[SOLVED] 2008 Mac Pro, can't install OS X

[wahoo233]

Hey guys, I just recently bought a 2008 mac pro, emc 2180 a1186 with no hard drives in it. I bought 2 new WD Blue 1tb drives, installed them correctly and ordered a copy of Snow Leopard. I got the disk in, booted to disk and got an option to install OS from disk. The process started and then i got an error to restart my computer. I have no time machine backup and no access to another Mac. What can I do here? Thanks!

 

[velocityg4]

Is it the white disc with the snow leopard on it or the grey discs? The white disc is for any compatible Mac. The grey discs are model specific.

Did you partition the drives in disk utility using a GUID Partition Map and Mac OS Extended (Journaled)?
http://www.macworld.com/article/2055589/storage/how-to-format-a-startup-drive-for-a-mac.html#slide7

Try doing a PRAM reset first.
http://www.macworld.com/article/2881177/macs/how-to-reset-your-macs-nvram-pram-and-smc.html

Choose a minimal set of options, base install. All you'll be doing, I assume, is updating to 10.6.8 then upgrading to 10.11 from the App Store. You don't need the extra garbage. When you download 10.11. Create a USB key installer. That way you can do a clean install in the future without re-downloading.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/09/how-to-make-your-own-bootable-os-x-10-11-el-capitan-usb-install-drive/

 

[wahoo233]

I can't even get to the utilities. It kernel panicked after I clicked install. And it's a gray disk. This is the version with the evga gtx video card. I can't get to any interface that I can tell to try to partition the drive. In my defense I don't know a thing about Macs so any direction will help. I will try to figure out resetting the pram

 

[velocityg4]

Is the grey disk labeled for Mac Pro? It needs to be.

Try holding the shift key while booting. Before the chime and until you see the OS loading. This use Safe Mode.

 

[McHenryB]

This illustrates the danger of buying OS X disks from eBay. OS X comes (or, rather, came since OS X is no longer sold on disks) in two versions - retail editions, and machine-specific editions. The former work on any (supported) Mac; the latter only on the particular model they were sold with. Unscrupulous sellers will sell machine-specific versions without pointing out this fact.