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1,1 Mac Pro not booking from OS X Disk

S

salocinnn

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 27, 2017
5
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Hello, I recently purchased a 2006 1,1 Mac Pro, and I'm having some issues with it, the computer boots on but only boots to an empty folder logo in front of a grey screen. I attempted the put in the original undamaged boot disk, the computer reads it but later ejects the disk after a minute or so of reading it, only displaying a apple logo in a grey screen. When I try to boot the computer into recover or safety mode it does not, only proceeds to read the disk and later eject it. Does anyone have a clue of what could be occurring, is it hardware or a software issue?
Thanks for any help or insight
 
Do you know for sure if there is a hard drive installed?
The empty, or flashing folder means that no bootable system can be found. It MIGHT be that there is not any hard drive installed. You can verify that in seconds by opening the side door and taking a look :D
Your Mac Pro is too old to boot to internet recovery, and if there is no operating system, then you don't have a chance of booting to safe mode either. And no system, no Recovery system either.

So, you need a bootable installer. Your Mac Pro would have originally come with some version of Tiger (OS X 10.4.7 or higher) If the DVD that you tried is a grey disk, then it needs to be the specific one made for your Mac Pro.
If your installer DVD simply ejects, the DVD might be damaged (either the media, or the DVD optical drive might not read DVDs because it needs cleaning (or replacing :D )
OR, even easier is to find a USB installer flash drive. You can easily find those on eBay, or Amazon.
Any 10.5 or 10.6 or 10.7 installer should work fine.

Or, for a completely legitimate installer, you can still purchase Snow Leopard (OS X 10.6.3) direct from Apple.
You can also purchase a download code that allows you to download Lion installer from the App Store.
 
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DeltaMac said:
Do you know for sure if there is a hard drive installed?
The empty, or flashing folder means that no bootable system can be found. It MIGHT be that there is not any hard drive installed. You can verify that in seconds by opening the side door and taking a look :D
Your Mac Pro is too old to boot to internet recovery, and if there is no operating system, then you don't have a chance of booting to safe mode either. And no system, no Recovery system either.

So, you need a bootable installer. Your Mac Pro would have originally come with some version of Tiger (OS X 10.4.7 or higher) If the DVD that you tried is a grey disk, then it needs to be the specific one made for your Mac Pro.
If your installer DVD simply ejects, the DVD might be damaged (either the media, or the DVD optical drive might not read DVDs because it needs cleaning (or replacing :D )
OR, even easier is to find a USB installer flash drive. You can easily find those on eBay, or Amazon.
Any 10.5 or 10.6 or 10.7 installer should work fine.

Or, for a completely legitimate installer, you can still purchase Snow Leopard (OS X 10.6.3) direct from Apple.
You can also purchase a download code that allows you to download Lion installer from the App Store.
Click to expand...

I do in fact have a hard drive put into the computer, and it functions as I was able to test it on another computer and I can confirm that. The computer seems to read the disk for a while, and later ejects it, after about a minute or so. I do have some other installer discs, I have a OS X Panther 16.3 installer disc (4 of them) a set of OS X Leopard install discs, a set of OS X Snow Leopard Install discs and some grey ones that are dates for 2006, which I assume are the install discs for this. Should I attempt to use the Snow leopard Disc to install? Since I know for a fact this was installed on the computer previously.
Thanks for the help!
 
Panther (OS X 10.3.x) has no hope of installing on any MacPro, it's PowerPC only. Your MacPro can't possibly boot to Panther.

"Set" of Leopard, or Snow Leopard install disks?
As far as I know each installs from a single DVD.

The grey disks are possible, if you are certain that they shipped with the same MacPro that you have. They would typically install only on the same model Mac that they shipped with, so worth a try. I would do the Snow Leopard first, however. That would be your best chance.
But try the grey disk anyway, then the Leopard, too, if the Snow Leopard doesn't work.
And, if you have an optical drive problem, none of those will work (until you replace that superdrive with one that actually works), and all will be ejected instead of booting.
 
When you said the hard drive has worked in other computer, do you just mean it was on a Mac/PC as a data drive, or did you have OS X installed and bootable on it? I actually literally pulled the 2.5" SSD from a MBP 13" 2011 with 10.6.8, put it straight into the SATA slot of a Mac Pro 1,1 without even the conversion bracket and it boots with no problems (in fact been using it for months) .

Also about installer DVDs, DeltaMac is on track, most of them are specific to the machine that it came with and would refuse to work on other machines. (It is actually just one line code with the model identifier in the .pkg that you can change). The best shot is a retail version of 10.6 (with a colored photo of the snow leopard on disc) because retail version does not have machine restriction.

If you are still stuck then the path of finding an installer image on internet will be more fruitful.
 
DeltaMac said:
Panther (OS X 10.3.x) has no hope of installing on any MacPro, it's PowerPC only. Your MacPro can't possibly boot to Panther.

"Set" of Leopard, or Snow Leopard install disks?
As far as I know each installs from a single DVD.

The grey disks are possible, if you are certain that they shipped with the same MacPro that you have. They would typically install only on the same model Mac that they shipped with, so worth a try. I would do the Snow Leopard first, however. That would be your best chance.
But try the grey disk anyway, then the Leopard, too, if the Snow Leopard doesn't work.
And, if you have an optical drive problem, none of those will work (until you replace that superdrive with one that actually works), and all will be ejected instead of booting.
Click to expand...
Thanks Delta Mac, when I get home I'm going to try to boot from the snow leopard disc, if it doesn't I'm going to replace the optical drive and see how I'll go from there, thanks for the help!
 
orph said:
do you have a second mac you can use? if so you can make a boot disc on a USB stick or something (even boot via second mac via target disc mode) as a way to install a os on to the macpro
looks like osx10.4.7 is the oldest os it supports and osx 10.7.5 is the newest (without work hacks)
http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/mac_pro/specs/mac-pro-quad-2.66-specs.html
Click to expand...
Yeah I have a Mac Book Air that runs El Capitan on it. Can I use that to make a boot disc in a USB?
 
Chancha said:
When you said the hard drive has worked in other computer, do you just mean it was on a Mac/PC as a data drive, or did you have OS X installed and bootable on it? I actually literally pulled the 2.5" SSD from a MBP 13" 2011 with 10.6.8, put it straight into the SATA slot of a Mac Pro 1,1 without even the conversion bracket and it boots with no problems (in fact been using it for months) .

Also about installer DVDs, DeltaMac is on track, most of them are specific to the machine that it came with and would refuse to work on other machines. (It is actually just one line code with the model identifier in the .pkg that you can change). The best shot is a retail version of 10.6 (with a colored photo of the snow leopard on disc) because retail version does not have machine restriction.

If you are still stuck then the path of finding an installer image on internet will be more fruitful.
Click to expand...
I had tested the HD on my custom pc has a data drive, and it was completely blank, has the person I had bought it from had wiped it externally completely before he brought it to me. Might there be a formatting problem with it? Has I know he wiped it from a PC as well.
 
salocinnn said:
I had tested the HD on my custom pc has a data drive, and it was completely blank, has the person I had bought it from had wiped it externally completely before he brought it to me. Might there be a formatting problem with it? Has I know he wiped it from a PC as well.
Click to expand...
During OS X installation if the target drive is in the wrong format (not HFS+) then the installer will prompt you to reformat, if not you should still be able to access Disk Utility and do it before the actual installing starts (Disk Utility is built-in the bootable OS X installer DVD/disk-image).

I am thinking that using your MBA may help you more. But I only have experience with MBP so I am not entirely sure if it works the same. On an MBP I can put the Mac Pro 1,1 (with the blank HDD) into Target Disk Mode, connect it to a MBP via Firewire cable, OS X on MBP can access the HDD as if it was directly attached. You can therefore run installer with this MBP without involving the possibly broken optical drive of the Mac Pro's. However I am unsure if being on El Capitan would make back-tracking to a previous OS X install impossible. If that's the case then you need to boot the MBA into a 10.7 installer or previous first, which for some newer MBA is restricted as the machine and its firmware / drivers are shipped after those older OS X versions.
 
if you can grab a copy of osx10.7 you can then install it on to a usb drive (flash/SD card/external HD etc).
you now have a USB device with a full working copy of osx on it so just drag the installer on to the usb drive then plug it in to your 1.1 and hold alt on startup and chose the usb installer boot from it.
you now can use disc utility if you need or just install OSX from the installer on the drive.

you can make fancy boot drives but iv always found this way easier, i use SD cards in a USB SD card reader to do things from cloning drives to first aid etc handy

there's also apple hardware test hold 'd' on boot
https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT201257

this will work as long as there's no extra problems with hardware

ps
if your macbook air has 10.7.5 on it then you'd be able to stick it in to target disc mood and boot from it but id assume you are on a newer OS
 
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