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HELP!!! how to install Mac OS Snow Leopard to my new MAC PRO
- Thread starter shamelesz
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Do you have access to any other Intel Macs with Firewire, that came with Snow Leopard or Leopard or Tiger?
Since the current Mac Pros came with a special build of 10.6.4, you can't use the Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard Upgrade/Retail DVD with them, as they only have 10.6.3 on them.
Since the current Mac Pros came with a special build of 10.6.4, you can't use the Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard Upgrade/Retail DVD with them, as they only have 10.6.3 on them.
I made a bootable 8GB thumb drive with 10.6.8 in case of disaster. Something like that would work, wouldn't it?
Yes, that would work.
But sadly only on 2011 Macs except the MBA, and it will not, or only partially, work with all upcoming Macs.
One does not need another drive, one does need a working 10.6 installation medium or another 10.6 installation, which one can copy. But as already mentioned, since the 2010 Mac Pros came with 10.6.4 and the Retail DVD of Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard only has 10.6.3 on it, the DVD will not have drivers for the 2010 Mac Pro, thus one needs a little extra steps.
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No.
Do you know someone with a 2011 or 2010 Mac, that came with Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard and still as the installation media?
Anyway, to get 10.6 onto your Mac Pro, you need a Mac, that either has 10.6 on it or at least has the ability to have 10.6 installed and also has Firewire.
If that can be arranged, you start the Mac Pro in Target Disk Mode and connect it to the other Mac and insert the 10.6 installation media in the other Mac and start installing onto the HDD of the Mac Pro, which should be formatted first, as you do a Clean Install.
When the installation is done, you start from the HDD in your Mac Pro still in Target Disk Mode and update your fresh installation of Mac OS X to the latest version.
You might not need to do that second part, if the Mac OS X version you install is already at version 10.6.5.
So you couldn't install SL 10.6.3 on the other drive, then download the OS X 10.6.8 combo updater using your Lion boot drive and apply it to the non operational SL build on the other drive?
Yup, as the 10.6.3 version on the Retail DVD of Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard does not include the drivers for the 2010 Mac Pro, thus it won't install, thus the little extra steps.
But if one could get its hands on a grey Restore DVD for the 2010 Mac Pro, it would be easier. One could contact Apple and ask for those disks and hopefully get a satisfying answer and delivery.
Thank you for your support, i will try this one, one more thing i have old application like adobe illustrator cs2 is there any possible way to use that to may MAC OS lion?
Not that I know of, as Rosetta (the layer to run PPC applications on Intel Macs) has been removed and is not included with Mac OS X 10.7 Lion.
oh may this is bad, i have many old application and all of that will not work it so sad,
. how about to dual boot with MAC other MAC OS is this possible???
oh may this is bad, i have many old application and all of that will not work it so sad,
PPC applications will work with 10.6, as it still includes Rosetta, but in order to dual boot your Mac, you still have to install 10.6, and that can only be done via the steps I laid out.
Will not work, if it doesn't have at least 10.6.5 installed and as the OP mentioned having a PPC G5 Mac, it will definitely not work.
I believe the last operating version to be put on the recovery disk is 10.6.6 for SL - which would mean (I believe) 2010 macbooks/iMacs should have been shipped with 10.6.6. If you can locate someone who has a 2010 macbook, you can borrow their disk to install.
If you know a way to use those Restore DVDs, then that would be the way, but sadly those disks are model specific and only work on the model they came with. If there is a way around this and you know it, I am all ears.
If you know a way to use those Restore DVDs, then that would be the way, but sadly those disks are model specific and only work on the model they came with. If there is a way around this and you know it, I am all ears.
There is a work around. It requires opening and modifying the installer.
There's a plist file that lists which Macs the disk can work on.
Change that plist file, repackage the installer, and now the disk is universal.
For the original poster.
The easiest (perhaps only) way to do this would require a 2nd Intel-Based Mac that can use 10.6.3.
If you know a way to use those Restore DVDs, then that would be the way, but sadly those disks are model specific and only work on the model they came with. If there is a way around this and you know it, I am all ears.
I believe they are kernel specific, rather than model specific, imho. Not totally sure on what I just said, so someone can confirm for me =)
Yes, run bootcamp and MAKE sure you have either a usb bootable win7 OS or the dvd.
Or don't run boot camp as it is unnecessary and gives you really old drivers.
I feel bad for the OP but where has he been? You should have looked into all this compatibility stuff before throwing down thousands on a new Mac.
You can probably find a 2010 Mac Pro restore disc kit on a torrent site.
you could also use instadmg to slipstream the 10.6.8 combo update onto the retail dvd and get a true universal installer, but that's a fair amount of work.
editing the plist alone gives you a disk that acts like a universal installer but still may be missing needed drivers. if you do it that way, make sure to install the 10.6.8 combo update as soon as possible and you should be fine.
to boot windows 7, put the windows install disc in the drive and boot while holding down the option key, then select the windows dvd from the list of drives.
editing the plist alone gives you a disk that acts like a universal installer but still may be missing needed drivers. if you do it that way, make sure to install the 10.6.8 combo update as soon as possible and you should be fine.
to boot windows 7, put the windows install disc in the drive and boot while holding down the option key, then select the windows dvd from the list of drives.
The Kernel is part of the OS, so the OS installer can't be Kernel specific.
They could be firmware specific.
I don't know about Snow Leopard for a fact, but Leopard just had a javascript file with a list of models ('iMac', 'MacBook', etc), a required amount of ram, and a minimum cpu speed.
It was all plain text, so you could modify the values (or change the method to just return TRUE) and then the installer would work on any Mac.
Wondersparks bootable USB dongle would work. Install 10.6.8 onto the USB drive as a bootable partition NOT as an installer. Boot off of the USB drive, then clone its contents to the Mac's internal hard drive. It wouldn't be an installer, but it would give you the same result.
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Sorry, I was mistaken. My USB thumb drive only had the restore DVD for 10.6.2 on it, as it turns out. It doesn't work on my system anymore, since I updated to 5,1, and it was for when it was 4,1. I'm now stuck... in the sense that I cannot go back from 10.6.8 without some trickery.
I have two clones of my boot drive to protect me in case of disaster, but I cannot easily do a clean install at this point. I sold my original CPU, so I'd have to borrow/buy a 4,1-compatible CPU and revert the firmware to 4,1 and then restore to 10.6.2. Either that, or do the target disk mode method with another Mac.
If I was to use the Target Disk Mode method using a 2010 MacBook Pro and my Mac Pro with 5,1 firmware, would the 4,1 Mac Pro Restore DVD work in the MacBook Pro drive, or would I just need to buy a retail Snow Leopard DVD and use that?