New to this - Mac Pro 2.1 1168 EMC 2138

[AnUrbanPenguin]

Good Afternoon all,
I am very new to Macs, but am pretty well versed in computing (I have an IT degree, but it was pretty much all windows based).

Today I seen a Mac Pro 2.1 with Dual Xeon 3.0Ghz Processors, X1900XT and 4GB RAM, No storage for £14. I puchased it and am now wondering what I can actually do with it?

I have read through guides of opencore and the FAQ here and from what I gather I cant get a supported MacOS on it (its Clovertown CPUs are listed as not ideal? (lack of SSE 4.1?)). I could easily install Windows 10 Pro or LTSC on it to get a few Windows years out of it, but that sort of defeats the point of trying to dip my feet into the waters of MacOS.

Is there a way I can get a supported version of MacOS running on this thing with some software mods? From what I gather SSE4.1 is a limitation? Once I know if its actually possible then ill start looking at hardware upgrades, but for now would rather not spend any more money on it unless I can actually do something with it!
Thanks!

 

[Amethyst1]

OS X El Capitan v10.11.6 is the latest version of macOS the machine will run. It’s been unsupported for a couple of years.

 

[AnUrbanPenguin]

OS X El Capitan v10.11.6 is the latest version of macOS the machine will run. It’s been unsupported for a couple of years.

Thanks for the response. From what I had read I figured this was the case. I guess it’s going to be a windows 10 machine. I’ll probably dual boot El Capitan on it but keep the macOS offline!

Ill probably upgrade the ram. With 8 slots 16gb in an 8x2 config will probably cost next to nothing.

 

[AnUrbanPenguin]

OS X El Capitan v10.11.6 is the latest version of macOS the machine will run. It’s been unsupported for a couple of years.

Do you think the £14 price was a good deal?

 

[eyoungren]

Thanks for the response. From what I had read I figured this was the case. I guess it’s going to be a windows 10 machine. I’ll probably dual boot El Capitan on it but keep the macOS offline!

Ill probably upgrade the ram. With 8 slots 16gb in an 8x2 config will probably cost next to nothing.

Unsupported does not necessarily mean unusable. We have a history here of making old things do modern stuff.

AFAIK, El Cap will still handle iCloud, meaning you can use Messages and Facetime. Dropbox is still supporting Yosemite, which is a few versions before El Cap. And there are devs here that produce modern browsers if your favorite does not support El Cap.

Just off the top of my head.

Also, someone else can probably confirm, but there are limits to versions of Windows that will run on the MPs.

 

[Amethyst1]

Do you think the £14 price was a good deal?

A very good one.

 

[AnUrbanPenguin]

Unsupported does not necessarily mean unusable. We have a history here of making old things do modern stuff.

AFAIK, El Cap will still handle iCloud, meaning you can use Messages and Facetime. Dropbox is still supporting Yosemite, which is a few versions before El Cap. And there are devs here that produce modern browsers if your favorite does not support El Cap.

Just off the top of my head.

Also, someone else can probably confirm, but there are limits to versions of Windows that will run on the MPs.

I’d be a bit weary of putting a machine that’s not had security updates for a few years online, feels like asking for trouble?

 

[AnUrbanPenguin]

A very good one.

Annoyingly I think I could have gotten a quad core 3.1 for a similar price which you can do a lot more with but I assumed they were both the same model with a better CPU configuration in mine as they were both A1186! Was a bit of an impulse bid at a liquidation auction so didn’t have time to do any research.

 

[eyoungren]

I’d be a bit weary of putting a machine that’s not had security updates for a few years online, feels like asking for trouble?

Well, a lot of us use PowerPC Macs. This subforum was created at our request/insistence. And there are browsers that work on PowerPC.

I'm not saying do your banking with it. But I don't see where doing some Google searches or reading news or stuff like that would be something that would harm you.

 

[AnUrbanPenguin]

With how active the Mac pro community is I am surprised that no one has read the Mac Pro 1,1 / 2,1 bios with an eeprom reader and modded support for other xeons into it?

Similar to how some lga 1151 sockets have their bios modded for 8th and 9th gen intel cpus.

If I could get a copy of the bios with a reader does anyone know someone who is good with bioses to add in the microcode for either yorkfield or harpertown xeons?

 

[TheShortTimer]

Do you think the £14 price was a good deal?

Yes, that was a steal!

Well, a lot of us use PowerPC Macs. This subforum was created at our request/insistence. And there are browsers that work on PowerPC.

I'm not saying do your banking with it. But I don't see where doing some Google searches or reading news or stuff like that would be something that would harm you.

Precisely. There is also the option of putting the computer behind a firewall in the form of an old PC with two NICs (or a Raspberry Pi for that matter) - which is something that often goes overlooked when considering possibilities to protect computers with unsupported operating systems. IPFire comes to mind. In the past I've used Smoothwall.

 

[theMarble]

If I could get a copy of the bios with a reader does anyone know someone who is good with bioses to add in the microcode for either yorkfield or harpertown xeons?

I recall some people have tried to get slightly newer CPU's running a few years back, however it never worked out as the physical chipset on the 1,1/2,1 are nowhere near the same as the 3,1, despite having the same socket.

 

[AnUrbanPenguin]

I recall some people have tried to get slightly newer CPU's running a few years back, however it never worked out as the physical chipset on the 1,1/2,1 are nowhere near the same as the 3,1, despite having the same socket.

I’ve managed to find the thread on here and the quest is still ongoing. Hopefully a solution is found!

Opened it up today and it’s got 8 dimms in it totalling 8gb which is nice, but even nicer is that they all have the massive ram heat sinks on them for any future upgrades. At the moment its a random selection of 512mb 1gb and 2GB sticks.

GPU looks original too! Lots and lots of dust which will be fun.

 

[Nguyen Duc Hieu]

Keep on the good work, Penguin!

Windows 10 (64 bit) seems nicer than the over aged El Capitan.

It would still be a decent machine for some light games and works, too.