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I have an old Mac Pro 1,1 (from 2006) that I am trying to make usable again. I can't access most websites, download updates, or do anything else that might require HTTP requests because (I'm assuming) SSL/HTTPS stuff has been updated in recent years. Since I can't install any updates (and 10.6 might be the latest I can upgrade to anyway), how can I fix my SSL/HTTPS issues?

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  • You can get a 1,1 to Lion, 10.7.5, but I'm not sure that will help. There's a list of 'modern' browsers/mailers that work on Snow Leo kept on forums.macrumors.com/threads/…
    – Tetsujin
    Sep 23, 2021 at 23:23
  • Try Firefox Legacy at parrotgeek.com/fxlegacy.html
    – lhf
    Sep 23, 2021 at 23:39
  • You could try installing a 64 bit Windows 10 or current 64 bit Linux such as Ubuntu. Sep 23, 2021 at 23:41
  • @Tetsujin I had already tried upgrading to Lion by downloading and copying the installer from another computer, but couldn’t get past the first step which makes an HTTP request (I assume) to verify the authenticity of the installer.
    – Andrew
    Sep 24, 2021 at 6:06
  • @DavidAnderson I also tried installing Ubuntu (using a patched version of 20.04 to account for the 32 bit EFI, from mattgradient.com). I got as far as booting up Ubuntu from the DVD, but the graphics were glitchy, so I decided not to go forward with the install. Maybe there’s an NVIDIA driver available that will fix it. I don’t know. I didn’t get that far. I decided to go back to seeing if there was a way to fix my current issue instead of starting over from scratch.
    – Andrew
    Sep 24, 2021 at 6:18

2 Answers 2

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Step 1: Download a browser with up-to-date certificates, such as Firefox Legacy (aka Nightly) to a USB drive and copy it to the Applications folder on the old Mac. See List of web browsers, email clients, and FTP clients that run on older Macs

Step 2: Remove old version of Homebrew if you have it installed.

rm -rf /usr/local/Cellar /usr/local/.git && brew cleanup

Step 3: Download the install script for Tigerbrew (a fork of Homebrew which supports older versions of OS X. Since curl will be too old to download this, you will have to do it manually (right-click, "save as" to your home directory).

https://raw.github.com/mistydemeo/tigerbrew/go/install

Step 4: Open Terminal and run the Tigerbrew installer (install is the name of the file you just downloaded):

ruby install

Step 5: Add this to your ~/.bash_profile if you haven't already.

export PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:$PATH

Step 6: After installing, run brew doctor. This will set up a few things, but also prompt you to install a few things such as:

brew install curl
brew install git
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As noted in comments for the browser try Firefox legacy.

For other software try using Macports Macports has a version for each version of OSX going back to Tiger and these have been in constant maintainence since then and are fully part of current development.

To install

  1. Make sure you have Xcode - Probably best for version 3.2 (Snow Leopard unfortunately was the OS where the latest version 4.x had to be purchased) https://guide.macports.org/#installing.xcode.snowleopard
  2. Download the package for Snow Leopard
  3. Install the package - double click on it in Finder
  4. I think this will alter your ~/.bash_profile top add /opt/local/bin to your path - if not do it manually.

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