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Mac Pro 1,1 CPU Upgrade

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My work machine is a Mac Pro 1,1, and it’s obviously getting a bit long in the tooth. I upgraded the video card from an X1900 to a Radeon HD 5770 (which works fine) last year, and just yesterday, I undertook the process of installing two Xeon X5355‘s rather than the stock 5150 processors. The process is pretty simple (I’d call it a medium difficulty), but is easy enough to follow instructions online1 (the hardest part was removing the cowl from the processors). You’ll need a 3mm 9″ hex key (I happened to have one), and some thermal compound (I used Arctic Silver 5).

The processors I used were purchased off ebay for all of $54/each with free shipping. BTW, make sure to buy the SLAEG revision, as this version halves the idle power usage down to about what the stock CPUs use2. Install time was about an hour with pulling everything apart, and doing the thermal compound correctly (clean the CPU/heatsink, prime/tint both surfaces, etc).

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  1. I’ve actually found this to be the best written instructions on getting MOST of the way there [↩]
  2. The stock 5150’s use 24W idle, and about 65W full power. The X5355 SLAEG use 25W idle, and 120W at full power. Decreased power usage seems to be from the SLAEG supporting Demand Based Switching. [↩]

Final Cut Studio 7 co-existing with FCP X

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Here at work, we have FCS7 and FCPX on all our lab machines, but we’ve always had a weird issue where the Mac App Store (MAS) shows updates being available, but they won’t install due to some error. After thinking about it for a while, I took at look at the Final Cut Studio 7 apps that have FCP X equivalents (Final Cut Pro.app, Motion.app, and Compressor.app), and interestingly, I found in Contents that each had a _MASReceipt directory. Interesting. It seems at some point the MAS put receipt files in the older versions of the apps, and that confused it thinking that there were updates.

Anyway, removing these directories from each of the apps fixed the issue. Seems like a bug on Apple’s part. =/

UPDATE: Upon looking further, it actually seems like the MAS put the receipts in the wrong apps. The _MASReceipt directories were in the old versions, but not in the proper versions. This SEEMS to be because, for our students sake, I renamed the MAS versions of FCPX apps X.app1 but left the older versions by their original names. Once we switch to using FCPX primarily, I’ll file the old versions away, but for now, it just appears that Apple does things based on the name of the app, and not any kind of application signing. At least, in 10.6.8. =/ I was, however, able to move the _MASReceipt directories into their respective, correct, apps, and the MAS saw that, and now reports them as installed. Weird.

  1. So, Final Cut Pro X.app, Motion X.app, and Compressor X.app [↩]

Steve Jobs

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While the web is filled with memorials, testimonials, quotes, etc about Steve’s passing, I figured it only appropriate that I say something… since while I am a System Administrator by profession, I am a Mac user by lifestyle. From the computers I’ve used at home since I was 5, to the servers I work with today, I work with Apple hardware. I’ve always loved Apple hardware, even when they made rather uninspiring devices during period between Steve Jobs’ leaving, then returning to Apple. I wouldn’t call myself a cultist, but I would call myself a skeptical believer. Apple has made some missteps in my mind (killing the Xserve, the rather drastic changes in 10.7 server, etc), but I do believe that what they do they do because they truly believe “this is how it should be”. It’s not just a “this will make us money” or anything like that. Steve, and Apple, both thought they were taking something that was imperfect, and bringing it closer to perfection. And he realized that perfection was out there, somewhere just beyond reach, so you had Apple products that evolved from generation to generation.

What hit me yesterday was that Steve basically bookended his career with the birth, and the (arguably) death of the personal computer. The Apple I/II, and the Macintosh were largely the birth of the real personal computer, and with the release of iOS 5, you have an iPhone, iPad that can be used PC free, which some argue has brought about the end of the PC era. I’m not sure if I agree with that, but it certainly is a step toward the lifestyle where we may have an actual computer at home, or work, but day to day, our lives will largely be played out on phones, tablets, etc. This is already the case for most of us, and will only become more so for others as time passes.

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