Loading Snow Leopard on an older, upgraded (cpu) Mac Pro..

[Kraniac]

Im looking for a reasonably fast, older Mac Pro (5,1) Found a few that Im considering and wondering if I can load Snow Leopard on these without a glitch.

...they say the "G5 style case" Mac Pros will ALL accept 10.6..

But, I;'ve heard of some folks having problems..IE they won't accept the purchased SL Disc...and need the original discs that came with the machine (if Snow Leopard was the original OS that it shipped with)

This gets a bit confusing..

I need Snow Leopard for a device i want to keep using..

[Gareth]

Looks like those machines shipped with 10.6.4, so if you have a retail installer that is 10.6, it won't work.

I wonder what version this disc that Apple still sells is: http://www.apple.com/shop/product/MC573Z...ow-leopard

If it's 10.6.7 or 10.6.8, it should work, but I think the originally retail installer stopped at 10.6.3?

For my own installs, I ended up creating a "universal" 10.6.7 USB installer from a MacBook Pro 10.6.7 specific disc http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?st...3175902871 . But if the disc Apple is selling is 10.6.7 or 10.6.8, I would just go that route.

[JoeH]

The reason you need the 10.6 discs the Mac Pro 5,1 models shipped with is that they require 10.6.4. The last retail disc for Snow Leopard was 10.6.3.

You can probably do an install using a different Mac from the retail discs and then update to 10.6.8. The drive should then be able to be used in a Mac Pro to run Snow Leopard.

Apple may still be able to provide a copy of the installer discs for one of these. But I don't know how far back they are still available. You have to request these through Support, it not provided as a retail product and the discs shipped are burned from an stored image. Last time I used this to replace a missing set of installer discs was several years ago and the charge was $20.

Edit: he typed faster...

[Kraniac]

I can't figure out, from the Apple site, which version the disc from Apple actually is

EDIT: didn't see your post until after I types this, Joe..thanks

[JoeH]

Kraniac wrote:
I can't figure out, from the Apple site, which version the disc from Apple actually is

Last person I know who got one said it was 10.6.3, they did not update the retail version at all. I do know that the OS X 10.6 Server discs I bought to run in a VM were also 10.6.3.

[rz]

Would running SL in a VM work for you?

[GeneL]

I don't get the problem?

I have been using an older 1,1 Mac Pro for years and it is upgraded to 10.7. No problem.

At the time OS 10.7 (Lion) was introduced I made an installer on a usb flash drive. Wouldn't that work for you, Krainiac?

BTW, since I acquired a brand new 2012 Mini, I haven't been using the Mac Pro, so I'd like to sell it, before Mavis beats me up for having it sitting in the hallway!

[C(-)ris]

As others have said 10.6.3 is the last retail disk ever produced. The 5,1 requires 10.6.4, therefore you need the original installation disks. That said, a 4,1 is hardware identical to a 5,1 except for the processor/graphics card options. Those shipped with 10.5 so any 10.6 disk would work great in those.

[mattkime]

>>As others have said 10.6.3 is the last retail disk ever produced.

The end of an era!

[GGD]

If you have another older Mac that can boot 10.6.3, then you should be able to use it to install 10.6.3 onto the drive, then run the 10.6.8 combo update and then the MacPro should be able to boot from that drive.

You could do this by putting the MacPro into Target Disk Mode, and connecting it to another Mac via FireWire to do the install and update, then shut everything down and boot the MacPro.