iMac Pro running with El Capitan?

[DreWellet]

Hi,

I'm a freelance video editor and I'm currently working on a production that uses FCP 7 (Yes... you read that right). I have FCP 7 on my early 2008 Mac Pro, but I bought a new iMac Pro earlier this year and would like to use it for this job. We all know that FCP 7 is now obsolete with High Sierra. But is there a way to create a partition, or a boot drive, and use El Capitan or Sierra on my iMac Pro?

I've tried many different ways, but none of them work. Can anyone confirm if it can be done? Or am I losing my time?

 

[mreg376]

Have you tried virtualization software like Parallels or VM Fusion? There's also a free version called Virtual Box.

 

[mj_]

It can't be done. Traditionally, the oldest system you can run on a Mac is the system it initially shipped with. There are some notable exceptions to this rule but they are few and far between. For the iMac Pro, this means that it requires at least 10.13 High Sierra and won't boot with anything older than that. Most importantly it's secure boot chip (I think it was called the T2 chip) required a special version of High Sierra in the beginning. Thus, it can't even be hacked into submission.

The most recent iMac that will still run El Capitan is the Mid-2015 iMac. Even the Late-2015 requires Sierra already.

The only thing you can really do is Virtualization, as @mreg376 has already suggested.

 

[Soko]

I have a 27" 2017 iMac, purchased when the iMac Pro started shipping. Maxed out, 4.2Ghz i7, 64Gb ram, 2Tb SSD. I always clone my current OS install before I upgrade and install it as a virtual machine in VMware Fusion. My oldest Mac OS X installed in VM is 10.6.8 Snow Leopard. All previous OS X and macOS are installed for me in VM. I do allocate the max resources each OS supports, and can continue to use legacy software with no issues.

Maybe your iMac Pro can be this software setup for you? Snow Leopard's, I think, max ram is only 8Gb, it may 16Gb? I haven't booted into Snow Leopard for many months.

 

[Fishrrman]

You can't boot an iMac Pro using El Capitan.

You -MIGHT- be able to run El Cap in a virtual machine...

 

[AnonMac50]

Doubt it would be possible. The two biggest issues are usually the GPU and the CPU. The CPU in the iMac Pro is too new to be handled by El Capitan's kernel as far as I know, and the GPU doesn't have drivers for it either. I think the oldest system that it can run is High Sierra. You could run El Capitan in a Virtual Machine (I've done it), but it won't work with Final Cut Pro 7 properly, if at all, unfortunately. I also wish this wasn't the case.