Mac Pro on

MacPro3,1 gains a GeForce GT 720

Mon, 28 Sep 2015 21:33:47 +0000

It was time to upgrade my secondary video card on my trusty MacPro3,1. I first goofed considerably with a Radeon 5250. I even went so far as to bust out my old firmware editing tools to change the vendor id in a feeble attempt to get OS X to use it without needing to modify kexts. Then I heard that more recent nvidia cards are supported by NVIDIA’s “web” OS X drivers. I swapped the 5250 (with its firmware restored) for a GeForce GT 720.

MacPro3,1 gets USB 3.0 support

Tue, 23 Dec 2014 19:03:31 +0000

In my quest to keep my 2008 era Mac Pro (MacPro3,1) reasonably well suited to my needs, I recently decided to attempt to add USB 3.0 support.

I recently bought myself one of these babies, Inateck KT4004. I like that it has 4 ports and no external power required.

The Amazon page claimed this card is for the Mac Pro. I wasn’t sure if there would be weird driver issues and bought it with a little hesitation. I�installed it in about 2mins and upon booting I could immediately see it available:

Snow Leopard Upgrade on a Triple Booting Macbook

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 20:41:13 +0000

Howdy World, so last friday was release day for Snow Leopard, woot! I went out and grabbed a copy and rushed home to upgrade my macbook… Here’s the tale of a bit of resistance I met and how I resolved it.

Yellow Triangle of Rejection

So the problem I quickly encountered was that my “Macintosh HD” partition had an ugly little yellow symbol over it rejecting me from updating my OS X install. I forget (unfortunately), the particular error message. Nevertheless the short version was that regardless of how I launched the installer or a number of other things I tried, it wouldn’t let me run the upgrade.

Using a Clone PC Video card in a Mac Pro

Sun, 29 Jun 2008 11:47:06 +0000

Howdy World, I seek your input. I want to run a clone PC video card in my 2008 Mac Pro machine. In particular, I was thinking I’d get something as close to the $280.00 Apple provided NVIDIA 8800 GT card as possible. My current first choice is the $180 eVGA e-GeForce 8800 GT.

I expect the potential major problem to be that a clone video card may be unaware of the boot process of a mac machine. I’m speaking with particular respect to EFI. That said, I’m also aware that clone PCs are intended to be able to use EFI instead of BIOS - so I’d expect decent newer video cards to support this.

Best Case Scenario VNC

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 23:37:30 +0000

Here’s a little video I did up of what’s got to be as good as it’s gonna get over VNC. The Video speaks for itself. Have fun.

Refurbished Mac Pro First Boot

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 13:09:48 +0000

Here’s a little video I did of the “first” boot of the Refurbished Mac Pro I picked up.

Unboxing of Refurbished Mac Pro machine

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 11:03:39 +0000

Here’s a video I made of opening the refurbished mac pro I picked up. Saved me some good coin going the refurb route - though I figured people may be interested in seeing how a refurb pro comes packed.