Xserve 1,1 fresh start, help a noob please.

[Aantonis]

Dear all,

I jumped into what I thought was a hell of a deal. A local ad for an xserve with a very short description mentioning two 5500 Xeons. I immediately thought he meant the 5500 family, thus Nehalem, thus a 3,1 xserve for 150 euro. YEAH BABY! No RAM, but what the hell. In all of Greece there is only one more ad for an xserve. Well, we met in a parking lot not far from my place, and I just bought it, without even trying it out due to the unit's immaculate condition.
As it turned out I got myself a 1,1 which according to the serial number (I didn't take the heatsinks off yet) is a 2x Xeon Dual Core 2.0Ghz unit.
Good news. 1) It has both PSUs and both work. 2) Drive slots are filled with caddies and not blanks. 3)The unit is like new. It hasn't got a spec of dust in it, like it was unboxed yesterday (It even has the CD drive's "remove before installation" protective paper in. The top, sides and front ain't got a single scratch on them.

I want to use this unit primarily as a home media server/streamer and secondarily for some light office usage.

Could someone point me in the right direction of the steps I would have to take in order to bring it as close to the present as possible? (I got lost with the firmware, gpu needed and the actual installation patches) I m reading threads all over here but I got so lost I don't know where to start. Although I have no RAM, I know I will be starting a bare metal installation of everything. The guy left a 1TB and an 80Gb in two of the three caddies which I will use to get me started.
I do have a MacBook Pro on Sierra which I can use to create images and such.

Any help would be very much appreciated.

P.S. If you have valid reasoning that upgrading probably ain't worth it, I will also appreciate this too.

 

[jbarley]

Couple of threads which might be of interest, if you have'nt already read them.
I do believe the EFI mods will be necessary to get anything newer then Lion to run.
When I started down this path with my MacPro1,1 I found youtube a good source of info also.
I've since graduated to a MacPro3,1 running Sierra and High Sierra.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/2006-2007-mac-pro-1-1-2-1-and-os-x-el-capitan.1890435/
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/os-x-yosemite-on-unsupported-macs-guide.1761432/

 

[Draeconis]

Couple of threads which might be of interest, if you have'nt already read them.
I do believe the EFI mods will be necessary to get anything newer then Lion to run.
When I started down this path with my MacPro1,1 I found youtube a good source of info also.
I've since graduated to a MacPro3,1 running Sierra and High Sierra.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/2006-2007-mac-pro-1-1-2-1-and-os-x-el-capitan.1890435/
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/os-x-yosemite-on-unsupported-macs-guide.1761432/

The Xserve1,1 just as the MacPro1,1 is limited to at best running El Capitan, due to SSE4.1 instructions used by Sierra onwards. Providing the guide to running El Capitan on the Mac Pro works on the Xserve, 10.11.6 is the best you can expect this machine to run.

 

[Aantonis]

Thank you very much jbarley and Draeconis for your replies. I m waiting for 8x1Gb of Ram I found locally, and I will return for actual hands-on questions, which hopefully will be kept to a minimum. The threads you told me to look at and the explanation as to why I can't go over El Capitan saved me from lots of frustration.

 

[Draeconis]

I don't know if you've turned it on yet, but to be aware it's a server, and as such it's quite loud, since it's made to be used in a data centre. Just FYI

 

[AidenShaw]

I don't know if you've turned it on yet, but to be aware it's a server, and as such it's quite loud, since it's made to be used in a data centre. Just FYI

Also, something like a $600 NUC (https://www.neweggbusiness.com/product/product.aspx?item=9b-56-102-184) would be much faster, much smaller, much quieter - and use far less electricity.

An Xserve was a questionable value proposition when it was new - seriously, put your money into a NUC rather than the ancient Xserve.

 

[Aantonis]

I don't know if you've turned it on yet, but to be aware it's a server, and as such it's quite loud, since it's made to be used in a data centre. Just FYI

Oh I have done that already, but I m familiar with server noise levels. I work in a small office where I keep our company's twin Dell R710s in an open rack (which are of course 2u and one of the quietest models of their era), but I m a hobbyist myself. I do like to tinker and play around with computers. Thanks to my father, I ve had one since the 8086/4.77Mhz era at the age of 5.
[doublepost=1504674349][/doublepost]

Also, something like a $600 NUC (https://www.neweggbusiness.com/product/product.aspx?item=9b-56-102-184) would be much faster, much smaller, much quieter - and use far less electricity.

An Xserve was a questionable value proposition when it was new - seriously, put your money into a NUC rather than the ancient Xserve.

Thanks for the reply Aiden. I know it is just a money pit, that's why I ll stop the spending right after I get it to boot. As I wrote in the previous post, I love the hobby side of this, not the actual uselfulness. With the money I ve spent so far, just for it to POST, I could have bought myself a nice DELL with 48GB of ram, able to handle a bunch of VMs. Damn, i just realized that...

I love NUCs. Two years ago, some junkies broke into our offices, stealing all towers, and my thousand dollar NUC i5 Imac G4 conversion. Since then, I have replaced all office computers with NUCs and at the end of each day we just unplug them and take them with us. Never felt safer. I do understand your point and you are 100% right.

 

[LightBulbFun]

Xserve 1,1s are fun machines I managed to bag mine for £35 off of ebay

I wrote a bit about my experience getting 10.11.6 running on mine here, they are surprisingly quiet for a 1U rack mount server

https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...blems-and-general-faqs.2059200/#post-24848595

 

[Aantonis]

Xserve 1,1s are fun machines I managed to bag mine for £35 off of ebay

I wrote a bit about my experience getting 10.11.6 running on mine here, they are surprisingly quiet for a 1U rack mount server

https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...blems-and-general-faqs.2059200/#post-24848595

Thank you very much LBF, that was a very interesting read!

I received my memory modules yesterday. It's running stable at 10.7.5, so I m ready to start the next phase which will probably be flashing it to 2,1, and then try to get it up to 10.11.6 provided I find a supported video card.

Noise levels are at 55-59dB at ear level, which I ll see if I can improve on that.

One thing that made me wonder MCP temp is at 82C or 180F... Is this normal?

 

[l0tsofcub3s]

Xserve 1,1s are fun machines I managed to bag mine for £35 off of ebay

I wrote a bit about my experience getting 10.11.6 running on mine here, they are surprisingly quiet for a 1U rack mount server

https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...blems-and-general-faqs.2059200/#post-24848595

I saw what you wrote about your xserve, how can you install El Capitan with out installing it externally? I get an error that "El Capitan is already installed on your computer".

 

[LightBulbFun]

I saw what you wrote about your xserve, how can you install El Capitan with out installing it externally? I get an error that "El Capitan is already installed on your computer".

are you downloading el cap from here? https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT206886

if not try that then see if it works

IIRC its just like installing El cap on a MP1,1 make USB stick then replace the boot.efi files

 

[ssgbryan]

If you are going to use it as a server, I'd recommend getting Xeon L5335 CPUs ($10), it will cut the electricity costs in half and double the available cores.

 

[l0tsofcub3s]

are you downloading el cap from here? https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT206886

if not try that then see if it works

IIRC its just like installing El cap on a MP1,1 make USB stick then replace the boot.efi files

Sir, I figured it out. I had to make a read/write version of the install ESD and open the OSInstall.mpkg in flat package editor to edit the "distribution" part of the package to support my motherboard ID. I then had to edit the platformsupport.plist and installable machines.plist. Then, the installer finally let me install El Capitan. But thank you for you advice!