Tiger Mac Pro Hardware Support

[remixer]

Hi all,

 

Not strictly a x86 build question but it is a Intel Mac, long winded too, to summarize - I want a upgraded Mac Pro to run one of the following:

 

Tiger so I have legacy equipment support on a good fast machine with multiple monitors.

Or

A stable Leopard OS with Tiger Firewire drivers.

Or

Windows XP with multiple monitor support

 

So far I haven't succeeded with any of the above scenarios.

 

Here's the background. I purchased a used 2006 MacPro1,1 and I kitted it out with dual Quad-Core Xeon E5335 processors plus a NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT and a ATi Radeon HD 3870. Works like a dream when I running Leopard but the thing is I need to run Tiger on this machine. I need to do so because I have some 'old' audio gear (Presonus V-fire - firewire) and Presonus are not going to develop Leopard drivers for this gear. However for me the Presonus V-Fire is a interface into some 'legacy' Roland digital mixing equipment I still use today. I am not willing to abandon the Roland equipment because it works well for my needs and cost me an arm and a leg when I bought it. I've installed Tiger on it's own hard disk and it runs but I loose multiple monitor support, that is I'm down to just one monitor, I typically need 3 during a project.

 

My questions are:

Is it possible to get a NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT or a ATi Radeon HD 3870 up and running with dual head support?

 

Does Tiger fully support the E5335 processors.

 

Trying an alternate approach I tried a Windows XP install, because Presonus do have XP drivers for their gear. However the XP install hangs on the device driver installation with a blue screen. Anybody any suggestion why? Are the E5335 processors knocking it out or the graphics cards? Vista installs and runs great but I can't get the drivers I need for Vista.

 

I've tried both the NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT and the ATi Radeon HD 3870 installed in isolation but still no joy.

 

I have the original Mac Pro install disks and these now refuse to install on my Mac. Any idea why?

 

Could I drop Tiger Firewire kernel extensions into Leopard and run them successfully? If so what files do I need? I did try this myself. I replaced the firewire kernel extensions files in /System/Library/Extensions with their Tiger equivalent. I took the following extensions from a up-to-date Tiger 10.4.11 installation.

 

AppleFWAudio.kext

IOFireWireAVC.kext

IOFireWireFamily.kext

IOFireWireIP.kext

IOFireWireSBP2.kext

IOFireWireSerialBusProtocolTransport.kext

 

I archived the Leopard files and copied the above files into /System/Library/Extensions. Tiger has a additional extension called IOFireWireMxBt.kext. I copied this over too.

 

After copying I ran the Disk Utility and repaired permissions on the Leopard OS hard disk. Rebooted and the extensions appear to load successfully but system eventually crashes when I'm using the V-Fire.

 

Finally, does Tiger Server OS have any additional support that may get me to where I want?

 

Thanks,

Stephen