A few years ago I saved up a lot of cash and treated myself to a refurbished 2006 Mac Pro, model 1,1. Every year, I gave it an overhaul… a bit of dusting here, a graphics card there… and as a testament to Apple's products, I upgraded the OS every year, and it kept pace with little or no hassle.

Then, Apple decided to drop support for it in the recent Mountain Lion (10.8) release.

Not fast enough? Unlikely. Not 64-bit? Hardly, I counted the pins on the processor, definitely more than 64 there.....

So, the challenge was on.

After a bit of googling, I figured out how to take my Mac Pro to the next level, thanks to a couple of posts from guys far cleverer than I…

Basically, you need to turn your Mac into a Hack. A this point I hear you panic slightly, but having done it, and having not encountered any problems, I'm happy it hasn't caused me any issues… yet…

So here goes - a Mac Pro 1,1 or 2,1 won't run Mountain Lion because…

* It has a 32-bit firmware that can't be upgraded (EFI32), and ML needs a 64-bit one (EFI64)
* It has a rancid old graphics card by default
* It's name isn't on the bouncer's list, so it won't get into the party (the installer does a model check)

So you need to…

* Fool it into thinking it does have EFI64 at startup
* Spend megabucks on a new card
* Hack the installer to get it to accept your machine

Here's how I did it.

Kudos first to Jabberwok: http://www.jabbawok.net/?p=47#comment-947
… and to Gringo: http://forum.voodooprojects.org/index.php?topic=649.0

First stop - new graphics card. I needed a new one anyway as my old one went on the fritz (I actually got £20 for it on eBay!!) so I bought a stock Apple Store ATI Radeon HD 5770 1024 MB graphics card. No flashing, no hassle.

Then I downloaded the following:

Chameleon boot loader - at time of writing, v2.1 here: http://chameleon.osx86.hu/articles/chameleon-21-latest-version-download-links-updated

Firmware update tool - for my particular version of Pro, here: http://forum.netkas.org/index.php/topic,1094.180.html