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Upgrading MacPro

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  Upgrading MacPro Lyndon <lyndon@someisp.com> - 2020-07-21 14:56 -0400
    Re: Upgrading MacPro nospam <nospam@nospam.invalid> - 2020-07-21 15:13 -0400
    Re: Upgrading MacPro Your Name <YourName@YourISP.com> - 2020-07-22 08:34 +1200
      Re: Upgrading MacPro JF Mezei <jfmezei.spamnot@vaxination.ca> - 2020-07-21 19:08 -0400
    Re: Upgrading MacPro Lewis <g.kreme@gmail.com.dontsendmecopies> - 2020-07-21 23:08 +0000

#133660 — Upgrading MacPro

I have a 2010 MacPro running Sierra with 16gb RAM. I believe I have to 
install High Sierra before going to Mojave. I also have a metal graphics 
card to put into my computer. I have also come across the fact that 
firmware needs to be upgraded. 

So:

Does Mojave install the firmware upgrade?

Will Mojave run with regular spinning harddrives?

What order should all these steps be taken?

After doing all this, can Catalina be installed?
(App store will not download Catalina at this time for my machine.)

Where in this whole process does an SSD become mandatory?

Does Catalina or Mojave recognize spinning harddrives?

My second harddrive has Snow Leopard for those apps that will not run on 
Lion & forward. Are there any difficulties switching back and forth from 
Snow Leopard?

Thanks
Lyndon

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#133661

In article <lyndon-203D4F.14560121072020@news.newsguy.com>, Lyndon
<lyndon@someisp.com> wrote:

> I have a 2010 MacPro running Sierra with 16gb RAM. I believe I have to 
> install High Sierra before going to Mojave. 

you believe wrong.

> I also have a metal graphics 
> card to put into my computer. I have also come across the fact that 
> firmware needs to be upgraded. 

why haven't you upgraded it? it will benefit using it in sierra.

> So:
> 
> Does Mojave install the firmware upgrade?

that's up to the card manufacturer.

> Will Mojave run with regular spinning harddrives?

of course it will.

> What order should all these steps be taken?

first upgrade the card's firmware, which should be current even if you
don't upgrade to mojave.

> After doing all this, can Catalina be installed?
> (App store will not download Catalina at this time for my machine.)

nope. that computer is much too old to run catalina.

> Where in this whole process does an SSD become mandatory?

nowhere. 

> Does Catalina or Mojave recognize spinning harddrives?

of course it does. what ever gave you the idea it didn't?

> My second harddrive has Snow Leopard for those apps that will not run on 
> Lion & forward. Are there any difficulties switching back and forth from 
> Snow Leopard?

other that the first hard drive will be unreadable when booted into
snow leopard, no.

time to upgrade those old apps and move on.

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#133666

On 2020-07-21 18:56:02 +0000, Lyndon said:

> I have a 2010 MacPro running Sierra with 16gb RAM. I believe I have to
> install High Sierra before going to Mojave. I also have a metal graphics
> card to put into my computer. I have also come across the fact that
> firmware needs to be upgraded.
> 
> So:
> 
> Does Mojave install the firmware upgrade?
> 
> Will Mojave run with regular spinning harddrives?
> 
> What order should all these steps be taken?
> 
> After doing all this, can Catalina be installed?
> (App store will not download Catalina at this time for my machine.)
> 
> Where in this whole process does an SSD become mandatory?
> 
> Does Catalina or Mojave recognize spinning harddrives?
> 
> My second harddrive has Snow Leopard for those apps that will not run on
> Lion & forward. Are there any difficulties switching back and forth from
> Snow Leopard?
> 
> Thanks
> Lyndon

An SSD is not "mandatory" in any way. Hard drives and Fusion drives all 
work in every version of MacOS to date, and support won't be dropped 
any time soon. Even USB floppy drives still work in High Sierra and 
almost certainly newer MacOS versions.

Even when Apple finishes moving Macs over to it's Apple Silicon 
ARM-based chips, hard drives will ,have to be supported. They aren't 
going away any time soon.

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#133674

On 2020-07-21 16:34, Your Name wrote:

> Even when Apple finishes moving Macs over to it's Apple Silicon 
> ARM-based chips, hard drives will ,have to be supported. They aren't 
> going away any time soon.


My hard drives on 2013 Mac Pro are in a separate enclosure linked with
Thunderbolt.

They appear in the "SATA" section in System Information, with
"Thunderbolt AHCI Controller" and rthe disks themselved as SATA.

This means the firmware/console needs to not only know about Thunderbolt
but also SATA.

It isn't clear to me how an external array of NVME drives would be
handled, I assume M.E drivers would be needed over thunderbolt.

USB is easier because all drives appear as USB drives.

App]le stated that by disabloing the "Secure" portion of "Secure Boot",
you will be allowed to boot from an external drive. So the firmware will
have drivers to see/access external drives.

However, what hardware will be supported by the console isn't specified.
Apple _could_ decide SATA is "legacy" and not bother supporting it.  (at
console level needed for boot).

Once OS-X has booted sufficiently, its own drivers kick in, and
supporting devides already supported is easy as the code is already
there.  But since Apple is upgrading the IOS Console Boot, it needs to
decide what support it will put in it.

So it remains to be seen what will be supported.

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#133675

In message <lyndon-203D4F.14560121072020@news.newsguy.com> Lyndon <lyndon@someisp.com> wrote:
> I have a 2010 MacPro running Sierra with 16gb RAM. I believe I have to 
> install High Sierra before going to Mojave. I also have a metal graphics 
> card to put into my computer. I have also come across the fact that 
> firmware needs to be upgraded. 

> So:

> Does Mojave install the firmware upgrade?

I believe the firmware updates are automatically done with system
installs now, but definitely worth checking.

> Will Mojave run with regular spinning harddrives?

Technically? Yes. I would not run any computer without an SSD boot drive
in this day and age, the difference is simply too large.

> What order should all these steps be taken?

Install the new GPU as early as you can, keep the intermediate systems
until you're done with the entire process so if you need to go back you
don't have to go back to the beginning.

> After doing all this, can Catalina be installed?

Not officially, but you can probably finagle something if the system
recognizes the METAL GPU. Unsupported, but probably will work.

> (App store will not download Catalina at this time for my machine.)

No, you will have to download it on a fully supported machine. Your 2010
Mac Pro will never download Catalina.

> Where in this whole process does an SSD become mandatory?

Never, but I would have already put one in the 2010 Mac Pro years ago.

You can get a 1TB SATA SSD for around $100 or a 512GB for about $50. I
don't think there are any SATA-II 1TB SSDs, but SATA-III works. Your
machine only has SATA II, so if you can find a cheaper SATA-II drive,
get it.

> Does Catalina or Mojave recognize spinning harddrives?

Of course.

-- 
M is for MAUDE who was swept out to sea
N is for NEVILLE who died of ennui

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