Early 2008 Mac Pro

For some reason following booting up my Early 2008 Mac Pro running 10.8.2 Mountain Lion will NOT recognize my external hard drive connected via USB nor will iTunes 10.7 recognise both my iPhone 4 & iPad 2.
I upgraded to Mountain Lion yesterday and everything worked fine until booting this morning.
What is going on?
Thanks.

No the external drive does not appear in Disk Utility.
Also wondering why iTunes cannot see either my iPhone 4 or iPad 2, both connected via USB on the front of my Mac Pro?
The difficulties I am experiencing are similar to what occured when I first tried to upgrade to ML. Back then, shortly after ML's release, post install ML would switch off my Apple keyboard.
I have waited since then for a fix, and had hoped the issue to have been resolved by 10.8.2. It appears only partially resolved.
In the end the Apple employee at the Genius bar re-installed Lion and mentioned that after a Google search other Apple users with the same model as mine were reporting the same issues.
I may have to return to my AppleStore to have Lion reinstalled post a clean wipe of the ML HDD.

Similar Messages

Why are there so many problems with the early 2008 Mac Pro ???

Hi everybody out there using Mac Pro's early 2008,
I found out there is a lot of problems with the early 2008 Mac Pro.
My early 2008 Mac Pro has been repaired ones under warranty and now it stopped working again ! Also see under: Mac Pro early 2008 no chime and does not start up. Why is this ????
It worked well for about 2 years and then it just fails and i had this failing issue twice already !!! Is this just a BAD Apple product or how do you think I need to approach this. Let’s face it, these machine don’t come cheap and you at least expect them to work without problems for 4-5 years. What is happening here ???
Cheers, Kavango

go to a black screen after 15 minutes or a couple hours
That is probably an indication that you need to find a new graphics card.
RE: Mac Pro Replacement Graphics cards
1) Apple brand cards,
2) "sold in the Apple store" cards, and
3) "Mac Edition" cards ...
... show all the screens, including Boot up screens, Safe Mode, Installer, Recovery, debug screens, and Alt/Option boot screens. At this writing, these choices include:
1) Apple brand cards:
• Apple-firmware 5770, about US$250** works near full speed in every model Mac Pro, Drivers in 10.6.5
• Apple-firmware 5870, about US$450
2) "sold in the Apple store" cards
• NVIDIA Quadro 4000, about US$1200
• NVIDIA Quadro 5000, about US$2500
3) "Mac Edition" cards -- REQUIRE 10.8.3 or later:
• SAPPHIRE HD 7950 3GB GDDR5 MAC Edition, about US$480** Vendor recommends Mac Pro 4,1
• EVGA GTX 680 Mac Edition, about US$600
The cards above require no more than the provided two 6-pin aux power connectors provided in the Mac Pro through 2012 model. Aux cables may not be provided for third-party cards, but are readily available.
If you are Meet ALL of these:
• running 10.8.3 or later AND
• don't care about "no boot screens" etc AND
• can re-wire or otherwise "work out" the power cabling, THEN:
You can use many more cards, even most "PC-only cards"

I have an early 2008 Mac Pro, which has re-booting problems. Also what does the spinning beach-ball indicate?

Hi, I have an early 2008 Mac Pro which has re-booting problems.
Processor speed is: 2.8
Memory: 2GB 800 MHz DDR2 FB-DIMM
2 x 28GHz Quad Core Intel Xeon
I am running OSX Yosemite Version 10.10
My Mac Pro keeps re-booting. Last year I had to replace my graphics card. My original card was the ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT 255MB, and that is what I have now. At this precise moment my Mac Pro is running perfectly, except that it is slow and the spinning beach-ball keeps appearing. I have managed to do some work with the disk utilities, verifying, cleaning and partitioning. Some errors were found and when it was cleaned this seemed to help my Mac Pro to function properly. Although I am able to use my Mac Pro now, from day to day I still experience re-boot problems. Also quite unexpectedly my mac dictionary has an error, it closed itself down and will not open at all, I had the message to say that a report will be sent to Apple.
I have tried starting my computer with an external hard drive fitted via a USB cable, I use for back-ups. This worked and I was able to wipe my hard drive clear and replace all info from the back up I had done only a few days ago.
This worked for a few days and then the same problem started again.
I am beginning to wonder if I need to buy a new hard drive.
If there is anyone who has some answers to help me solve my problem, I would be most grateful.
Robert

When you have the beachball activity, note the exact time: hour, minute, second.
These instructions must be carried out as an administrator. If you have only one user account, you are the administrator.
Launch the Console application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad and start typing the name.
The title of the Console window should be All Messages. If it isn't, select
          SYSTEM LOG QUERIES ▹ All Messages
from the log list on the left. If you don't see that list, select
          View ▹ Show Log List
from the menu bar at the top of the screen.
Each message in the log begins with the date and time when it was entered. Scroll back to the time you noted above.
Select the messages entered from then until the end of the episode, or until they start to repeat, whichever comes first.
Copy the messages to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C. Paste into a reply to this message by pressing command-V.
The log contains a vast amount of information, almost all of it useless for solving any particular problem. When posting a log extract, be selective. A few dozen lines are almost always more than enough.
Please don't indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into this discussion.
Please don't post screenshots of log messages—post the text.
Some private information, such as your name, may appear in the log. Anonymize before posting.

With Boot Camp, should I install the 64 bit version of Windows 7 (Home Premium edition) OR the 32 bit version when installing onto an early 2008 Mac Pro operating OSX Lion with a 1 TByte internal HDD?

With an early 2008 Mac Pro I'm about to add a second internal drive (1 TByte SATA) and initially install OSX Lion onto the new drive. Then to partition this new HDD via Boot camp. But my question is whether I am best advised to purchase the 64 bit version of Windows 7 (Home Premium) or the 32 bit version of Windows 7 (Home Premium) for the Windows sector of the disk What are the differences, and will I notice a difference in performance?

In chart from wiki, (scroll down to "Comparison chart") check the maximum CPUs supported.
You don't see this on MSoft's 1st searched for chart hit. This is one reason you will regret not paying for Professional+ if you get Home Premium 64 as I did for Mac Pro early 2008.
Home Prem Task Mgr sees 4 processors vs. the 8 that are seen by Pro+.
Costs more than a Mac upgrade to Lion if you make that mistake.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_7_editions

Early 2008 Mac Pro + ATI Radeon HD 4870 = Not working

Just took delivery of my new HD 4870 video card today. I installed it in my Early 2008 Mac Pro and booted up. I got a picture no problem on one monitor, but nothing on the other. Furthermore, the display perfpane was missing a lot of controls, like Arrangement and Detect Displays and whatnot.
I did a bunch of rebooting and swapping of cables, and determined that both the mini-display port and the standard DVI connection will drive a monitor. However, if both are plugged in, the only active display is the one plugged into the mini-display port, and there's no option to setup the secondary display.
So I booted into bootcamp, and it automatically recognized both display ports, and mirrored my desktop on both monitors. I downloaded and installed the latest windows drivers, rebooted the machine into windows once more, and was able to configure a multiple monitor display with no problem.
This tells me it's not the card and it's not the motherboard.
Booting back into mac OS, I discovered that it doesn't even recognize that the card has video ram. It thought I had no video ram in the system.
So, this all leads me to the conclusion that Apple shipped me a card that it has not yet provided driver support for.
Hey Apple, can I have my 4870 display driver now?

Hi again,
It was funny to read all your answers on my iPhone while away from my computer. I could have reply on the iPhone but I preferred to wait to give you all the procedure I used to install the beta driver successfully this morning.
To start, I found this link:
http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=155477
and followed the "4870 INSTRUCTIONS", starting like suggested by doing the "First, follow the 4850 INSTRUCTIONS above"... (See the link)
I would like also to specify that I did this without having installed the card physically yet. So I kept my HD 2600 in the computer, followed all the steps excepted for the step 3:
3. Reboot with -f -v (kextcache/verbose mode)
There is no -f nor -v switches available for the reboot command at the shell prompt. I simply rebooted as usual "Pomme -> Redémarrer".
After the reboot, all my software was still working as expected with my HD 2600 card, meaning that these steps are specific and active only for the HD 4870 when it's detected at boot-up.
You may have to Google for the string "Kext" in order to get the application to install the file ATY_Motmot.kext. For your information, ATY_Motmot filename is the same string as the one found under "System Information ->PCI cards" under "Name".
I get:
ATI Radeon HD 4870:
Name: ATY, Motmot
The article is not clear regarding where to find the OpenGL.framework to backup before installing the downloaded one. I found mine under:
/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.5.sdk/System/Library/Frameworks/OpenGL.framework
After having shutdown the computer, just after the reboot that proofed everything was ok, I removed the original HD 2600 card and put back the new HD 4870 and boot up...
Then I check the "System Information" and found both "Quartz Extreme" and "Core image" supported!
I launched Aperture, got it!
I launched Final Cut Express, got it!
I launched Starry Night Pro Plus, got it! Then I checked the OpenGL settings in Starry Night Pro PLus and activated both options:
Use shaders where available
Use AllSky shader (Not compatible with all hardware)
When I was doing these actions with my original HD 2600 card, the software was giving me a warning that my hardware did not support these options and that it could crash.
This time, with the HD 4870, it accepted my settings and give me back a very beautiful blue sky with much more shades!
So in conclusion, it works very smoothtly with my system and I am writing this with two monitors, having bought the MiniDP to DVI adapter this afternoon
I am happy!
P.S.: A girl from Apple support called me back this afternoon regarding my problem. She was very happy two when I told her that I did apply the beta driver and that it was working very well...
Good luck and best regards...

Early 2008 Mac Pro + nVidia 8800: Never going to work?

This forum is littered with threads about early 2008 Mac Pros with the nVidia 8800 card - none of them positive.
I was unfortunate enough to wait for Apple to release such a machine and buy it. Graphics performance is dire given the hardware available. The machine routinely crashes with the window manager hang problem (the user interface just locks up, yet network services etc. still work), in the way familiar to anyone blighted by this particular bug; just run the Folding@Home client on your machine if you want to experience the joy. Or screensavers, sometimes, so I've had to turn those off. And I've had to turn off monitor power saving too, because I too suffer from the 'monitors sometimes don't wake up' bug. And of course I can't sleep the machine either, because firmware upgrade or not, it's still not reliable. And after all this, still the machine crashes.
SSH to the machine; try to restart cleanly; even 'sudo reboot' won't restart it. Apple have achieved something I've never seen out of any Unix or Unix-like operating system, ever; the kernel is unable to kill its own processes.
There have been no indications from Apple that I've seen on these forums over several weeks that the problem is even being acknowledged, let alone tackled. Latest reports indicate that even the 1st gen Mac Pro owners are suffering if they install the 8800.
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1460752&tstart=0
My machine rarely makes it through the day without a forced reboot due to the window manager hanging. I can't do any work on it. I can't rely on it. I can't enjoy it. I can't even use it for web browsing without fear of it hanging.
There seem to be no facts about this at all. So all I can ask for is opinions. Does anyone have any offering of hope that early 2008 Mac Pros might ever work properly with 8800 cards? Y'know, little things, like actually being able to handle graphics? Or sleeping the monitors? Or, heaven forbid, sleeping the whole machine? Or should I just send it back as unfit for purpose?
Yours, tired and exasperated... :-/

I posted this in some other blog (forum), I should have posted this here also but I hope this gives you and all with these problems hope!! I also ran some fish tank test some else posted to get the folding problem to happen and I can not get it to happen at all now, and since my 8800 went in I get NO LOCKUPS, SCREEN FREEZES, shaky blurry video when I boot, so far NOTHING, IT JUST WORKS!!!!!!!!
Now that I think about it the person who said to use the fish tank program had a bad 8800 and maybe you do also!! here is the link to that:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=6965475&#6965475
I purchased my first mac pro early 08 2 months ago (amazon.com).
2 quad core 2.8's, 2 gig apple 4 gig OWC total 6 gig ram,2-WD raptors (1st mac 2nd boot camp winxp 32 bit), apple care.
I had all my problems with the ATI card (I always purchased ATI, never Nvidia, for all the PC's I built) a couple of times I bought the first ones out, these had all kinds of problems until good drivers that actually worked were released (usually 6-12 months after the release of the card).
So I try not to buy routers, graphic cards, etc.. for at least 6-12 months, but back to my 2600 card!!
When I received my mac the graphics would freeze, I did a lot of online reading only to find out the ATI 2600 was the problem, the cure was to hook up 2 monitors to the card (and that worked!!).
Then they came out with the firmware update, now my main monitor would after 2 days on a reboot be scambled (samsung syncmaster 213t, NEVER had ANY problem with it before on any PC I had, so I knew it was not the monitor) to fix the problem I had to either turn power off to the syncmaster or resetting PRAM (worked for a couple more days, then the same problem).
I called apple and they sent a tech out within days to replace the ATI card, the replacement did the same thing after a couple of days, so I called Apple back and they took a bunch of info from my computer (BTW not much at all loaded in the mac side) and said to call back in a week, so I called back a week later and they said they were going to exchange the card for either another ati 2600 or the Nvidia 8800, I said 8800 and a day later on a saturday I received it, swapped the card and NEVER HAD ANY PROBLEMS at all!!
So I don't know if the ATI card has problems with certain monitors or they are just poorly made (maybe AMD is mad with Apple that Apple did not use AMD processors).
I have read others that swapped with the 8800 and their problems went away also!!!!
Maybe some have no problems with the 2600, but I would not recommend it to anyone, if you can avoid the 2600 GO WITH THE 8800, the drivers will get better (and the 8800 will eventually outperform the ATI)and you will not be sorry.
Apple is awesome, they are 2nd to none, their is no other company like this anymore that I have dealt with in a long time (not just because they gave me a 8800), like I said in the beginning of this post I always purchased ATI cards and would have kept it if it would have worked but 2 doing the same, ATI [AMD] has lost my support until they prove otherwise.
I recommend Mac's to everyone now!!
good luck and let me know it any of this has helped!!!!!!!!!!

Early 2008 Mac Pro wakes up from sleep with Mavericks.

Ever since I upgraded to OSX Mavericks on Tuesday, my early 2008 Mac Pro keeps waking up from sleep mode every couple hours. It goes back to sleep again on its own though after a minute, so I'm thinking it's some kind of new automated feature that I'm not aware of. With the Mac Pro being fairly loud when it wakes up from sleep mode, it woke me up three times last night! Is there some kind of option in the system preferences that I'm not aware of that can deactivate this new behavior? I usually only shut down my computer once a week, and keep it in sleep mode when I'm not using it most of the time, but I'm going to have to start shutting it down every night now to keep it from waking me up throughout the night...

Hello MARl0,
You may want to disable the Power Nap functionality, if available, in System Preferences -> Energy Saver.
OS X Mavericks: Change Power Nap settings
http://support.apple.com/kb/PH14391
Cheers,
Allen

Where and what type of solid state drive should I buy for my early 2008 Mac Pro Desktop??

where can I buy and what type of solid state drive should I use to upgrade my early 2008 Mac Pro Desktop??

Rick,
When you get a chance.... DSLReports is off line: their SQL server decided to take its indexes and access to data. Power. Not enough of the right kind of UPS. Same happened to StorageReview's "Drive Reliability Database" about 8-9 yrs ago.
dslreports.com is offline
Fri Apr 20 09:05:55 EDT 2012
SSD: Loading CS5 plus other little monsters might matter.
Lots of small I/Os
latency of 1/100th where nanoseconds replace those "long" milliseconds
System: Small and fast.
DLLoyd even goes for short-stroking drives to get and maintain highest I/O
The new 10k VRs hit 200MB/sec - I still use them and still find them useful, long lasting, feel responsive with whatever I ask of them. I know they get criticized and "cost too much"
Just bought a new WD Black and yes it is better than the 2008 model I was using.
600GB 10K $200 vs $150-220 for WD Black. your choice
I can destroy a 7.2k drive, I have brought ever 10K drive back after a simple WD Extended Test in Lifeguard.
I don't really care about $$/GB or I wouldn't have just bought Intel 128GB $149
Database: the pros put the index in memory and page fix (virtual volumes in memory; cache; hold disk drive index in memory). Caching storage has been around for almost 40 yrs.
Today you can use SSDs as front end cache to hold DB indexes and frequent data for web servers and such adn use slower secondary storage.
SSD + SAS + 4TB storage
Separating the system from data: #1 must
Having data on array: been what I use
I put a large photo library on 2 x 10K VRs vs SSD and couldn't tell much difference (SSD is soundless of course) But my WD Blacks make as much noise and run 15*C hotter than those 10K (not what you expect?)
While 10K and 7.2K are in the 140-180MB/sec range, they are in 3.0 to 12.0 ms seeks, not 0.01 ms.
People wonnder why shrink a drive to 2.5" (or why not go down to 1.8".
How long does it take to reposition a disk head? how often? the 10K VR travels on outer tracks at 70 MPH. Really trying to fly off into space.
It uses one step to find the "zip code" and then another DSP to find the "house."
True of any high density perpendicular recording mechanism.
And of course while the Raptor-X tried to find a home with famers, Cheetah buyers, the WD 10K line has more of a home where servers and small form factor drives - and 100s of them - can fit in a rackmount server I imagine.
Anyway.... if SR and DSLReports can drop out of site due to power and hardware failure and loss... we can learn some and hope to protect our own data and investments.

How do I fix my early 2008 mac pro boot hard disk. Lost everything when it crashed hard, can not reinstal via cd/dvd drive... are there any fix get it boot from dvd drive?

I have an early 2008 MAC PRO Quad Core 3.0ghz processor. 8 Gig of rams, with a 1 Gig memory Radeon 5770 HD Graphic Card running the latest Version of Snow Leopard OS. Last week lighting struck the house take out all of my hard drives (4) thank god the surge protector mitigated the mother board from damaged, use the Parted Magic to check out the motherboard and it intact with no damage. I can boot with the Parted-magic and be able surf and post this question to this forums. I replaced a newly formatted hard drive and trying to installed OS X Mountain Lions to the new drive, but unable to have it boot in my MAC PRO DVD, I get the usual chimes during the booting processed but the screen remain blackout, but able to boot with Parted-Magic to surf the web and access Apple sites/forums.
I am not well verse in using the Parted_Magic to repair or get my-mac to boot normally so I can reinstall OS X. Any help would appreciated.
Thank you
Disabled Veteran.

Go to System Profile and look, does it say "MacPro3,1"?
That is 2008.
FBDIMM would be 800MHz. Did you use older slower 667MHz in yours?
You can but take a hit in performance.
Sounds like MacPro1,1.
Mac Pro (3.0GHz quad core (dual CPUs) 8GB 667 RAM)
In 2007 March an 8-core 3GHz did come out 2,1.
So just to be clear.
===========
It was all working fine a couple of days ago. At the time it randomly shut down I was trying to use Boot Camp to create a Windows 7 area,
Whenever you want to install Windows, remove all the drives other than the one Windows goes to. And if you use a dedicated drive YOU DO NOT NEED Boot Camp Assist, unless you use XP, which really is limited and crippled (one processor, 1.9GB RAM support).
And when it freezes, your only choice is to nuke (reformat) and restore or get out that backup CLONE you made before (ie, Step #1 in the Boot Camp Guide).
Sure that whole NTFS / MBR / GUID could be an issue, but you should just have a blank drive or clone.
No don't bother Apple, they seem to not have a good sense about Windows on Mac Pro anyway.
Other than zap pram from cold boot / tried booting with NO drives inside and just 10.6. DVD - should be fine.
You should be fine iwth Windows 7 DVD and one drive, or even XP.
Make sure you take your time and reconnect cards etc properly and any cables.
Booting from OS X DVDs may not work if there is a drive with a totally shot directory or partition table. Put them in FW case and turn on AFTER OS X is booted.
Why aren't people Cloning as a Backup Strategy
Carbon Copy Cloner 3.4.2
How To clone

Problem on my early 2008 Mac Pro

I had this problem with my early 2008 Mac Pro which started last week.
Some background; I'm using 8GB RAMs, using Snow Leopard and bootcamp Windows 7 and 3 days before the start of the problem, I had replaced the original 320GB HDD for 640GB HDD and reinstalled both OSes.
While I was playing some videos in Windows 7 last week, it displayed the blue screen with memory dump message and restarted on its own. Thereafter, I was unable to load Windows 7 and SL respectively, both hung before they can be loaded. In SL, I noticed that there were some faint red dots in the Apple logo and subsequently, the entire screen started to flicker with some random black and white strips. In Windows 7, it frozen at the Windows logo with a 640x480 resolution. My default resolution was 1920x1200. However, I managed to loaded into the safe mode of Windows and extracted my work.
I tried to re-install SL and it hung again at the Apple logo followed by the flickering.
I sent it to my local service centre and the technician removed my video card, RAMs and memory risers and cleaned the contact, ran the stress test overnight, AHT3A152 and ASD3S123 tests and concluded that he found no issues with the hardwares and the problem did not occur again.
The Mac Pro was sent back to me today and earlier, I started up with no problem and decided to remove the Windows partition and I restarted it again to confirm everything was ok. However, at the next startup, the problem re-surfaced and I could no longer start up my Mac Pro in SL.
I tried to swopped back the original 320GB HDD, but the problem still persists. Before I send back my Mac Pro to the service centre tomorrow, I would like to have some 2nd opinions. Based on my description, what is the likely cause of this problem, is the newly replaced 640GB be the root cause?

Do you keep Windows on its own hard drive?
I would have kept the 320GB while using Windows WD Lifeguard to test, zero, run extended tests and slow long format of the new WD 640. Then just cloned system to new drive.
Casper 6.0 seems to be great utility if you want to avoid reinstalling 7, though I've found 7 to be fast and easy to install even with dozens of programs to add.
Are you using the current / latest graphic driver for 7? I don't notice you even list which card.
RAM - there is no perfect test, AHT finds some while Memtest takes time and may find others.
Windows may be more sensitive to weak hard drive sectors and memory than Mac OS or than HFS+.
Do you have any 3rd party devices? PCIe? Cables etc?
And you can't boot off Windows 7 DVD or Safe Mode?
Windows should automatically offer to boot in Safe Mode.
Also, try restore from last good restore point.

Will OSX support Adaptec PCI Express scsi cards in an early 2008 Mac Pro?

I need to move my scsi interface scanner from a G4 machine and the old PCI Adaptec AHA 2930 CU card won't fit. I was using Snow Leopard on the G4 unit - it still supported the Adaptec card and all was good. My 23" Cinema display then bit the dust and I replaced it with with a 24" Cinema display with the mini display port connector. I purchased an adapter from Kanex to make it compatible, but the adapter was defective - so I returned it. Their reviews aren't very good - seem to have a lot of D.O.A. adapters - not sure I want to deal with the frustration, but it would be the least expensive option.
I do have, however, an early 2008 Mac Pro that I can use, provided that it supports the newer PCI Express scsi cards that Adaptec makes. I'm not sure which one to get yet, either. I'd rather not buy one and find out it won't work. I can make a partition on the boot drive for Snow Leopard in case scsi isn't supported in later versions of OSX. In case you're wondering, I did use a scsi to firewire adapter to run the scanner on my laptop for a while - but it stopped working and I can't locate any replacements (or the company - 2nd Wave Technologies - for that matter). I haven't tried locating a scsi to usb adapter, but from what I can see, they are getting pretty scarce. I'd replace the scanner, but it is fairly pricey and the newest model retails at the price of a small car - so that really isn't an option at this point.
Thanks in advance for any info.
Message was edited by: Jakob Richardt
Changed name of display adapter manufacturer.

Thanks for the response - I guess the question I should have asked is "Will OSX support scsi cards in an early 2008 Mac Pro and if so, which ones?" I didn't realize Apple and Adaptec weren't working together - my G4 tower arrived with an Adaptec card in it when I bought it in 2000 (from a third party vendor, not directly from Apple). It came with either OS 8.* or OS 9. When I updated to OSX, everything continued working, so I didn't think much about it until I pondered using the Mac Pro for the scanner - at some point the G4 is going to stop working - need to have a solution before that happens. The manuals I've been reading refer to the slots in the G4 machines as PCI. The manual for the Mac Pro refers to the slots as PCI e. These slots have fewer connectors, so I thought that the "Express" part of the name referred to this particular card configuration when compared to the longer card connectors in the G4 type of machines.
Can you tell me what scsi card brands will work in the Mac Pro? I'd still like to pursue this option. As I mentioned in my original post, buying a new scanner isn't in the cards right now - it costs more than the computer, so, although pricey, the card option is still less expensive.
Thanks!

Early 2008 Mac Pro 3,1 Mystery Logic Board/GPU Issue

I recently received an Early 2008 Mac Pro 3,1 for free because the owner couldn't figure out what was wrong with it. It would boot up with the startup chime, but never output any video, and kept rebooting and replaying the startup chime. Using the diagnostic LEDs on the logic board, I was able to see that the Power Good LED (LED 7) and the EFI LED (LED 9) were both on, but the GPU LED (LED 8) never lit up. After trying all the PCI slots and confirming that the graphics card worked in another Mac Pro, I confirmed it wasn't the graphics card. I then tried a different power supply and different power supply cables, different RAM, different RAM boards, but still nothing. (Note: I also went through all the usual stuff: Power Cycling, PRAM, SMC Reset)
I then ordered a replacement logic board (used from eBay) and spent the weekend swapping out the logic board. After the swap, the Mac Pro STILL won't output video, and now the EFI LED (LED 9) won't even light up. Tried resetting the EFI Firmware via a CD, and still nothing. Does anyone have any idea as to what the issue could be? I'm 95% certain I plugged everything back in correctly on the board, but I don't know what else to do other than tear it apart again to confirm everything is plugged in. The only other thing I can think of is that the second logic board I received was also bad.
Please help!!!

Your problem sounds like a graphics card problem to me.
confirming that the graphics card worked in another Mac Pro,
Was this also a Mac Pro 2008 model? was it running the same Mac OS X version as you are testing? what version?
what graphics card are you trying to use? Genuine Apple or flashed PC or unflashed PC? what Mac OS X version?
That second board sounds Bad to me if it won't say EFI-OK.

What upgrade graphic card do i need for a early 2008 mac pro

I have a early 2008 Mac Pro. ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT 256 MB is what i have now. What is a good upgrade graphic card to get.

The GTX 780 6GB runs fine on the dual PCIe internal power cables -- as does the GTX 680 and Radeon HD 7950. The same can't be said of the GTX TITAN or GTX 780 Ti or Radeon R9 280X -- all of which require an auxiliary power feed to avoid a nasty power down of your tower at the worst moment when too much wattage is demanded of the Mac Pro's factory power supply.
Did I mention that the GTX 780 with 6GB of GDDR5 matches the 6GB of GDDR5 in the TITAN?
The one fallacy to my 'sweet spot' award has to do with OpenCL. In case you hadn't noticed, the AMD Radeon GPUs smoked the NVIDIA GeForce GPUs running Photoshop's OpenCL accelerated Iris Blur filter and rendering LuxMark's OpenCL accelerated Room scene.
- http://www.barefeats.com
So depends on budget, whether you want a PC card for less but no "early EFI boot screen" prior to drivers loading, and what apps and needs you have.
The one thing for sure is that 2600XT should have been retired ages ago and even more so with 10.8.3 and above, it could be trouble or just... PITA/POS.

Can you marry a thunderbolt display to a early 2008 mac pro?

can you marry a thunderbolt display to an early 2008 mac pro?

You will need a DUAL-LINK DVI cable for that display.
<http://www.amazon.com/DVI-D-Male-Dual-Link-Cable/dp/B003QNDEGA>
Your video card is designed to run two 30" displays, but is getting old. Cards that age do fail due to bad capacitors, bad solder, of stuck fans.

Mountain Lion Hangs on Early 2008 Mac Pro

I installed Mountain Lion 12A269 on a freshly formatted disk on my Early 2008 Mac Pro. I have 10 GB of memory.
Once or twice a day, the computer hangs. I can move the mouse cursor, but can't click on anything and the keyboard is inactive. The dock doesn't raise when I move the mouse over it. CMD-OPT-ESC doesn't bring up the force-quit window and none of the menus work. All I can do is hold the power button in to shut down and then restart the computer.
There's no kernel panic -- the computer just hangs.
The console shows two System Diagnostic Reports:
Finder_2012-08-28-093935_Disk.hang
RPDLAgentHelperE_2012-08-16-14738_Disk.crash
Since it just hung a few minutes ago (08/30/12) I don't know if either of these files are relevant. Neither one is helpful.
I'm looking for suggestions for fixing this problem or additional troubleshooting. The computer just hangs -- there's no consistent action to trigger it. It's already resulted in a lot of lost work and productivity.

The console messages indicate a problem with your disk drive. It may be failing.

Installing OS and Apps on SSD boot drive on early 2008 Mac Pro while keeping all other data from old iMac on hdd

So I've just got myself a early 2008 Mac Pro with a OCZ RevoDrive 80GB PCIe SSD to replace my old iMac which is slowly but surely giving up on me. I want to put my OS (mavericks) and some/all (whichever is possible/easier) apps, both apple and 3rd party, from my old iMac, onto the SSD but keep all my other data on the 2TB HDD, also from my old iMac, in the mac pro. Can anyone tell me how to do this/if its possible? (not massively tech savvy so simpleish language and steps would be handy!) Thanks!

How to use an SSD with your HDD
If you are going to use an SSD as a boot drive together with your existing HDD as the "data" drive, here's what you can do.
After installing the SSD you will need to partition and format the SSD using Disk Utility. Then, install OS X on the SSD. After OS X has been installed boot from the SSD. Use Startup Disk preferences to set the SSD as the startup volume.
Open Users & Groups preferences. Click on the lock icon and authenticate. CTRL- or RIGHT-click on your user account listing in the sidebar and select Advanced Options from the context menu. You will see a field labeled "Home dir:" At the right end you will see a Change button. Click on it. In the file dialog locate the Home folder now located on the HDD (HDD/Users/account_name/.) Select the folder, click on Open button. Restart the computer as directed.
When the computer boots up it will now be using the Home folder located on the HDD.
Another more technical method involving the Terminal and aliases is discussed in depth here: Using OS X with an SSD plus HDD setup - Matt Gemmell. This is my preferred approach because I can select which of the Home's folders I want on the HDD and which I don't want. For example, I like to keep the Documents and Library folders on the SSD because I access their content frequently.
Be sure you retain the fully bootable system on your HDD in case you ever need it.

Early 2008 Mac Pro

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