Hello I recently installed El Capitan on my 2006 1,1 using the Pikify scripts. Everything went great. I installed update 2017-005 and all other updates hiding 2018-004. I also installed Boot64 to protect the boot.efi files and selected the grey screen. After installing iTunes Device Support Update the system rebooted and is now using the black screen. I ran the ensureboot script to change back to grey and rebooted but it remains the black screen. Everything seems to be fine otherwise and it keeps booting fine but I am curious what changed this screen and why I cannot change it back. I have the HD5770 Mac Edition video card and lucky 13gb of RAM.
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2006/2007 Mac Pro (1,1/2,1) and OS X El Capitan
- Thread starter Mr. Zarniwoop
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- mac pro 2006 mac pro 2007
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Heya,
So after quite a few YouTubes I do finally have El Capitan running on my 1,1 Mac Pro baby. Quite the sight. The glory was fleeting as the system continually restarts after a few minutes regardless of activity, more frequently when burdened. I considered memory a potential issue as I only have 6GB, and then saw a few posts in this thread addressing a similar issue and potential solution.
I was hoping to get confirmation of this diagnosis. I've attached the System Crash log for any clues.
Fortunately, the prices for RAM for this model have come down significantly since 2015.
Thanks tons!
So after quite a few YouTubes I do finally have El Capitan running on my 1,1 Mac Pro baby. Quite the sight. The glory was fleeting as the system continually restarts after a few minutes regardless of activity, more frequently when burdened. I considered memory a potential issue as I only have 6GB, and then saw a few posts in this thread addressing a similar issue and potential solution.
I was hoping to get confirmation of this diagnosis. I've attached the System Crash log for any clues.
Fortunately, the prices for RAM for this model have come down significantly since 2015.
Thanks tons!
What you have of the crash log is not conclusive.Heya,
So after quite a few YouTubes I do finally have El Capitan running on my 1,1 Mac Pro baby. Quite the sight. The glory was fleeting as the system continually restarts after a few minutes regardless of activity, more frequently when burdened. I considered memory a potential issue as I only have 6GB, and then saw a few posts in this thread addressing a similar issue and potential solution.
I was hoping to get confirmation of this diagnosis. I've attached the System Crash log for any clues.
Fortunately, the prices for RAM for this model have come down significantly since 2015.
Thanks tons!
I would run some hardware tests. If you have enough RAM, pull some modules and then check.
Heya,
So after quite a few YouTubes I do finally have El Capitan running on my 1,1 Mac Pro baby. Quite the sight. The glory was fleeting as the system continually restarts after a few minutes regardless of activity, more frequently when burdened. I considered memory a potential issue as I only have 6GB, and then saw a few posts in this thread addressing a similar issue and potential solution.
I was hoping to get confirmation of this diagnosis. I've attached the System Crash log for any clues.
Fortunately, the prices for RAM for this model have come down significantly since 2015.
Thanks tons!
Update:
From reading even more posts, it appears 12 GB is indeed required. I'll follow up, sorry for the premature post.
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Yeah, I though not. Thanks for letting me know. The RAM is probably fine, it looks more like it needs at least 12GB. Thanks tons for the quick response.
Update:
From reading even more posts, it appears 12 GB is indeed required. I'll follow up, sorry for the premature post.
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Yeah, I though not. Thanks for letting me know. The RAM is probably fine, it looks more like it needs at least 12GB. Thanks tons for the quick response.
When you do get the Memory situation worked out. You can go up to 56GB (6x8GB)(2x4GB) Keep an installer handy. The last App Store OS X update seems to break it.
I was able to take from other boxes and get my RAM from 6 to 10 GB, still shy of the reccommended 12GB. So far, no crashes at all, knocking on wood, in half a day of actual activity. DRAMATIC improvement.
Some apps are still being finicky:
Browsers Safari (9.1.2 & 11.1.2) and Firefox 77.0.1 have trouble with some pages, YouTube especially so. I've read this is an issue, the fix of clearing history had no effect for me. Safari gave a content crash, report attached.
Opera (68.0) handles everything fine.
Civilization 5 crashes, game only, immediately on launch. Report attached.
Note: All browsers and Civ 5 run fine on our other, slightly newer and runs El Cap natively, Mac Pro.
Some apps are still being finicky:
Browsers Safari (9.1.2 & 11.1.2) and Firefox 77.0.1 have trouble with some pages, YouTube especially so. I've read this is an issue, the fix of clearing history had no effect for me. Safari gave a content crash, report attached.
Opera (68.0) handles everything fine.
Civilization 5 crashes, game only, immediately on launch. Report attached.
Note: All browsers and Civ 5 run fine on our other, slightly newer and runs El Cap natively, Mac Pro.
Great to know! I'd read that 32GB was the new max, which was great as the originally thought max, as you know, was 16.
So sorry, I'm not clear on this part. Which installer, what's the IT that get's broken?
If this is about the 2018-001 security update, some of the El Cap guides warn about it specifically. I independently updated to what is said to be the last allowable security update, SecUpd2017-005ElCapitan.
Installer pertains to whichever usb drive one would use to install El Capitan on the Mac Pro 1,1.
As far as, the last update. Every time I’ve left One of these Mac pros with someone I hacked it for, the App Store security update breaks it.
Got it. In my case, I didn't use a flash drive, I had another internal available.
Understood, I am not surprised.
Hello Steven
Let me restate the “requirement”.
You need 12GB of RAM (or more) to perform the install using my Pikify tools. The install method uses Apple supplied tools to create an image that was originally envisaged (by Apple) to be burned to a read-only DVD as the install media.
Because of the read-only heritage (expectation), when you boot from the install media it creates some RAM disks to hold the installer operating system and the compressed install components. As the installation gets going, it needs to unpack the compressed installed components. One of those compressed files expands to approx. 9 GB, the expanded data is written to the RAM disk. The combination of the installer OS, the compressed components, AND the expanded data needs to fit into the RAM disk. In practice I measured the utilised RAM at just over 10GB. Hence the recommendation for 12GB. It is ONLY needed to perform the installation. You “could” down size the RAM after a successful installation (but I simply assume you wouldn’t want to).
I did try to figure out how to use disk rather than RAM-disk, unpack the large files onto available disk, which would hopefully remove the need for the large amount of RAM. However, I never found the combination of tools and launch switches to do this.
Empirically, the community seems to agree that MacPro 1,1/2,1 run El Capitan much more smoothly with more RAM. The assumption therefore is that 16GB or 32GB was a soft recommendation for these machines anyway. When this thread was most active, the secondhand market was awash with cheap compatible RAM (and probably still is). We always advise people to buy as much high capacity RAM as they could afford.
This brings me on to your symptoms... MacOS El Capitan does not like to run with 512MB RAM sticks. All reports of random crashes are typically resolved by removing any 512MB RAM sticks from the system. There were a few reports of 1GB RAM sticks also causing some similar instability. As such, we have always recommended that you install pairs of 2GB or pairs of 4GB RAM sticks. Every user that took this advice reported back that their system was now stable, and seems to operate more smoothly/quickly.
If you want to read more, search for my posts in this thread with 2GB in the text...
Thank you for the great info, sheds much light. Appropriately, when I altered my RAM I did find a single 512MB chip in there. Why? I have no clue, I've always known they need to be in pairs. I'm sure removing that was as much, if not more, responsible for stabilizing the system. I'll definitely add RAM.
Please forgive my newbieness, as I referred to so many guides, I am not certain which/whos disk image I used for my El Cap install. I did then replace 2 boot.efi files as instructed. Are these mostly the same procedure/files, are all MacPro 1,1's using a RAM disk? That is, did I use the Pikify tools or would I know?
Could RAM also be responsible for the application issues I mentioned, Browsers and Civ5? If the RAM disk uses 10GB, and I HAVE 10GB, that doesn't sound like it leaves much for actual operation. Do the crash logs I posted give any clue?
Also, I've noticed that when I put the Mac to sleep, I often find it shutdown later. I know RAM isn't affected by sleep, might the convention of the RAM disk react differently?
Lastly, is El Cap still the latest feasible system for a 1,1/2,1? I have apps, OK Civilization 6, that requires Sierra (10.12.6). I read that there was talk of perhaps in the future being able to run OS's after 10.11.6. I guess there is always boot camp, if not.
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Hello Steven,
Let me clarify again. The discussion about RAM disks is only relevant for the installation of El Capitan. Once installed and booted natively it’s just like any other PC/Mac, you’ll be using your hard disks (spinning or SSD) and RAM as “normal”.
You say you don’t know where you got your El Capitan source from. This seems to imply that you did not use my Pikify tools. You probably found one of the shared disk images that has been “pre-configured”, cloning that onto your hard drives. It’s a popular approach, and works for many people. In my opinion as an approach it carries a higher risk of “something being wrong”. There are some disk images circulating that simply have the boot.efi files replaced (which is all that is needed for MacPros 1,1/2,1). There are other disk images circulating that have more modifications to address specific issues for other Mac devices. For example, MacMinis and MacBooks have trouble with USB not working, to address this the community developed some alternative kernel extensions (kexts, if you come from a Windows background kexts are loosely equivalent to “Windows driver”). I guess what I’m trying to say is that if you used a disk image and cloned that onto your boot disk, there’s a chance that it’s not fully compatible with the MacPro 1,1 due to those additional modifications.
The Pikify tools take a different approach. You start with the Apple provided installer application “Install Mac OS X El Capitan”. This is the unmodified source. The Pikify tools then use Apple supplied tools to ”create install media”. This produces an disk image that Apple assumes will be burned to a DVD, or extracted onto a USB thumb drive. Think of this as the official Apple method of producing portable installation media. What the Pikify tools then do is to open up the image(s) to replace the two locations containing the boot.efi file. That’s it, no other modification.
Then, just like the “old days” you boot using the installer, (optionally format your hard disk to ensure a clean install), run the installation, reboot, and voila, you have a fully working copy of El Capitan.
In my opinion this is a ”safer” approach because you are starting from a known-good source media, Apple’s distribution of El Capitan (compared to something of unknown origin downloaded from the Internet).
The second advantage to the Pikify approach is that it will properly create the Recovery HD partition. This is one of the requirements for full operation of El Capitan, and it is VERY useful as the alternative bootable partition if you ever encounter an issue that prevents you from booting your main partition (in Windows terms it’s analogous to a Rescue Disk). If you use the “clone method” it is unlikely that you have a properly functioning Recovery HD partition (often it’s just not there because your source image doesn’t include it).
There are three popular approaches to installing El Capitan:
- Find a disk image on the Internet, clone it onto your hard disk, boot. It seems easy, but as I discuss above it all depends on the validity of the disk image you find/use, and probably doesn’t include a working Recovery HD partition.
- Use a newer Mac that does support El Capitan natively, connect your hard disk to that Mac (options: remove your disk and put it into a USB/FireWire caddy, remove your disk and put it in the chassis of a MacPro 3,1 or newer, or put your MacPro 1,1 into “target disk mode” and connect it to the newer Mac using FireWire). Run the “Install Mac OS X El Capitan” app from the newer Mac, installing onto your hard disk. Before refitting your disk to your MacPro 1,1 you need to manually replace the boot.efi file in two locations (three locations if you include the Recovery HD), refit your HDD, boot.
- Just use your existing MacPro. Build install media using my Pikify tools. Boot from the install media (this is where the RAM disks are used, and therefore you need 12GB RAM or more), complete the installation. Reboot (now using the HDD). You’ll have a working El Capitan partition AND a working Recovery HD partition.
Probably!
I also notice that you have some 1GB RAM sticks installed. If you read my previous post, you’ll see that some users reported random crashes with 1GB sticks too. Removing those and only using pairs of 2GB or pairs of 4GB RAM sticks is the strong recommendation from the community, along with buy as much high capacity RAM as you can afford. You won’t regret having more RAM.
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Hi,
Well the picture is yet more clear, I very much appreciate your comprehensive replies. You are quite the font.
Since I had replaced the boot.efi files manually in my install, it would appear I didn't use a pre-configured image. I do plan to reinstall El Cap, and 32GB of memory are already on the way, 45 bucks on ebay. Noted about the 1 GB sticks, no issues so far since removing the 512MB. I do have an El Cap native Mac Pro, would method #2 be mostly comparable to your Pikify tools? Would it generate a recovery partition, which I definitely miss. Since my new memory will be here shortly, I think I'll wait and try #3.
Any thoughts on this part.
Hey Steven,
There’s no way for the MacPro 1,1/2,1 machines to go beyond 10.11.6. After El Capitan, Apple started to use CPU features that these venerable machines simply cannot deliver. There was some talk about maybe someone would write some “shims” in software to replicate the hardware. Frankly it was quickly dismissed as too complicated and even if it did happen it would make usability treacle-slow!
Heya Again,
Got it on El Cap being the end of the line for the 1,1/2,1, happy to get this far. And yes, I had to look up "treacle".
I received and installed my 32GB RAM and struck out immediately to get v14 Pikify'd. I am beyond stoked to report that it worked like a charm! I am pleased to have a recovery partition and a stable OS. Nicely done! It is quite zippy. Yes, a new OS and significantly more memory, I am still surprised.
So my 6th grade quote was by Alexander Pope, "A little learning is a dangerous thing." I take it you see where I'm going with this. Well, I've always found, almost, that the risk taking aspect of this philosophy brings gains greater than the potential loss. So, before totally moving in to my new OS, I thought I'd push it. I have read a great number of posts and am not concerned I will do harm that cannot be re or undone. I did follow the post after yours on page 56 regarding what to do after installing, I did utilize boot64 to protect my .efi files. I also understood, perhaps mistakenly, that the later updates, including security update 2018-004, were OK to download through the app store and that the boot.efi files would be replaced as needed for me.
Also, I proactively saved a copy of my kernel file, in case of reboot-loopage. That's right, reboot-loopage occurred indeed. I rebooted from my Leopard partition, replaced the 2 boot.efi files and the kernel, just to see if that got me going again before reinstalling. As I'm sure you surmise, it didn't.
Well that was 4am so I'm leaving it like that for now, maybe you can help me climb out. I did see that reinstalling may be an issue and that I could have to do some time traveling adjustments to do so.
Apologies if I seem a bit all over the place, it can be a tad confusing to follow the timeline. A few steps backwards amidst all these tremendous leaps forward are certainly acceptable.
A couple of items I noticed while El Cap was good:
The included Safari runs perfectly until YouTube. I calls out an issue and content crashes. That's one of the reasons I wanted to try an update, to see if this was the issue here. Firefox was also not happy with YouTube, and Opera ran everything harmoniously, in case there's a clue.
Of course I had to check my games... Civ 5 still crashes on launch. Runs fine on our 3,1 El Cap native Mac Pro. Similar Crash report as the ones I posted a few back.
So far, I still had to use option on startup to get El Cap or Leopard took precedence. I can't swear by this one as I'm not sure I restarted many times before I broke it.
Once again, many thanks for all the effort, both for the creation of the tools and for continuing to directly help those of us still in need.
Got it on El Cap being the end of the line for the 1,1/2,1, happy to get this far. And yes, I had to look up "treacle".
I received and installed my 32GB RAM and struck out immediately to get v14 Pikify'd. I am beyond stoked to report that it worked like a charm! I am pleased to have a recovery partition and a stable OS. Nicely done! It is quite zippy. Yes, a new OS and significantly more memory, I am still surprised.
So my 6th grade quote was by Alexander Pope, "A little learning is a dangerous thing." I take it you see where I'm going with this. Well, I've always found, almost, that the risk taking aspect of this philosophy brings gains greater than the potential loss. So, before totally moving in to my new OS, I thought I'd push it. I have read a great number of posts and am not concerned I will do harm that cannot be re or undone. I did follow the post after yours on page 56 regarding what to do after installing, I did utilize boot64 to protect my .efi files. I also understood, perhaps mistakenly, that the later updates, including security update 2018-004, were OK to download through the app store and that the boot.efi files would be replaced as needed for me.
Also, I proactively saved a copy of my kernel file, in case of reboot-loopage. That's right, reboot-loopage occurred indeed. I rebooted from my Leopard partition, replaced the 2 boot.efi files and the kernel, just to see if that got me going again before reinstalling. As I'm sure you surmise, it didn't.
Well that was 4am so I'm leaving it like that for now, maybe you can help me climb out. I did see that reinstalling may be an issue and that I could have to do some time traveling adjustments to do so.
Apologies if I seem a bit all over the place, it can be a tad confusing to follow the timeline. A few steps backwards amidst all these tremendous leaps forward are certainly acceptable.
A couple of items I noticed while El Cap was good:
The included Safari runs perfectly until YouTube. I calls out an issue and content crashes. That's one of the reasons I wanted to try an update, to see if this was the issue here. Firefox was also not happy with YouTube, and Opera ran everything harmoniously, in case there's a clue.
Of course I had to check my games... Civ 5 still crashes on launch. Runs fine on our 3,1 El Cap native Mac Pro. Similar Crash report as the ones I posted a few back.
So far, I still had to use option on startup to get El Cap or Leopard took precedence. I can't swear by this one as I'm not sure I restarted many times before I broke it.
Once again, many thanks for all the effort, both for the creation of the tools and for continuing to directly help those of us still in need.
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Apparently in my efforts to repair my El Cap Boot loop, I have removed my ability to start up from Leopard on a separate internal drive. I believe I installed a tool that was not meant for the older boot drive. As I can no longer get into the computer, it’s hard for me to track what I did. It was a tool that had options for black and gray Startup screen. Might there be a way to remove responsible files in terminal from the recovery drive. While I have not lost data or bricked anything, my current option is installing systems again.
I’ve sort of retired from this forum. I only come back occasionally for nostalgia’s sake!
Boot64 is only effective if you start from El Capitan prior to 10.11.6. Once you reach 10.11.6, Boot64 is no longer required, nor effective.
The notorious boot loop was introduced AFTER 10.11.6, it was introduced by Security Update 2018-001.
You can install Sec Updates up to and including 2017-005.
Sec Updates from 2018-001 onwards all contain the new kernel that are no longer compatible with MacPro 1,1/2,1 CPUs. It is assumed that the modifications to the kernel were made to address the “Meltdown and Spectre” vulnerabilities.
Boot64 does not “watch” the kernel file and therefore does not replace it with the last known good kernel (from Sec Update 2017-005). If you’re any good at scripting you could have a go at modifying the code. It’s just shell script!
Hello
Hi I have updated to 15G21013 so far and it's doing alright. Im looking and think its 2018-003. Is that correct to your knowledge? Why is it not boot looping? Because of cpu upgrade I did?
Thanks ahead for the reply. Thinking of getting rid of it, just pulled it off the shelf.
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wondering how far it will go I guess I could mess with it but not really in the mood.
Hi I have updated to 15G21013 so far and it's doing alright. Im looking and think its 2018-003. Is that correct to your knowledge? Why is it not boot looping? Because of cpu upgrade I did?
Thanks ahead for the reply. Thinking of getting rid of it, just pulled it off the shelf.
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wondering how far it will go I guess I could mess with it but not really in the mood.
Oh well got an empty drive mounted guess im cloning boot drive... will let you know if it works
Understood, and very glad you check back as much as you do.
I blanked my drive and re-pikify'd, updated to SecUpd2017-005 and decided that was far enough. I was getting the "No Packages available..." error, reset to 2017 and was able to continue. El Cap is alive and well.
My 32GB new RAM is showing as 28GB, tried repositioning/reseating & PRAM. Close enough after coming from 4GB previously, just hope its not a sign of another problem.
Still having application specific performance issues, apparently the additional RAM did not help. Safari Version 9.1.2 (11601.7.7) quits content and crashes on YouTube, Civilization 5 still crashes immediately (logs in previous post). I only mention this here as they both run fine on my 3,1 Mac Pro running El Cap, presumedly natively.
UPDATE: I knew there was something about the security update and Safari. After doing the security update, a new Safari was available for download, Version 11.1.2 (11605.3.8.1). This did indeed get Safari on YouTube. Should've seen that one.
Thanks tons for the help.
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Hi Steven,
The RAM issue might still be causing you instability problems (Civ). It sounds like one of your 4G Sticks is “bad”, which means one of your pairs is effectively “bad” (the pairs are in dual-channel), likely causing the remaining crashes. See if you can track down the “bad” stick, remove both the bad one and its partner. You’ll go down to 24Gb but it should help stability.
You might want to confirm the issue is a bad stick, or a bad socket. Start from a known good configuration (24Gb), with the bad stick (and its good partner) out. Swap the bad stick to a known working slot. If the reported RAM drops then the stick is bad. If the reported RAM remains the same, then it’s probable that it’s the slot that’s gone bad. Visually check the slot, look for dust, look for damage to the connector, look for possible damage to the circuit board tracks, look for cracked solder joints. If you’re handy with a soldering iron and find some damage or cracked (dry) joints, try re-soldering. If you find a broken track, carefully scrape a few mm of the “silk screen” protection off the tracks both sides of the break using a scalpel, then bridge the break with a small amount of solder.
If you think it’s the circuit board, but can’t see any damage, try all the sticks again, making sure that you firmly seat the sticks (visually check the side-levers have located properly, it indicates proper fiitting)...
If you find it’s the RAM stick that’s faulty, personally I would contact the vendor of the RAM to see if you can return/replace the bad stick. If you’re successful, put the pair back in to get back to the glories of 32Gb!
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I'm in the midst of installing El Cap on my 2,1 (flashed 1,1, 16GB RAM) and have hit a problem.
I ran the Pikefy app on an SSD connected to my MBP (Mojave) and all went well.
When I put the SSD in my 2,1 and select the El Cap installer volume in the boot menu the computer just sits there.
I have an Nvidia 7300 GT Mac in it when this happens. Could the hang, or whatever it is, be due to this?
I also have a GT120 but as this is a 64-bit EFI card it won't show the boot screen and, I suspect, also not video during the installation process.
One thing I have tried is to wipe the installer volume and hook up the 2,1 via target disk mode to pikefy and then restart from that volume, but that only rebooted the MBP (into Mojave).
Any suggestions what I can do?
Thank you in advance
Philip
I ran the Pikefy app on an SSD connected to my MBP (Mojave) and all went well.
When I put the SSD in my 2,1 and select the El Cap installer volume in the boot menu the computer just sits there.
I have an Nvidia 7300 GT Mac in it when this happens. Could the hang, or whatever it is, be due to this?
I also have a GT120 but as this is a 64-bit EFI card it won't show the boot screen and, I suspect, also not video during the installation process.
One thing I have tried is to wipe the installer volume and hook up the 2,1 via target disk mode to pikefy and then restart from that volume, but that only rebooted the MBP (into Mojave).
Any suggestions what I can do?
Thank you in advance
Philip
