{"id":981,"date":"2017-02-03T12:06:53","date_gmt":"2017-02-03T21:06:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/accretiondisc.com\/blog\/?p=981"},"modified":"2017-02-03T12:06:53","modified_gmt":"2017-02-03T21:06:53","slug":"got-the-mac-pro-running-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/accretiondisc.com\/blog\/2017\/02\/03\/got-the-mac-pro-running-again\/","title":{"rendered":"Got the Mac Pro running again"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Mac Pro “Quad Core”\u00c2\u00a0(specs here<\/a>) that I picked up\u00c2\u00a0at a surplus sale for $50 just cost me another $15. No, wait, it was $20. The power button was blinking on and off and the machine wouldn’t boot. Supposedly<\/a>, you can fix certain things just by resetting the SMC<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0Or maybe the battery is dead. Since the computer is about 10+ years old and probably was still using the OEM battery, I figured I should start there, I started there by\u00c2\u00a0replacing<\/a> it. (It’s a C2032 lithium battery<\/a>, which is apparently the button battery equivalent of a AA. It cost me $5, because I didn’t \u00c2\u00a0check Amazon, where they\u00c2\u00a0run\u00c2\u00a0about 80\u00c2\u00a2<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

But, sorry, no luck with the SMC or battery. That left “bad\u00c2\u00a0RAM”<\/a> as the problem. The RAM is (unfortunately) but exotic and obsolete:\u00c2\u00a0PC6400 DDR2 ECC 800MHz in pairs of 240 Pin FB-DIMM Modules. \u00c2\u00a0ECC memory!<\/a> Can you believe it? I don’t think I’ve used ECC RAM since leaving college and the DECSystem-20<\/a>‘s core<\/a> memory. Or, who knows? Maybe I use ECC memory\u00c2\u00a0all the time via Facebook, Google, Amazon, and other web-based services. But I’ve never had to pay for it. It’s not cheap, at upwards of\u00c2\u00a0$10 per GB from OWC<\/a>.<\/p>\n

How much could I afford? The machine came with 4 MB, but it supports up to 16 GB (or 32 GB if you cheat). It seems crazy to spend money to upgrade a machine today if you’re only going to have 4 GB when you’re done, but who wants to buy $80 worth of RAM?<\/p>\n

Finally, I hit on the idea of getting the wrong kind of RAM. Apple RAM has about 4 ounces of head-spreaders per stick. (It’s actually pretty amazing. I guess they figure people who buy a Mac Pro are going to be serious users.) But you can get ECC RAM of the wrong kind directly from China<\/a> for just $15. So that’s what I did.<\/p>\n

It arrived, and I installed it. (What an awesome thing it is to have a computer from Apple that is easy to upgrade instead of a hermetically sealed Batmobile<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

The best part is that\u00c2\u00a0it works. It’s probably more failure prone now, I know. But remember, it wasn’t booting at all. This looks better to me:<\/p>\n

\"Mac<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Mac Pro “Quad Core”\u00c2\u00a0(specs here) that I picked up\u00c2\u00a0at a surplus sale for $50 just cost me another $15. No, wait, it was $20. The power button was blinking on and off and the machine wouldn’t boot. Supposedly, you can fix certain things just by resetting the SMC.\u00c2\u00a0Or maybe the battery is dead. Since […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[52],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-981","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paRqpr-fP","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/accretiondisc.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/981","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/accretiondisc.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/accretiondisc.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/accretiondisc.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/accretiondisc.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=981"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/accretiondisc.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/981\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/accretiondisc.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/accretiondisc.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/accretiondisc.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}