DISCLAIMER: This is a continuing series detailing the painful story of a DIY render farm build. It is terribly technics and
somewhat frustrating. Those who are unprepared for such “entertainment” are advised to ignore these posts.
Well, I came back and found that the drive was not really responding. Not only had it failed, attempts to install anything at all failed. I removed the drive physically and put in a new one.
It, also, won’t install. This is consistent, anyway! I thought the whole idea of installing from the USB stick was that it saved time and I could use the same stick repeatedly… But when I tried to restart with the option key down (which allows you to choose what version of the system to use) the USB key showed up in the menu yet never actually booted up. The computer ignored my request and simply booted off the regular old install on the hard drive – the one I’m trying to write over.
Googled it: resetting the PRAM may help? And yes, it did.
But once I restarted and tried to install 10.8 with MLPF it still did not work. Mac Pro 1,1 is not supported – they did warn me about that. To be honest, I’m almost not even thinking about that any more. That MLPF I have was old news – I already mentioned that the same guys had not only retooled their 10.8 hack, they had a new 10.9 and even 10.10 hack, and it looked good. It was a little funky, involving opening the installer.app and replacing some files, manually installing some kexts… the info is clear, but there was more than one written account of how to accomplish it.
Even so, it sure was appealing. 10.9 would not only means using AEFX 2014, it meant I might be able to keep the render farm up to date for even longer before I would have to abandon it!