MP 1,1-5,1 Run Win XP Natively on 5.1 Mac Pro?

[PianoPro]

Looking for advice from someone with a better memory than me about getting Win XP to run on 2010 5.1 Mac Pro:

My choices using the Mac Pro:

1. Load Win XP on 2010 Mac Pro with RX-560 Metal video card?
2. Load Win XP on 2010 Mac Pro with original HD5770 video card (which I would have to find/get)?

Potential Issues with RX-560 video card:

A) Getting Win XP running without Boot Screen using the RX-560 video card. Too much trouble?
B) No Win XP compatible drivers for RX-560. Will it run in a basic mode to do simple graphical plots, or not work at all?

Let me explain why I'd like to get Win XP running on a 2010 Mac Pro.

I have a need to run Window XP on a computer with a PCI slot to support a GPIB-like interface card (actually an Audio Precision APIB interface card). No newer version of Windows is supported by the application software with the interface card. I'd like to set it up on my 2010 Mac Pro to avoid having to find an old Win XP PC with PCI slots to do it.

VMware Fusion or Parallels won't support general PCI cards with Win drivers (my understanding), so I need Windows XP to run natively on the 2010 Mac Pro 5.1, else this would be a breeze. (Assumption, the Win drivers will work on the Mac Pro running Win XP natively.)

Long ago, I believe I had Win XP running natively on that Mac Pro before changing to Win 10. Searching the web it appears that Bootcamp did not support Win XP on the 2010 Mac Pro. But since one doesn't actually need Bootcamp I still got it running with its original HD 5770 video card. Since then I changed to a RX-560 Metal video card.

So any advice from someone with a better memory than I have about Win XP on old Mac Pro issues?

 

[Slartibart]

Newer versions of VirtualBox support PCI-passthrough - this might immediately work.

Other than that - it’s been a while that we had these Macs in the lab, so it might be wrong - creating a MSDOS FAT32 partition <2Gb with the option »Master Boot Record« and some HD and then starting the Mac holding Alt/Option while the Windows XP DVD is in the super drive and then boot and install from there should work.

 

[h9826790]

You may consider to run QEMU on the cMP, Win XP in VM, and use PCIe passthrough to let the QEMU Win XP VM drive the card. In this case, no need to worry about the RX560 driver.

 

[PianoPro]

You may consider to run QEMU on the cMP, Win XP in VM, and use PCIe passthrough to let the QEMU Win XP VM drive the card. In this case, no need to worry about the RX560 driver.

Newer versions of VirtualBox support PCI-passthrough - this might immediately work.

Other than that - it’s been a while that we had these Macs in the lab, so it might be wrong - creating a MSDOS FAT32 partition <2Gb with the option »Master Boot Record« and some HD and then starting the Mac holding Alt/Option while the Windows XP DVD is in the super drive and then boot and install from there should work.

Thanks guys. I have no experience with QEMU or VirtualBox but I'll look at both in the next couple of days and see where that takes me. (I read that neither VmWare Fusion which I use, or Parallels, have PCIe passthrough so I didn't think of similar ideas.) Both sound easier than getting Win XP running natively with RX560.

 

[startergo]

It unit the QEMU but the KVM that allows virtual pair passtrough. And KVM with nested virtualization is only available in Linux or Windows hosts.

 

[startergo]

Newer versions of VirtualBox support PCI-passthrough - this might immediately work.

This was dropped in version 6.1.0 as it was not working:

• Linux host: Drop PCI passthrough, the current code is too incomplete (cannot handle PCIe devices at all), i.e. not useful enough

Changelog-6.1 – Oracle VirtualBox

www.virtualbox.org

 

[Petri Krohn]

Potential Issues with RX-560 video card:

A) Getting Win XP running without Boot Screen using the RX-560 video card. Too much trouble?
B) No Win XP compatible drivers for RX-560. Will it run in a basic mode to do simple graphical plots, or not work at all?

You can get basic "vga" level UEFI / GOP graphics out of the RX 560 without drivers, if you boot you operating system through OpenCore. Unfortunately Windows XP only works in legacy "BIOS" compatibility mode and OpenCore can only boot an operating system in EFI mode.

@Dayo has a solution to this issue: RefindPlus provides a boot screen and GOP graphics and can legacy boot Windows XP.

GitHub - dakanji/RefindPlus: A Boot Manager for Mac and PC

A Boot Manager for Mac and PC. Contribute to dakanji/RefindPlus development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

For more, see this thread: RefindPlus|OpenCore by MyBootMgr

I have a need to run Window XP on a computer with a PCI slot to support a GPIB-like interface card (actually an Audio Precision APIB interface card).

I'd like to set it up on my 2010 Mac Pro to avoid having to find an old Win XP PC with PCI slots to do it.

Mac Pros do not have PCI slots, only PCIe slots. AliExpress sells PCIe to PCI adapters that allow you to mount a low profile PCI card in a PCIe x1 slot.

P.S. - You might change the title of the post to Run Win XP Natively on upgraded 5.1 Mac Pro?

 

[Dayo]

OpenCore can only boot an operating system in EFI mode.

FYI that this can be bypassed by using OpenCore to first run a loader that can boot Legacy BIOS and then booting the Legacy (BIOS) OS with such.
EDIT: No longer sure this is a good idea

Such a loader can be something like RefindPlus or similar but also, via OpenCore's "BootKicker" tool, the Apple Startup Manager itself. BootKicker provides access to the Apple Startup Manager on GPUs without Mac-EFI as of OpenCore v0.8.7.

The RefindPlus|OpenCore setup created by MyBootMgr takes a different approach whereby RefindPlus is loaded on startup and a user can then choose to either run stuff RefindPlus can boot, such as a Legacy (BIOS) OS, or run OpenCore for stuff it cannot boot, such as unsupported Mac OS.

Different ways to get to the same end of being able to, even with an otherwise unsupported GPU, run OpenCore for unsupported Mac OS and still use a Legacy (BIOS) OS.