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Mac Pro 1,1s are officially screwed

Lesser Evets said:
However, we have to be aware that our machines are definitely closing in on antiquation, in terms of OSX support. Once we get to the last OSX, we have maybe 2 or 3 years and nothing more will be made by Apple to help us adjust to blossoming technology and formats.
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I understand your point, in terms of OS support the 1,1's life is coming to an end.

But what's funny is, I sit down in front of mine and it still copes with everything I throw at it. I've made a few upgrades recently, and at no point do I think, man I really need a new computer.
 
aliennerd said:
I understand your point, in terms of OS support the 1,1's life is coming to an end.

But what's funny is, I sit down in front of mine and it still copes with everything I throw at it. I've made a few upgrades recently, and at no point do I think, man I really need a new computer.
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Really, the only reason why it is not supported is that the two video cards that it shipped with, the ATI Radeon X1950 and the NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT all have things preventing them from seeing driver updates. In the case of the former, AMD has completely abandoned users of all ATI X1xxx series cards/GPUs, which is why there aren't any Windows 7 drivers for those cards and why Apple doesn't support running Windows 7 on Macs equipped with those cards via Boot Camp when they would support Windows 7 on Macs with the theoretically weaker Intel GMA 950. With Snow Leopard and Lion, I imagine they were able to get away with reusing the same driver that these machines had from Leopard (if not Intel Tiger), but with Mountain Lion, they are not. In the case of the latter card, NVIDIA and Apple have always had problems with the Mac drivers to this card, so it's no wonder that Apple is abandoning it.

That being said, I see nothing about the GeForce 8800 GT (which was a standard card on the Early 2008 Mac Pro and an upgrade for the original) negating support for the original generation of Mac Pro, which is weird, because I feel like Apple could then say "we support the first generation of Mac Pro in Mountain Lion, but only with this video card installed". Maybe they just wanted to make things simpler. Still though. I feel like any limitation preventing the first rev Mac Pros from running Mountain Lion has nothing to do with the speed of the hardware that is doing so and more to do with things like drivers.
 
it's time to say goodbye...

Yes, my 2006 Mac Pro 2x3GHz Dual-Core Xeon is about to be replaced. Last year I bought a Mac Mini Server to run my home automation and iTunes Server and it is already 25% faster than my MP, but I too didn't want to let my Mac Pro go. So, I put in a fancy new SSD drive which sprang new life into it.

But, soon my Retnia Macbook Pro with 16GB RAM and a zippy 2.7GHz i7 will be arriving to replace my MP.

I just need to find a USB 3.0 or Thunderbolt enclosure for my SATA Blu-Ray Drive. Or do you think that a USB 2.0 enclosure is fast enough for ripping Blu-rays with MakeMKV??
 
schalliol said:
Thanks for the update. Do you have a link to a repository of knowledge on this you could link us? Thanks!
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Jabbawok's guide is so far the best step-by-step of how to install the Developer Preview of Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion on a MacPro1,1/2,1: How I installed Mac OS 10.8 12A239 DP4 on my MacPro 1,1

It's not exactly simple... yet. It involves using a legacy mode Chameleon boat loader (to emulate an EFI64 boot on a MacPro1,1/2,1 just like a "hackintosh" OSx86 PC boots), and copying the ML install onto a bootable partition (and modifying it by adding the MacPro1,1/2,1 on the supported machines list) so the install runs from that partition.

Apple Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion looks like it won't work if you have the original Nvidia GeForce 7300 256MB graphics card (no drivers). It probably won't work well if you have the original ATI Radeon X1900 XT 512MB graphics card (drivers don't support OpenGL properly and legacy mode booting is supported differently with that card), although perhaps there's a partial workaround?
 
ryanide said:
Yes, my 2006 Mac Pro 2x3GHz Dual-Core Xeon is about to be replaced. Last year I bought a Mac Mini Server to run my home automation and iTunes Server and it is already 25% faster than my MP, but I too didn't want to let my Mac Pro go. So, I put in a fancy new SSD drive which sprang new life into it.

But, soon my Retnia Macbook Pro with 16GB RAM and a zippy 2.7GHz i7 will be arriving to replace my MP.

I just need to find a USB 3.0 or Thunderbolt enclosure for my SATA Blu-Ray Drive. Or do you think that a USB 2.0 enclosure is fast enough for ripping Blu-rays with MakeMKV??
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Runs fine from a USB 2 enclosure. I'm doing it with an LG Blu-ray drive.
 
Thanks!

bpd115 said:
Runs fine from a USB 2 enclosure. I'm doing it with an LG Blu-ray drive.
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I wasn't sure if transfer speeds would be limited first by the drive read speed or the USB 2.0 data transfer rate. Sounds like it is the Drive read speed, in which case using USB 3.0 would not make the transfer any faster. Right?
 
miniConvert said:
I'm replacing my Mac Pro 1,1 server with a Mac mini server + RAID over Thunderbolt. I can appreciate that for some, who have invested a lot of time and money in this machine, it's painful to think that it's nearing EOL. But for me and my needs, the six year old hot and increasingly noisy beast can definitely be respectfully retired at this point.

No idea what I'll do with it.
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Why is it hot and noisy?

My 1,1 has been running pretty much solidly for the 6 years I've had it and its neither hot nor noisy. I do however clean it periodically.
 
jabbawok said:
Why is it hot and noisy?

My 1,1 has been running pretty much solidly for the 6 years I've had it and its neither hot nor noisy. I do however clean it periodically.
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Four hard drives whirring away and that beast of an ATI card that was available at the time make for a hot Mac Pro. I think the ATI card may be much to blame... when the first one failed Apple sent me the basic nVidia one as a spare while rev. 2 ATI cards were on order and let me keep it afterwards, I suppose I could try putting that in.

It was the office server, so a lot of disk activity probably didn't help. Now a Mac Mini Server + Promise RAID make a much more elegant solution, even if I do have to have an entire second Mac Mini Server as a redundant spare.
 
Mr. Zarniwoop said:
Apple Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion looks like it won't work if you have the original Nvidia GeForce 7300 256MB graphics card (no drivers). It probably won't work well if you have the original ATI Radeon X1900 XT 512MB graphics card (drivers don't support OpenGL properly and legacy mode booting is supported differently with that card), although perhaps there's a partial workaround?
Click to expand...

I wonder how many X1900's are still out there that haven't burned up yet.
 
miniConvert said:
Four hard drives whirring away and that beast of an ATI card that was available at the time make for a hot Mac Pro. I think the ATI card may be much to blame... when the first one failed Apple sent me the basic nVidia one as a spare while rev. 2 ATI cards were on order and let me keep it afterwards, I suppose I could try putting that in.

It was the office server, so a lot of disk activity probably didn't help. Now a Mac Mini Server + Promise RAID make a much more elegant solution, even if I do have to have an entire second Mac Mini Server as a redundant spare.
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I assume that's the X1900-XT that's noisy. I had an 8800GT for a while which gradually got noisier as it got clogged with dust. I have a 5770 in now and its virtually silent. I upgraded the CPUs a few weeks back and the heatsinks were thick with dust. I suppose the fact that I run an SSD and two internal HDDs makes for a little less noise and heat. My LaCie FW800 drive makes more noise than the MacPro. Annoyingly enough, since I replaced the IDE superdrive with a SATA BD-Burner it polls the drive periodically and makes a little clicking noise, along with a ridiculously bright LED.
 
With the GM out to devs, I thought I'd just post to keep this thread rolling. It would be great to see a step-by-step to get 1,1s to work with ML if anyone would be willing to create one! :cool:
 
schalliol said:
With the GM out to devs, I thought I'd just post to keep this thread rolling. It would be great to see a step-by-step to get 1,1s to work with ML if anyone would be willing to create one! :cool:
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Seriously? Did you even read any of the comments above? There is a guide just 5 or 6 posts above yours....

You can lead a horse to water....
 
MacVidCards said:
And let's get to the bottom of this whole "Apple says they will be yanking the currently included 32 bit support" thing. goMac says he read it on devel site but his strict adherence to his NDA keeps him from posting links or quotes. Yet this other person states:

"Originally Posted by SG1-1 Bull, that has nothing to do with the EFI 32 bit Bios, and to top it all off, THE only thing NOT 64 bit is the EFI BIOS.

The NDA, Really?

There is Nothing that states that, I have read through that whole site. And I'm not going any further then that other then to add, The information you posted was in itself deceiving."

It's either specifically mentioned on the devel site or it isn't. SOmeone is full of crap....who?
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I can't wait! Maybe it's already been answered, but the Truth will be made known! :D
 
schalliol said:
With the GM out to devs, I thought I'd just post to keep this thread rolling. It would be great to see a step-by-step to get 1,1s to work with ML if anyone would be willing to create one! :cool:
Click to expand...


Here is a ML guide that works perfectly on the Mac Pro 1,1 and 2,1 http://www.jabbawok.net/

Even works great with GM... using it now and love it... you do however need a good video card like the AMD HD 5770, an Apple video card is not necessary as this method allows PC video cards to work without the need to flash them.
 
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jabbawok said:
I assume that's the X1900-XT that's noisy. I had an 8800GT for a while which gradually got noisier as it got clogged with dust. I have a 5770 in now and its virtually silent. I upgraded the CPUs a few weeks back and the heatsinks were thick with dust. I suppose the fact that I run an SSD and two internal HDDs makes for a little less noise and heat. My LaCie FW800 drive makes more noise than the MacPro. Annoyingly enough, since I replaced the IDE superdrive with a SATA BD-Burner it polls the drive periodically and makes a little clicking noise, along with a ridiculously bright LED.
Click to expand...

I make it a point to use canned air every few months in my Mac Pro. It's pretty amazing how much dust blows out the back of the video card especially.
 
The X1900 is a dust magnet and get's progressively louder the more it sucks in, give it a clean out and you'll be amazed by the difference:-

atidust.jpg
 
aliennerd said:
The X1900 is a dust magnet and get's progressively louder the more it sucks in, give it a clean out and you'll be amazed by the difference:-

Image
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Exactly. I'm amazed that many folks just let the problem go. "My video card is getting loud because of dust!!"....and then what? Do they fix the problem that is easily correctable? Nah, they just let it burn up. Makes total sense.
 
Kinda reminds me of the similar issues with the 8800GTs, and their Thermal tape. I have thought about taking it apart and reseating it with Thermal Paste.

nVidia made a stupid judgement when they chose to use that tape, imo.
 
I agree that they should do something to fix the Mac Pro 1,1/2,1 support. They only thing stoping them is the EFI32 but if they set aside some of their programmers to work on a EFI64, it could easily be done without unsoldering anything from the motherboard like some people have been saying.If they trimmed down the EFI64 code and removed support for the old cards that ML doesn't support any how they could easily make it fit.

I am currently running ML just fine on my 2006 Mac Pro 1,1 with the AMD HD 5770 and it runs amazing.
 
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