Mac Pro & Boot Camp

mikethomsonmikethomson
Posted:
in Current Mac Hardware edited January 2014
OK. Here's how I got XP running on my stock 2.66 Mac Pro. I'm writing this from Internet Explorer on XP sp2



1. Download boot camp here

2. Run Boot Camp & follow instructions (soooo easy)

3. I partitioned my XP drive to 20GB. You will want to keep it under 32GB if you want to format it FAT instead of NTFS. This way you can write to the drive from OSX

4. Burn your drivers CD. Mine did NOT work in XP. That's why I'm writing this.

5. Insert your XP CD and install

6. Once windows is installed, you can try to install your boot camp drivers, but mind said my hardwarre was incompatible. I had 640x480 in blorious 4bit colour! No networking!

7. Time eboot back to OSX and download some drivers.

8. My mac came with the stock 7300 so I downloaded the XP drivers from here

9. I couldn't find any info on the manufactureer of the network cards on the mac, so I took an educated guess and downloaded the intel PRO/1000 drivers from here

10. save these drivers to your FAT windows drive or a usb key, which should work in XP

11. Back in XP install the nvidia driver, my version was 91.31

12 It didn't work straight away, but windows found new hardware "pci bridge" and asked me to restart. After a restart, I think I had to intsall the drivers again, but it worked. Now I have 2 monitors running at 1280x960 in dualview!

13. Next I installed the intel network driver PRO2KXP.exe

14 Towards the end of the installation a little window popped up to tell me that Local area comnnection 3 was unplugged. This was the second etherned port that I'm not using. I was on the net straight away!



I hope this helps anyone with shiny new Mac Pros run their windows only apps at full speed. For me, it's Maya. I'll just wait patiently until Autodesk bring out a universal binary on Maya 8.
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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 26
    daneel571daneel571 Posts: 5member
    How did you get the audio drivers installed and where did you get them. Everything works on my install except for audio(showes the yellow question mark and calls it a PCI device) and PCI Express x4 ports 3-7 drivers cant load.
  • Reply 2 of 26
    mikethomsonmikethomson Posts: 29member
    To be honest, I haven't even looked at the audio yet. I didn't even notice it wasn't working. All I just wanted to get video and networking running so I can run Maya, which needs to be serialised over the network and obviously needs openGL to be useable. Does anyone know what audio hardware apple is using?
  • Reply 3 of 26
    daneel571daneel571 Posts: 5member
    I found a list of all drivers needed to make XP fully functional on a MacPro.

    http://discussions.apple.com/thread....96874&tstart=0

    I have installed all of them and my system is fully functional now, but I still get the yellow ! marks for PCI Express x4 Fort 2-7.
  • Reply 4 of 26
    mikethomsonmikethomson Posts: 29member
    Hey, well spotted! Thanks for the link.
  • Reply 5 of 26
    zachpruckowskizachpruckowski Posts: 805member
    Expect an update to Boot Camp to fix this. I'm surprised Apple hasn't done it already
  • Reply 6 of 26
    kim kap solkim kap sol Posts: 2,987member
    Ok...now the question is, how come the 7300 inside the Mac Pro, a card made to work with an EFI boot ROM, works under Windows, an OS made to work only with a BIOS boot ROM which are not EFI compatible, yet a PC card made to work with a BIOS boot ROM doesn't work in a computer with an EFI boot ROM which are normally BIOS-compatible (especially with Boot Camp.)



    If you ask me, the whole "you can't use a PC graphics card in your Mac Pro" is a whole bunch of baloney. I hope someone figures out how to get those PC graphics card to communicate with the BIOS-compatible EFI chips because there are zero reasons why a Mac card can work in Windows and why a PC card can't work it's magic on OS X...unless of course EFI sucks more than BIOS...and we all know this isn't true.
  • Reply 7 of 26
    placeboplacebo Posts: 5,767member
    It's odd that the usually seemless Boot Camp process is so spotty here, could be that Boot Camp treats the iMac and Macbook Pro as the same computer since they use the same drivers and thus there hasn't yet been a comp that requires different drivers?
  • Reply 8 of 26
    isomorphicisomorphic Posts: 199member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by kim kap sol


    If you ask me, the whole "you can't use a PC graphics card in your Mac Pro" is a whole bunch of baloney. I hope someone figures out how to get those PC graphics card to communicate with the BIOS-compatible EFI chips because there are zero reasons why a Mac card can work in Windows and why a PC card can't work it's magic on OS X...unless of course EFI sucks more than BIOS...and we all know this isn't true.



    My guess is that it comes down to card firmware.



    I would bet (this is pure speculation) that if you flashed a PC Radeon X1900 with a Mac Radeon's firmware, you'd get... a Mac Radeon.
  • Reply 9 of 26
    placeboplacebo Posts: 5,767member
    Yeah, we just need to figure out how to do the aforementioned. Frankly, I don't want to wait for that, so the $100 Apple premium was worth it.



    And drivers are still a huge issue, if you care at all about Coreimage and OpenGL accelleration in OS X.
  • Reply 10 of 26
    mordakmordak Posts: 168member
    So if we ordered the x1900, will we need to download drivers from ATI's website too?
  • Reply 11 of 26
    placeboplacebo Posts: 5,767member
    Yeah, probably, but they might just fix Boot Camp by then.
  • Reply 12 of 26
    kim kap solkim kap sol Posts: 2,987member
    It's still inconceivable that a Mac gfx card works under Windows (with the correct drivers) and that a PC gfx card does not work under OS X. If OS X has the drivers for the card...it should just work. If *anything* EFI should be able to handle any BIOS-only cards or EFI-cards...nobody should be expecting the opposite (the opposite being a card, needing EFI, to work on Windows which boots using the emulated BIOS calls.)



    Some say it has something to do with the fact that the Mac cards have a 128k ROM on them...but why would that firmware work on both Mac and PC and why would the traditional 64k ROM from PC cards *only* work on PCs.



    Apple is still up to old tricks. At least the CPU on the Mac Pro is socketable. But I bet if Apple had it their way, the CPU would be soldered on.
  • Reply 13 of 26
    zachpruckowskizachpruckowski Posts: 805member
    The Mac Radeon X1600 in the iMac and MBP doesn't work normally in Windows. It requires the special Apple drivers. As far as I know, no one with a Mac Pro has tried using a Windows gfx card. I highly recommend it to anyone with a few hundred to put up (if it don't work, you can return the Windows card later). Until someone tries it, we don't know for sure.
  • Reply 14 of 26
    joe_the_dragonjoe_the_dragon Posts: 931member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by kim kap sol


    It's still inconceivable that a Mac gfx card works under Windows (with the correct drivers) and that a PC gfx card does not work under OS X. If OS X has the drivers for the card...it should just work. If *anything* EFI should be able to handle any BIOS-only cards or EFI-cards...nobody should be expecting the opposite (the opposite being a card, needing EFI, to work on Windows which boots using the emulated BIOS calls.)



    Some say it has something to do with the fact that the Mac cards have a 128k ROM on them...but why would that firmware work on both Mac and PC and why would the traditional 64k ROM from PC cards *only* work on PCs.



    Apple is still up to old tricks. At least the CPU on the Mac Pro is socketable. But I bet if Apple had it their way, the CPU would be soldered on.



    The video cards need a efi bios to post. So a bios only one may fail to post. After boot up the os drivers take over.
  • Reply 15 of 26
    placeboplacebo Posts: 5,767member
    Somebody just used a PC 7800GTX in a Mac Pro over at the Macrumors forums, wasn't fullspeed since he couldn't figure out how to get extra power to it, but proves it can be done. Probably won't work with Mac OS X though, only Windows.
  • Reply 16 of 26
    zachpruckowskizachpruckowski Posts: 805member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Placebo


    Somebody just used a PC 7800GTX in a Mac Pro over at the Macrumors forums, wasn't fullspeed since he couldn't figure out how to get extra power to it, but proves it can be done. Probably won't work with Mac OS X though, only Windows.



    If so, you could:



    1) Buy PC OMGWTFBBQINSANE graphics card

    2) Get a Mac Pro with 7300GT.

    3) Toss the 7300GT in a x8 or x4 slot, and the other card in the x16 slot.

    4) Have decent OS X graphics, and great Game OS graphics.
  • Reply 17 of 26
    mikethomsonmikethomson Posts: 29member
    I had that in the back of my mind when i bought this system. I'm a little underwhelmed with the 7300 in Maya - no big surprise there. Mind you, that's under rosetta! I'm glad it runs at all. I'd just like to spread the cost of this beast around a little. Stock now, ram and gfx later.
  • Reply 18 of 26
    daneel571daneel571 Posts: 5member
    Anybody else noticing long boot times into XP. OS X boots up in a few seconds but XP takes about 40-50 seconds to boot. This is longer then my old computer (P4 2.8E) and I have fewer startup programs on my MacPro. Also program installation takes longer then on my Toshiba Core Duo laptop.
  • Reply 19 of 26
    placeboplacebo Posts: 5,767member
    I think it's SATA drivers.
  • Reply 20 of 26
    daspeeddaspeed Posts: 4member
    Won't these drivers work?



    http://downloadfinder.intel.com/scri...4&submit=Go%21
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