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computer1up

macrumors newbie
Original poster
May 31, 2018
11
0
I've got two Mac Pro 1,1's here. One has just arrived today. It was listed as as-is, with no video output. OK, so I obviously knew that when I bought it, but it was a bargain so I though "Heck, why not". I have got a few older PowerMac's working in the past that were listed as for-parts machines.

Anyhow, the other machine's a little bit of a different beast. That was my own machine once, which I then sold to someone very, VERY technically skilled who even tried to quite literally flash full 64-bit EFI firmware on it. Seemed to have worked half, but his original Apple 7300GT died midway in experimenting with the machine. And replacement original Mac cards are expensive.

My own machine has an HD 2600XT in it, which IS original Apple. I can tell as it has the typical 2 DVI's only and the typical Apple port labeling on it.

Both machines don't display ANYTHING, before and seemingly after a boot into OS X Lion. They do chime though.

I can sort of tell that the machines do boot into the OS on my SSD. Generally, a computer that isn't starting to boot or fully booted into an OS can be turned off by a simple tap on the power button. When there's no drive installed, that's the case with both machines. However, after waiting a while with a drive attached with a fresh Lion install on it, which I made on my Mac Mini, they need to be powered down by holding the power button. Another indication that they are booted is: my Cooler Master keyboard has animated backlight on it. When booting the machine, the keyboard lights come on and start being animated. However, seemingly in the transition from booting-up to fully booted, my lights turn off shortly and come back on in the animated style. I've got no sound from the OS though.

To make things even more weird, my keyboard seems to respond to the PRAM reset combo only on startup, none of the others seem to work. Not even holding F12 to open the DVD tray. I can't tell for sure as both with and without an original Mac graphics card there's no image on the screen during bootup and when booted in the OS. Even though the 2600XT might be dead, PC cards should work at least in the OS. I had the same card in the machine that I borrowed before I sold that (this is the "EFI-upgrade machine"). The card is known working, the monitors are known working.

Basically, the exact state of both machines is therefore unknown. I think I've ruled out memory issues, as no memory lights come on during bootup.
 

computer1up

macrumors newbie
Original poster
May 31, 2018
11
0
Allright, a long time and some troubleshooting later (had a really busy time at school): freedos does not seem to boot. I suspect that has to do with the MP not liking to boot up from anything other than HFS+ formatted drives on GUID schemes to begin with.

Also, I found out that there are diagnostic LED's above the memory risers. Wish I had found those sooner. The GPU_PRESENT light (I think that's light 6 or 7) does not light up with any of my cards.

That's weird, the fans of the cards do turn on. I'm thinking there could be an issue where the power supply to the PCIe sockets is funky. Either 12V or 5V is present on the card, which would make the fan spin, but the other one might not be there, which would explain why I get no video out and no GPU_PRESENT light. Oh, I forgot to say that I did of course press the DIAG_LED button to see which LED's power on. All the other ones, like trickle, EFI-done and POWEr-OK are on.
 
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