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d3vCr0w

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 23, 2016
16
3
Hi people, I have a Mac Pro 1.1 with an ATI Radeon HD 5870 graphics card (the pc flashed one), 6GB of RAM and the original 2 x 2,66 GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon processors, and I have been trying to install anything newer than Lion on it but I've had no success. The last OS I tried to install is Yosemite, I followed the process to make a bootable USB (with the replaced boot.efi and the Mac model and version added) using SFOTT but every time I boot from the USB I get a Kernel Panic.

Yesterday I decided to create a normal USB Yosemite installer (with the createinstallmedia command and the original OS X 10.10.5 installer downloaded from the AppStore) and took the Hard Drive (2.5") from the Mac Pro and put it inside my MacBook Pro, then I booted from the USB and installed Yosemite to the disk with no problems.

After that I put the hard drive back inside the Mac Pro, but of course it was not gonna boot because now the hard drive had the original 64 bit boot.efi and not Piker Alpha's one, so I opened Terminal and unlocked both /System/Library/CoreServices/boot.efi and /usr/standalone/i386/boot.efi (from the right disk of course) with chflags nouchg boot.efi, then I deleted both files and put Piker Alpha's boot.efi inside these folders, after that I locked the files again with chflags uchg boot.efi and I thought that was it.

The problem is that no matter how I try to boot Yosemite (ether restarting the Mac and holding Option, or selecting the OS X 10.10.5 drive from Settings>Startup Disk) it doesn't boot, all I see is a white screen and nothing happens. I know that the way I did it is not what appears in the guides, but it was the only way I could install Yosemite because from the Mac Pro itself it was not possible, but shouldn't it work?

What is the difference between having a USB with the replaced boot.efi and replacing the boot.efi after having the OS installed to a disk? As far as I understand the Mac version and board ID are just to fool the installer to believe that the machine is compatible and to allow the installation.

What else should I do to make it boot? Do I have to bless the file or set any special permissions?

This computer has been a pain in the neck to me, at first I got a PC graphics card (EVGA GeForce GT 640 2GB DDR3) because it was cheap, and it worked but I didn't think that the lack of boot screen was gonna be such problem to me, then I purchased the ATI Radeon HD 5870, which was even more expensive than the Mac itself (but I got my Mac really cheap, so don't think I am a fool) because I got it already flashed and I didn't want to import it from USA because although it would have been cheaper, then I would have to deal flashing it. In addition to that the fans are always running at full speed (although I'm using Macs Fan Control to lower the RPMs), so... anyway, that has been the trouble with my Mac Pro and I would just sell it but I want to keep trying because it is like a challenge to me now.

Any help is really appreciated, Thanks in advance.
 
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