Mac Pro 1,1 - Possibly Bricked

[ppolitop]

Hello everyone!

I have a Mac Pro 1,1 that used to run on a flashed Ati 4870. The card started to malfunction and cause system crashes most of the times only seconds after boot. Due to location and financial status (Greece) I have very limited access to graphics cards. Prices for apple-branded cards are insane, even on e-bay.

So I figured I could use one gtx 660 from gigabyte that I was fortunate enough to receive as a gift on the new year's eve. The card as far as I know, can work without boot screens only on Mountain Lion...

My plan was to install Mountain Lion on my 1,1, using for boot/install one old 8GB IDE HDD, placed on the optical drive bay. I could still use the Ati card, by unplugging one of the two 6-pin power connectors. This way OS X would start without acceleration and just a warning dialog. Legacy (BIOS) mode would not start at all. It instead displayed a DOS-Style error with big red blinking letters that I should connect the second cable and restart.

I reached the stage when I should run the installer for ML through chameleon since it's 64-bit only. The only option I had was to plug the second cable and hope the card makes it through. Well, it didn't. There was electric arcing, smoke and a terrible smell.

On the other hand, the computer seems ok, boots normally but without any picture displayed whatsoever, which is expected. Lion does not support my only intact card, the gigabyte gtx 660.

The strange thing is that I tried to boot blindly into legacy (BIOS) mode on either chameleon or windows (bootcamp) and I still get no picture. It's as if the mac freezes when I hold the option key down after the chime. Whatever combination of left-right and enter I may press, I still hear no disk activity or any other indication that the computer boots up.

I tried connecting the monitor to both the DVI-D output and the full DVI one with a D-SUB adapter. I may try HDMI too, but I doubt it would actually make any difference.

So now, here I am stuck with a black monitor and no obvious way of fixing this situation.

Anyone had a similar experience? Any advice, at all? I have no friends or relatives with a mac pro, so anything I do it must be done in the dark.
I have a MacBook pro that can connect to the disks of the tower, even on target disk mode.

Thank you for giving it a read,
Peter

P.S. It should be pretty obvious that I am not a native English speaker

 

[OrangeSVTguy]

You can screen share into your mac pro from your macbook pro/ipad/iphone but you have to have that enabled in the system prefs. I'm not too familiar with booting ML on a 1,1 so sorry I can't be much help in that department. Bummer that you might have fried your 8800 and the 6** only work with 10.8.

BTW I had no problems understanding your English. Sad when many people that speak it natively and you can't comprehend them lol.

 

[MacinJosh]

Hello everyone!

I have a Mac Pro 1,1 that used to run on a flashed Ati 4870. The card started to malfunction and cause system crashes most of the times only seconds after boot. Due to location and financial status (Greece) I have very limited access to graphics cards. Prices for apple-branded cards are insane, even on e-bay.

So I figured I could use one gtx 660 from gigabyte that I was fortunate enough to receive as a gift on the new year's eve. The card as far as I know, can work without boot screens only on Mountain Lion...

My plan was to install Mountain Lion on my 1,1, using for boot/install one old 8GB IDE HDD, placed on the optical drive bay. I could still use the Ati card, by unplugging one of the two 6-pin power connectors. This way OS X would start without acceleration and just a warning dialog. Legacy (BIOS) mode would not start at all. It instead displayed a DOS-Style error with big red blinking letters that I should connect the second cable and restart.

I reached the stage when I should run the installer for ML through chameleon since it's 64-bit only. The only option I had was to plug the second cable and hope the card makes it through. Well, it didn't. There was electric arcing, smoke and a terrible smell.

On the other hand, the computer seems ok, boots normally but without any picture displayed whatsoever, which is expected. Lion does not support my only intact card, the gigabyte gtx 660.

The strange thing is that I tried to boot blindly into legacy (BIOS) mode on either chameleon or windows (bootcamp) and I still get no picture. It's as if the mac freezes when I hold the option key down after the chime. Whatever combination of left-right and enter I may press, I still hear no disk activity or any other indication that the computer boots up.

I tried connecting the monitor to both the DVI-D output and the full DVI one with a D-SUB adapter. I may try HDMI too, but I doubt it would actually make any difference.

So now, here I am stuck with a black monitor and no obvious way of fixing this situation.

Anyone had a similar experience? Any advice, at all? I have no friends or relatives with a mac pro, so anything I do it must be done in the dark.
I have a MacBook pro that can connect to the disks of the tower, even on target disk mode.

Thank you for giving it a read,
Peter

P.S. It should be pretty obvious that I am not a native English speaker

Dang, man. I'd send you one of my 7300GT to help you troubleshoot if I were a little closer (my MP came with 4 from factory).

Although I have no concrete help to you at this time, I can say that the MP can act as if it was bricked when fiddling around. When I flashed my SSD's firmware (Intel 320) I had to use an Intel boot utility to flash. Trying to boot back to normal was a nightmare. I honestly thought it was gone because it wouldn't even take a regular HD. Some key combination fixed it.

Now, obviously you'd need a screen to go any further and I suggest you try and find or borrow another used ATI 48**/5***/68** and go from there.

 

[ppolitop]

Update

I would like to post an update from my Mac Pro 1,1 Running 10.8.1 on a GTX 660 2GB (no Ti there ).
It worked!

I encountered several issues, significantly worsened by the lack of visual input, but now I can confidently say I now understand the process very well.

I will soon attempt an update to 10.8.2 and test the mac some more. So far everything seems fine including audio, net, graphics/3d/flash acceleration, DVD player and Appstore. The booting sequence gets a little complicated if I have to switch back to 10.7 - but I won't need this often (I hope).

If anyone is interested in any aspect of the procedure, I will be very willing to clarify!

Update - 10.8.2 Is up and running! I had to boot without a graphics card after the update in order to connect through screen sharing and install the appropriate Nvidia Driver for 10.8.2. Thanks OrangeSVTguy! Screen sharing and Target Disk Mode saved the day.