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APFS support enabled in High Sierra for cMP

JedNZ

JedNZ

macrumors 6502a
Dec 6, 2015
632
241
Deep South
Just need some advice with respect to upgrading the firmware on my cMP 4,1 >5,1 (see my sig for full setup).

I have the following setup:
• An NVIDIA GT120 (PCI slot 4 - not hooked up to a monitor usually, but can)
• A Sapphire Nitro R9 380X (PCI slot 1 - attached to a 4K screen)
• A Samsung 850 EVO in an Accelsior S PCI-e SATA III adapter (PCI slot 2 - this is my boot drive with admin User accounts and all the apps)
• A Samsung 960 EVO NVMe in a PCI-e adapter (PCI slot 3) paired in a FD with a WD HDD (in a Direct Connect Bay) for my User data
• 3 other HDDs (backups and TM) and a SDD (Win10) in the other Direct Connect and Optical Bays.

What do I need to remove in order to safely upgrade just the firmware?
1. Can I do the firmware upgrade by booting from my normal PCI-e SATA III SSD boot drive? Or do I need to boot from a normal HDD? Would I need to remove the Accelsior S PCI-e SSD drive if I boot from the HDD?
2. Do I hook up the GT120 to my spare monitor (it gives boot screens)?
3. Do I have to remove the R9 380X, or can I leave it installed?
4. Do I remove the NVMe FD plus the accompanying HDD part of the FD?
5. Do I remove all other HDDs and SSD?

I can boot my Accelsior S PCI-e SSD without the NVMe FD installed as I have admin User accounts on it. So do I remove the NVMe FD and all the other drives, or do I need to boot from a HDD and remove everything else? I plan to delay upgrading to macOS 10.13 HS for a month or more to make sure the kinks are ironed out by those who pioneer before me. Any/all advice welcome.

Or do I simply wait for GM to be released?
 
h9826790

h9826790

macrumors P6
Apr 3, 2014
16,650
8,574
Hong Kong
weckart said:
I think the GPU is definitely the cause of my woes. Radeon HD7950. Fine under Sierra. For some reason, after updating the firmware my Mountain Lion disk wouldn't boot and clearly failed where the gpu drivers kicked in. I tried booting up with a clean 10.8.5 installer and the same thing happened. Nothing for it but to upgrade the drive to Mavericks. That seemed to have sorted that issue out.

As far as I can remember, HD7950 support came in with 10.8.3, so it should have booted (and did before the firmware update) regardless.
Click to expand...

I was with the 7950, and just switched to R9 380 few weeks ago. But I am out of town now, can't test if the Sapphire 7950 Mac Edition also freeze in HS B5.

JedNZ said:
Just need some advice with respect to upgrading the firmware on my cMP 4,1 >5,1 (see my sig for full setup).

I have the following setup:
• An NVIDIA GT120 (PCI slot 4 - not hooked up to a monitor usually, but can)
• A Sapphire Nitro R9 380X (PCI slot 1 - attached to a 4K screen)
• A Samsung 850 EVO in an Accelsior S PCI-e SATA III adapter (PCI slot 2 - this is my boot drive with admin User accounts and all the apps)
• A Samsung 960 EVO NVMe in a PCI-e adapter (PCI slot 3) paired in a FD with a WD HDD (in a Direct Connect Bay) for my User data
• 3 other HDDs (backups and TM) and a SDD (Win10) in the other Direct Connect and Optical Bays.

What do I need to remove in order to safely upgrade just the firmware?
1. Can I do the firmware upgrade by booting from my normal PCI-e SATA III SSD boot drive? Or do I need to boot from a normal HDD? Would I need to remove the Accelsior S PCI-e SSD drive if I boot from the HDD?
2. Do I hook up the GT120 to my spare monitor (it gives boot screens)?
3. Do I have to remove the R9 380X, or can I leave it installed?
4. Do I remove the NVMe FD plus the accompanying HDD part of the FD?
5. Do I remove all other HDDs and SSD?

I can boot my Accelsior S PCI-e SSD without the NVMe FD installed as I have admin User accounts on it. So do I remove the NVMe FD and all the other drives, or do I need to boot from a HDD and remove everything else? I plan to delay upgrading to macOS 10.13 HS for a month or more to make sure the kinks are ironed out by those who pioneer before me. Any/all advice welcome.

Or do I simply wait for GM to be released?
Click to expand...

1) Can. No need. No
2) No matter if it's required, I will do that. It's supper important to make yourself able to monitor the upgrade process.
3) AFAIK, no need, you can leave it there. However, if the upgrade failed with no apparent reason, I will remove this card and put the GT120 back into slot 1 (the expected / stock GPU config)
4) NO
5) NO

I personally won't wait, just in case they try to block the non 2012 model upgrade in the future release.
 
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W

weckart

macrumors 603
Nov 7, 2004
5,898
3,576
h9826790 said:
I was with the 7950, and just switched to R9 380 few weeks ago. But I am out of town now, can't test if the Sapphire 7950 Mac Edition also freeze in HS B5.
Click to expand...

Mine is a strange bird. It appears to be a R9 280 flashed to be a HD7950. I managed to flash the Mac EFI on it for the HD7950 without any issue; all the ports work with bootscreens but the card is a bit weird. After flashing the Mac EFI on it I cannot now boot the MP with the switch on the card set to 2, which did work before albeit with noisier fans than when switched to 1. I also cannot run macOS benchmarks on it, particularly Unigine as it crashes the MP.

Will probably have to raise it at Netkas and see whether stuff like this is unusual. Didn't get much response when I asked in the flashing thread on MR. Don't really want to go back to the stock card but stability matters as much as performance.
 
h9826790

h9826790

macrumors P6
Apr 3, 2014
16,650
8,574
Hong Kong
weckart said:
Mine is a strange bird. It appears to be a R9 280 flashed to be a HD7950. I managed to flash the Mac EFI on it for the HD7950 without any issue; all the ports work with bootscreens but the card is a bit weird. After flashing the Mac EFI on it I cannot now boot the MP with the switch on the card set to 2, which did work before albeit with noisier fans than when switched to 1. I also cannot run macOS benchmarks on it, particularly Unigine as it crashes the MP.

Will probably have to raise it at Netkas and see whether stuff like this is unusual. Didn't get much response when I asked in the flashing thread on MR. Don't really want to go back to the stock card but stability matters as much as performance.
Click to expand...

Did you keep the original ROM? You better create your own Mac EFI ROM but not flash another 7950's ROM onto your card.
 
W

weckart

macrumors 603
Nov 7, 2004
5,898
3,576
I created the ROM according to the process outlined for flashing the HD 7xxx range of cards. I would never just take someone's ROM and risk bricking my card. I have the original ROM. I could forgo the boot screens but those are useful, especially for firmware updates.
 
h9826790

h9826790

macrumors P6
Apr 3, 2014
16,650
8,574
Hong Kong
weckart said:
I created the ROM according to the process outlined for flashing the HD 7xxx range of cards. I would never just take someone's ROM and risk bricking my card. I have the original ROM. I could forgo the boot screens but those are useful, especially for firmware updates.
Click to expand...

This sounds really strange to me.

Switch 1 and 2 are independent. No matter what you flash to ROM 1, you should still able to boot from ROM 2, and it should perform exactly the same as before you flash ROM 1.

And I rarely heard a successful flashed 7950 crash like this. Unless the Mac EFI really inject some wrong stuff that didn't match your card, but coincidentally all those wrong info can still keep all ports on your card working.
 
W

weckart

macrumors 603
Nov 7, 2004
5,898
3,576
Yeah, I don't understand the switch thing either for the same reason but this is what has happened. I will try playing around with the power points. Unfortunately, all the SATA power points are taken. I might flip the gpu power cables around and see if the card is happier.

I think I have a Frankencard with somehow the wrong bios flashed on it, either at factory or by some previous owner. I bought it used from someone who was selling a lot of used HD7950s, so was probably not the original owner. It maybe that it failed testing as an R9 280 and so was demoted to a HD7950 or somebody just decided to do something strange to it.
 
justperry

justperry

macrumors G5
Aug 10, 2007
12,595
9,876
I'm a rolling stone.
Regarding Trim and APFS:
On a Mac Mini though.



2222222222.jpg
 
Last edited:
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handheldgames

handheldgames

macrumors 68000
Apr 4, 2009
1,940
1,169
Pacific NW, USA
fwiw... I just downloaded a 'FRESH' copy of the High Sierra beta on a '09 cMP, that's been upgraded to a '10 firmware.

as reported, installing with a non-efi video card fails to install the firmware update.
Pulling a flashed 7950 from the drawer, the firmware update worked without issue.

10.12.6 boots without issue on the new firmware. I'll update to beta OS at a later date.
 
JedNZ

JedNZ

macrumors 6502a
Dec 6, 2015
632
241
Deep South
Back on-off topic - ahem - my cMP 4,1>5,1 (dual tray) that I updated the firmware to B00 to - still running 10.12.6 - is showing TRIM enabled for both of my Samsung 850 EVO SSDs plus my Samsung 960 EVO NVMe as well. So TRIM sticks when upgrading the firmware whilst still remaining with Sierra 10.12.6, even for NVMe.

What I really, really want now more than anything else is for native NVMe support. But what would be really, really, really nice is for NVMe boot support. C'mon Apple - puh-leeez!
 
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Fangio

Fangio

macrumors 6502
Jan 25, 2011
375
473
10717
Yes indeed, there's a new firmware upgrade coming with DB6.

Again, the download of full 17A344b installer is required. It then asks for admin permission to install a new helper app

17A344b Installer HelperApp.png

When allowed, the firmware upgrade runs just as before. And you'll get this
SysInfo 17A344b.png
 
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