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Mac Pro... not sure if want.
Posted by: directive0 on 2013-01-02 11:26:09
Not really vintage... surplus maybe.

They're letting a Mac Pro go at work; the options are I can have it for free or I can sell it for them. I'm not interested in selling it personally, its a hassle to deal with used-computer consumers for items this large; easier to have someone come pick it up at the office.

Not sure of the specific stats, but its around an '08 quad or octa core I'd wager, word is around 2 gigs of ram. The problem is the ECC FB-DIMM RAM... that stuff is STOOPID expensive, at least relative to consumer RAM. I had originally planned to migrate my Windows stuff onto this guy at home and consolidate my core computers into one device... but just checking out some specs my Dell Vostro 220 (C2Duo) has a much nicer after-purchase video card installed and is already addressing 4 gigs of RAM. Not sure if it makes sense to sacrifice space and time to a computer that although would be nice to triple boot on will not be graphically as fast or upgradable.

To be fair, I'm not really doing anything GPU intensive beyond some light duty ray-tracing and minecraft. Anyone use a Mac Pro as their daily driver?
Posted by: Tmargo101 on 2013-01-02 12:01:14
Wow 8-o

If you don't want it, I'd gladly take it off your hands 😛

...

But seriously...
Posted by: directive0 on 2013-01-02 12:38:18
I know its a first world problem of a high order... 🙁

Posted by: coius on 2013-01-02 13:01:31
Looking on ebay, another 2GB is $30. That's not too bad for an expensive option. That gives you four, especially if it's octo-core. You should have 8 RAM slots at that. Even then, if it has 512MB Slots, it's not *too* bad I guess. don't argue with free. Eventually FB-DIMMs will come down in price once people realize there is no money made to be in them. DDR1 is finally coming back down in price since people have been replacing their machines from the DDR1 era with DDR3-based machines (especially people who don't upgrade often).

Take it, shelve it even. The machine is still worth $700+
Posted by: directive0 on 2013-01-02 13:04:51
Yeah you're right. I'll take it off their hands.
Posted by: gobabushka on 2013-01-02 13:08:16
I would be more than happy to give it a wonderful, and loving home so that it does not feel abandoned!
Posted by: Unknown_K on 2013-01-02 13:16:32
If it was me I would snag it just to kick the tires. If you don't like it you can pass it on. I did that with a Classic II and a 6200.
Posted by: Byrd on 2013-01-02 14:01:11
Take it, I don't know what the issue is - RAM is more expensive than standard equivalents yes (but even then - you can probably kit it out with 8GB+ for less than $200), you can pick up a generic PC video card and run that for OS X, and things like HD/SSDs continue to be cheap at the moment. It will kill your existing machine.
Posted by: Cory5412 on 2013-01-02 16:30:53
It looks like you've already made the decision, but if you're going to get one for free, even the first generation, I would recommend taking it -- I use a similarly big machine (with similarly big power-sipping capabilities) minus a video card, and it's great. I've got sixteen gigs of ram in my machine and I run a bunch of virtual machines with it -- it's great since most of my individual "machines" don't necessarily need a whole lot of CPU horsepower on their own.

If it's a 2008 model, that's all the better because you'll have better CPU options, and it looks like the 2008 models support up to 32 gigs of ram, if you want to put a bit of money into it.

I've also heard that VMware ESXi works on the Mac Pro hardware, and the free version of vsphere5/ESXi5 allows for up to 32 gigs of ram. You could take the video card out and run it as a remote virtualization box, which can be handy to have.

And if all else fails, once you've kicked the tires, you can sell it wherever.
Posted by: CC_333 on 2013-01-02 19:03:32
Hi,

I have an eight-core (2.8 GHz each) 2008 Mac Pro (bought new in March of '09), and it's perfectly fine with me.

I had a little snafu with the video card a few months ago, but I got that sorted out. Otherwise, it's a very reliable machine.

I agree with the RAM prices for the thing, though; I'd like to upgrade it to 8 GB (it's at 4 right now), but that would cost at least $150, and it's working OK as-is, so...

Good luck with your new machine!

c
Posted by: Cosmo on 2013-01-02 21:44:20
I have the 2x2.8QC as well (early 2008) and it's still "wicked fast" even with 4GB RAM only, really nice daily driver running 10.8 just well, could only use +4GB more RAM wich i just haven't got around upgrading.

MacPro's are great if you need the disk space, they have four slots for HDD's (for me, it it means less USB -drives around).

Take it, you won't regret it.
Posted by: BGoins12 on 2013-01-03 04:44:24
If you don't have an Intel Mac, by all means go for it. I know I would! I would go for it, even if I didn't need it.
Posted by: directive0 on 2013-01-03 08:29:54
Alright so I told them I'd take it.

Now the burden is mine to repair and restore.

Desired setup;

Bay 1 : Mountain Lion (or lion as the case may be)/Tiger (for that classic mac networking charm so I can retire the quicksilver I am currently using for that)

Bay 2 : Ubuntu Linux

Bay 3 : Windows 7

Bay 4: 1 TB Datanode

I was considering an iPad Mini as a little post-mas present to myself, but maybe I'll just sink some change into making my dream computer core. I can probably retire my old macbook server too, which is encouraging.



:approve:

Posted by: CC_333 on 2013-01-03 15:20:39
Hi,

Getting Tiger on the 2008 Mac Pro is tricky. It will work best if it has a stock card (ATI Radeon HD 2600XT). You will have to copy over some stuff from the iMac Graphics Update and some stuff from Leopard or Snow Leopard (mainly pertaining to the video drivers). It will only work with 10.4.11. Any less than that will result in a crash at start up.

I have a fully functional setup on mine (after much trial and error), so if you need any assistance...

I have read that if one has access to a first generation Aluminum iMac with its original Mac OS X 10.4.11 restore disks, the process of installing Tiger on a 2008 Mac Pro is much easier (it becomes a simple matter of installing it to the iMac, and cloning the install over to the Mac Pro).

c
Posted by: directive0 on 2013-01-03 15:55:48
BALLS.

I had a feeling it was going to be a hassle. Is 10.4 the last OS that supports HFV and appletalk?
Posted by: CC_333 on 2013-01-03 16:00:43
I had a feeling it was going to be a hassle.
Yeah, unfortunately it is. The earliest, supported OS is Leopard.
There's no need to give up on it right off, though. It's not too big a hassle.

c
Posted by: olePigeon on 2013-01-06 20:30:08
2008 is a good system. 64-bit EFI. CPU + Video upgrades will make it a nice machine for even a few more years to come.
Posted by: CC_333 on 2013-01-06 21:01:07
Hi,

Mine better last forever, because it cost quite a lot when we bought it ($5,000!) back in 2009.

With room for 32 GB of RAM (and allowance for the possibility of a CPU and video card upgrade), it should at least make it to OS 11.1 or something.

I have felt at times that perhaps it's way too much computer for me (I don't do much that a plain old MacBook couldn't do), but I bit the bullet and got it anyway because I liked the large amounts of expandability it offers over other contemporary Apple desktops (such as the iMac, which I had considered buying instead; I probably would've, but expandability was too important).

Anyway, if you got it free, there's no reason to regret it! (I wish mine were free, however it wasn't, and being able to afford it when it was new make me feel kind of proud somehow).

Enough rambling for now...

c
Posted by: Cory5412 on 2013-01-07 09:08:12
Mine better last forever, because it cost quite a lot when we bought it ($5,000!) back in 2009.
What an attitude -- at $5000, it's a professional tool meant to do a job that pays. (many creative professionals can pay for their Mac Pros with the proceeds from a single job.) Apple doesn't really optimize for people who keep their equipment around a very long time because it usually makes very little sense for creative professionals (and a lot of other Mac Pro users) to keep their machines around for too long, especially if they've got a workload that makes them wait for the machine.

It's not like the early '90s where the Indigo/Indy/Indigo2 each lasted five to six years as a product and each ran the current version of IRIX for nearly a decade, which was mandatory because you could easily spend $40,000 in 1992-dollars on an Indigo.

That having been said, I have no doubt that the Mac Pro's hardware will last a very long time -- and if your needs would objectively have been met sufficiently by a plastic MacBook, then I have no doubt that (even if it doesn't always run current software) the Mac Pro will be fast enough to do what you want for the forseeable future.

Or, it could be like the TiBook I got in 2003, which was woefully insufficient for everything I wanted to do by mid-2005. Even though we're currently in kind of a software performance requirements plateau right now doesn't mean we'll always be, and you may develop some interest or professional need, which brings the Mac Pro to its knees.

I liked the large amounts of expandability it offers over other contemporary Apple desktops
Expandability is definitely nice. Outside of hard disks, how much of it have you used? How much of it do you expect will affect what operating systems it'll ultimately be able to run? Most of the time, there's not much in the way of a graphics cutoff in a system with swappable graphics that really affects what operating systems will run. At best, you can improve the performance of a supported operating system with a newer GPU, but you'll almost certainly not be able to make an unsupported future operating system work by putting in a newer GPU.

being able to afford it when it was new make me feel kind of proud somehow
Plenty of people our age have put that much money or more into computers. 2009 was when I got my ThinkPad, which I dumped $2500 into easily. 2011 was when I got my virtualization server, into which I've put at least $3000-4000 so far. If you've got a nice job, having the expendable income to buy too-much computer isn't very surprising at all.

I can probably retire my old macbook server too, which is encouraging.
Will that machine run Tiger? If so, keeping that machine as a server for your vintage machines (presuming you can't install netatalk on something else, or find an early Mac Mini to run 10.4, or use ASIP or the built-in file sharing on an older PowerPC/OS9 Mac, or even find an old PC or virtual machine to run NT4/2kServer/Server2003) may be better than bothering with a seven year old version of Mac OS X on a machine that should be able to run 10.8 quite handily.
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