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Boot m.2 ssd in PowerMac G5
- Thread starter rabidz7
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LightBulbFun
macrumors 68030
The only way to get such a device bootable in OS X is to use a helper volume/SSD on the SATA bus (How Xpostfacto works when you tell it to boot from say a FireWire device)
otherwise No the XP741 is not bootable on a G5 Due to OpenFirmware lacking any sort of AHCI driver
BTW do you have System profiler shots of it? im quite curious how it shows up in OS X...
otherwise No the XP741 is not bootable on a G5 Due to OpenFirmware lacking any sort of AHCI driver
BTW do you have System profiler shots of it? im quite curious how it shows up in OS X...
appleish19
macrumors regular
I'm also extremely interested in how fast this is working for my quad. Really looking to upgrade.
You will not get it working in a PMG5, they can only boot from drives that are recognized by Open Firmware as a bootable device(hint: M.2 SSD's are not recognized), you would have to either modify Open Firmware(probably not possible), OR have a bootable hard drive, with software that can recognize a PCI M.2 SSD, then that software has to find and execute a bootloader on that SSD, and pass control of the computer over to that bootloader.
This is very similar to why we can't just put any PC graphics card in, it does not have the FORTH code required to be recognized by Open Firmware, therefore Open Firmware will not see it and will not boot the computer.
This is very similar to why we can't just put any PC graphics card in, it does not have the FORTH code required to be recognized by Open Firmware, therefore Open Firmware will not see it and will not boot the computer.
AphoticD
macrumors 68020
Interesting idea. Perhaps a GRUB2 build with AHCI drivers installed on an HFS partition of an internal HDD (or USB drive) could intercept at the bootloader stage to pass off control to a Linux or OS X partition on the PCIe SSD?
I imagine it would depend on how well GRUB2 can detect hardware and whether this is entirely dependent on Open Firmware.
I imagine it would depend on how well GRUB2 can detect hardware and whether this is entirely dependent on Open Firmware.
armdn
macrumors member
AphoticD
macrumors 68020
armdn
macrumors member
I had... 10 years ago.
Im interested too. And another thing, i think Apple Mac Pro RAID card could be bootable in G5, as drivers and RAID Utility is Universal Binary.
LightBulbFun
macrumors 68030
I have a G5 Quad but I dont have a PCIe SSD sadly!
as for the raid card, im guessing your refering to the Mac Pro 1,1-3,1 one which has the regular SAS connector on it?
I doubt it has an OpenFirmware ROM along side the EFI one but, depending if the Kexts for it in OS X are PPC or not, It might work as a non bootable card in a G5 much like how a PCIe AHCI controller/SSD works.
in linux even NVMe SSDs work fine in PCIe G5s 🙂
armdn
macrumors member
I know, but it is interesting to test in PM G5. Newer know, why Apple do universal binary driver and utility for RAID Card. RAID card itself is more like black box, as there is no point of enter to firmware. There may be a two firmwares on card...