David's Opinions

Yosemite on a MacPro1,1 20 July 2014

I have a MacPro1,1 that I brought second hand recently – this machine is well built and has some really decent processing power.I got the machine with the original graphics card and have been fortunate enough to obtain a later graphics card that has allowed me run later versions of the operating system that would normally not be possible. The graphics card isn’t the end of the story though. If you want to run MacOS 10.9 or MacOS 10.10 there are some tall buildings to leap over.

Installing 10.9 – Mavericks
Put the macPro into Firewire Target Disk mode. Connect the MacPro via firewire to a mac that can install Mavericks. Install Mavericks.
Next you will need to replace your boot.efi file in 2 places.
This file can be obtained from http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1598176&page=2
The first post in that thread has a link to the bootloader.

I have successfully done this and have Mavericks running on one hard drive in the MacPro.

Installing 10.10 – Yosemite
Follow these installation instructions to the letter.
Yosemite on a Mac Pro 1,1 or 2,1 – AppleLife

discussion forums…
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1740775

I have successfully done this and have Yosemite running on one hard drive in the MacPro.

I’ve also subsequently installed one of the Yosemite updates via Software Update and the update for Preview 3.

You wouldn’t believe how long it’s taken me to find this decent set of instructions…. actually if you’ve got here… perhaps you would.

The graphics card I have installed is: ATI Radeon HD 4870 512 MB

– David

Note: Beta4 installation required that I boot back into MacOS 10.9 and rerun the Chameleon installation to the boot volume – remember to edit the plist with your serial number.

Note: Beta5 installation completed successfully without issues.