Does this mean the MacPro1,1 and 2,1 will be supported with Lion?

[tobyg]

I don't know which kernel will be booted or if the 32 bit EFI will make anything not work correctly, but this seems to indicate the original MacPro1,1 and 2,1 should be supported to run Lion.

http://www.apple.com/macosx/how-to-buy/

"Step 1: Make sure your Mac can run Lion.

Your Mac must have an Intel Core 2 Duo, Core i3, Core i5, Core i7, or Xeon processor to run Lion. Find out if your current Mac has one of these processors by clicking the Apple icon at the top left of your screen, then choosing About This Mac. "

 

[MRiOS]

seeing as I'm typing this from a Mac Pro 1,1 and running Lion DP4, I;m going to say yes, Apple is still allowing those of us on 1,1 and 2,1 machines to run Lion.

 

[tobyg]

I just see so many people here suggesting people not buy or upgrade their old Mac Pro's because of the uncertainty of Lion being supported on these machines, because of the lack of 64 bit EFI. Maybe this will help silence those threads and bring more value back to the 2006/2007 Mac Pro's.

 

[MagicBoy]

Lion will run on it fine.

It's the 64-bitness of the CPU that matters, not the EFI or kernel mode. Of the Intel Macs only Core Solo/Duo machines are unsupported on Lion as the hardware is 32-bit only. They are limited to a maximum 2GB of RAM by the chipset anyway.

 

[tobyg]

Lion will run on it fine.

It's the 64-bitness of the CPU that matters, not the EFI or kernel mode. Of the Intel Macs only Core Solo/Duo machines are unsupported on Lion as the hardware is 32-bit only. They are limited to a maximum 2GB of RAM by the chipset anyway.

That's not entirely true. There is something else that matters. I upgraded my old iMac 17" original model (with the ATI card) from a T2500 CPU to a T7200 Core 2 Duo 64 bit CPU, and the Lion DVD wouldn't boot. It gave me the circle with the line through it. Worked fine on my 2010 Mac Mini though. (I no longer have that iMac or Mac Mini, sold them a couple of weeks ago and got a 2009 Mac Pro again)

 

[MagicBoy]

To be fair that is a a non-standard, ergo unsupported configuration.

I'd be interested to find out if EFI enables 64-bit CPU extensions in that configuration, I suspect not.

 

[AlexMaximus]

Best time for a used 1,1 Mac Pro is NOW !!!!!

seeing as I'm typing this from a Mac Pro 1,1 and running Lion DP4, I;m going to say yes, Apple is still allowing those of us on 1,1 and 2,1 machines to run Lion.

It would absolutely make sense for Apple. Remember, the big enemy here is the PC and not older Apple high end machines. They want to get people from PCs to Mac and not piss the top end customers off. Well thats great news for those who are looking for a cheap 1,1 MP right now. Once this gets around, I am sure the prices will go up again for good deals on 1,1 Mac Pros right now.

I really think about to go for one of them myself now...

 

[alust2013]

That's not entirely true. There is something else that matters. I upgraded my old iMac 17" original model (with the ATI card) from a T2500 CPU to a T7200 Core 2 Duo 64 bit CPU, and the Lion DVD wouldn't boot. It gave me the circle with the line through it. Worked fine on my 2010 Mac Mini though. (I no longer have that iMac or Mac Mini, sold them a couple of weeks ago and got a 2009 Mac Pro again)

The chipset still is from the 32-bit only hardware, and will limit the CPU in that capacity, but does allow the much improved performance of the Core 2

 

[MagicBoy]

The chipset still is from the 32-bit only hardware, and will limit the CPU in that capacity, but does allow the much improved performance of the Core 2

Both the Early 2006 Core Duo MBP and the Late 2006 Core 2 version used the 945PM chipset. There were differences somewhere as the later machines supported 3GB RAM.

 

[ActionableMango]

That's not entirely true. There is something else that matters. I upgraded my old iMac 17" original model (with the ATI card) from a T2500 CPU to a T7200 Core 2 Duo 64 bit CPU, and the Lion DVD wouldn't boot. It gave me the circle with the line through it. Worked fine on my 2010 Mac Mini though. (I no longer have that iMac or Mac Mini, sold them a couple of weeks ago and got a 2009 Mac Pro again)

Perhaps Lion determines the CPU type by the machine identifier somewhere, so it doesn't think you have a 64-bit CPU.

 

[tobyg]

Perhaps Lion determines the CPU type by the machine identifier somewhere, so it doesn't think you have a 64-bit CPU.

It wouldn't even boot the DVD. Gave me the circle with the line through it when I tried booting it. Didn't try verbose mode. And when I held down option, to list the available boot devices, it listed the DVD as something like "EFI BOOT" but not as "Mac OSX Lion" or whatever it's supposed to list it as. I don't recall the specifics, I gave up as I was selling the machine and before I reinstalled the original OS I wanted to see if Lion would install.

When I tried to install from the media while in SL, it said something about my machine not being supported.

 

[nanofrog]

seeing as I'm typing this from a Mac Pro 1,1 and running Lion DP4, I;m going to say yes, Apple is still allowing those of us on 1,1 and 2,1 machines to run Lion.

For the moment. They could decide to eliminate K32 support just before they go to RTM (Release To Manufacturing).

Hopefully they won't, but I'm hesitant to presume developer version support for K32 to mean it will be in the RTM release 100%.

You may recall ZFS support that existed in Developer releases vanished from the RTM version of Snow Leopard (due to licensing issues, but there could be other reasons as well, such as technical issues). So I do see it as a possibility something like this can happen with Apple since there is actually history of it (recent as well, not something a decade or more ago), not just in general/based off of Windows, ...

It's the 64-bitness of the CPU that matters, not the EFI or kernel mode. Of the Intel Macs only Core Solo/Duo machines are unsupported on Lion as the hardware is 32-bit only. They are limited to a maximum 2GB of RAM by the chipset anyway.

Not entirely true. Apple had to create a hack here and there (memory capacity in particular). 32 bit firmware without such a work-around/hack would only be capable of n^32 addresses, but that only provides support for 4GB of RAM. So they had to increase the addresses (n = 2^36 IIRC is what they went with). The rest of it had to do with Unix hacks (capable of running 64 bit applications on K32; Leopard was the first OS X release that provided this IIRC).

It also has an effect on what EFI cards it can work with. For example, EFI32 cannot run a card with EFI64 based firmware, such as the newer nVidia graphics cards (GT120 on). ATI's cards work because they use EBC (EFI Byte Code) rather than specific EFI32/64 code.