06/07 Mac Pro (1,1/2,1) and OS X El Capitan

[MacVidCards]

I don't think everyone who reads this Mac Pro forum section always goes to the OS sections so I want to make sure that there is a note here that the Mac Pro 1,1 has proven again to be the most durable and long term machine in Apple's history. As it nears 10 years of age it can STILL run the very latest OS, with all features.

Thanks to the original genius of Tiamo and followup work by a team of additional geniuses. (Not the cheerful blue or grey shirted guys at the Mall) users of this old workhorse can now run El Capitan with full feature set.

They have even figured out a fix for the Recovery Partition.

By putting a newer GPU in, along with the easily available WiFi AC/BT 4.0 card, you can use every new feature of the OS, Metal Graphics and Handoff/Continuity/Airdrop.

Pretty amazing.

It is especially poignant that so far, these are the ONLY machines from this era to run El Capitan. While Mavericks and Yosemite could run on other older Macs, they have hit a new brick wall. The OS can be installed and booted, bust far all of the other EFI32 machines with 64bit CPUs have no USB function. So, no way to move the mouse or enter on a keyboard. Since BT runs via USB bus, these are also ruled out.

I think it may be possible that someone will get USB working, but even then they will still be hampered with non-accelerated Graphics. None of the other older Macs have had real QE/CI since 10.8.

The Mac Pro 1,1 has thus remained relevant and useful long after the rest of it's 2006/7 Era machines are relegated to 10.7.5 or limited functionality in later OS's.

I don't think I need to do a How-To here, just follow the link into the OS forum. I prefer a method that isn't catching on anyway. But the boot.fi that enables full function was released earlier today.

I was called out in another thread for not mentioning the folks behind the effort, I will copy & paste the credits from that post.

Tiamo for the core idea since back in Mavericks.
PikerAlpha
PeterHolbrook
mikeboss
splifingate
Hennessie
Blacksheep666 (first to make El Cap work, put together pikeyosefix package)

And here is the link itself:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/2006-2007-mac-pro-1-1-2-1-and-os-x-el-capitan.1890435/

Note that the boot.efi that enables full function is on page 19.

I have found the easiest method to be to put a 2.5" drive in a supported machine, run the GM installer, then replace the two boot.efi files in the main install. The big breakthrough today was the ability to have the Recovery Partition to work, so that you can disable the SIP, allowing System File modding.

I found having a working 10.9 or 10.10 install on my 1,1 made life easier.

Not sure how others do it, but in one of those OS's I ran this in terminal:

defaults write com.apple.DiskUtility DUDebugMenuEnabled 1

Then open Disk Utility and use the new "Debug" section to "Show all partitions"

The El Cap Recovery partition should appear on the desktop. If there are multiple "recovery" partitions, make sure to find the El Cap one.

Then use the latest boot.fi to replace the one in there, you will have to unlock it first.

To unlock it, go to terminal and type: sudo chflags nouchg

Before you hit "Return" drag the locked boot.efi file to the terminal window, this will put it's path there.

Now hit return, if you have done it properly the little "lock" icon will disappear. Now chuck it in the trash and place the latest boot.efi in it's place. You should use "Get Info" to lock it again.

You should now be able to use the "option" key at boot to choose the Recovery 10.11 partition as boot drive.

Open the terminal from Utilities menu and type in: csrutil status

It should tell you that it is "enabled" now type: csrutil disable

It should now tell you that you need to reboot.

The instructions to switch the other two on the main OS install are in the linked thread.

SO FAR THIS ONLY WORKS ON MAC PRO 1,1 AND 2,1 !!!

Hopefully sheep666 will put together another package, not sure yet how it all works with SIP.

For pre-GM release I just installed on a 64bit Efi machine, ran sheep's scripts and rebooted a couple times until the 64bit machine quit booting to that install, a sign that it now had a 32bit EFI. I then moved the drive over and it worked. Beauty of this app in the past his that it re-copies the boot.efi files at every shut down, so updates can be run with impunity. We should wait for the release on 9/30 to finalize the procedures, and I will defer to the guys in that thread, they did the work, I just tested it.

The 1,1 Mac Pro is a heck of a machine. Courtesy of it's PCIE slots and Nvidia's driver packages you can put GPUs in it that make owners of 6,1 nMP Trash Cans drool with envy.

Thanks again to Tiamo for his pioneering work, whoever and wherever he is.

 

[PowerMac G4 MDD]

I try to explain to Winblows fans that my 2006 Mac Pro is a dream to upgrade and kicks @ss in every way, but they don't understand. To them, a computer is all about specifications on paper and NOTHING else. So unfortunate for them. Can't wait to test El Cap out on my 1,1 Mac Pro once the OS is released in full!

 

[VAGDesign]

...
I was called out in another thread for not mentioning the folks behind the effort, I will copy & paste the credits from that post.

Tiamo for the core idea since back in Mavericks.
PikerAlpha
PeterHolbrook
mikeboss
splifingate
Hennessie
Blacksheep666 (first to make El Cap work, put together pikeyosefix package)

And here is the link itself:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/2006-2007-mac-pro-1-1-2-1-and-os-x-el-capitan.1890435/

There you go great post and thanks for understanding that credits is great to be given to those who deserve them.
Sorry if I was a bit "harsh" on that "another thread", this one makes me smile now.

Cheers and "hi-five"

 

[Sko]

I don't think everyone who reads this Mac Pro forum section always goes to the OS sections so I want to make sure that there is a note here that the Mac Pro 1,1 has proven again to be the most durable and long term machine in Apple's history.

The linked thread started its life in Mac Pro forum but was moved to OS Forum for reasons unknown to me.

The 1,1 Mac Pro is a heck of a machine. Courtesy of it's PCIE slots and Nvidia's driver packages you can put GPUs in it that make owners of 6,1 nMP Trash Cans drool with envy.

Thanks again to Tiamo for his pioneering work, whoever and wherever he is.

My first computer was a Sharp MZ-700 back in 1982, and the Mac Pro 1,1 is the best buying decision I ever made.

 

[MacVidCards]

Stable & smooth. Great job guys.

 

[fhenry]

Stable & smooth. Great job guys.

Hello MVC,

Did you use a xp941 ssd on a PCI slot ? If yes do you think that 1 go/s is possible with 2 cards in raid 0 ?

Thx

 

[MacVidCards]

Hello MVC,

Did you use a xp941 ssd on a PCI slot ? If yes do you think that 1 go/s is possible with 2 cards in raid 0 ?

Thx

Can't say for sure. I guess it is a 941, not sure if I will get around to making a RAID 0.

Tonight I will verify that Final release is OK on 1,1. No reason to expect otherwise.

 

[Flint Ironstag]

Thanks for the heads up, and cheers to everyone who has contributed to this effort.

 

[MacVidCards]

El Cap on a 1,1 creates a roaring CUDA machine.

And yes, the released boot.fi still works on Final release. Have a look at the numbers for the Titan-X compared to the expected values for a GTX980. Pretty impressive as my 1,1 lost ability to run bottom slot at x16 for Nvidia cards. So, slow bus, slow RAM, ancient CPU, and still competitive as a CUDA station.

Pretty damned impressive.

 

[fhenry]

El Cap on a 1,1 creates a roaring CUDA machine.

And yes, the released boot.fi still works on Final release. Have a look at the numbers for the Titan-X compared to the expected values for a GTX980. Pretty impressive as my 1,1 lost ability to run bottom slot at x16 for Nvidia cards. So, slow bus, slow RAM, ancient CPU, and still competitive as a CUDA station.

Pretty damned impressive.

Yes, for cuda and open cl there is no difference with a 5,1 mp, even if you put 3 Titan together in a 1,1

 

[DPUser]

Nice writeup MVC. A pleasure to read.

 

[MacVidCards]

The clever guys behind this boot.efi are promising an installer package and a "How To" in next few hours.

If they don't cover what I consider the "easy way" I will post one here. Note that thus far El Cap has only run on the EFI32 Mac Pros. All of the other EFI32 machines have a major USB issue in addition to non-accelerated GPU.

 

[rmverdi]

The clever guys behind this boot.efi are promising an installer package and a "How To" in next few hours.

If they don't cover what I consider the "easy way" I will post one here. Note that thus far El Cap has only run on the EFI32 Mac Pros. All of the other EFI32 machines have a major USB issue in addition to non-accelerated GPU.

Any Updates on this package and How to? I tried to do the install w/ external drive on supported Mac, copy boot.efi to both locations. I am getting a kernel panic and a hardware driver error (APCI). Mac Pro 1,1 w/ Apple ATI 4870 graphics card

 

[VAGDesign]

I am getting a kernel panic and a hardware driver error (APCI). Mac Pro 1,1 w/ Apple ATI 4870 graphics card

Boot from Yosemite, get Kext Utility (google it) and put it in your Utilities folder cause it's handy to have.
Now, open Utilities where your Kext Utility icon is, open Finder to your El Capitan partition and go to: /System/Library
Grab the folder of Extensions and drop it on the icon of Kext Utility.

This worked for me when I installed Logitech Control Center for my mouse Performance MX, had an ACPI error too.
So this might be your solution

I hope this helps.

 

[PowerMac G4 MDD]

Hmm... I see a thread on Mac Extractor and MacPostFactor. I wonder how those are currently doing. It seems as though they are a bit more annoying to deal with and less legitimate; however, the last I saw was MLPostFactor, so I cannot speak for the current versions. Seems as though this way is more worth-it.

 

[MacVidCards]

Any Updates on this package and How to? I tried to do the install w/ external drive on supported Mac, copy boot.efi to both locations. I am getting a kernel panic and a hardware driver error (APCI). Mac Pro 1,1 w/ Apple ATI 4870 graphics card

1. Which EXACT post did you get the boot.efi from? They have posted about 20 of them, only a few work.

2. So you are getting to desktop then it crashes or does it fail to boot altogether?

3. Please check both boot.efi files and post what size they are.

4. Did you replace the boot.efi in recovery partition?

As far as the "packages", most are pointless for a Mac Pro. When the 10.8 Beta came out it at first had a 32 bit kernel. GoMac correctly predicted that it would be 64bit only by release, and it was. (He therefore knows somebody or something)

So a guy named Wayne Wong packed the 32 bit kernel from the Beta with some Beta extensions to keep 32 bit Macs running 10.8. With each update, it got more difficult to keep everything working. But he was able to sorta kinda let older Macs keep running 10.8.

Of course once 10.9 came out this particular trick quit working, and for awhile the only answer was a Hackintoshboot loader. Then the clouds parted and a saint from Heaven (St. Tiamo) dropped us a boot.efi that just let EFI32 Macs run just fine. HOWEVER, this just let the OS load, didn't write any 64 bit kexts. Bits and pieces were found, for some reason 10.6.2 held 64 bit kexts for Intel GMA950 and those helped some.

Biggest issue for 99% of these 32bit EFI Macs is that the GPUs have no drivers whatsoever. For the 1,1 and 2,1 Mac Pro you just put in a newer one and keep moving, for the iMac, MacBooks, and Minis, no such luck.

And yet the package creators kept promising new fixes that never came. The only real and true option is to use the boot.efi and have a Mac Pro with newer GPU. The package guys are frequently closer to snake oil salesmen. They have been promising 64 bit drivers for the excluded GPUs for years now. Godot himself will be delivering them. I occasionally go rattle some chains and expose them.

Anyhow, Mac Pro 1,1 and 2,1 are the only ones that can really and truly run El Cap with 100% ability. Replace the GPU and the WiFi AC card and you are golden. BTW, this shows us the future of the nMP 6,1. While the 1,1 and 2,1 dodged the "obsolete" bullet via newer PCIE cards, the nMP will just lay down and die when Apple tells it to.

 

[Bruce L]

On October 2, 2015 thanks to Mr. Zarniwoop, RX2904 and Piker-Alpha, I got El Capitan installed on my 2007 Mac Pro. Because of time restraints I did not attempt to do anything but see the OS load and then shut it down. Today I hauled my 2007 Mac Pro out and continued setting up El Capitan on it. What I found was that any type of processing would really slow the computer down. I was experiencing video issues and 2 kernel panics during the 4 - 5 hours I was on that computer today. This computer has the original video card and I upgraded the RAM TO 6 MB. I would like to keep this Mac Pro as an extra computer to use if my Mac Mini has issues. I was wondering if anyone could advise me as to how I might remedy these beach ball, video and kernel panic issues. I am thinking I might need to upgrade my video card and/or RAM but my budget is currently limited.

 

[MacVidCards]

More than likely your GPU is the ancient 7300GT or X1900XT, neither of which has any driver support in 10.11.

This is why owners of nMP are going to be sorry campers down the road when a new OS leaves their cards in the dust.

Fortunately for you, the option exists to just put a new card in for peanuts.

Right now your CPU has to draw everything on the screen instead of letting GPU do it.

So get a 8800GT or something, ANYTHING from a later GPU series. I suggest a card with EFI32 support so you can do troubleshooting, etc.

For about $75 you can get an EFI32 GT120 with Dual DVI ports. Either or both can run a 30" Apple display. This isn't a gaming card, but will free the CPU up from doing GPU work.

 

[cmanns]

I installed my "hackint0sh" El Capitan (2x apple soft RAID0 1TB drives) into 2006 MacPro with pikes bootloader applied via 8,2 iMac 2008...

It booted fine with 7800GT, ran great besides no video acceleration.

I'm currently using Yosemite & BootCamp Windows 10 on a 2006 MacPro 1 1 2x 2.66GHZ Dual-Core 8GB Ram GTX650Ti

All 2014/2015 video games play "decently" for having the 2.66 dual cores

 

[Bruce L]

Thank you MacVidCards for the information and link to what I would guess is your site. I will follow-up with you on that site regarding the best card for my Mac Pro and budget.

 

[Bruce L]

MacVidCards I have a friend with a 2008 Mac Pro with an Nvidia GeForce 8800 card with 512 MB of RAM but a bad motherboard. If he sold me the card should it work for me?

More than likely your GPU is the ancient 7300GT or X1900XT, neither of which has any driver support in 10.11.

This is why owners of nMP are going to be sorry campers down the road when a new OS leaves their cards in the dust.

Fortunately for you, the option exists to just put a new card in for peanuts.

Right now your CPU has to draw everything on the screen instead of letting GPU do it.

So get a 8800GT or something, ANYTHING from a later GPU series. I suggest a card with EFI32 support so you can do troubleshooting, etc.

For about $75 you can get an EFI32 GT120 with Dual DVI ports. Either or both can run a 30" Apple display. This isn't a gaming card, but will free the CPU up from doing GPU work.

 

[MacVidCards]

You would need to flash it with EFI32

 

[Bruce L]

Thank you for this information. I read a little bit about flashing at the MacVidCards site and was wondering if the card will work without flashing now and could be flashed later. I would like to use the card to finish my clean install and then send it to MacVidCards to get flashed sometime before the end of January 2016. Also this card only has 512 GB of on board RAM as compared to the card on the MacVidCards site which has 1 TB of RAM so I don't know if this would be problematic.

You would need to flash it with EFI32

 

[HAL2010]

It's not that difficult. Just flash it yourself.

 

[Bruce L]

Thank you HAL2010. I will do a search on how to do this. BTW as an aside I had the privilege of visiting the Netherlands in 1975. What a beautiful country. The people were so friendly and the women I saw in Amsterdam (and I am not referring the red light district) were definitely some the prettiest women in Europe.

It's not that difficult. Just flash it yourself.