...Heartened by this, I popped the disc out ( I finally know what the Mac weenies in Dominion chat meant when they chanted "Six over, three down!!!" from time to time... that's the number of holes under the optical drive to find the right spot to poke the eject button...
) and slid drive sled #1 into its slot.
Hall-leh-fukkin'-lu-jeh!!! Signs of life!!! I see a rotten apple on the screen! I let it run for aboot a minute, but progress was quite slow, and I was afraid to let it go any longer until I'd properly serviced the heat-sink, etc. as it was just on there with 4 screws.
We'll see how that service goes... I have a .iso for Mint with Cinnamon and Xfce DE, as well as GhostBSD with MATE DE. If the Mac boot disk or the GT8800 don't wanna play nice, I have them on standby. ![Evil >:D](https://www.eevblog.com/forum/Smileys/default/xevil.gif.pagespeed.ic.tdrs7Uj5gu.png)
mnem
![Tweak :-/O](https://www.eevblog.com/forum/Smileys/default/smiliey_cal.gif.pagespeed.ce.yYMcAvxBJk.gif)
Congratulation, you've done a dam(pun intended) good job; now you have a good Mac video card, which I would recommend to use it only when needed. And for future references: the reflowing can be re-done a few times, if needed ![Evil >:D](https://www.eevblog.com/forum/Smileys/default/xevil.gif.pagespeed.ic.tdrs7Uj5gu.png)
Yeah, I'm studying the airflow through this thing right now; I have a couple ideas for ensuring it gets nice cold outside air in hopes of preventing future relapse. If this thing does wind up as my *NIX workstation, it may very well be on a high duty cycle, as I am old and pretty slow anymore.
![Tongue :P](https://www.eevblog.com/forum/Smileys/default/xtongue.gif.pagespeed.ic.J5mTe0A2NA.png)
Impressive. Next time I get an IT related problem I’m going to solve it with a flame thrower too. ![Laughing :-DD](https://www.eevblog.com/forum/Smileys/default/smiley_laughing.gif.pagespeed.ce._hfWAz_QHO.gif)
or the famous 50 grams ...
Well... when the only tool you have is a dragon...
Now, now Saskia... you know how ceefour gives me heartburn. ![Wink ;)](https://www.eevblog.com/forum/Smileys/default/xwink.gif.pagespeed.ic.cldandycH0.png)
Wow, that is very, very brave - congratulations to your repair! I am not sure I'd ever go that far with my heatgunny :-) Cheers, THDplusN_bad
Well, this kind of tinkery is exactly what I bought the cheap hot-air rework station for; I'm glad to be able to put it to proper use.
![Wink ;)](https://www.eevblog.com/forum/Smileys/default/xwink.gif.pagespeed.ic.cldandycH0.png)
The one I used on the bottom for preheat... that was bought for like CAD$12 off Amazon specifically for heat-shrink tubing and light incendiary work.
![Laughing :-DD](https://www.eevblog.com/forum/Smileys/default/smiley_laughing.gif.pagespeed.ce._hfWAz_QHO.gif)
Together, they seemed to work quite well in this application.
Thanks for the feedback everyone. ![ThumbsUp :-+](https://www.eevblog.com/forum/Smileys/default/icon_smile_thumbsup.gif.pagespeed.ce._JElyJQqdB.gif)
The boot partition is completely borked; I let it try to boot for over 30 minutes, then ~10 seconds after the progress bar went away, it just shut itself down. I was able to get it to boot from the recovery/utility partition tho last night... spent aboot 30 minutes poking around until I had to go to bed ~2am as I kept falling asleep on the KB.
I figured it was better to take it up again after a decent night's sleep in my own bed rather than wake up again with a wrenched back and my face looking like a Belgian waffle. ![Laughing :-DD](https://www.eevblog.com/forum/Smileys/default/smiley_laughing.gif.pagespeed.ce._hfWAz_QHO.gif)
It appears from the Utilities applet this machine does in fact support FIRMWARE RAID; but only RAID 0 & RAID 1. I'm guessing they saved RAID 5 for those willing to pony up for a hardware RAID Controller.
![Roll Eyes ::)](https://www.eevblog.com/forum/Smileys/default/rolleyes.gif.pagespeed.ce.XcUK202Yqt.gif)
While there are enough drives here to do a mirrored RAID 0, I'm already annoyed by the failed boot disk, so will probably just use the individual drives for different OSes as the winds of tinkery carry me. If I get really annoyed with the speed of the spinning rust, I can always just put some cheap SSDs in there. Would also decrease the heat suffered by that GPU considerably.
*sigh*
And to add insult to injury... just as there appeared to be some progress with the MacPro itself, the 30in Cinema Display just kakked, after working perfectly for 3 days on various other PCs.
![Face Palm :palm:](https://www.eevblog.com/forum/Smileys/default/xfacepalm.gif.pagespeed.ic.EBDwh1hCfo.png)
No smoke, not even a whimper; just refused to turn on or show any signs of life this morning.
mnem
Fuck you, Murphy.