New to Mac, and I'm already GOING CRAZY!

[MaximumHeat]

Well, kind of...let me elaborate:

I traded my PS2 for a Mac Pro 5.1. Specs:
- 2.8 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon
- 8 GB 1066 MHz DDR3
- (4) 1 TB HDD
- ATI Radeon 5770 Graphics Card

My buddy says this computer is from like 2008-9. First off, I was so impressed that such an old computer could be so capable and even relevant today. When I got it home, I tried to get it working, only to suffer display issues. It would boot up, show the Apple logo, then the screen would shut off.

So I tried multiple TVs and monitors to no avail.

I finally remedied this by purchasing a new DVI to VGA adapter. Lo and behold, I could now boot up! The screen no longer shut off after the Apple logo. I was ecstatic. But something just wasn't right...

All of the colors were just... off. The color red seems to be missing entirely, and other colors just showed up as different, like a hue of blue or greenish tint. So, I did some reading, and someone on a forum recommended another user (using a MacBook, though) to use the Mini DP to HDMI option and that would fix the issue. So, I'm currently waiting on a Mini DP to HDMI adapter, but something happened and the package was lost. 14 days later, I'm now getting a refund for it. I live far away from any computer or Apple store, so I have to order everything.

So I came home from work today, and the computer had been left on, but the TV was put to sleep. I sat down and clicked play on a YouTube video, and after a few seconds, the screen suddenly went FULL COLOR! Everything was perfect and vibrant. I was so amazed and happy that I couldn't believe it. But then, the screen flickered to the dull bluish tint a couple of times, and then after about 5 minutes, went back to that blue tint and stayed that way.

So I'm seeking advice. This computer is so freakin' old, it doesn't have an HDMI port. It does have Bluetooth, but no HDMI. I didn't even know what a Mini DP was, but it has two of those ports and a DVI port. I'm currently using an old VGA cable to a TV, and was wondering if I should try DVI to VGA and just buy a new VGA cable (in hopes that it's just a bad VGA cable) or should I use Mini DP to HDMI?

I'm totally new to Mac, and honestly I didn't even know that they used DVI and Mini DP ports exclusively. I was kind of surprised there was no VGA port at all on the computer.

Seasoned Apple veterans, please advise me. What is the best route to go to get this old (but still pretty kick ass) computer to work again? It's really all I have and although it's functional, it sure would be nice to have full color support on it. Does this sound more like a software issue to you? VGA cable? Bad graphics card? BTW, resetting NVRAM and SMC accomplished nothing.

I'm half tempted to just install Linux on it, but I really wanted to enjoy the MacOS as I found it quite enjoyable and intuitive. When trying to do a software update from Snow Leopard, it says that everything is already up to date. Any suggestions on what I can do to get the colors back to normal?

 

[Horsa]

Hi there @MaximumHeat: welcome to the forum and the Mac family.

First off, let me say that yes, despite their vintage now, IMHO the Mac Pros are definitely still kick-ass: real powerhouse machines and hugely upgradeable. I love mine!

From your brief tech description, it sounds like yours is this 2010 model. The latest version of MacOS you can upgrade to is 10.14 (Mojave). However, as far as I'm aware, you can't do an upgrade directly from Snow Leopard to Mojave: you'd need to step up to, say, El Capitan first, then move on to Mojave. If you wanted to get to Mojave in one leap, you'd have to format your system drive and do a totally fresh, full install of Mojave. Doing it this way, of course, you'd get a nice clean OS, but you'd lose any other apps that are already on the machine. More info on the OS upgrade path here: How to get old versions of macOS

From your description of what's happening - especially the random, inconsistent rendering behaviour - provided you're sure that your VGA cable and DVI to VGA adapter are both of good quality and reliable - it sounds like the graphics card is flaky and needs replacing. However, before you go spending more money...

Did you actually see the machine hooked up to a monitor and working properly before you did the deal, or was it an online purchase? If you bought it from a dealer of any repute and it was advertised as being in full working order, your first act should be to take it back and get them to fit it with a working graphics card.

Apart from the graphics problem, as far as you can see, does everything else seem to be behaving itself? You mention that you've found the OS enjoyable, so I'm guessing the answer is yes.

BTW, if you do eventually want to try Linux on it, there's no need to lose the Mac OS - you can dual-boot if you want to.

 

[Randy B. Singer]

Any suggestions on what I can do to get the colors back to normal?

Here is what I can tell you....

First, VGA is a very old standard for transmitting video via an analog signal to a monitor. It is terribly outdated. Some computers and some monitors still include it as a legacy interface for use with old equipment or as a least common denominator of last resort. It is difficult to adapt a VGA device to use with a digital device because the conversion is very complex.

DVI and DisplayPort are modern industry standard DIGITAL video interfaces. Their time came and went, and HDMI won as the digital standard on almost every modern computer, monitor, and television. Both are easy to find adapters for to use with HDMI, as it is all just digital signals.

The Mac Pro is and has always been a professional high-end machine, offering much better performance than other contemporaneous Mac models. It is highly upgradeable, but doing so will likely be very expensive. At this point it might not be worth investing money into a 11 year old computer. You might be able to purchase, for instance, a brand new Mac mini for close to the price of upgrading your old Mac Pro to not even be as fast as a new mini. (The new M1-based mini runs circles around any older Mac Pro. Technology advances quickly over just a few years.)

Mac Benchmarks - Geekbench

It is HIGHLY unlikely that having a problem with color fidelity on a known good monitor (or TV) is due to a problem with the OS you have installed (no matter what the version). Color fidelity problems might be caused by a bad video cable or video adapter. You should try another cable/adapter and see if that helps. If the problem persists using more than one video cable or adapter, then that isn't the problem. This leaves your video card as a likely cause of your problems. You can find replacement video cards for an old Mac Pro used for about $40:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07NKDTGHM/?tag=macforums0e4-20

I hope this helps.

 

[MaximumHeat]

Here is what I can tell you....

First, VGA is a very old standard for transmitting video via an analog signal to a monitor. It is terribly outdated. Some computers and some monitors still include it as a legacy interface for use with old equipment or as a least common denominator of last resort. It is difficult to adapt a VGA device to use with a digital device because the conversion is very complex.

DVI and DisplayPort are modern industry standard DIGITAL video interfaces. Their time came and went, and HDMI won as the digital standard on almost every modern computer, monitor, and television. Both are easy to find adapters for to use with HDMI, as it is all just digital signals.

The Mac Pro is and has always been a professional high-end machine, offering much better performance than other contemporaneous Mac models. It is highly upgradeable, but doing so will likely be very expensive. At this point it might not be worth investing money into a 11 year old computer. You might be able to purchase, for instance, a brand new Mac mini for close to the price of upgrading your old Mac Pro to not even be as fast as a new mini. (The new M1-based mini runs circles around any older Mac Pro. Technology advances quickly over just a few years.)

Mac Benchmarks - Geekbench

It is HIGHLY unlikely that having a problem with color fidelity on a known good monitor (or TV) is due to a problem with the OS you have installed (no matter what the version). Color fidelity problems might be caused by a bad video cable or video adapter. You should try another cable/adapter and see if that helps. If the problem persists using more than one video cable or adapter, then that isn't the problem. This leaves your video card as a likely cause of your problems. You can find replacement video cards for an old Mac Pro used for about $40:

Amazon.com: Mac Pro 2009 2010 GeForce GT120 512MB Graphic Card A1310 639-0376 630-9643 : Electronics

I hope this helps.

Thank you both so much for your help! I really do like this machine, and I've started to already grow accustomed to the Mac GUI. Coming from a Windows/Linux environment my whole life, I find Mac to be simply awesome and intuitive. I believe that I'll try the cables first, as this is the least costly solution, and if that doesn't work, I'll go with changing the video card. If for some reason that doesn't work, I guess I'll have to work on reinstalling or using Time Machine perhaps to restore to an older state that may work.

Regardless, I will probably keep this computer, since it has four 1 TB hard drives in it, and would be great for storage if nothing else.

Once again, thanks for the speedy responses.

 

[Horsa]

Glad you're liking the experience, @MaximumHeat. One thing's for sure: your graphics problem is definitely a hardware issue. No OS related thing could produce those effects.

Once you've got the graphics thing sorted, you will need to upgrade the OS, though. Snow Leopard is a lovely version to use (I remember it fondly!), but it's totally out of date, security-wise etc. - some modern web content won't even render correctly in the available browsers, and there's no up-to-date 3rd party apps that will run under it.

El Capitan will bring you reasonably up to date. If you want to move on from there to Mojave, it's your choice. Depending what kind of work you want to do on the machine, you might want to throw some more memory in there. You know the old saying: "You can never be too rich, too beautiful or have too much memory in your computer."

 

[MaximumHeat]

Glad you're liking the experience, @MaximumHeat. One thing's for sure: your graphics problem is definitely a hardware issue. No OS related thing could produce those effects.

Once you've got the graphics thing sorted, you will need to upgrade the OS, though. Snow Leopard is a lovely version to use (I remember it fondly!), but it's totally out of date, security-wise etc. - some modern web content won't even render correctly in the available browsers, and there's no up-to-date 3rd party apps that will run under it.

El Capitan will bring you reasonably up to date. If you want to move on from there to Mojave, it's your choice. Depending what kind of work you want to do on the machine, you might want to throw some more memory in there. You know the old saying: "You can never be too rich, too beautiful or have too much memory in your computer."

To update: I found a graphics card that is exactly the same as mine (ATI Radeon 5770 1GB) for only $30 total with shipping and everything, and I figured what the heck, and I went ahead and ordered it. Worst case scenario, I'll have a backup or I believe I could probably resell it on eBay if I found out it was a cable and not that.

I'm just being a tad bit impatient about waiting for the cords to arrive, but I figure for only 30 bucks, it's really not a big loss.

 

[Horsa]

As you say, no harm having a spare graphics card on the go. Keep us posted as to how things progress!

 

[lclev]

I have one of the old silver boxes that I use at work. It is a 2009 (4.1) flashed to run as a 2010 (5.1) Mac Pro and currently running Mojave. I have a GTX 780 video card (flashed to show the start up screen) in it and still have the original GT120 just in case of issues. Spares are good!

The issues you are having really sounds like a cable or adapter. I had an HDMI cable at work that was causing the monitor to just randomly flash and shut off for a few seconds then work again. If the monitor had shown color issues I would have figured a cable issue. So, after blaming everything but the cable, I changed it out and presto - Fixed! Hopefully the new cable will do the same for you.

Lisa