanks for all your comments in the forums, they have helped me a lot to be able to have my Mac Pro 1.1 run without problems.
I am new to the Apple world, I was recently given a Mac Pro 1.1 and thanks to this forum I managed to install Mac OS X El Capitan 10.11.6 with Security Update 2017-005.

I wanted to install Security Update 2018-004 but I could not. This is what I did:

A. I went to System / Library / Kernels and copied the "Kernel" file to my partition with Mac OS X Lion.
B. Install Security Update 2018-004, wait for it to reboot and get into chaos.
C. Start my partition with Mac OS X Lion, and copy the "kernel" file that I had previously copied to my partition with Mac OS X El Capitan to System / Library / Kernels.
D. The system goes into chaos

Could you help me? I'm a little newbie on Mac but I love what I've discovered so far.
Could you tell me step by step what to do in Security Update 2018?

I await your quick response

 

[rthpjm]

Hello, first of all thanks for all your comments in the forums, they have helped me a lot to be able to have my Mac Pro 1.1 run without problems.
I am new to the Apple world, I was recently given a Mac Pro 1.1 and thanks to this forum I managed to install Mac OS X El Capitan 10.11.6 with Security Update 2017-005.

I wanted to install Security Update 2018-004 but I could not. This is what I did:

A. I went to System / Library / Kernels and copied the "Kernel" file to my partition with Mac OS X Lion.
B. Install Security Update 2018-004, wait for it to reboot and get into chaos.
C. Start my partition with Mac OS X Lion, and copy the "kernel" file that I had previously copied to my partition with Mac OS X El Capitan to System / Library / Kernels.
D. The system goes into chaos

Could you help me? I'm a little newbie on Mac but I love what I've discovered so far.
Could you tell me step by step what to do in Security Update 2018?

I await your quick response

Boot into your Lion partition

Using a Terminal
Navigate to /Volumes/yourElCapPartition/System/Library
touch Extensions

Reboot to the El Capitan partition

Try that....

 

[alphascorp]

Hello,​

I'm back, following my posts #4299 of July 20, 2018, #4419 of Sep 16, 2018 and #4430 of Oct 3, 2018​

regarding the operation of the update "SecUpd2018-004ElCapitan" with Kernel 2017-005.​

After 5 months EVERYTHING IS STILL STABLE !!!​

I just restart my mac pro after 17 days of intensive use and still no instability.​

​

​

Fix SecUpdate ElCapitan Mac Pro 1.1-2.1 Start Loop.dmg​

​

​

​

​

 

[andrew nz]

Hello,
I'm back, following my posts #4299 of July 20, 2018, #4419 of Sep 16, 2018 and #4430 of Oct 3, 2018
regarding the operation of the update "SecUpd2018-004ElCapitan" with Kernel 2017-005.
After 5 months EVERYTHING IS STILL STABLE !!!
I just restart my mac pro after 17 days of intensive use and still no instability.


Fix SecUpdate ElCapitan Mac Pro 1.1-2.1 Start Loop.dmg

View attachment 808245
​

can you advise if this is the solution for the security updates and those issues for el cap for 2018?

 

[alphascorp]

can you advise if this is the solution for the security updates and those issues for el cap for 2018?

Hello Andrew, you probably want to talk about the boot loop of our Mac Pro 1.1 / 2.1 under El Capitan, after the installation of security updates since January 2018?

The solution is explained by "Larsvonhier" and "kaosnews" (page 170 post #4237), a big thanks to them!

Personally I installed "SecUpd2018-004ElCapitan" and to avoid the boot loop I created an automatic tool that replaces the new kernel with the one of "SecUpd2017-005" and with a postinstall script to repair the timestamp of the folder /System/Library/Extensions.

Fix SecUpdate ElCapitan Mac Pro 1.1-2.1 Start Loop.dmg

I designed this tool without OS restrictions, you no longer need a clone of your ElCapitan system disk or use commands via the Terminal. For my part, I launched this tool from my old SSD with Lion 10.7.5, plugged into USB and everything worked very well...

Many of us have updated our Mac Pro 1.1 / 2.1 by replacing the new 2018 kernel with the 2017 kernel.
Some have decided to stop the 2018 update by staying on that of 2017-005 and it is their choice.
I just bring my help and feedback with my automatic tool to those who want to update their Mac Pro 1.1 / 2.1 and fix the boot loop, I do not force anyone to install the 2018 updates!!!

My Mac Pro 2.1 is updated with "SecUpd2018-004ElCapitan", Safari 11.1.2 (11605.3.8.1) and iTunes 12.8
I have only disabled SIP and I regularly check and repair permissions with OnyX 3.1.9 for OS X El Capitan 10.11 and it remains stable even after 17 days without restart.

 

[flygbuss]

Is it possible to use html5 within safari 11 on a cMP 1,1 or 2,1? Netflix always asks for silver light.. thank you!

 

[Argyboy]

Is it possible to use html5 within safari 11 on a cMP 1,1 or 2,1? Netflix always asks for silver light.. thank you!

Sounds a bit odd, but the best solution there is to use Google Chrome for Netflix, which uses the Widevine plugin so no need for Silverlight to play DRM protected content. You can use the latest versions of third-party browsers in El Capitan and should be able to for at least a couple of years.

 

[flygbuss]

Sounds a bit odd, but the best solution there is to use Google Chrome for Netflix, which uses the Widevine plugin so no need for Silverlight to play DRM protected content. You can use the latest versions of third-party browsers in El Capitan and should be able to for at least a couple of years.

I don't like chrome to be honest and I was using Opera for Netflix but it's limited to 720p.
I found an extension for Firefox wich allows it to play Netflix content in 1080p. Seems to work pretty well as fas as I can tell. I was just wondering if there would be a way to convince Safari to use HTML5 instead of Silverlight since it works like that on my newer Macs. Apparently it's not only connected to Safari and the OS but also to the machine itself.

 

[maruteru]

Hello to everybody. Let me start by saying thanks a lot to all the people who have helped to get El Capitan up and running on the Mac Pro 1,1 and 2,1. I really appreciate your commitment.

I have a Mac Pro 1,1 with a Radeon HD 4870 and 6 GB RAM which has been running Mac OS X 10.9.5 (using the SFOTT method) nicely for quite some time. Now I have tried to install El Capitan using the PikifyAppV1-9 found in posting #1390, but Idid not have any success. The app seems to work fine and does create an OS X Install Data folder on the target disk, but after rebooting, the MacOS installer does not start up. In the end, the target disk only contains the Data folder.

Since my Mac Pro 1,1 doesn't have enough memory for the Pikify method to work, I have tried to run the Pikify app using my Macbook Pro 8,2 which has 16GB RAM (and which runs 10.12.6). The Mac Pro 1,1 has two additional hard disks, one with a working Mac OS X 10.6.8 and an empty one for the El Capitan installation. I connected these disks in Firewire target mode to the MBP and then rebooted the MBP into 10.6.8 (of the Mac Pro 1,1). Afterwards I ran the Pikify app which seemed to do its job. But after clicking the reboot button in the app, the MBP simply booted up 10.6.8 again. The El Capitan installation never started. This is where I am stuck right now.

I have also tried the script-based Pikify3.1.v14 tools. And I did the same procedures with a Mac Pro 5,1. The behavior is always the same: I end up with no El Capitan installer.

Does anybody have an idea, how to get past this point of the installation? Unfortunately I don't have any additional RAM for the Mac Pro 1,1.

 

[flygbuss]

Hello to everybody. Let me start by saying thanks a lot to all the people who have helped to get El Capitan up and running on the Mac Pro 1,1 and 2,1. I really appreciate your commitment.

I have a Mac Pro 1,1 with a Radeon HD 4870 and 6 GB RAM which has been running Mac OS X 10.9.5 (using the SFOTT method) nicely for quite some time. Now I have tried to install El Capitan using the PikifyAppV1-9 found in posting #1390, but Idid not have any success. The app seems to work fine and does create an OS X Install Data folder on the target disk, but after rebooting, the MacOS installer does not start up. In the end, the target disk only contains the Data folder.

Since my Mac Pro 1,1 doesn't have enough memory for the Pikify method to work, I have tried to run the Pikify app using my Macbook Pro 8,2 which has 16GB RAM (and which runs 10.12.6). The Mac Pro 1,1 has two additional hard disks, one with a working Mac OS X 10.6.8 and an empty one for the El Capitan installation. I connected these disks in Firewire target mode to the MBP and then rebooted the MBP into 10.6.8 (of the Mac Pro 1,1). Afterwards I ran the Pikify app which seemed to do its job. But after clicking the reboot button in the app, the MBP simply booted up 10.6.8 again. The El Capitan installation never started. This is where I am stuck right now.

I have also tried the script-based Pikify3.1.v14 tools. And I did the same procedures with a Mac Pro 5,1. The behavior is always the same: I end up with no El Capitan installer.

Does anybody have an idea, how to get past this point of the installation? Unfortunately I don't have any additional RAM for the Mac Pro 1,1.

You can’t boot an El Capitan drive with the modified boot.efi on a supported Mac. Just install El Capitan on your FireWire Disk, disable SIP, run the script you’ll find on github and put back the drive into your Mac Pro after applying the script. I never worked with the app but it should do the same as running the script.

 

[maruteru]

You can’t boot an El Capitan drive with the modified boot.efi on a supported Mac. Just install El Capitan on your FireWire Disk, disable SIP, run the script you’ll find on github and put back the drive into your Mac Pro after applying the script. I never worked with the app but it should do the same as running the script.

Hello flygbuss. Thanks a lot for the fast reply.

I will install El Capitan the way you suggested. Could you please tell me which script on github you mean? I am a little overwhelmed by the many scripts and tools that I found on this thread and in the macrumors forums. And, would I still have to apply either CapitanPikeFix or rthpjm's Boot64 tool?

 

[flygbuss]

https://github.com/ryanmaclean/Mac-Pro-1-1-El-Capitan-Upgrades/blob/master/README.md

Though my Mac Pro didn’t chime twice it worked flawlessly..
[doublepost=1544221774][/doublepost]Just copy the script into terminal and run it. Leave out the nvidia part if you have an amd card.

 

[Macschrauber]

Plugged into the built-in USB ports (the rear panel's ones)

[Edit] keyboard is plugged. Mouse is on bluetooth.

Do you have an airport card in the box, I had airport cards what run in Lion but not in El Cap (bxb6 if I remember right but thats just from memory) the result is no usb.

 

[maruteru]

[doublepost=1544221774][/doublepost]Just copy the script into terminal and run it. Leave out the nvidia part if you have an amd card.

I did as you suggested, and omitted the nvidia part. The Mac Pro 1,1 then booted nicely into El Capitan. So, thank you for your help. If I understand correctly, this method does not alter the Recovery Partition of El Capitan though. Am I correct? That would explain why I couldn't boot into the latter when trying to change the SIP status of the main system.

I went on and performed steps 1-7 described in posting #1391, installing the boot64 tool which is supposed to undo kernel changes induced by Apple updates. The Mac Pro booted and ran stably after all this.

Since my adjusted El Capitan was on 10.11.5, I decided to give it a go and install the 10.11.6 update through the Apple Store. I had read in an earlier posting that everything should go smothly when updating from 10.11.5. Before installing, I checked it didn't say anything about containing a Security Update 2018-xxx.

Well, the installation didn't hang and booting performs fine as well. But when I try to log in, the screen just changes the color for a half a second, then I am presented the same login screen again. I made sure I had typed in the correct passwort, rebooted several times, but no luck! Is it possible, that the current 10.11.6 update also contains kernel changes, which were not present in earlier versions of the same update? Or did I miss something else?