MP 1,1-5,1 2006 Mac Pro

[TCrowe]

After 7 years I got the bug to see how my old Mac Pro worked today(or not). It fired right up and now I'm stuck. I have a very old Samsung monitor, no mouse and various keyboards but no way to log in. Truthfully, I can't remember passwords or which OS it is running unless it is Snow Leopard. I believe I downloaded Lion and have the ISO image still on it. I did this because I upgraded my iMac to Catalina but have any number of old Myst games that I would love to get back into. (I never won any of them!)

I want to get a new monitor for it and am not sure what might be a good enough monitor for Myst etc. and will also work with this old a machine. I am a retired photographer and will not be using it for photography so it will sit here for games and the novelty of having a tower resembling a Mack Truck in my office. It does my heart good to know that I kept it from being damaged through all the Sonoma fires and power outages. They burned right up to my fence where we stopped them in 2017.

 

[pertusis1]

Just ask one of your neighbors if they have an old monitor laying around. Most people have one taking up space they'd be glad to be rid of.

 

[TCrowe]

As I said, I have an old Samsung monitor. I don't remember my login password so I need to bypass it somehow. Can't remember if there is a way to do so.

 

[Soba]

I want to get a new monitor for it and am not sure what might be a good enough monitor for Myst etc. and will also work with this old a machine.

Assuming you have the graphics card that your system shipped with originally, you should have at least one DVI port and one dual-link DVI port (and possibly two dual-link DVI ports). DVI is in wide use today and you should be able to connect almost any display you wish. There are a host of good, inexpensive 1080p displays out there that should run great and you can potentially go to a higher resolution with dual-link DVI. You can also easily get cables that will let you connect to an HDMI or DisplayPort display, if needed.

To reset your password, it's quite easy if you have your Snow Leopard install disc handy. Boot from the install disc, then use the Password Reset option from the Utilities menu.

If you no longer have the Snow Leopard disc, this should help:

How to reset your Mac OS X password without an installer disc | MacYourself

Let's say you totally forgot the password to log on to your Mac. Or maybe you purchased a used Mac from someone else and they've got it locked down. There are numerous ways to reset a password with no OS X discs...

www.macyourself.com

Also, depending on how much effort you wish to make, it should be possible to upgrade that machine to a more recent version of macOS, if you wish. The forums here have lots of info if you search around. But if you're happy running Lion, that should serve you just fine.

My inclination would be to wipe and do a clean install on the machine after you're sure there's nothing important on it, but it's up to you if you think that's necessary. Good luck and have fun!

Incidentally, the Myst 25th anniversary collection is available and can run on more modern systems, though I believe the games are 32-bit apps and thus won't run on Catalina.

 

[retta283]

Do be aware that the 2006 Mac Pro is very power-hungry and will eat up a lot of electricity. If you can deal with that, more power to you.

There are some utilities you can use to reset the password, but I'd recommend making a Lion bootable USB and starting fresh from there.

 

[TCrowe]

Thank you all for the great advice. After looking far and wide I found that the machine has Bluetooth 2.0. I believe I need a wired mouse and the old mac keyboard has seen better days. I don't want to go from iMac to Mac Pro with one keyboard so I looked on Amazon and saw they were pushing (it seemed to me, "pushing") Macally keyboards and the reviews were quite mixed. I write short stories which I publish on a website of mine and love the Apple keyboard. Somewhere I have a Logitech solar powered but it never worked well. Any hardware suggestions would also be appreciated. I am a little buffaloed by the fact that it is 2006 and I have little idea of whether the new tech will work with it. Yes, it has the original PCI Express graphics card and does have two DVI connectors. I did a RAM upgrade but I'll be darned if I can remember from what to what. Other than that, it's stock.

 

[defjam]

Thank you all for the great advice. After looking far and wide I found that the machine has Bluetooth 2.0. I believe I need a wired mouse and the old mac keyboard has seen better days. I don't want to go from iMac to Mac Pro with one keyboard so I looked on Amazon and saw they were pushing (it seemed to me, "pushing") Macally keyboards and the reviews were quite mixed. I write short stories which I publish on a website of mine and love the Apple keyboard. Somewhere I have a Logitech solar powered but it never worked well. Any hardware suggestions would also be appreciated. I am a little buffaloed by the fact that it is 2006 and I have little idea of whether the new tech will work with it. Yes, it has the original PCI Express graphics card and does have two DVI connectors. I did a RAM upgrade but I'll be darned if I can remember from what to what. Other than that, it's stock.

I would recommend buying original keyboards / mice from Ebay. They can be had there for reasonable prices in excellent condition. I've bought several and have been very pleased.

 

[TCrowe]

Thank you, I'll take a look.

 

[ssgbryan]

If you are going to use it for any length of time, I'd recommend replacing the CPUs with a pair of low power Clovertowns - it would cut your power draw in 1/2.