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Something awesome happened…!

R

RedCroissant

Suspended
Original poster
Aug 13, 2011
2,268
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The other day I was trying to figure out what to do with all of my PPC Macs that were no longer doing what I needed them to do as far as work goes for accessing sites and I found something great on CraigsList…a Mac Pro 1,1 for $200.

It had the 2.66GHz Quad Xeon, 8GB RAM, 250GB HDD, power cable and original installation media.

Now it has….2 x 250GB HDDs in RAID as the boot volume, my 2 TB WD drive for media and general storage and I still have 1 empty 3.5" HDD bay as well as an empty optical drive bay. I don't have any more money to upgrade anything at the moment but I am considering installing a SATA optical drive/Blu-ray drive at some point, more RAM, and of course a better Graphics card.

This is awesome and since this is my main sub-forum, I wanted to let everyone know!
 
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The 2006 Mac Pros are nice, especially when upgraded with a newer GPU and SSD (as mine is). Will it be replacing your G5 quad as your main Mac?
 
welcome to the Mac pro club i guess heh :) I run a Mac pro 1,1 as my main computer (its Pentabooting between 5 OSs heh) for a almost 10 year old computer it runs beautifully (I did have 32GB of ram but had to return a few dead sticks hope to get replacements soon) I also plan to get 2 Quad core X5365 Xeon CPUs for it heh
upload_2016-1-30_0-21-24.png
 
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Got El Cap running on mine amongst other iterations but am finding that Finder freezes often and then locks up. Only happens with 10.11.x
 
Definitely get an SSD for the OS/applications, a nice Samsung 128 GB one isn't too expensive and they make these Mac Pros crazy fast! (you can get a 3.5" adapter box to fit it in one of the drive bays) Also Snow Leopard is awesome on them if you don't need anything that's in the newer versions.
 
Nice to see some excitement here. Enjoy!
One query though. I thought that the Mac Pro 1.1 max OS was 10.7.5. How does one go about getting 10.11?

I've just seen that there's one for sale near to me for what I would consider a bargain price. I'm going to have to stop reading this forum........;)
 
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redheeler said:
The 2006 Mac Pros are nice, especially when upgraded with a newer GPU and SSD (as mine is). Will it be replacing your G5 quad as your main Mac?
Click to expand...

It will definitely replace my G5 Quad as it already has. Being able to sync my iPhone 4S AND do the work that I need to from home and also have the opportunity to run the design software that I pretty much abandoned is exciting. Maybe now I can do some more work on my portfolio! We shall see!

LightBulbFun said:
welcome to the Mac pro club i guess heh :) I run a Mac pro 1,1 as my main computer (its Pentabooting between 5 OSs heh) for a almost 10 year old computer it runs beautifully (I did have 32GB of ram but had to return a few dead sticks hope to get replacements soon) I also plan to get 2 Quad core X5365 Xeon CPUs for it heh
View attachment 613260
Click to expand...

Well when I can afford the upgrades to make it work on more recent versions of OS X, I will. But for right now just having a machine that can handle everything that I actually need and want to do is awesome. I have Windows 8.1 on a disc and I enjoy running Linux so that should be lots of fun to try and do. I think that I'll be limiting myself to virtualization for now though.

CooperBox said:
Nice to see some excitement here. Enjoy!
One query though. I thought that the Mac Pro 1.1 max OS was 10.7.5. How does one go about getting 10.11?

I've just seen that there's one for sale near to me for what I would consider a bargain price. I'm going to have to stop reading this forum........;)
Click to expand...

The reason that it can run newer versions of OS X is not due to the processor or the system itself necessarily but the Boot EFI. On the 1,1 and the 2,1, the boot EFI is 32 bit, not 64 bit like later revisions of the Mac Pro and of course the other machines that Apple manufactured. BUT, since the CPUs are 64 bit, people have hacked it to replace the existing 32-bit boot.efi with a 64 bit version which allows the machine to boot into later versions of OS X. An updated graphics card is required and of course more RAM would also be recommended when going past Lion.

As of right now, Lion does everything that I need so I am staying put.

It's rather nice to be a Mac Pro owner!
[doublepost=1454140962][/doublepost]The other thing that I thought was fun when I saw the Mac Pro and got the serial number was the production date! My PMG5 Quad was made in June of 2006 and the MP was made in August! The same factory and just 10 weeks apart!
 
Congrats on the new system! The 1,1 is an amazing piece of hardware, mine does everything I ask of it and then some - It's even more upgradeable than most people think it to be.
 
1,1 towers are awesome! I bought mine last weekend for $150 and it replaced a HP Proliant DL360 G5 server that was super loud. Mine runs 10.11.3 great! Just needed a different GPU.

Screen Shot 2016-01-25 at 1.55.27 AM.png



Oh also this past week has been Intel Mac week for me, acquired a 17" 2007 MBP, 15" Late 08 MBP, the Mac Pro, and my new MacBook Air. I officially own more intel macs than ppc at this point :O
 
Hmm. I thunk you needed at least 12GB of RAM to run 10.11 on a 1,1. Better check for pikefix updates.
 
RedCroissant said:
The other day I was trying to figure out what to do with all of my PPC Macs that were no longer doing what I needed them to do as far as work goes for accessing sites and I found something great on CraigsList…a Mac Pro 1,1 for $200.

It had the 2.66GHz Quad Xeon, 8GB RAM, 250GB HDD, power cable and original installation media.

Now it has….2 x 250GB HDDs in RAID as the boot volume, my 2 TB WD drive for media and general storage and I still have 1 empty 3.5" HDD bay as well as an empty optical drive bay. I don't have any more money to upgrade anything at the moment but I am considering installing a SATA optical drive/Blu-ray drive at some point, more RAM, and of course a better Graphics card.

This is awesome and since this is my main sub-forum, I wanted to let everyone know!
Click to expand...

Good for you. So its on raid eh!
 
Possumgal said:
Congrats, Red, sounds like a really good deal. I'm sure your new toy will keep you going for several years.
Click to expand...

Thanks! And yes that's what I'm hoping! Well not so much hoping as I am expecting it just due to the fact that it was well built/designed. If my wife's 2009 iMac can last 6 years, I know that I can get this to last as well. Plus, my PowerMac G5 Quad was able to last until just recently and the only reason that I had to find something else was the fact that Flash was still being utilized by my work and by other sites related to my work that I find myself wanting to access/use. If Flash wasn't an issue, then the Quad would still be my main machine.

redhatcode29 said:
Good for you. So its on raid eh!
Click to expand...
Thanks and YES! RAIDs are awesome and fun.
 
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