Booting a Power Mac with a 30" Cinema and Nvidia 6800 Ultra DDL Graphics Card

As we noted in Monday's How Fast Is It? article on the NV6800 Ultra, once installed there was no way to boot our new Power Mac G5 except off the main drive with the Nvidia drivers we installed BEFORE we installed the card and hooked up the monitor. Not even the system install discs that came with our month-old Power Mac G5 would boot it. How would we reinstall Mac OS X if we had a rare disaster with no CD that would boot it? How would we create another startup drive?

Well, the only way to do it, we thought and noted at the time, was to switch out the NV6800 Ultra for the stock ATI 9600 XT graphics card, install Mac OS X and the NV6800 drivers and then switch the cards again, a lengthy royal PITA. To do this an extra monitor is needed also since the 30" Cinema Display will only run off NV6800 cards. But what if we had sold our stock graphics card before realizing the conundrum or didn't have a spare monitor?

There is another solution, one that Apple should have included with each $600 NV6800 card sold, at least for the time being. Install Disc 1 of the system disk set that came with our month-old 2.5 GHz Power Mac G5 is version 1.2 and is Mac OS X 10.3.4, no less, even though 10.3.5 has been out for a long time. But we found out that there is a newer version 1.3 of Install Disc 1 that comes with more recent (less than a month!) Power Mac G5s and it will boot a Power Mac G5 with a NV6800 card and 30" Cinema Display.

So we called AppleCare to get the newer set of system install discs. Rather than doing the right thing at first, the AppleCare technician said the official workaround was to switch cards back and forth and not to send out new system discs. I was astonished but I pressed him for the new discs. After all, this is something Apple should have anticipated and switching cards and monitors is no simple 5-minute task. It would have been a simple matter for Apple to have included a new v1.3 Install Disc set with each NV6800 card. The suggested workaround is absurd, especially for an $8000 purchase. When you call AppleCare remember that, if suggested, their workaround won't work if you no longer have your stock graphics card or don't have an extra display or both. Our new system discs should arrive within a week according to the technician.