Trying to get Mavericks to run on my Mac Pro 1.1

[rben675]

Hey All, sorry if this is the wrong forum to ask this, but I couldn't tell where this belongs.
this is bit of a tricky, but been doing a ton of research on this and from xlr8 your mac website, mac rumors, etc. and found this: http://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/1rsp3q/install_mavericks_on_older_mac_pro_11_21_20062007/[1]

Essentially, I'm trying to get my 1.1 from 32bit to 64 bit and then install mavericks/yosemite.

I've followed everything on a video and on the Sixty-Four On Thirty-Two websites (SFOTT) but I've come on a weird problem. I've upgraded my video card to the ATI Radeon 5770 which was flashed for a Mac but doesn't display boot screen, I hold down Option, Command+R or C or anything to choose the USB drive to install mavericks but, I get nothing.

I took out the 5770 and put in the original gpu. Everything boots up. I hold down option and I don't see the usb drive selected, just my macintosh hd drive on the computer. I then tried each usb slot to see if there was something funky going on, but some of the time I would get the boot screen, sometimes not.

Anybody have any ideas about this or a work around? I'm giving up for the night but I'm thinking about trying to use target disk mode and installing from there or just use the the HDD/SSD and install it onto there, then pop it back into my 1.1.

 

[TBear12]

Hey rben675.

I had success with installing Mavericks on a Mac Pro 1,1 through the Target Disk Mode Method, although what I did was installing Mavericks onto a spare HDD, and then overwriting the .efi file.

Not sure about your graphics card issue, but for me, using the stock 7300GT will work for the install process. It's just it becomes almost unusable after the install. That's where the 5770 should come in.

Good luck with your install!

 

[rben675]

Hey rben675.

I had success with installing Mavericks on a Mac Pro 1,1 through the Target Disk Mode Method, although what I did was installing Mavericks onto a spare HDD, and then overwriting the .efi file.

Not sure about your graphics card issue, but for me, using the stock 7300GT will work for the install process. It's just it becomes almost unusable after the install. That's where the 5770 should come in.

Good luck with your install!

Thanks. Would you suggest that I keep the 7300GT in just to boot up the first time in mavericks and select the drive?

Also, I decided to do what you said and actually attempting to target disk mode and change the boot.efi before your reply. Did you only replace the boot.efi in coreservices or in i386 also? I can't find it on the drive.

While looking for the boot.efi in i386 I got a little excited as I finally found it and replaced it, only to realize I replaced it on my MBPs hard drive, not the mac pro ssd... I'm still waiting on what I should do about that problem...

 

[TBear12]

From memory I installed it in both locations. There are several guides on how to install using the Target disk mode method. I used this one:

http://retrocosm.net/2014/01/04/mac-pro-11-and-mavericks/

Keep thhe 7300GT in there until everything is stable.

Not sure about what to do if you replaced the .efi in your MBP. What I did was take the hard drive for the Mac Pro and put it in a hard drive caddy, and using my MBP, I installed Mavericks using an external enclosure. On the restart, I rebooted into my Macbook Pro and then replaced the files from there. Be careful when moving files around.

Good luck!

 

[rben675]

From memory I installed it in both locations. There are several guides on how to install using the Target disk mode method. I used this one:

http://retrocosm.net/2014/01/04/mac-pro-11-and-mavericks/

Keep thhe 7300GT in there until everything is stable.

Not sure about what to do if you replaced the .efi in your MBP. What I did was take the hard drive for the Mac Pro and put it in a hard drive caddy, and using my MBP, I installed Mavericks using an external enclosure. On the restart, I rebooted into my Macbook Pro and then replaced the files from there. Be careful when moving files around.

Good luck!

Thanks! Yes, I did basically same thing, minus being careful moving the files around... I haven't powered down my MBP yet in fear of something happening because of the boot.efi mixup.

 

[lwwz]

If you put a DVI to VGA converter on your HD5770 you should get the boot screen on your monitor. My HD5770 will only show the boot screen on VGA output from DVI connector 1.

Your monitor will have to support VGA. I have a VGA cable connected to my monitor with a DVI adapter and just leave it hanging behind my MP for when I need to boot into maintenance mode then just swap back to the DVI connector when I'm done.