Turning a 2008 mac pro into a 2018 mac pro

#TURNING A 2008 MAC PRO INTO A 2018 MAC PRO UPDATE#
#TURNING A 2008 MAC PRO INTO A 2018 MAC PRO PASSWORD#

For days on end, the most I ever did was put it into sleep mode, from which it tended to wake up and let me log back in pretty reliably. The 'Plain grey screen with no login field for the password' problem became more frequent, to the point that I was loathe to shut down my machine for fear I might never be allowed back into the OS.

#TURNING A 2008 MAC PRO INTO A 2018 MAC PRO UPDATE#

Thought I'd hit you with an update on this situation. I do wonder whether the problem might lie with the PCIe card. I can't believe the SSD system drive itself is failing - it's a Crucial BX500 and it was installed brand new just a year ago! However, because it is mounted on a PCIe card (OWC Mercury Accelsior S in slot 2) to ensure the best data transfer rates, the machine inevitably sees it as an 'External Physical Volume'. I opened disk utility and did a live mode first aid check of the SSD system drive: no problems detected. I shut down, unplugged the mains power and all unnecessary peripherals, reconnected the power and hit the startup button. For some reason I can't fathom, the machine couldn't find the OS from which to boot. Then the dreaded flashing grey folder with a question mark appeared. At switch-on, I got the startup chime, then a pale grey screen, but no mouse pointer or keyboard interaction possible. Unfortunately, today the problem repeated itself but worse. ?ДЄll and any thoughts gratefully received. So, all in all - and unless the problem recurs - something of a mystery. When I re-connected it and re-booted, I did a PRAM re-set for good measure. Very little dust came out, but I'm glad I made sure. I felt that the air coming out of the back of the case was a bit warm for a machine that was just idling, so I disconnected everything, took it away to a clean space and gave it a thorough dust-removal (as thorough as one can be without actually removing the CPU heatsinks). I ran Onyx to check the startup disk and repair permissions etc., and it didn't find anything amiss.Дid a re-start and it booted normally - the dark grey screen appeared and the login box was visible.

#TURNING A 2008 MAC PRO INTO A 2018 MAC PRO PASSWORD#

I sussed that this was where the password entry field should be, so I typed in my password and hit return. I then found out that when I hovered my mouse over the central portion of the blank screen, there was a small area where the pointer turned into a typing cursor. My mouse pointer was visible on the screen and movable, and when I hit the 'Open CD tray' button on the keyboard, it worked - so it was clear that the mouse and keyboard were working normally and interacting with the machine. This morning, when the pale grey screen disappeared, it re-appeared as pale grey and was just empty - no login box visible. Normally, what happens next is that when the progress bar gets to a certain point the screen disappears and comes back again, the progress bar completes and the pale grey screen gives way to a dark grey one, in the middle of which I see the OSX login box.

The usual pale grey screen appeared, with the Apple logo and the dark grey progress bar under it. This morning I switched on my Early 2008 Mac Pro (running El Cap off an SSD - see hardware spec in my side panel) and something odd happened during the boot process. I wasn't sure whether to post this in the desktop hardware section or as an OS-related query (because I don't know where the root of the problem lies), but here goes.

Turning a 2008 mac pro into a 2018 mac pro