MP 1,1-5,1 Help, mac pro boots but no display.

[Crucialmoon]

I recently ran into a used first generation mac pro(don't know the year of it) however, the motherboard says apple 2006 which makes me think its 2006 but they could have used that motherboard in later years. But whatever that's not important, the issue I have ran into is that the computer's fans, lights will turn on and it will do apples chime however, there is no display at all, its just black. I have tried somethings to troubleshoot it already and before I go any further I should probably state that I'm more a PC guy and don't know that much about macs.

Firstly, I noticed the computer contained a Quadro 4000 GPU and to my knowledge this is an aftermarket upgrade for these systems. So, my first thought was to test it actually displays something so, I put it into my desktop and it booted up and was functional. Therefore, I know that there is something else wrong with the computer weather its a hardware or software issue I'm not sure.

Then I saw the red light on the ram slides that said that DIMM 1 had an error so, I switched the 32 GBs of ram around and still nothing.

I was stumped so, surfed some old forums and YouTube videos and I found this forum that suggested resetting the CMOS will fix the black screen so, I went for it because I had no other ideas and still nothing.

I would appreciate any tips or ideas on how to fix this problem. If you have any other questions feel free to ask, Thanks!

 

[Nguyen Duc Hieu]

I guess the OS on your MP's HDD/SSD are gone.
Assuming that the hardware is fine, your Quadro 4000 is a PC card and not Apple card. Therefore
1. Your iMac will only show the log-in screen or desktop screen after 4~5 min from powered-on, provided that you have the OS installed in a HDD/SSD connected on 1 of the 4 bays.
2. With no OS, your iMac will show a white screen, and a folder with a question mark, provided that you have a native support 32 bit graphic card.

You don't have a 32 bit Apple card, or a proper OS disk (OS X Lion), your computer will stay dark.

 

[Crucialmoon]

So how would you recommend trying to trying to fix the issue? Getting an apple video card or trying to install a new operating system?

 

[Nguyen Duc Hieu]

So how would you recommend trying to trying to fix the issue? Getting an apple video card or trying to install a new operating system?

If you can install a new operating system without the Apple video card, go for it.
The latest OS you can run on MP1,1 is pikified El Capitan (El Capitan with 32-bit EFI).
The official supported OS is OS X Lion.

 

[Crucialmoon]

Okay, I think that is the issue, I put the hard disk into my other computer and there was absolutely nothing on it. Could I install mac from a pc on to the drive then put it into the Mac Pro? Or could I install windows on to the drive and would it boot up on the MP?

 

[Nguyen Duc Hieu]

Okay, I think that is the issue, I put the hard disk into my other computer and there was absolutely nothing on it. Could I install mac from a pc on to the drive then put it into the Mac Pro? Or could I install windows on to the drive and would it boot up on the MP?

Mac installed on PC then transfered to MP: thereotically, it would, if you can install Mac OS from a windows PC, something like using Transmac to restore a pre-install disk image file on a disk. You can try this to see if it works out for you.

Installing Windows on the drive: It will be a little tricky, but it may work better with windows.

Anyway, if you can find a still-working 7300GT cheaply, you'd better get one and save tons of trouble in installing OS.

 

[Crucialmoon]

So I would use transmac to make a bootable USB drive and using a 7300GT I should be able to navigate the boot screen and boot from the USB?

 

[Nguyen Duc Hieu]

Use the correct DMG, and you can restore an El Cap dmg to SSD/HDD, then transfer to the MP.
Put the SSD to the 1st HDD bay, do a PRAM reset. You may boot to El Cap, no need to use 7300GT.

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