Xserve 1,1 Video Question.

[catzilla]

I have a Xserve 1,1 that I have been tinkering with. I bought a couple of sticks of ram and a pair of quad core processors. I managed to get El Capitan booted but the video is painfully slow. Any idea as to the best card that will run? I have a Radeon X1300 256mb installed in one of the PCIe, no help.
Thanks.

 

[hwojtek]

It's not a PowerPC, refer to Mac Pro subforum and work it from there, a vast amount of Nvidia and AMD cards work with this hardware, it's more or less a Mac Pro 1,1/2,1.

 

[catzilla]

It's not a PowerPC, refer to Mac Pro subforum and work it from there, a vast amount of Nvidia and AMD cards work with this hardware, it's more or less a Mac Pro 1,1/2,1.

Once removed rule, there has been activity on early Intel here as well.

 

[AphoticD]

Once removed rule, there has been activity on early Intel here as well.

Maybe a GT120? El Cap ran well on my MP3,1 with the little PCIe GT120 before I replaced it with a GTX 680.

 

[amagichnich]

It's not a PowerPC, refer to Mac Pro subforum and work it from there, a vast amount of Nvidia and AMD cards work with this hardware, it's more or less a Mac Pro 1,1/2,1.

Not quite right - have you tried asking an early Intel related question in one of the other forums? Don't do it."Buy a new Mac", "Why bother with something so old", "go to classic mac forum", "Install the newest OS and all will be fine". Officially this is the PPC forum, but many of us here have early Intels too and are willing to help with our experience

Once removed rule, there has been activity on early Intel here as well.

Correct

 

[647156]

I have a GT120 (from a Mac Pro) in my 2008 Xserve 2,1 which works well for running up to/including High Sierra, however I doubt that would work in the 2006 1,1 given that I don't think it works in the Mac Pro 1,1/2,1. Unfortunately the other cards from Mac Pros don't fit in the Xserve given that only a single-height card will fit...

 

[AphoticD]

Not quite right - have you tried asking an early Intel related question in one of the other forums? Don't do it."Buy a new Mac", "Why bother with something so old", "go to classic mac forum", "Install the newest OS and all will be fine". Officially this is the PPC forum, but many of us here have early Intels too and are willing to help with our experience

Correct

I’ll vote for a name change: “PowerPC and Early Intel”

“Obsolete” is a bit of a rough term and “Vintage” already has a forum.

In reality, this forum has covered topics from 68k through to Intel. It’s mostly just a welcoming place for older Mac hardware and software discussions that you won’t find in the relevant iMac, Mac mini, MacBook/MBP and Mac Pro forums.

If I have any early Intel questions, I wouldn’t hesitate to ask here before going over to other sections where it’ll be either ignored or criticized.
[doublepost=1517660289][/doublepost]

I have a GT120 (from a Mac Pro) in my 2008 Xserve 2,1 which works well for running up to/including High Sierra, however I doubt that would work in the 2006 1,1 given that I don't think it works in the Mac Pro 1,1/2,1. Unfortunately the other cards from Mac Pros don't fit in the Xserve given that only a single-height card will fit...

After a little digging around it looks like there was a 32bit EFI version of the GT120 which would operate in the MP1,1 , 2,1 and the Xserve 1,1. Apparently you can still order them from MacVidCards, but I haven’t had any dealings with that business, so I can’t make any recommendations. I would try hunting around for a method to flash a stock standard 64-bit card, but that might be a dead end if nobody has released a ROM for it.

EDIT: Or maybe they have sold out...

 

[amagichnich]

I’ll vote for a name change: “PowerPC and Early Intel”

“Obsolete” is a bit of a rough term and “Vintage” already has a forum.

In reality, this forum has covered topics from 68k through to Intel. It’s mostly just a welcoming place for older Mac hardware and software discussions that you won’t find in the relevant iMac, Mac mini, MacBook/MBP and Mac Pro forums.

If I have any early Intel questions, I wouldn’t hesitate to ask here before going over to other sections where it’ll be either ignored or criticized.

Thumbs up

But... If we are to call it "PPC and early intel" or "Old macs" than I bet many folks with their 2012 "obsolete" MBPs will come here too. Had one of them at work recently, asked me to help him with his old and slow MBP because "you have old macs too". "Can you do something? I think it's obsolete already" (my face)

 

[AphoticD]

Thumbs up

But... If we are to call it "PPC and early intel" or "Old macs" than I bet many folks with their 2012 "obsolete" MBPs will come here too. Had one of them at work recently, asked me to help him with his old and slow MBP because "you have old macs too". "Can you do something? I think it's obsolete already" (my face)

Yes, even those poor slow Ivy Bridge i7’s can hardly crunch FaceBook, instagram and Youtube simultaneously when their 128GB SSDs fill up to zero K available.

 

[hwojtek]

This is a processor thing, not an age thing.
A 1,1 Xserve is based on a totally different and incompatible architecture, though since it is very related to an early Mac Pro, it belongs there and not here. There are simply no questions relevant to both architectures (PowerPC / Early Intel) so this forum would be a mess.

Not quite right - have you tried asking an early Intel related question in one of the other forums? Don't do it.

Well, I'm quite sure a thread with over a 1M views regarding El Capitan on the Mac Pro 1,1/2,1 has a very good place in the Mac Pro forums and I have not noticed any "buy a new Mac" there. I believe it's a matter of attitude and asking the right questions in the right places.

That said - the OP should refer to any "early Mac Pro video adapter" thread he might find in the Mac Pro section. The answers are right there.

 

[amagichnich]

This is a processor thing, not an age thing.
A 1,1 Xserve is based on a totally different and incompatible architecture, though since it is very related to an early Mac Pro, it belongs there and not here. There are simply no questions relevant to both architectures (PowerPC / Early Intel) so this forum would be a mess.

Well, I'm quite sure a thread with over a 1M views regarding El Capitan on the Mac Pro 1,1/2,1 has a very good place in the Mac Pro forums and I have not noticed any "buy a new Mac" there. I believe it's a matter of attitude and asking the right questions in the right places.

That said - the OP should refer to any "early Mac Pro video adapter" thread he might find in the Mac Pro section. The answers are right there.

Yes, that thread has many posts, I can see that. But clearly that's the exception. Early macbook? CoreDuo iMacs? No chance

Of course an Intel is not a PPC, beware but many of us PPC owners have an early Intel and therefore know much more about these machines and how to tweak them than the folks in the modern Macs forums who have 2013 upwards Macs, even though the cpu architecture is completely different

 

[0248294]

This is a processor thing, not an age thing.
A 1,1 Xserve is based on a totally different and incompatible architecture, though since it is very related to an early Mac Pro, it belongs there and not here. There are simply no questions relevant to both architectures (PowerPC / Early Intel) so this forum would be a mess.

Well, I'm quite sure a thread with over a 1M views regarding El Capitan on the Mac Pro 1,1/2,1 has a very good place in the Mac Pro forums and I have not noticed any "buy a new Mac" there. I believe it's a matter of attitude and asking the right questions in the right places.

That said - the OP should refer to any "early Mac Pro video adapter" thread he might find in the Mac Pro section. The answers are right there.

I would have agreed, had I not seen so many threads in the Intel forums were someone with an older MacBook or iMac got tons of useless replies with "It's obsolete/old/crap/etc, buy a new one". That's specifically why sometimes people come in here with Early Intel questions. And guess what? So far this forum isn't a mess!

 

[AL1630]

Yeah, this is one of the cleaner MR forums. The only other community that's so accepting of older hardware for everyday use is the Mac Pro one, and that's probably only because of the EFI mods. Lots of other places, anything with a Core 2 Duo or earlier is marked as 'completely obsolete". It's nice to have a place to come where people are willing to help with almost any older mac.

 

[LightBulbFun]

I have a Xserve 1,1 that I have been tinkering with. I bought a couple of sticks of ram and a pair of quad core processors. I managed to get El Capitan booted but the video is painfully slow. Any idea as to the best card that will run? I have a Radeon X1300 256mb installed in one of the PCIe, no help.
Thanks.

Xserve1,1s fun macs those I got one for £35 off ebay once

in terms of video cards being that it is an EFI32 machine which does limit your options a bit. (it dosent help that the Xserve1,1 has a particularly buggy and difficult to work with EFI/BootROM)

I would recommend picking up an ATI Radeon 2600 XT from a Mac Pro 3,1. it like most ATI PCIe Mac cards have an EBC firmware which means they work with both EFI32 and EFI64 machines, which means it should be compatible with the Xserve1,1 and will work nicely in Leopard to high sierra even (although you cant run high sierra on an Xserve1,1 sadly) and give you full boot screens

I would avoid PC Video cards in the XS1,1 even if they work in Mac Pros with no boot screens, I have found with my Xserve1,1 at least, they just end up kernel Panicing OS X when it configures all the PCI devices.

interestingly enough tho, I do have a GT 120 from my Mac Pro 4,1 and although its an EFI64 card so it just acts like a PC card and has no boot screens it will happily auto int in 10.11.6 in the Xserve instead of causing a kernel panic like all the other cards I have tried which dont have a compatible EFI32/EBC firmware.

hope this helps

 

[647156]

The only other community that's so accepting of older hardware for everyday use is the Mac Pro one

Probably because even if you order a Mac Pro from Apple you are getting old hardware (plus even the 1,1 is still completely useable today)

 

[AL1630]

Yeah, it's pretty amazing what a 1,1 or 2,1 can still do. Mine is my main computer and it does everything I need. Upgrades are really cheap as well.

 

[1042686]

I have a mp 1,1 running elcap. With the stock GPU (7300gt iirc) it ran terribly sluggish, menu artifacts etc. and forget about launchpad - OMG. Anyhoo, I had a 1gb GeForce gt 240 laying around from an ancient gaming build & with advice from one of the nerdiest Pizza eaters (think Revenge of the nerds meets English busses) & subsequent Ppc/Apple wizard kid I know, I stuck that in the 1,1 & now get excellent accelerated graphics -albeit no boot screen.

I can live w/o a bootscreen, so if you want a cheap fix & can do without a boot screen, you could try a gt 240 with the caveat I’m talking about my mp & not a Xserve (don’t own one) but from the posts above from folks who probably know more than I, they seem to allude to your xserve & mp1,1s as homogenous - relatively speaking.

Anyhow, at $15-25shipped On eBay, it could be a cheap fix for your elcap Xserve.

Good luck.

 

[AL1630]

Mine runs an 8800GT, I thought it was probably the cheapest decent elcap option, since I like my boot screens. I didn't even try with the stock one, since people said it wasn't usable.