New Mac Pro (Early 2008): Tiger bootable?

Someone is giving "Apple rep" a bad name with bad advise it sounds like.

I have no idea what the official Apple position is but I can confirm that OS X 10.4.11 will boot and run on my Mac Pro 2.8, Quad-core. I have it on a separate internal drive and it works perfectly.

Cheers.

So basically, we're saying that,

you can't INSTALL tiger on the new pros, but
you can RUN tiger,
if you install it on a hard drive in another machine, and then transfer the hard drive to the new pro?

Richard,

When did you purchase this machine? How did you install Tiger?

Best as I can discern from varied reports and internet chatter, it's a "what BIOS does the machine ship with" restriction, right guys?

I bought the machine last week and I moved one internal drive from my 2.66, 4 core Mac Pro to the new Mac. I did not install OS 10.4 from and installation CD.

I have called support 3 times on this matter.

Each time, I ask the question: "So with my brand new, January 08 Mac Pro, I can take any retail Tiger install CD, and do an 'erase and install' on my boot drive, and this will work"

Each time, I was told yes, no problem. I even had the third guy go double check, as I told him that some people were saying they had problems. He said it will work fine.

I even asked if it mattered which version of leopard disk it was, and they said as long as its not a specific like "Mac book Pro" disk, then it will work.

I am going to try on Monday... I doubt it is going to work though. Seems fishy.

Each time, I ask the question: "So with my brand new, January 08 Mac Pro, I can take any retail Tiger install CD, and do an 'erase and install' on my boot drive, and this will work"

Will not work. No retail Tiger (except the latest server edition) will install on an Intel Mac.

I even asked if it mattered which version of leopard disk it was, and they said as long as its not a specific like "Mac book Pro" disk, then it will work.

A Retail Leopard may not work since it came out before the new Mac Pro, but you already have a version that came with the computer that will work.

First, add me to those who tried and succeeded in booting a new 8 x 2.8 GHz Mac Pro using OS 10.4.11. I originally stuck my 10.4.10 disk in the new Mac to do a migration, but when powering up with the option key held, I saw that it was offered as a boot disk. It didn't actually work though... it kept alternating between the apple logo and a black screen. So I updated it to 10.4.11, and then it booted fine.

One thing though... it seems to lack the custom video drivers for the stock ATI card. I'm basing this on fast user switching, which does not use the usual cube effect, and the "flurry" screensaver, which truly CRAWLS in visible little steps, instead of flowing like an image in motion. THAT might be an issue for a video edition facility trying to run this configuration. My guess is that the video driver might be something you could pinpoint and copy it out of a 10.5.1 installation, but I haven't actually confirmed that yet.

Great point about the video drivers. I would also suspect that there would be an issue with PCIe 2.0 since that did not come out until the new machines. I guess Apple did not want a bunch of support calls as to why things did not work under 10.4 with the new machines.

Can someone who has this new Mac Pro try to install tiger on it to see if it works ? Thanks, i really need to figure this out before i put an order...

It may or may not work, but is unsupported by Apple, so the risk of purchase would be entirely your own. Refer to: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=25497

I have replaced Leopard with Tiger (10.4.11) on a dual-core Mac Pro, purchased in December, and it seems to be running fine. Not sure if you can do the same with the newer quad-core machines.

which begs the question, how did you proceed?

Call We Love Macs (1-800-588-5290) and ask them for the version of Tiger that works with Intel-based Macs (part # 1001405). Be aware that there is another version of Tiger that will only work on the old G3 - G5 PowerPc based machines. You do not want that one (but if you do, you can have the one I bought before I learned there were two versions). Back up all your files to an external hard drive, and uninstall after 3rd party software, printer drivers, etc., especially Photoshop if you're using it. Insert the Tiger disk, and follow the instructions for a complete erase and install. When you re-boot, Leopard will be gone, and you'll be operating in Tiger. Note that my Mac Pro is a dual-core, not quad, so I have no idea if this works with the quad-core machines.

I had MacPro 2.66 and yesterday replaced to New MacPro 8core 2.8.
also, My pre-booting disk(Tiger 10.4.11) in Raptor replaced into New Macpro.

1. Booting, 3d rendering performance works well and it uses all 8 core.
2. Updating latest tiger patch works well.

but...

1. Did not boot with Tiger install CD
2. Graphic performance,Open GL support was bad or had crashed. i assume that it because driver or EFI version.
3. When into sleep mode,it looks hard disk stopped but screen did not.

I am little disappoint to apple did not support tiger in new mac pro.
it should be installing with tiger booting CD.

i believe you should be able to partition the harddrive and be able to install both application with out too much issue. you also might be able to use bootcamp to boot tiger up. since bootcamp isnt windows specific you should be able to boot the older tiger using that. i dont know if thats possible as i havent tried it but it could possibly work and i know you can set the bootcamp OS to run at start up so thatll fix that issue if you can get it to work.