Need Direction on Best OS for Clean install – New SSD for FCP 7.03 – older Mac Pro

[Neil Patience]

Hi Don

I have FCP 7.03 running on an SSD on my MAC PRO which is older than your model. I run it on Lion without any issue. I also run Lion on a new i7 Macbook Pro
with FCP 7.03 also on an SSD. It takes about 10 secs to boot from cold.
Many here have successfully used Mountain Lion – there are quite a few posts on that. A few have reported issues on ML but often turns out they did not do a clean install.

Certainly Lion will give you no issues I am happy to recommend that. (Being 64bit some apps are able to use more ram and run more quickly however sadly that does not apply to FCP 7 as its 32 bit)

best wishes
Neil
http://www.patience.tv

8 Core MacPro, Kona 3, Tangent Wave, Mackie Universal Symphony 6.5 FCP7
i7 2.7 Gig MBP (non retina) 16Gigs Ram Blackmagic Monitor Mini Symphony 6.5 FCP7

[Don Cobble]

Thank U needed the reassurance before I went to all the trouble – I still have the original Graphics card NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT should that be ok with Lion

PC
I7 2.8 Ghz 8GB Ram
Win 7 Pro 64bit OS
PNY Quadro 4000

3-4 TB HD
Vegas 10 64bit & Vegas 11 64Bit & Vegas 12 & Adobe Production Premium CS5.5.2 & Avid Media Composer 5.5

Camera
Sony EX1 shoot in 1920×1080 30P

[Don Cobble]

Sir Neil,
I just found that I cannot buy Lion any longer do you know if Leopard or Snow Leopard would be better?
Thank U
Don

PC
I7 2.8 Ghz 8GB Ram
Win 7 Pro 64bit OS
PNY Quadro 4000

3-4 TB HD
Vegas 10 64bit & Vegas 11 64Bit & Vegas 12 & Adobe Production Premium CS5.5.2 & Avid Media Composer 5.5

Camera
Sony EX1 shoot in 1920×1080 30P

[Ryan Holmes]

Snow Leopard 10.6.8 is the last supported OS for FCP7. I would run that if you want to be absolutely sure it’ll work well.

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
@CutColorPost

[Neil Patience]

Hi Don

While Ryan is correct and FCP7 was last supported on Snow Leopard it is not supported anymore anyway so it does not really matter.
It will run perfectly on Lion I have 2 computers ranging from 2007 to 2012 models and its totally fine on either.

The 7300 is fine under Lion but you need to change driver for ML but I would avoid ML really and stick with Lion.

Apparently you can buy it from apple if you call sales on 1-800-692-7753 and it is $20 – if thats no longer the case or you are not convinced then Sow Leopard would be the way to go.

best wishes
Neil
http://www.patience.tv

8 Core MacPro, Kona 3, Tangent Wave, Mackie Universal Symphony 6.5 FCP7
i7 2.7 Gig MBP (non retina) 16Gigs Ram Blackmagic Monitor Mini Symphony 6.5 FCP7

[Don Cobble]

Thank You Neil for your help!

PC
I7 2.8 Ghz 8GB Ram
Win 7 Pro 64bit OS
PNY Quadro 4000

3-4 TB HD
Vegas 10 64bit & Vegas 11 64Bit & Vegas 12 & Adobe Production Premium CS5.5.2 & Avid Media Composer 5.5

Camera
Sony EX1 shoot in 1920×1080 30P

[Don Cobble]

Thank You Ryan

PC
I7 2.8 Ghz 8GB Ram
Win 7 Pro 64bit OS
PNY Quadro 4000

3-4 TB HD
Vegas 10 64bit & Vegas 11 64Bit & Vegas 12 & Adobe Production Premium CS5.5.2 & Avid Media Composer 5.5

Camera
Sony EX1 shoot in 1920×1080 30P

[John Pale]

It sounds to me like you have a Mac Pro 1,1.
You cannot run Mountain Lion on this machine (without extreme hackery, anyway…yes, I’ve done it )

Lion will work fine with FCP 7, though no real reason to upgrade beyond Snow Leopard unless the features of Lion are important to you or other software you have requires it.

Your original 7300 graphics card is very slow by today’s standards, but FCP makes very little use of graphics acceleration. However, if you want to use Color, you might want to look for a used AMD Radeon card 4870, 5770.
Color likes AMD instead of Nvidia. Newer AMD cards won’t work, so you’d have to find an older one on the used market,

I ended up selling my Mac Pro 1,1 and getting a used 3,1 used as a stopgap until see where Apple was going with Pro machines. Nowhere, so far..but that’s another thread.

[Bret Williams]

I have a 1,1 running lion with a 5770. Even runs FCP X pretty decent. How do you hack it to run Mountain Lion? FCP 7 runs even better on Mountain Lion IMO because just about every thing works better in Mountain Lion compared to LIon. I’d skip Lion and Leopard and go with their more refined leaner versions snow leopard or mountain lion.

[John Pale]

Basically, you have to turn your genuine Mac into a Hackintosh, by using a non-Apple boot loader called Chameleon.
This is because Mountain Lion does not have a 32 bit kernel and a 64 bit kernel as earlier MacOSX versions do. There is only a 64 bit kernel. The Mac Pro 1,1 and 2,1 can only physically handle 32 bit EFI firmware, so they cannot boot the 64 bit kernel normally via EFI. They can boot the 64 bit Kernel like a PC, using BIOS..but that involves a very complicated hack.
If you do it wrong, you can render your computer completely unbootable…so I will not post the procedure here.

If you are still interested, you can go to the forums at netkas.org and read the very long thread about it.

I do not recommend doing it, unless you are very advanced with the terminal and Hackintosh stuff.

Even if you are advanced, I still think you are better off getting a used machine off e-bay that can run the 64 bit kernel normally, if you want to run Mountain Lion. That would be a MacPro 3,1 or newer. Lion runs very well on the hacked Mac Pro 1,1 in true 64 bit, but Mountain Lion has some odd power management issues, and some random flakiness that make it not worth the effort on a production machine. If you want to do it for kicks on an extra machine, knock yourself out. It’s kind a fun to get it working…like mission impossible.