I Bought the Last One Apple Ever Made...

[brirec]

I’m really glad to see a video on this, but I really look forward to a follow up, too!

 

I used to own one of these and wish I still did. I could hook you up with a pair of delidded X5680 Westmere CPU for it if you’re interested, but they require some serious unofficial firmware hacks that basically amount to using a modified Mac Pro 2010 firmware on there, which changes the way its RAM slots are setup for one thing.

 

There’s so much weirdness to these computers that you didn’t even get into, either! The lack of any audio (including a startup chime… not that you’d hear one over the fans!) or the full-size DB-9 RS232 port, which is officially supported for a serial console. 
 

There’s also onboard IPMI which can easily control things like power remotely, though it’s not nearly as extensive as what you’d find on more popular servers. 

 

I could go on… I still use a 2009 Mac Pro that’s been upgraded to the max as my main workstation + gaming rig + Proxmox VM host for my Plex server and whatnot. It handles all of those at once just fine and fits a ridiculous amount of storage. 

[CommanderAlex]

On 3/16/2023 at 5:34 PM, BondiBlue said:

One thing I noticed in this video is that the part about making a bootable installer for El Capitan was completely wrong. You don't run the installer on the newer Mac in order to make a bootable USB drive, and since the newer Mac was too new to run an old version of OS X of course it wouldn't let you install it. 

 

What was shown and said in the video was basically the equivalent of trying to make a Windows installer by running the Windows Setup executable and installing the OS on a separate computer. Apple even has documentation online for making a bootable USB installer, and all you have to do is use Terminal.app and a simple command that's built into macOS. Run that on the computer that's already working and you'll have an installer for El Capitan ready to go. 

Also, one more thing IIRC is that the installer is based on a time clock internally and you have to change the time and date to a time where El Capitan was the latest supported OS X at the time. I had to do this on my Mac Pro 4,1 flashed 5,1 with delidded Xeons too. 

 

 

 

That RAID card at 6:06 in the video I actually have one that came with my Mac Pro 4,1 but the battery is dead too. 

[Peter_The_Ent]

I would love a follow up video on this, showing possible upgrades and what it can be used for and stupid stuff to do with it like LMG loves to do. Also would love for a video on how to convert it into a storage server with airdrop capabilities but the storage amount like an ultra high end home storage server.

[PoeTheGhost]

I'd also like to see more about old Mac mods like OpenCore for Monterey+ and DosDude's patchers (which I've used on my Xserve, several 10 year old MacBook Pro's and MANY recycled ~2011 mini's) and the overall community that's helping with keeping this old hardware relevant.

 

I retired my "final gen" Xserve from production just last fall. It's currently my main experimental server at home, and the fans are still louder than any quadcopter or drone I've ever seen.

 

Old Mac Pro "cheese grater" desktops and Rack mount models are especially popular for audio production, even at major studios, becauze there's some VERY esoteric capture equipment out there that does not have any support on newer OS's, including some of the biggest studios out there making movies.

 

I'm also open to DM's about my '09 Xserve, has working RAID cards & HDD's, has running El Capitan for the server suite, and Catalina (patched) for the rest.