Snow Leopard MacPro

You can certainly try physically transferring your current HD. It's not guaranteed to boot - newer Macs don't get on with versions of OS that came out before the hardware model did. But it may!

The recommended method is to boot from your new 10.7 drive, and use Migration Assistant to bring across your user files and applications.

Are you still running any PowerPC applications, such as Office 2004?

Matt

Find the couple threads about downgrading new Macs from Lion to Snow Leopard.

The only change that really matters is the EFI and SMC firmware.

He wants to run SL, so no issue with Rosetta if he can, only if he is forced to.

In which case, no idea how well, but running SL as a guest OS under Parallels 7 and 10.7.4.

This: $2119

http://store.apple.com/us/product/FC560LL/A

If you want to swap the processor yourself to the W3680 $590

Then sell the OEM processor to pay for 4 x 8GB and $209 for 256GB SSD

http://ark.intel.com/products/47917/Intel-Xeon-Processor-W3680-(12M-Cache-3_33-G Hz-6_40-GTs-Intel-QPI)

http://www.buy.com/prod/intel-xeon-up-w3680-3-33-ghz-processor-socket-b-lga-1366 -hexa-core-12/q/loc/101/214873128.html

okay, popularity and price went back up to $610.

But you get the idea. Very popular drop in upgrade.

David Camps-Campins1 wrote:

I want to buy either the Mac Pro 3.33 GHz 6-Core or the 12-Core 2.4GHz 6-Core as an upgrade from my existing MacPro 2x2.6 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon...

Can I transfer the existing Snow Leopard HD from the old MacPro to the new one wothout causing issues? Can I also transfer from a clone to the new HD?

Regards,

David

I did what you want to do, except that the 6-Core I switched the drive into was one of the last Snow Leopard equipped Mac Pro's. From what I've read, the Lion equipped Mac Pros will run Snow Leopard too, except that as of this week, the Mac Pro lineup has changed and there's no way of knowing for sure if the new Mac Pro, say the 6 core, is identical to the old Mac Pro, at least in that respect.

In any case, the hardware differences between the two Macs are significant, so I'd suggest running the 10.6.8 combo updater after the transfer in order to get all the appropriate system software installed. Transferring the clone should work too, but again, the combo update would customize the installation for the new hardware.

Geekbench the W3680 why not.

David Camps-Campins1 wrote:

Thanks FatMac. My only hurdle now is which one to buy 🙂

I am leaning towards the 3.33 GHz 6-Core. With your know how, do you think I will see a good speed increase from my older MacPro 2x2.6 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon to the 3.33 HHz 6-Core?

I think you'll find a noticeable jump in speed, as I did, because the new MacPro is faster in a number of ways, not just the CPU clock speed, e.g., faster memory bus and memory, a lot more cores since software can see and use 12 threads, which act like 12 cores, on the 6 core Mac, and much more capable video. A feature of the Westmere processor which I wanted was supporting nested virtualization with virtual machines. For example, Windows 7 Pro, which I run in VMWare Fusion, includes something called XPMode, which is Windows XP Pro running in a window (or full screen) within Windows 7. With the early Mac Pro, XPMode shuffled along at a painful crawl because its environment had to be emulated within Win 7. With the Westmere processor, XPMode can run directly on hardware and is remarkably fast. I doubt that's important to most people but I was impressed.

Hatter If you buy this 2.8 Mac Pro does it come with a Snow Leopard start up disk. ( did it origanlly}

I saw a chart on the origanl ship dats on all Mac Pro's but I can't find it. ( any way to tell what start up disk

a model came with.

llechtmmgg

It will boot 10.6.4-1/2

The Mac Pro has not changed. What matters is the EFI firmware.

Even those that have shipped with Lion could downgrade.

One or more users were able to request OEM DVDs as Lion does not ship with DVDs.

Apple never made a retail OS X 10.6.5 or later DVD and all Mac Pro 5,1's will boot 10.6.3 DVD, useful until you upgrade to 10.6.5+

But, I can't say or guarantee - that is for Apple. You can try to chat with someone that recently bought one, but Specials are going to be the safest.

The hatter wrote:

...Apple never made a retail OS X 10.6.5 or later DVD and all Mac Pro 5,1's will boot 10.6.3 DVD, useful until you upgrade to 10.6.5+...

What does 10.6.5+ do to those Mac Pro's? My 5,1 came with a 10.6.4 install disk and was upgraded to 10.6.8, then Lion, etc. I just tried booting from the 10.6.3 retail disk and it hung almost immediately.

I thought that 10.6.3 retail in safe mode perhaps though would boot.

What changed? hardware and OS are tightly tied and w/o driver support unlike Windows there is no mode to boot w/o support for hardware. .6.5 has drivers - 6.4 had some but buggy.

Well, that hurts and means the Lion + SL $69 flash memory card is the only way. In the past I would buy each DVD (10.4.3, 4.6 and then 5.3 and 5.6).

Hatter The point I was trying to make is did it ship with a 10.6.4 start up disk. If it did and it comes from Apple

with Lion loaded you can request the original 10.6.4 from Apple and they will send it to you if that is what it shipped with. ( I read this in one of the posts in the past)

lechtmmgg

Hopefully this information can get us a little farther;

The part numbers for the backplane board, processor boards and processors themselves are the same for 2010 Mac Pros and the new 2012 models.

It does not make sense that there would be any OS restriction from a parts standpoint as a first-week 2010 MP running 10.6 would get the same replacement parts as a 2012.

So if there is an EFI change (and where could this be stored that wouldn't be in the processor, processor tray or backplane board???) then it is NOT one that we couldn't figure out a way to backdate (they've done this with Mac Pro 2009's).

Still a heck of a gamble, but I'm seriously considering buying one and finding out!

Was at an on-site today where someone had just gotten a new Mac Pro.

I didn't have too much time to test, but I was able to verify that using a Mid 2010 Mac Pro computer specific 10.6 install disk, a 2012 can load and install and boot 10.6.

Based on my experience backdating a M2011 iMac that shipped with Lion with a earlier M 11 10.6 disk, my guess is that we wouldn't have many issues after running all updates.

I'm confident enough now that I _will_ be buying one of the new 3.33 GHz new Mac Pro's, but it may yet be a month or so till I have the money together. Hopefully the release of Mountail Lion won't change anything!