Resolved 2006/2007 Mac Pro (1,1/2,1) and OS X Yosemite

[meet.nick]

Hello everyone,

My system is a Mac Pro 1,1 with Mountain Lion 10.7.5 and the following specs:
Processor : 2 x 2.66 GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon
Memory : 17 GB 667 MHz DDR2 FB-DIMM
Graphics : ATI Radeon HD 5770 1024 MB
Hard disks : 1 SSD 250 GB and 2 RAID 1TB each

I completed all the steps from Hennesie2000's Guide for Yosemite (https://www.icloud.com/pages/000MYCYnKrh0JRg1EPDrG6wiQ#Yosemite_on_a_Mac_Pro_1,1_or_2,1_-_Boot.efi_Method) exactly as mentioned. When I try to boot the system (using the option key) from the thumb drive - I can see two options apart from my hard disk: 'EFI boot' and 'OS X Base system'. I tried booting from both the options to no avail. When I chose the 'EFI boot' it landed on the recovery screen. When I tried to boot from the 'OS X base system' I just land on my login screen for mountain lion. How do I get the system to boot from the thumb drive?
Any help would be greatly appreciated!

EDIT: I tried setting the boot disk to the thumb drive from the Utility manager that opens when I try to boot from the 'EFI boot' disk and then clicked on restart. The white on dark background Apple logo appeared. I could see a white progress bar under it for a while and then everything disappeared. For almost 45 mins now I have a 'black screen' and the CPU is louder than usual.
What should I do now?

Thanks,
--
Nikhil

 

[Ant3000]

There is a prepatched version of Yosemite available - P1 has the info on this. This will probably be an older version that the latest version so you will need to install PikeYoseFix to enable the updates from the Mac App Store. There may also be other preached versions available for download mentioned on this thread.

 

[meet.nick]

There is a prepatched version of Yosemite available - P1 has the info on this. This will probably be an older version that the latest version so you will need to install PikeYoseFix to enable the updates from the Mac App Store. There may also be other preached versions available for download mentioned on this thread.

I tried the prepatched version too and have exactly the same problem. I can see a progress bar for a while and then I get a blank screen however long that I wait. I am guessing it might be something to do with the hardware. Could it be a problem with the memory?- I have an odd number - 17 GB. Also would their placement in particular slots make a difference?

 

[Ant3000]

The position makes a difference - look inside the side panel for a diagram showing the correct positioning or Apple website. Is all RAM reported in system profiler? Are any lights on the riser board (seen with door removed)? This indicates faulty RAM or poorly seated.
512mb modules cause issues with El Cap but thought they were OK with Yosemite - you could try removing them as 17gb suggests you have some installed. I have same GPU as you - I assume a Mac version (or flashed PC version).

 

[meet.nick]

The position makes a difference - look inside the side panel for a diagram showing the correct positioning or Apple website. Is all RAM reported in system profiler? Are any lights on the riser board (seen with door removed)? This indicates faulty RAM or poorly seated.
512mb modules cause issues with El Cap but thought they were OK with Yosemite - you could try removing them as 17gb suggests you have some installed. I have same GPU as you - I assume a Mac version (or flashed PC version).

Thanks a lot for the timely reply Ant3000.
I tried removing the 512MB rams and installing the rest of the 4*4GB rams according to the instructions by Apple. The system still hangs up at about about half the way on the progress bar. Any other suggestions?

 

[Ant3000]

Are you installing on a newly formatted blank HD? I did this (actually an SSD) having created the installer on my Laptop.
You can connect your Mac Pro to another supported Mac using Target Disk mode and install from there. Changing the Boot.efi files from the supported Mac. Have you tried another prepatched installer - I seem to recall some had problems with corrupt downloads. I assume you need Yosemite and not El Capitan, or you could jump straight into that.

 

[ewleonardspock]

Is your RAM in the correct position on the riser boards? Over on the El Cap thread, a guy recently had crashes caused by RAM being positioned incorrectly - the side panel has a diagram inside showing the layout for different configurations, as does the Apple website. It seems to be very important.

They appear to be, all 4 slots on the top board and slots 1 and 2 on the bottom board.

 

[Ant3000]

yes, that appears to be correct positioning. Running out of ideas - I guess it could still be faulty RAM that only stalls when under load - you could stress test it. Removing pairs of modules would also be an option but there are quite a few permutations possible but it may be possible to pin point a faulty module this way - over time. But it may be nothing to do with RAM but it is something that can be tested and eliminated. The crashes could also be unlinked so there may not be one thing causing them.

 

[meet.nick]

yes, that appears to be correct positioning. Running out of ideas - I guess it could still be faulty RAM that only stalls when under load - you could stress test it. Removing pairs of modules would also be an option but there are quite a few permutations possible but it may be possible to pin point a faulty module this way - over time. But it may be nothing to do with RAM but it is something that can be tested and eliminated. The crashes could also be unlinked so there may not be one thing causing them.

I have 4 of the 4GB rams and have installed two on the upper board and two on the lower one close to the gold pins. I tested the ram with Memory86 on boot and found no errors.
I tried upgrading the firmware to 2,1 from 1,1. I even tried erasing my SSD and then trying to boot from both the prepatched Yosemite USB and the one with changing the boot.efi manually, with the same result (I can see the apple logo and the progress bar move for a while and then get a blank screen). I don't know what else I can do.
Do you know of a link with clear instructions I can follow (I am new to Mac's) to load Yosemite in target disk mode from a system that has Yosemite installed?

 

[Ant3000]

I am sure someone else had a link to another installer #4032 Others seem to have had success with this.

 

[meet.nick]

I am sure someone else had a link to another installer #4032 Others seem to have had success with this.

Thank you Ant3000, but the link in the post does not work anymore. Are you aware of any other?

 

[jbarley]

check out the link at post #4048, this is the pre-patched image I used with good success.
Keep in mind that it is a 5GB+ file so allow yourself the time to download it.

 

[meet.nick]

check out the link at post #4048, this is the pre-patched image I used with good success.
Keep in mind that it is a 5GB+ file so allow yourself the time to download it.

jbarley that is the same link as that on the first post of this thread, hence the same file.Thanks anyway!

I finally mananged to install Yosemite! Yay!! The solution was to use the disk utility to restore the image on to a hard drive connected to the mac instead of the pen drive. I then just had to boot from the hard drive and that was it!
But there is still a problem after the installation, my new Mac USB keyboard does not get detected nor do USB sticks. Only one of the old USB keyboards that I guess came with the Mac Pro back in 2006 works with it. I tried the keyboard with other systems and it works just fine. The USB sticks also are perfectly healthy!

I would like to whole heartedly thank Ant3000 for pointing me to post #4032 where the link did not work but I happened to come across the above method and it worked great. I have been struggling with the installation of Yosemite with several USB disks and several methods for over a week now. I request you guys to suggest this to people who use a USB disk and cannot boot into the installer. I also thank Deepwinter for uploading the method. Of course Pike should get most of the credit, I can use the almost redundant Mac Pro for a few more years now.

Having said that, I would appreciate any help with the USB problems plaguing my new Yosemite installation. Will Hennesie2000's Guide for manually tweaking boot.efi help in any way?

 

[Ant3000]

Good to hear you have sorted the install. There seem have been more and more issues related to USB issues recently but I am not sure why. I do always seem to get the message that "keyboard is not recognised" but it is an Apple keyboard and always works fine so I just ignore this message. Whether or not the brand of USB stick used for the installer makes a difference (I used Crucial 16gb) or do some other factors make a difference as to whether or not this works cleanly?
By the way, have you installed PikeYoseFix to protect the boot.efi when updating?

 

[meet.nick]

Good to hear you have sorted the install. There seem have been more and more issues related to USB issues recently but I am not sure why. I do always seem to get the message that "keyboard is not recognised" but it is an Apple keyboard and always works fine so I just ignore this message. Whether or not the brand of USB stick used for the installer makes a difference (I used Crucial 16gb) or do some other factors make a difference as to whether or not this works cleanly?
By the way, have you installed PikeYoseFix to protect the boot.efi when updating?

I think I tried with more than one USB sticks just to control for that with the same result.
Yes I have installed PikeYoseFix.
So, is there any fix for the USB problems? None of my USB sticks or my newer keyboard work.

EDIT: I found in a thread on this forum that this could be caused due to a conflict between the wifi card and the USB ports. Removed the wifi card and all the USB ports are fine!! The wifi and bluetooth cards don't get detected anyway on the Yosemite! Does everybody have the same problem?

 

[ewleonardspock]

yes, that appears to be correct positioning. Running out of ideas - I guess it could still be faulty RAM that only stalls when under load - you could stress test it. Removing pairs of modules would also be an option but there are quite a few permutations possible but it may be possible to pin point a faulty module this way - over time. But it may be nothing to do with RAM but it is something that can be tested and eliminated. The crashes could also be unlinked so there may not be one thing causing them.

It crashed again, this time when I tried to have VLC start streaming video from a firewire digitizer. Here's the console output. Note: The reboot occurred at 1:06:48

 

[meet.nick]

Good to hear you have sorted the install. There seem have been more and more issues related to USB issues recently but I am not sure why. I do always seem to get the message that "keyboard is not recognised" but it is an Apple keyboard and always works fine so I just ignore this message. Whether or not the brand of USB stick used for the installer makes a difference (I used Crucial 16gb) or do some other factors make a difference as to whether or not this works cleanly?
By the way, have you installed PikeYoseFix to protect the boot.efi when updating?

I had installed PikeYoseFix. I updated the software once and it was all fine. But when I updated the software again today I am unable to boot. Not even into the recovery partition so I could restore the time machine backup!
What can I do in this case?

 

[Ant3000]

Do you have another HD installed with an OS on it? If so boot holding option key and then select the appropriate HD. The update may have overwritten the boot.efi files although YoseFix should prevent that. What version we you going from and to? If you can boot into another OS you could change the boot.efi files manually - Post 1 should have details. File size is the thing that helps you tell them apart - I think the Apple .efi files are around 600kb and the replacements around 300kb. If you have the Apple version you need to swap them in the places specified.

I just re-read how you installed Yosemite and wonder if that is the problem. It is a long while since I installed Yosemite, but I thought the INSTALLER was restored to a USB memory stick (or HD) and then run from their to install on the Mac Hard Disk. Your description suggests you restored it to the HD and then BOOTED from it rather than installing.

 

[vk7hch]

Thanks to the info found in Post #1, I now have Yosemite running on my Mac Pro 2.1 (upgraded 1.1) 2 x 3 GHz Xeon, 10 Gb ram, 240 Gb SSD.
I used the pre-patched installer and kept the stock 1900xt card in for the install so that I could see the boot screen and select my thumb drive. The install went perfectly, booted to desktop as expected. Very sluggish graphics, so shut down, replaced video card with ATI HD R6850 and rebooted. As this card has not been flashed, there was no boot screen however desktop came up nicely. Steam works, DVD player works so I am one very happy fella.
I applied PikeYoseFix and rebooted twice as instructed.
It so far has applied 2 updates, is running 10.10.5 with 2016-004 security update and running just beautifully.
To say that I am impressed would be an understatement. Donation certainly will be made to encourage continued work.
Thanks again.
Chris

 

[ReallyRedCobra]

so something happened. I ran the latest update and i havent been able to boot back into mac. Everything was working fine before. Ive tried to boot from my usb stick but its in this weird reboot loop it seems and when i put just the hard drive in I think it gets to the desktop but I never get a video signal. I have a 970GTX in it which has been fine. I've reset the PRAM. I'm not really sure what else to try at this point. I can boot into windows 10 no problem. Anything mac related is a no go. Of course it would help if i could see what the hell was going on. I wish I could get a video card in this that would work.

 

[Ant3000]

Were you running PikeYoseFix before you ran the update? If not you will probably have overwritten the boot.efi files. Do you have an earlier OS you can boot into to allow you to do this? Or can you boot into recovery? If you have no boot screens you could pull all drives except the one that contains the OS and then startup - you can then select that drive in Sys Prefs as your startup drive. Then shutdown, replace other drives and reboot. You should then be able to manually change the boot.efi files or check they are overwritten - They are different size if they are Apple's version so easy to tell - info is on this thread.

 

[plentyoftimeto69]

Okay guys, I read the info on page 1, and it looks like Macvidcards is out of the cards that they have in stock. What part #'s work for Apple handoff? BCM94360CDAX is the one Macvidcards sells, but will a BCM94360CSAX work? It looks like I have to stick either in a cheap mini PCI-X adapter. Am I on the right track? Really wanna get handoff working on this system.

Oops, posted this in the wrong thread.

 

[rkanaga]

I am on 10.11.3 and have so far avoided upgrading further due to the pain of having to swap the Efi files (not running Pike Yosefix, and have a non Mac GPU so not easy to select boot disk.)

However I seem accidentally to have triggered the update process. before shutting down the Mac I am making a Super Duper copy of the boot drive on an external USB drive so I have hopefully boot from it when the main drive fails to boot.

Could anyone please remind me of the process to disable SIP and change the EFi files?

I can boot into recovery and have the EFi file on a USB stick.

Is the command "$ csrutil disable" correct?

Last time I did this I seem to remember still having problems replacing the files (i.e. it still would not let me) until I booted into a copy of Lion (which I no longer have.)

Is there anything else I should be doing?

Many thanks

 

[Ant3000]

You may be better posting this in the El Capitan on Mac Pro 1.1 thread. I am sure the process for updating the boot.efi files is on P1. You may get lucky and it not update the files when it launches - I assume you are typing from another Mac? If the install hasn't started you could install Boot64 script which works effectively the same as PikeYoseFix - differently, but same result in protecting the changed boot.efi files.

 

[cms062407]

So, I've got this up and running and updated to 10.10.5... installed NVIDIA web drivers, shut down the Mac, put GTS 250 card in...and I am getting nothing...not even a black screen...just "no signal" on my monitor...does anyone know what could be going on??

Thanks!!!