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Macdctr

macrumors 65816
Nov 25, 2009
1,012
733
Ocean State
$100 for a Mac Pro isn't bad at all. The 2006 Mac Pros are still very capable, and with a GPU upgrade you can modify versions of OS X up to El Capitan and they'll run just fine. There's quite an extensive thread here on it.

Mine started out similarly to yours, but is now a 2007 8-core 2.66 GHz with a Radeon HD 5770, 13 GB RAM, and 512 GB SSD as a boot drive. It feels a lot quicker running Mavericks/El Capitan unsupported than many brand new base-model Macs being sold with 5400 RPM HDDs.

I had a MacPro1,1 that I updated the firmware to a 2,1. I then swapped out the processors from 2 Dual Core 3.0GHz Xeon CPU's to 2 Quad Core 3.0GHz Xeon CPUs. The MacPro had two super drives and a Radeon 5770 Mac Edition 1GB video card. It also had 32GB RAM and 3TB HDD storage. Before I gave my MacPro to my brother I was running El Capitan on it and had no issues whatsoever. El Capitan actually ran fairly well on my first gen MacPro.

I think Jonny365 got an awesome deal on his MacPro. Enjoy modding your "new to you" Mac Pro :)
 

Johnny365

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Nov 30, 2015
1,029
611
I would also be open to a PCI-e external card that takes up a slot for Wifi AC/BT 4.0 if those exist. I just don't know which ones will work and if they require additional power.
 

Johnny365

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Nov 30, 2015
1,029
611
Just got a 20" Apple Cinema Display (1680x1050) with Power brick and a mDP to DVI dongle attached for $30 at Goodwill.

Screen works and is pretty great, considering the price and before I was using a Dell 18.5" 1366x768 LCD.
 

AidenShaw

macrumors P6
Feb 8, 2003
18,667
4,677
The Peninsula
Just got a 20" Apple Cinema Display (1680x1050) with Power brick and a mDP to DVI dongle attached for $30 at Goodwill.

Screen works and is pretty great, considering the price and before I was using a Dell 18.5" 1366x768 LCD.
Welcome to the 21st century (barely). ;)

Unless you're building a computer history museum, 13 year old monitors are truly sad compared to the cheapest current monitors. Brand new, never used 13 year old monitors are sad. 13 year old monitors that have been used, and might only be at 50% of their original brightness are beyond sad.
 

Johnny365

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Nov 30, 2015
1,029
611
Seeing as it is under what it goes for $80+, I think I did alright.
 

MultiFinder17

macrumors 68030
Jan 8, 2008
2,740
2,088
Tampa, Florida
Welcome to the 1,1 club! I got a 1,1 for free a few months back, and have slowly been tinkering with it. It was hit by lighting, and all of the USB ports were dead, but it still booted. $30 for USB card and $40 for 32GB RAM later, and it's running El Captain like a champ! I ended up giving it to my dad to replace his 2009 mini that he's been telling me is running a bit slow, and he absolutely loves it.

Does it perform as well as my 5,1 Hex? Nope, but it certainly outperforms what he had before and the price was right!

Let's keep these old machines alive!
 

AidenShaw

macrumors P6
Feb 8, 2003
18,667
4,677
The Peninsula
Seeing as it is under what it goes for $80+, I think I did alright.
You could "do alright" getting a mint condition 1952 Philco on the cheap - but you'd still have a 15" black and white screen with 7 TV channels.

Great for a museum, not so great for Game of Thrones.
 

redheeler

macrumors G3
Oct 17, 2014
8,657
9,324
Colorado, USA
Welcome to the 21st century (barely). ;)

Unless you're building a computer history museum, 13 year old monitors are truly sad compared to the cheapest current monitors. Brand new, never used 13 year old monitors are sad. 13 year old monitors that have been used, and might only be at 50% of their original brightness are beyond sad.
The 20" late 2005 ACD is an alright display and it complements the 2006 Mac Pro nicely, I use one as a secondary display with mine. Sure I would prefer to have a 5K display instead, but that's not always an option. :)
 

pastrychef

macrumors 601
Sep 15, 2006
4,758
1,462
New York City, NY
AidenShaw has a point. Older CCFL based LCD monitors will lose brightness over time. It's unavoidable and will gradually get dimmer with each use. It is one of the flaws of older monitors which has been corrected with LED backlighting.

I had been using an old Dell 30" Ultrasharp from 2007 until I replaced it last year with a 4K monitor. The difference in brightness, sharpness, and picture quality was huge. The modern monitor was just better in every possible way.
 

LightBulbFun

macrumors 68030
Nov 17, 2013
2,900
3,195
London UK
AidenShaw has a point. Older CCFL based LCD monitors will lose brightness over time. It's unavoidable and will gradually get dimmer with each use. It is one of the flaws of older monitors which has been corrected with LED backlighting.

I had been using an old Dell 30" Ultrasharp from 2007 until I replaced it last year with a 4K monitor. The difference in brightness, sharpness, and picture quality was huge. The modern monitor was just better in every possible way.

I hope you Do know that LED Monitors can lose brightness/colour shift over time too. they are also a Phosphor based technology like CCFLs (in CCFLs its a Mercury discharge producing UV that gets converted to white light by the Phosphors, in LEDs its Blue light being converted to white light by you guessed it a Phosphor) I also want to say that I use a 2007 20 inch cinema display with my Mac Pro that has been wonderful (sadly its on the Blink but I have a 23 inch Acrylic Cinema display that just needs a new stand to replace it Heh)

upload_2016-5-8_12-40-11.png
 

MagicBoy

macrumors 68040
May 28, 2006
3,974
1,060
Manchester, UK
Welcome to the 21st century (barely). ;)

Unless you're building a computer history museum, 13 year old monitors are truly sad compared to the cheapest current monitors. Brand new, never used 13 year old monitors are sad. 13 year old monitors that have been used, and might only be at 50% of their original brightness are beyond sad.

That's a bit harsh. Why is the Mac Pro forum so snobby about people not running current in-warranty kit? There's no stipulation that anyone has to own current range Apple products to post in here.

Display performance is related to the hours of operation on them. I was using a pair of 10+ year old 20" IPS screens daily at work until one of the CCFLs started flickering slightly after 20k+ hours usage on them. Brightness was fine.
 

AidenShaw

macrumors P6
Feb 8, 2003
18,667
4,677
The Peninsula
That's a bit harsh. Why is the Mac Pro forum so snobby about people not running current in-warranty kit? There's no stipulation that anyone has to own current range Apple products to post in here.

Display performance is related to the hours of operation on them. I was using a pair of 10+ year old 20" IPS screens daily at work until one of the CCFLs started flickering slightly after 20k+ hours usage on them. Brightness was fine.
A ten year old computer can be just as good and fast as when it was new.

A ten year old LCD monitor (especially an old CCFL on) is most likely degraded significantly.
 

throAU

macrumors G3
Feb 13, 2012
9,273
7,441
Perth, Western Australia
Of course it is, but everything else about the machine is so much slower.

Yup, but most people don't max the performance of even the old CPUs and GPUs in general use.

The biggest bottleneck for most people is storage IO speed, and even an SSD connected via USB will make a spinning disk feel extremely slow. I've tested the 850 EVO via USB3 adapter and it still got over 350 MB/sec read/write sequential (can't remember the exact figures) and random 4k IO is just not even in the same planet as a spinning drive.

Random IO is what kills spinning drives, and apps/multitasking does a fair bit of it. Absolute worst case on a memory starved machine getting hammered with random IO (to load applications and/or swap to disk), a spinning disk will do about 1 megabyte per second. An SSD under the same workload will do 30x that.
 

richgoga

macrumors regular
Oct 11, 2013
150
61
What is this, troll night? Different products for different people. Some like older hardware, some like cutting edge.

Don't let it get to you.

And never argue with a stupid person, they drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.

Just remember this thread in 3-4 years time when Apple's forced obsolescence finally affects those with 4,1s & 5,1s.

They'll all be part of the hack club then. I wonder how they'll react to in 2020 to everyone with 8k iMacs telling them that their 10yr old cheese grater 5,1 is junk?!

Just go with what's right for you, right now.
 

CapnDavey

macrumors 6502
Apr 11, 2015
345
87
theres nothing wrong with the older cinema displays I'm using one got it cheap without the power supply using the meanwell supply hack
 

Johnny365

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Nov 30, 2015
1,029
611
I ended up getting yet another Apple eMac. This time it is a Late 2005 model with a 1.42GHz, 512MB Ram, no Airport Extreme card, 160GB HDD. The HDD is shot (stays at the spinning Apple bootup screen, unless anyone knows what else to do. I ran a File Check and it said Disk0S3 I/O Error, which I am assuming is the HDD.

Since the specs are better than the one I got earlier in this thread (1GHz vs 1.42GHz), I may try to fix this one. Any tips?

Oh, it was FREE
 
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