Today’s side project is shoehorning a more modern video card into my 2008 Xserve 2,1.
For about ten years Apple also made servers…
The first Xserve models back in 2002 had G4 PPC processors in them, and I installed a stack of them along with the external drive array for Marianapolis Prep in Connecticut.
In 2005 the G5 Xserve came out, and was quickly replaced by the Xeon powered Xserve 1,1 in 2006 due to the Intel transition. The 2,1 came out in 2008, and the 3,1 came out in 2009 – and the entire line was cancelled in 2011
The Xserve is basically a 19″ rack-mount version of the equivalent era’s Mac Pro, so this is essentially a MacPro 3,1 with fewer PCIe slots.
In typical Apple fashion, the Xserve is as much art as it is server.
This one was used for several years as the SFTP server for receiving game builds for testing, and has been out of service for about a decade now.
The only real problem it has is the x1300 MXM video card (upper left) is very odd, somewhat proprietary, and pretty underpowered… It was a server after all, so graphics weren’t very important in Apple’s opinion – and then they tweaked OSX’s UI to require 3D acceleration…
For the OS it came with though (Snow Leopard) and the $499 server version (Snow Leopard Server) it was more than enough. But, with a better video card this 2008 server will also run this year’s MacOS “Sequoia”.
Which leads us to today’s fiddling.
I have a single slot, PCIe-powered Nvidia 730 which should be supported by the machine, but without the custom Apple firmware it doesn’t appear to work.
Typically, without the Apple Blessed Firmware you just get a blank screen until the OS fully comes up, but I’m not getting anything.
I have an Apple GT120 video card coming, which should allow for the installation of newer OS versions as well. So, I’ll leave this here for now and return once the card gets here.
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