Some Mac Pros

[waynestewart]

Picked up a bunch of  what were supposed to be 2.66 1,1 Mac Pros for what worked out to $50 each. In amongst them were 3 later machines. A couple of 2008 8 core 2.8 and a 2010 quad core 2.8 with 2 Radeon 5770s. All the machines are working fine except the 2010 which has an issue. None of the 4 drive connections work. I’m thinking about moving over from my currant 2008 2.8 8 core as in my case that isn’t that big an issue for me because both connections in the optical bays are working and I use 2 PCIe SSDs though I would be happier to have the drive bays working. I’m wondering if it’s the SATA ports or the power so I’m going to pick up a SATA extension cable and see if an externally powered drive will show up.

 

[belgaonkar]

Nice!

 

[omidimo]

Worst case, get an Apricon Velocity Duo X2, such a terrific little card.

 

[waynestewart]

[SIZE=11pt]I got the SATA extension, had to modify it a little so it would fit. Tried it out with an external power supply and the drive showed up right away. It was late and I thought I’d think about the next step the following day. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]At 6am I wake up with a question. I’d tried a couple of different drives, one from my 2008 and one from a 2006 Mac Pro in all the slots. The trays were in all the way but were the drives actually plugging into the connector? So I took a bare SSD and plugged it into the connector and the Mac Pro booted off it! Apple changed the drive trays. A little measuring showed me that the 2010 drive connectors sit further back than in the 2006/8. I’m guessing that this machine had 4 drives and when they pulled them they threw in whatever trays they have handy. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]They make drive trays for mounting 2.5” drives so I’ll order a couple of those. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]This settles the question about which machine I’ll keep. I wanted a Mac Pro to run some PPC software which meant I needed OS 10.6 or earlier. The 2008 Mac Pro I had did that well but I had to do a little hack to run 10.12 and every time I did an OS update I had to redo the hack. The 2010 will run both OSes without a hack. Of course that may change when 10.13 comes out. Ideally I’d like the 12 core model but this is good for now and eventually I’ll end up with one of those[/SIZE]