Can't reset PRAM on 2008 8-Core Mac Pro

My Mac Pro has been behaving weirdly for a while, and since it's been years, I figured I'd zap its PRAM. But it doesn't work.
I have an Apple wired keyboard, connected directly to the Mac Pro (no USB hub). But when I restart the Mac holding down cmd-opt-P-R, it's ignored -- it goes straight to the desktop as usual. No cycling of boot-up and no multiple chimes.
Any ideas why?
(Yes, definitely command and not control. I'm a Mac vet.)

Hi JAso, no worries. glad to help. Yes try and crank up your MP 2008 on another file system with OSX on it. Keep that OSX pure.. no unneeded apps.. duct the basic OS and any S?W updates / maintenance - repair the disk permissions and reboot of the new OSX.. - make user/pwd jaso .. etc.. be as quick and lean as you need. Keep as maintenance starter
What to look for from restart of new FS ( memory stuck / FW disk etc):
spritely start up and login.. just like out of the box
fast login to new clean user/
restart it a few times to resolve any "struth that fast!" anomalies...
What to do next if the former is true...:
well it's likely your MP's h/w is healthy and as reliable as ever and..
main file system is a bit buggered and can USUALLY be corrected... (but not always)
the OSX OR the localised goodies in ~/ that you use and a bit crook (r.s.), stale, plotted, bloated and possibly corrupt.
Else.. hmm the MP might need some surgery. The main file system's storage hardware (Macintish HD et al) might be slightly crook.
Anyway all of the is and the really cool things you can do to fix the S/W structures to make you mc kick along is easy to do.
AND.. read this with vigour and enthusiasm..
contrary to many of the sheepish and parroted posts in these forums there is usually NO NEED TO REINSTALL the OS. to fix these slowdown things!
use available tools to perform basic clean up and some surgery
one or two commercial ISV software.apps you MIGHT optionally purchase to perform filesystem tune ups beyond what OSX offers.
Anyway mate.. see if you can sort out a small OSX standalone system on an external spinning disk .. preferably SATA, eSATA, FW800 .. rear of that .
Oh and is you have a spare FW MAC,, fire up the MP2008 in TARGET MODE (hold 'T' key at startup), slip in a FW 800 cable between each and off you go.. You can checkout the MP's file systems from other Mac.
More Opinion: ALSo Recovery Partition if you have it. Often there's can be unavailable or as corrupt.
THere's tonnes of ways to check this out...WITHOUT whacking th existing OS... thats a subsequent resort.
Post your results for others to see.
Warwick
Hong Kong

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http://macperformanceguide.com/Mac-InstallingSSD.html
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For over a year I have been using a Logitech wireless keyboard and mouse, but I don't know if this is involved in the wake from sleep problem or not. I should add that this keyboard/mouse combination has never previously given any trouble at all.
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Glad to hear you were already using SuperDuper and (use to) use Disk Warrior.
Can't be rushed. Take a look at how long it takes Micromat and SoftRAID to update their products to get a ballpark idea of time and work to have compatible versions. Or do like others, wait for "SP1" or a year, wait for Adobe and others to be ready before fully supporting.
The best time to upgrade to (Jaguar, Panther, Tiger, and now Leopard) is a year out, even when the product is at its end release-point, not when it is just 1.0.
Minor but things First Aid misses, and can mean all the difference in the world. Major is bad enough that after recovering files you need, you should reformat and restore due to keys out of order, overlapped extents, corrupt journal (there is a tip about turning journaling off and back on to fix some problems).
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Alsoft can't work on an update until they have in their hands a stable and released version. And Disk Utility does and has changed during the last 18 months.
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I have had success running boot camp on an 8-core Mac Pro from 2009. I have an ATI 4870.
I initially used Windows 7 Beta (32bit) and then RC (64bit) and finally the shipping version (64 bit Professional).
32-Bit crippled Crysis performance for me (only the demo). I was able to run the game with most settings all the way up (excluding Anti-aliasing), at 1920x1080 and it ran fine for about one minute before hitting the hard-drive for about 10 seconds. This thrashing occurred repeatedly and I have up - that problem was resolved when I moved to 64bit Windows.
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Optical audio and the front headphones work fine for me - though the 4 conductor cord does not recognize the microphone (from an iPhone headset) in Windows, which gets me down as it would be nice to audio-chat in some games.
Try these thing in this order if you can, and have not already:
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Can I install Windows 7 on my new MAC Pro running OSx 10.9

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Mac model
Windows 8, 64-bit
Windows 7, 64-bit
Windows 7, 32-bit
Windows Vista, 64-bit
Windows Vista, 32-bit
Windows XP, 32-bit
Mac Pro (Late 2013)
BCA
Mac Pro (Mid 2010)
5
5
4
DVD
DVD
DVD
Mac Pro (Early 2009)
5
5
4
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DVD
DVD
Mac Pro (Early 2008)
4
4
DVD
DVD
DVD
Mac Pro (Early 2007)
DVD
Mac Pro (Mid 2006)
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New 8 Core Mac Pro Question

What will the 8 Core Mac Pro do for Aperture? I know you need 4 gig of ram and the ATI video card. I am just curious about what processor to purchase.
I find that Exporting images from a wedding of 800 or so images takes about 2.5 hours on my G5 Dual 1.8 with 3 gigs of ram. I would really like to speed up the Export process!
I will also be using Photoshop CS3 when it ships. Will Actions that I have written run faster on the 8 Core Machine?
I just need some buying advice.
Kevin Hawkins

How much Aperture alone sees today is not so much the point as is what happens with real world performance. Real world it is not just about the theoretical limit of what Aperture sees; apps and the OS/RAM/GPU/CPUs all work together, and folks typically do have more than one app open at a time. My expectation is that although certainly fully functional with 4 GB, the kind of users that run Aperture on a MP will find that greater than 4 GB of RAM is clearly beneficial.
Anecdotal reports also seem to indicate that Mac Pros have an inherent need for more RAM than previous boxes needed.
Also OS 10.5/Leopard is due soon enough that we should be planning new box configurations based on our expectations of what impact Leopard and Aperture v2 will have on RAM utilization. My strong opinion is that we will be able to take advantage of more RAM as 2007/2008 play out.
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I just put a ATI 4870 in my Mac Pro and I took out the standard GT120. My father has a Mac Pro as well and I thought about putting the card to use by installing it in his Mac Pro.
Both our Mac Pros are the most recent version. Only difference is that his is 4 core and mine is 8.
So can I do this? Can I put two GT120's in his Mac Pro, and would it even make a difference for him. He mainly uses Aperture 2, and Office apps.

Two cards only allow more displays to be connected.
Rendering for all displays is still done with only the primary card.
The information is then passed along the PCIe bus to the additional cards.
What additional cards actually do is to increase bandwidth loading of the PCIe bus, which can result in a net decrease in performance.
Some applications are not multi card aware, and can result in negative performance.
One example is the case of two identical cards and FCP:
http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/non-linear-editing-mac/145449-dual-graphics-cards-ma c-pro-final-cut-pro.html
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I have a late 2009 Dual Core Mac Pro.
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I thought this was weird because all the slots are filled with 2 gigs chips for a total of 16 gigs.
When I checked about this Mac it said I only had 12 gigs of memory in my system.
I went to open up the case, and there are to red light glowing for slots 7 and 8 on the motherboard, and any memory chips I put in those slots do not show up.
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Stan

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So the movie version is that you have some DIMM(s) that have failed, and you should remove them from your Mac and consider whether to replace them with good modules, or to add some larger modules.
I expect your recent power failure, protected by a UPS, is merely a coincidence, not a cause-and-effect.

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Time machine only copies User Info and Users (Applications, Library, and System are missing) from my quad core Mac Pro. 45 Gb of 162 Gb are missing. Any one having success with time machine copying all folders using Mavericks?
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The late, great Pondini was investigating that issue before he passed away.
See here: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5125969
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Can't reset PRAM on 2008 8-Core Mac Pro

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