ATI 5770 and Leopard 10.5.8, what happens?

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Level 1

36 points

ATI 5770 and Leopard 10.5.8, what happens?

Hi all, I know that the official apple supplied Radeon 5770 card is not supported for use with Leopard 10.5.8,

I have Mountain Lion on my new Hard drive, but I occaisionally need to boot onto my old OS on a separate drive to run a couple of legacy apps

so my specific question is what happens if I boot into 10.5.8 using the 5770 graphics card?

do I get nothing at all, just a blank screen?

do I get something but without accelleration or the wrong res etc?

what happens?

cheers Rob

my machine is a Mac Pro, early 2008 (3,1), with 8 cores

Posted on Sep 20, 2012 8:16 AM

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Answer 1

The hatter

Level 9

61,031 points

Sep 20, 2012 8:40 AM in response to Robert P

You can run "legacy" Mac OS X in a VM.

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Answer 2

Sep 20, 2012 9:05 AM in response to Robert P

you should get this:

do I get something but without accelleration

It is also possible that the display will go dark at the login screen (after the gray screen, dark gray Apple, and gear have been working).

The drivers (that would provide full function in Mac OS X) were in special 10.6.4 and standard 10.6.5 and later.

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Answer 3

Robert P Author

Level 1

36 points

Sep 20, 2012 9:13 AM in response to The hatter

The hatter,

does that go for Rosetta apps too?,

I have Paralells 8 on my Mountain Lion install,

but isn't installing say a Leopard or Snow Leopard VM a royal pain?

I have read a couple of posts on this and it seems like such a convoluted mess to get it working, unless you know of an easier way?

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Answer 4

The hatter

Level 9

61,031 points

Sep 20, 2012 9:33 AM in response to Robert P

The reason for VM is so you can avoid the pain of dual boot, and so you can retain Rosetta in the guest OS.

How royal it is, not sure. Setting up VM should be easy even if you have to edit. And see what is on Parallels support forum or check out VirtualBox latest.

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Answer 5

Robert P Author

Level 1

36 points

Sep 20, 2012 10:30 AM in response to The hatter

hmm I found the post regarding an older OSX as VM, not sure this would be reliable enough for me, http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1365439

As I only use these apps very occaisionally I'm not too worried about a dual boot,

I might see if my apps still behave under Snow Leopard though, that might be my best bet as the 5770 is compatable with that OS as well as Mountain Lion

thanks for your replies guys, gives me a few options to think about

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Answer 6

MlchaelLAX

Level 4

2,293 points

Sep 21, 2012 5:41 PM in response to Robert P

What apps are you attempting to run? Trial versions available for download for me to attempt to run in vSL?

Alternative to Royal Pain = send me a fresh copy of snow leopard + a 16GB flash drive + return postage (and packaging).

I send you back: slightly soiled copy of snow leopard + 16GB flash drive with Mac OS X Snow Leopard.pvm file included for you to move to your ~/Documents/Parallels/ folder.

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Answer 7

Robert P Author

Level 1

36 points

Sep 21, 2012 7:16 PM in response to MlchaelLAX

I mostly need to access Macromedia Freehand MX, this is to be able to open old files which I then convert to illustrator as I need them, like I said I only occaisionally need to use the older OS

I have 20 years of Freehand files so there's no way I am going to convert them all in advance, some Freehand files can be opened directly in illustrator, but they are only the files with the most simple graphics,

I also maintain several websites which I created in Adobe Golive, another app which didn't make it to an intel only format, these will eventually be replaced with new sites created with Dreamweaver

I have already updated to Snow Leopard to run those apps when I need them, I had to apply a small patch to Freehand to get it working but all is fine now, I will eventually no longer need them but for now I have a solid solution that will work with the new Radeon 5770 card (£179 from dabs in the UK) £25 cheaper than buying from Apple!

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Answer 8

MlchaelLAX

Level 4

2,293 points

Sep 21, 2012 8:22 PM in response to Robert P

Great news; good luck!

For anyone else who upgraded to Lion/Mountain Lion and now still needing to run Freehand; but wanting to avoid the dual-boot system or be able to run Lion/Mountain Lion concurrently:

[click on image to enlarge]

Link for others reading this thread:

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1365439

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Answer 9

Robert P Author

Level 1

36 points

Sep 21, 2012 8:34 PM in response to MlchaelLAX

MichaelLAX, I must admit that is very pretty!

I might just give it a go 🙂, nothing to lose, I have a Snow Leopard install DVD

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Answer 10

Robert P Author

Level 1

36 points

Sep 21, 2012 8:36 PM in response to MlchaelLAX

How does Freehand run in two layers of virtual environments, Rosetta and Paralells?

and does time slow down as you go deeper!

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Answer 11

MlchaelLAX

Level 4

2,293 points

Sep 21, 2012 9:02 PM in response to Robert P

Runs fine!

Rosetta functions as you have always experienced it in Leopard. Parallels will inject a slight slowdown, but unless you are running complex animation, 3D graphics, etc. you should not see much difference. As I understand Freehand, you are doing Vector drawing, with no rendering required.

You might want to consider some more RAM, especially if you expect to keep Snow Leopard in Parallels running throughout the day while you concurrently work in Mountain Lion. I expanded my 2011 Mac Mini to 8GB RAM (cost me less than $80 with shipping back in 2011) and allocated 2GB to Parallels and I like the performance.

On my Mac Book Pro with only 4GB with 1GB allocated to Parallels, I do see diminished efficiencies in both environments when Parallels is running. But not enough for me to go out and upgrade its RAM at this time.

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