Downgrade of Mac Pro OS

[pctechtv]

Hi, if you have a Mac Pro that came pre-installed with Yosemite is there any way to install Mavericks or even older OS's on it. Thanks

 

[flowrider]

Can't tell ya unless you tell us which MacPro you have.

Lou

 

[bax2003]

Mac Pros - earliest version of OS X you can install:

MacPro 6,1 (Late 2013) - OS X 10.9
MacPro 5,1 (Mid 2010) - Mac OS X 10.6.4
MacPro 4,1 (Early 2009) - Mac OS X 10.5.6
MacPro 3,1 (Early 2008) - Mac OS X 10.5.1
MacPro 2,1 (April 2007 8-Core) - Mac OS X 10.4.9
MacPro 1,1 (Mid 2006) - Mac OS X 10.4.7

 

[IowaLynn]

Hi, if you have a Mac Pro that came pre-installed with Yosemite is there any way to install Mavericks or even older OS's on it. Thanks

You can always opt to run in a VM, and most Macs that came with 10.10 would not be able to run Snow Leopard (which as you see all the Classic Mac Pro models can) and therefore you would have no support for Rosetta which allowed for running PowerPC code in emulation.

 

[pctechtv]

Can't tell ya unless you tell us which MacPro you have.

The one I have is MacPro 6,1 (Late 2013) - OS X 10.9. Thanks

 

[26139]

Hmmm....

Without an emulator of some sort, no Mac can run an earlier OS version than the one it shipped with.

 

[IowaLynn]

The one I have is MacPro 6,1 (Late 2013) - OS X 10.9. Thanks

Then anything like 10.8.x and earlier would necessitate VMware Fusion or Parallels - and those are not emulators. Rosetta runs inside Snow Leopard to run PPC (and could use a single threaded 2GB environment, not ideal but efficient). No Intel processor could of course run PowerPC code on its own at all. For that you would need a G5 for instance.

 

[pctechtv]

Great answers guys, helps a lot! I totally under stand the hypervisor suggestion like VMware Fusion or Parallels, I use thing like that on PC. If I have another question about the Mac Pro let say about it's memory should I continue this post with other questions or should I start a new thread? Thanks