Installing Displaylink driver on another system HD

[sultanmakende]

Ok, so seems like I can.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202796
But I'm not sure that my old early Mac Pro will boot from a Mac mini installed Mavericks, so I will do do a test install of both Mavericks and the displaylink driver on a spare drive to see if it will.

[saudor]

you may be right in that the mac mini might use a 2.5 inch SATA laptop drive vs the 3.5inch desktop in the mac pro.

If that is the case (I think it is), you'll end up needing a 3.5 inch SATA to USB enclosure

On the other hand, you can put in your mac mini drive into the mac pro AFTER you install the driver onto your mac mini if all you need to do is access files on the mac pro. this assumes that your mac mini uses a standard laptop drive and not something that is soldered onto the motherboard

[sultanmakende]

Yep, I already have a SATA to USB device, which is what I will be using.
Later today I will have a go and post my results.
Many thanks for the input.

[sultanmakende]

hi Saudor,
so I managed to install Mavericks on an external drive via the Mac Mini by booting up while holding shift + option +command +R and logging into my apple account, which installed the mavericks OS via the internet.
However as I suspected, it installed the software specific to the 2014 Mac Mini hardware and the 2006 MacPro would not boot from that disk.
Actually I find it rather silly that Displaylink installer won't allow the driver to be installed on an externally mounted boot / OS drive.
I wish the developers would do an upgrade to allow this as it must be a common problem.

[saudor]

That's really odd. There's a ton of cloning software like CarbonCopy, SuperDuper (i use this one) that can be used to boot a mac from an external drive despite it being from another computer.
I guess at this point, your option might be to plug in the mac pro disk into your mini and access files that way

Actually...
http://www.everymac.com/systems/appl...2.0-specs.html

If that is the one you have, that explains it. 2006 mac Pros are only supported till 10.7.5 and of course Mac minis dont run 10.7.5. But i'd go for a new GPU if you can find it. DL hardware while nice for basic reading and light internet, it's not so good for heavy duty work. Your mac mini will likely provide better performance over the 2006 under those conditions.

[sultanmakende]

Yes that was the issue - OS / hardware incompatibility that I suspected would happen.
And indeed, getting the DL to work on the Macpro was only to confirm that it is indeed a video card problem, before I splash out on a replacement.
I will just go through the exact symptoms below to get any opinions if my diagnosis of faulty video card is correct:

1.Press start button and familiar chime
2.Apple logo appears.
3.Rotating progress ring for about a minute or two below apple logo.
4.Progress ring stops, screen flashes and goes totally white, then nothing more.

I have also verified the HD, no problem there, and the above also happens even if i try booting/re-installing from a bootable pendrive installer.

My theory is that the video ram on the video card is burned, but as I said I wanted to eliminate all other possibilities before buying an new card and the DL option was one way of doing so, if I could only get the driver on to the Macpro's boot drive!
I wish the developers at DL would find a way to allow installing the DL driver on to an external boot HD.
Once again, thanks for your input!

[saudor]

There are guides out there that should force installation of OS X on unsupported hardware. After all, I even got Mavericks running on an AMD windows PC. I think there is an ongoing thread on macrumors concerning the mac Pro 2006 and El Capitan. (Mavericks should definitely be possible)

The hackintosh forums are a good resource to get non Mac graphics card working with OSx. (These tend to be cheaper). I hear the ATI 5770 (I picked one up for $20 used a year ago) is pretty easy as macs actually use the card.

Do you have access to a PC that you could place the card in? Or even another Mac. The former might prove difficult if the firmware on the card pertains to a mac

Do you get the same symptoms from a snow Leopard installer? But sounds like a graphics issue.

[alphadog00]

Originally Posted by sultanmakende

Yes that was the issue - OS / hardware incompatibility that I suspected would happen.
And indeed, getting the DL to work on the Macpro was only to confirm that it is indeed a video card problem, before I splash out on a replacement.
I will just go through the exact symptoms below to get any opinions if my diagnosis of faulty video card is correct:

1.Press start button and familiar chime
2.Apple logo appears.
3.Rotating progress ring for about a minute or two below apple logo.
4.Progress ring stops, screen flashes and goes totally white, then nothing more.

I have also verified the HD, no problem there, and the above also happens even if i try booting/re-installing from a bootable pendrive installer.

My theory is that the video ram on the video card is burned, but as I said I wanted to eliminate all other possibilities before buying an new card and the DL option was one way of doing so, if I could only get the driver on to the Macpro's boot drive!
I wish the developers at DL would find a way to allow installing the DL driver on to an external boot HD.
Once again, thanks for your input!

Is the mac seen on the network? Can you ping it or see the machine from another mac? If not, then I would say it is more then your video card. From step number 4, I can't tell if it has finished booting or not, but I suspect it has not and you have either corruption on your hard drive or some other hardware failure.

If it were video card, I would expect to see no display at all. Try rebooting in verbose mode and/or single user mode to see what is loading and where it fails.