G5 HD swap question

Greetings all. My GF has a 1.6G (PCI) Power Mac G5 that will no longer boot up. I did some troubleshooting on it and am pretty sure it's the logic board (I'm very PC saavy but do not know that much about Macs). I have found a reasonably priced used 2.0G dual processor (PCI-X) Power Mac G5. So my question is - will the 2.0G G5 boot up and function properly using the hard drive of the 1.6G system if I swap it into that unit (meaning installing the old system's HD as is into the new system without changing anything on it)?

Thanks in advance,
Zak

zakmichaels said:

Greetings all. My GF has a 1.6G (PCI) Power Mac G5 that will no longer boot up. I did some troubleshooting on it and am pretty sure it's the logic board (I'm very PC saavy but do not know that much about Macs). I have found a reasonably priced used 2.0G dual processor (PCI-X) Power Mac G5. So my question is - will the 2.0G G5 boot up and function properly using the hard drive of the 1.6G system if I swap it into that unit (meaning installing the old system's HD as is into the new system without changing anything on it)?

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It should. However, I would download and apply the most recent Update Combo for your version of OS X to be absolutely certain all drivers for that new machine are in place.

lifeisabeach said:

It should. However, I would download and apply the most recent Update Combo for your version of OS X to be absolutely certain all drivers for that new machine are in place.

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Thanks for the reply...

Just to be clear - her current system will not boot at all and, if I am interpreting your comment correctly, I may run into issues getting the new system to boot since there may be missing drivers seeing as I wouldn't be able to apply the latest Update combo before booting up the new system. If so, does Mac have a "safe mode" to boot up to similar to that in the PC world so that I could have at least minimal functionality in order to get any driver updates I would need?

Cheers.

zakmichaels said:

Thanks for the reply...

Just to be clear - her current system will not boot at all and, if I am interpreting your comment correctly, I may run into issues getting the new system to boot since there may be missing drivers seeing as I wouldn't be able to apply the latest Update combo before booting up the new system. If so, does Mac have a "safe mode" to boot up to similar to that in the PC world so that I could have at least minimal functionality in order to get any driver updates I would need?

Cheers.

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No no… I did mean install the Update Combo after moving it. It should work… I have a bootable USB thumb drive that at one point I moved around between a Mac Pro, Mac mini, and a MacBook, and all booted fine from it. It probably shouldn't be "necessary" to re-run the Update after moving the drive. It looks like both models came out at the same time, so it's highly unlikely the drivers aren't there already. I'm advising it purely as a precautionary measure. There's certainly no reason not to do it.

And yes, there is a Safe Mode.
Mac OS X: Starting up in Safe Mode

EDIT: Just to elaborate… an installation of OS X should already have all the drivers available for any Mac that version is compatible with and switches to them on startup if need be.