Visually Identify Apple Mac Pro 2006 2008 2009-2012

How to Visually Identify Apple Mac Pro 2006 2008 2010-2012

Mac Pro 1,1 and 2,1 (2006-2007)

Mac Pro 3,1 (2008)

Mac Pro 4,1 and 5,1 (2009 -2012)

 If there is a doubt in identifying a Mac Pro you have or are looking to buy one thinking you will be getting the deal of the century only to find out its a 1,1 stuck with maxing out at El Cap.

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If there is a 400 FW port its a 1,1 2,1 or 3,1

2 X 800 FW ports Square 4,1 5,1

 Closer look at the differences between the 1,1 or 2,1 and the 3,1 if you notice the Memory boards on the 1,1 / 2,1 are both facing the same way and memory is loaded on the top. On the 3,1 the top board is facing down and the bottom board is facing up. 

 Also there is this cool sticker that should be on all Mac Pro's that you can look up the info on at https://everymac.com/


1,1 / 2,1 will Max out at El Captain and you must use a modified version to get it installed. "Piker-Alpha bootloader" or an image from @Greg Hrutkay over at his YouTube channel Hrutkay Mods.

3,1 can go up to Catalina with DosDude1's installer, But remember the Xeon processors lack some of the instructions sets of the 4,1 and 5,1 like SSE4.2 and Native APFS support which makes them a bit more difficult to get things working properly. DosDude1 has work around for all of this baked in to his Post installer but just remember these are a work around. As well there is a flash for APFS on the 3,1 want to know more?
http://www.cesgeekbook.com/2020/06/opencore-mac-pro-2008-31-mojave.html

4,1 / 5,1 Also can run up to Catalina and Mac OS (BS) Big Sir beta with OpenCore spoofing the ID or Catalina as of writing this with DosDude1's installer I am sure he will get something put together for Mac OS "BS".

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OpenCore install on Mac Pro 5,1 Easy

Installing OpenCore on a Mac Pro 4,1 flashed to ,1 or a 2010 -2012 Mac Pro 5,1

 

The Easy Install of OpenCore on a Mac Pro 4,1 flashed to 5,1 or a 2010 -2012 Mac Pro 5,1

**** Don’t Do This *** do you research and make sure it is something you want to do.  Just a warning!! I may not be able to help if this is your primary machine and something goes south! 

Make sure you have a back up when ever you are doing something that is not supported by Apple.  This is My CYA!!

Reasons why and How To.

First thing is to disable SPI (System Integrity Protection) !!! Super Important !!
Command for that is as follows

    1.    Turn off your Mac (Apple > Shut Down).
    2.    Hold down Command-R and press the Power button. ...
    3.    Wait for OS X to boot into the OS X Utilities window.
    4.    Choose Utilities > Terminal.
    5.    Enter csrutil disable.
    6.    Enter reboot.



Second you can download OpenCore from:
Man tat Lo

https://forums.macrumors.com/attachments/opencore-0-5-9-zip.920640  . FYI this is the New Version 0.5.9 with open canopy.

Don’t for get to check out https://www.facebook.com/groups/926701850730668/ user name @Martin Lo

As well as h9826790   On Macrumors Forums
 

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Logitech Got It Right

Logitech Long Battery Life and Unifying Receiver!

 Marathon Mouse Performance Plus / M705

 

 It is widely accepted that Apple’s MacBook Pro’s touch pad are one of the best out there,

and the touch screen on the surface pro is great.  

I don’t disagree with any of that but sometimes for better productivity and ease of use sometimes it is just easier to have a mouse available to use.

Yes wireless mice have been around for a while. But what happens if you loose the USB receiver or it gets broken.  In the past you would have just had to buy a new one.  

Well Logitech took care of that!

The Logitech Productivity Plus mouse with the Logitech Unifying Receiver features up to 36 month battery life

Ergonomically it feels relatively comfortable in my hand maybe just a bit on the small size.  For years I used a large ball mouse that had some mass to it.  

Mind you I have a medium size frame so your mileage may very if you have larger or smaller hands

Now one thing it seems that Logitech is super proud of is the scroll wheel Quote “hyper-fast wheels can go up to 1000 lines a second in speed mode, without high resolution enabled Hyper-Fast Scrolling “
And in the video I said Mac OS 10.11 but Logitech says 10.4 and later so there is that! But not sure I believe that fully cause the web site has a bit of confusing info

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OpenCore Mac Pro 2008 3,1 Mojave

Mac Pro 3,1 2008 OpenCore full video acceleration with  Radeon GPU's in Mojave

The Mac Pro 3,1 from 2008 is perfectly capable of running Mojave DosDude1 but there are somethings you may want to have that OpenCore will provide.

Sometimes OpenCore default config will show odd things with the Processors this is purely cosmetic

Like a Boot Picker with out having a Mac flashed EFI card that shows native Apple Boot screens like when you press the ALT key on boot with a native Mac card or a stupidly expensive flashed card from Macvidcards?

You want the say RX 580 or an RX 570 in the system for video editing and  want to be able to utilize the full potential of the card's Hardware acceleration?

So lets put OpenCore on the system.

Well that is not so simple if you installed DosDude1's Mojave on an APFS drive.  With @Martin Lo's or  Man tat Lo  How to install "OpenCore for Mac Pro" package. 

You can use clover open the EFI drop all the files and bless the drive till the cows come home and it will never work.  Due to the helper partition and scripts that DosDude installs as helper for the system to use APFS.  

DON'T do this ... I am just telling you now.  Don't

So there is another way.  Hrutkay Mods has a video WATCH IT!!

Collin "DosDude" has a ROM Flash that will allow native support for APFS drives on the Mac Pro 3,1 2008 ***** WATCH THE VIDEO ALL OF IT FIRST!! 

How to Flash Your Unsupported Intel Chipset Mac for Native APFS Booting!

Okay, still DON'T DO THIS.. IF YOU PROCEED I CAN NOT HELP YOU YOU ARE ON YOUR OWN.

Once you have installed the APFS patch / rom flash you can boot to APFS drive YAY!!! But you can not just deleat the helper files for APFS that DosDude installed.  

You have to reboot from your DosDude Mojave patcher USB again.  

Re-install Mojave after that is done re-run the patcher tool from the USB patch for your system 3,1 making sure that the APFS helper is unchecked. 

Boot in to Mojave and open the EFI drive with clover, drop the Boot and OC folder in to the EFI drive.

Bless the system re-boot and voila you have a boot picker hadrware acceleration for you RX 580 and you are ready to rock.  

 

Need more detailed info.  Drop a comment and I will do a step by step.

 

 

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Asus Dual RX 580 8GB in Mac Pro 3,1 (2008) in 2020

Installation of an RX 580 in a Mac Pro 3,1 from 2008 is it worth it??

Did it work??

Well yes sort of!!

The Mac Pro 3,1 was from the $100 Tech haul https://youtu.be/_h1UGYwTTlg

Dual 2.8 Ghz Quad Core Xeon processors had the HD 5770 installed, ended up putting a 250GB SSD in bay 1 and 2 3tb HDD's in bays 3 and 4 in a software raid one for storage.

Wanted the RX 580 Metal support and the graphics compute power for rendering and exporting videos. Well for better performance may have to wait for my unicorn the Mac Pro 5,1 Dual processor. I will find it!!!

MAYBE!!

macOS Mojave patcher from @DosDude1 http://dosdude1.com/mojave/

Well the install did not go exactly as planned.
The Mac Pro 3,1 dose not have the SSE4.2 instruction set so the drivers for the RX 580 will not install properly. High Sierra appeared to be working and showed the card properly but there was no video acceleration. @DosDude1 to the rescue again. Installing Mojave with his patcher tool.. Link in the description Got the RX 580 working. Although not the best seems to be running in slow-mo in in OS X and just ok in Windows 10.

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Success RX 580 8GB Card Working in Mac Pro 3,1

Was having sse4.1 issues .. Thanks to @Dosdude1 the patch is in Mojave. Was not ready to go up to Mojave but was the easiest way to do it.
So in looking for upgrades for the Mac Pro 3,1 do your due diligence on finding compatible upgrades.  I did not.. there for ID10T errors..

Subscribe to our youtube channel so you don't miss the how it was done SUBSCRIBE HERE

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RX 580 8GB Failure in Mac Pro 3,1

Tried putting the RX 580 in ... Showed up in system as RX 580 but would not load any graphics acceleration what so ever even with an external power source.. so back to the drawing board..

Back to the HD 5770 for now

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