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Alright!! I got it working finally. Here is what I did.

1. Pulled the spare drive from the Lion MP, and moved it to an older SL MP.
2. Wiped the drive, and did a full install of SL 10.6.
3. Pulled the drive, moved it back to the new MP, and it would NOT boot it.
4. Put the drive back into the older MP, and did all the updates, bringing it to 10.6.8.
5. Moved the drive back to the new MP, and voila! it booted.

This leads me to believe that it would probably boot a 10.6.6+ DVD just fine.

YAY!

Lex
 
Alright!! I got it working finally. Here is what I did.

1. Pulled the spare drive from the Lion MP, and moved it to an older SL MP.
2. Wiped the drive, and did a full install of SL 10.6.
3. Pulled the drive, moved it back to the new MP, and it would NOT boot it.
4. Put the drive back into the older MP, and did all the updates, bringing it to 10.6.8.
5. Moved the drive back to the new MP, and voila! it booted.

This leads me to believe that it would probably boot a 10.6.6+ DVD just fine.

YAY!

Lex

Sounds like they might have changed the system identifier or some other setting to make the Mid 2010 MacPro install disc not recognize the system as a MacPro5,1

Can you post the system profiler data so we can see what might have changed?

Still a crappy move by Apple, but at least it's not all lost to those of us with 400+ macs to support and aren't ready/wanting to goto buggy Lion.
 
Genius is a tool. I spoke with Apple Enterprise and yes, you can do whatever you like on 2011 machines that originally came with 10.6. It is just "not supported". But seeing as I support myself. No biggie. It has been this way for 10 years on downgrading.
 
Sounds like they might have changed the system identifier or some other setting to make the Mid 2010 MacPro install disc not recognize the system as a MacPro5,1

Can you post the system profiler data so we can see what might have changed?

Still a crappy move by Apple, but at least it's not all lost to those of us with 400+ macs to support and aren't ready/wanting to goto buggy Lion.

Sure, here is the info:

H a r d w a r e :

H a r d w a r e O v e r v i e w :

M o d e l N a m e : M a c P r o
M o d e l I d e n t i f i e r : M a c P r o 5 , 1
P r o c e s s o r N a m e : Q u a d - C o r e I n t e l X e o n
P r o c e s s o r S p e e d : 2 . 4 G H z
N u m b e r O f P r o c e s s o r s : 2
T o t a l N u m b e r O f C o r e s : 8
L 2 C a c h e ( p e r c o r e ) : 2 5 6 K B
L 3 C a c h e ( p e r p r o c e s s o r ) : 1 2 M B
M e m o r y : 6 G B
P r o c e s s o r I n t e r c o n n e c t S p e e d : 5 . 8 6 G T / s
B o o t R O M V e r s i o n : M P 5 1 . 0 0 7 F . B 0 3
S M C V e r s i o n ( s y s t e m ) : 1 . 3 9 f 1 1
S M C V e r s i o n ( p r o c e s s o r t r a y ) : 1 . 3 9 f 1 1
S e r i a l N u m b e r ( s y s t e m ) :
S e r i a l N u m b e r ( p r o c e s s o r t r a y ) : J 5 1 2 9 0 2 C W B H 8 C
H a r d w a r e U U I D :



S o f t w a r e :

S y s t e m S o f t w a r e O v e r v i e w :

S y s t e m V e r s i o n : M a c O S X 1 0 . 6 . 8 ( 1 0 K 5 4 9 )
K e r n e l V e r s i o n : D a r w i n 1 0 . 8 . 0
B o o t V o l u m e : M a c i n t o s h H D S L
B o o t M o d e : N o r m a l
C o m p u t e r N a m e :
U s e r N a m e :
S e c u r e V i r t u a l M e m o r y : N o t E n a b l e d
6 4 - b i t K e r n e l a n d E x t e n s i o n s : Y e s
T i m e s i n c e b o o t : 2 m i n u t e s


If I missed someting important, let me know and I will post it.

Lex
 
Does anyone have the info from a mid 2010 MacPro (fraid I only have 2009 and 2008 MacPros to look at)?

The identifier is the same, so it's have to be the rom versions that somehow tripped up the installer.

Are you sure the MacPro install disc you used originally was from the same rev MacPro? (mid-2010)
 
Does anyone have the info from a mid 2010 MacPro (fraid I only have 2009 and 2008 MacPros to look at)?

The identifier is the same, so it's have to be the rom versions that somehow tripped up the installer.

Are you sure the MacPro install disc you used originally was from the same rev MacPro? (mid-2010)

ROM Version, or boot loader? Or is that one in the same? The disc I used came from a MacPro that was purchased either in December or Jan. I will look at it's profile on Monday. I am home now for the weekend.

I went ahead and ordered a Snow Leopard disc from the Apple Store. It will be worth the $30 just to see if that one boots. I assume it will be the latest version, but I hate assuming anything when it comes to Apple

Lex
 
I went ahead and ordered a Snow Leopard disc from the Apple Store.
I assume it will be the latest version
Shipping times of "2-3 weeks" in the Apple Store might indicate some hope for you. Maybe Apple are producing new DVDs with 10.6.8.

Otherwise, the only Snow Leopard releases available on "generic" DVD (i.e., not bundled with a system) were 10.6.(0) and 10.6.3 - which of course lack drivers for Mac Pro 5.1, as these Mac Pros were introduced months after 10.6.3...
 
Here's my history with this scenario.

I just bought a new Mac Mini to replace my MBP 1,1 (32 bit). I swaped out the rotary drive for an SSD and tried using the recovery utility to install Lion on it. It erred out and rather than try again (process took 2 hours before it failed) I tried other methods (none of which worked and eventually I tried the RU again, this time with glorious success). One of the methods was to clone my old partition with SL 10.6.8 on it. It booted just fine but had a slew of problems (cursor redraw problems, video corruption, Photoshop issues, and some other Finder anomalies). It nay have been because SL did not support the new hardware. It may also have been caused by running a 32bit OS on a 64bit platform (unlikely). But the system was not usable.

Other reports at iFixit clearly show that while it is technically possible (I'm proof of that), you shouldn't expect a workable system.

Quite likely Apple won't bring updated drivers over to SL because they will likely see no reason to support a system to run deprecated software.

So it depends what system you want to run Lion on. As with the new Mini, it got a new video card. But the rest of the Mac line is still built with full SL support. It would be strange for Apple to lock SL out of these systems so unless we hear that's the case, I'd say yes, SL can be installed on anything that was built before Lion went retail.
 
Alright!! I got it working finally. Here is what I did.

1. Pulled the spare drive from the Lion MP, and moved it to an older SL MP.
2. Wiped the drive, and did a full install of SL 10.6.
3. Pulled the drive, moved it back to the new MP, and it would NOT boot it.
4. Put the drive back into the older MP, and did all the updates, bringing it to 10.6.8.
5. Moved the drive back to the new MP, and voila! it booted.

This leads me to believe that it would probably boot a 10.6.6+ DVD just fine.

YAY!

Lex

So you're relly running SL 10.6.8 on your new Mac that had Lion pre-installed?
Is it stable? And you're booting from an external drive?

This is killing me.
I got my new MBP 6 days ago, and at first I was really excited.
But when I tried to install Pro Tools 8, I realized this might not be as neat as I had imagined...
I am desperate to find a way to install Snow Leopard on my MPB.
It could take months, (if ever) to get Pro Tools 8 working with Lion..
And I'm about to buy Traktor Scratch Pro 2. And that would propably not work either.

spec:
15 inch, early 2011.
2 GHz Intel Core i7
8 GB 1333 MHz DDR3
AMD Radeon HD 6490M 256 MB

/B
 
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