Ok, so this is probably more to raise eyebrows of the techies here than
anything else.
Mac Pro 2010, had a Metal-compatible MSI graphics card added a year or
two ago to upgrade to Mojave. Working fine until Friday when machine
became very drunk (for want of a better word).
Restoring the original ATI Radeon card today has restored normal working
*but* this should absolutely not work;) Additionally, it now only
supports one monitor whereas in Yosemite it still supports two, and that
monitor has far fewer options for scaling than usual. But it works...
Machine is actually snappier than before and I found an old USB-based
DisplayLink-compatible monitor output and have restored one of the lost
screens.
The drawers full of cables and adaptors have all been put to good use
testing different combinations and it definitely only supports one
monitor now - but that'll see me through until I get a new machine when
the Apple chip Macs come out within the next two years.
Thanks for the suggestion Sam; I had been putting it off as i have
massive fingers and fiddling around inside the Mac is really
frustrating, but it was the logical next step.
The only thing to learn from this is to try even things that should
not work when the obvious ones don't;)
(Now wondering if it will work with Catalina...)
Cheers,
Jason
On 16 Aug 2020, at 10:18, 'Jason Davies' via Sussex Mac User Group
wrote:
One more thought (because these case studies occasionally turn out to
be useful to people) is that the SSD start-up had complained it was
full not that long before all this (day before, I think) and it was
full of temp files so I restarted and deleted a few bits and pieces.
The directory may have got muddled at that point, I'm thinking....
On 16 Aug 2020, at 9:43, 'Jason Davies' via Sussex Mac User Group
wrote:
Yeah, I have the old graphics card so could replace the new one and
run the test (it's just very fiddly to connect the cables with my
eyesight being a bit old, and I've been trying to avoid it!).
Annoyingly it won't do anything at all on any OS with both left
installed.
And I had the same thought after looking at the Mac mini spec- I
could get a thunderbolt 3 enclosure. My main need is not the power
(having five disk bays is nice though!) it's multiple monitors and I
was surprised to see a mac mini can drive three with the right
attachments. It can also get really expensive if you max it out!
But I didn't want to buy anything until the apple chip versions came
out...
Thanks Sam. I did think the new ones were locked down, as it were but
wanted to double-check.
cheers,
Jason
On 15 Aug 2020, at 22:56, Sam - MacAmbulance wrote:
Can you try with a different graphics card to test? You can buy a
replacement then send it back if it doesn’t resolve the issue.
I believe the new MacMinis are all soldered PCIe storage these days,
they don’t have a SATA port anymore. You could connect your SSD
via a USB3 enclosure and it would be almost the same speed as in
your MacPro.
_
Regards
Sam Mullen
+44 (0)7747778022 <tel://+447747778022>
[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
www.macambulance.com <http://www.macambulance.com/>
MacAmbulance Ltd.
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On 15 Aug 2020, at 22:45, 'Jason Davies' via Sussex Mac User Group
<[email protected]> wrote:
Hi smuggers,
I've never seen a problem like this. My old Mac Pro, with an
upgraded graphics card that supports Metal in Mojave has suddenly
started failing to launch apps but only some apps. It started on
Friday when I was in the middle of doing stuff, and it was behaving
normally, then suddenly it wasn't.
Eg it starts up normally but then apps that normally take a few
seconds take about 20 minutes to launch (no exaggeration). Once
launched, they might or might not work normally. Virtually every
app does this but not all - eg Activity Monitor behaves completely
normally, starts up in a few seconds. Safari, which launches after
about 3 or 4 minutes, quits in a second when I tell it to, but
other apps get stuck and never quit. The Finder is meanwhile
normally responsive, eg copying a 6 gig file to a USB drive in a
couple of minutes.
I've run an ancient copy of Rember (RAM checker), and done the
Crucial 'garbage disposal' thing by starting up in Target Disk Mode
and leaving it for 8 hours.
What makes it difficult is that because of the new graphics card,
that let it run Mojave, does not display the usual 'hold down a key
at start-up' options such as hardware test or selecting start-up
disk. Holding down Shift for Safe Mode seemed to just make it hang
indefinitely forcing a hard shutdown.
The start up is an SSD connected via PCIE card. So tomorrow I'm
going to try removing each of the 8 gig RAM sticks and seeing if
that eliminates it, then connecting the SSD into one of the
internal bays (it was a bit slow generally doing this but would
point at the PCIE card). I'll also try to create a Mojave start-up
but annoyingly, despite the upgraded graphics card, trying to run
the Mojave combo refuses to launch as it thinks my graphics card
doesn't support Mojave.
All of which makes me think maybe it's time to replace it if I
can't work this out. I can only afford a Mac Mini but the entry
level has a puny 256 internal start-up. How hard is it to swap that
out for my existing 2.5" SSD (if possible at all?)
If anyone can think of anything else to try, please let me know.
I've run Disk Utility and am considering if I can erase and restore
the SDD as HFS+ so that diskwarrior will play nice with it. I've
also removed and re-seated the RAM after carefully vacuuming out
the internals.
Cheers,
Jason
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Cheers,
Jason
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