Resolved i7-940 and kernel panic

[Zeke D]

Yeah, there are 4gb versions on eBay fir like $200.

It's a shame that there's no Mac ROM fir the 2gb GTX660. Those are on eBay for like $75.

 

[MIKX]

Sorry to digress : AliExpress mistakenly sent me a Core i7 960 3,2 Ghz quad core 960. Would this work in a Hackintosh with High Sierra or any other mac OS ?

 

[Zeke D]

Sorry to digress : AliExpress mistakenly sent me a Core i7 960 3,2 Ghz quad core 960. Would this work in a Hackintosh with High Sierra or any other mac OS ?

As long as the microcode for that processor is included in the Mac Pro firmware, you should be good to go. I've installed El Capitan & High Sierra on my cMP 4,1 without issue. If it's a hackintosh, then you should be good to go.

 

[tsialex]

As long as the microcode for that processor is included in the Mac Pro firmware, you should be good to go. I've installed El Capitan & High Sierra on my cMP 4,1 without issue. If it's a hackintosh, then you should be good to go.

i7-960 is a D0 and uses 106A5 microcode, so fully supported on a Mac Pro.

If the PC board has support for it on the BIOS, macOS will boot.

 

[hutzi20]

Not just i7s are C0/C1, but some early Xeons, like L5520, are 106A4 too, but seems the C0/C1 Xeons can boot macOS without microcode and C0/C1 i7s can't.

Seems it’s more complicated than that. I had problems with my 4,1 after upgrading the Bootrom with 10.13.5. I could boot a finished installed macOS just fine, but I can’t do system Upgrades. Also I couldn’t boot into a recovery or a macOS installer stick. All stucked with a kernel panic.
when I used a second Mac to install Mojave (or any other OS) on an external disk and then put the disk into my Mac Pro then it boots und worked fine. But nothing more.
Later I realized that there was an Intel Q1DV with C0 stepping installed (engineer sample of the W3570). I always thought it were a normal W3570. So I changed the CPU and everything’s works and I can boot everything.

It’s strange for me the Q1DV could boot a installed System, but couldn’t boot up the recovery nor a Installer or perform an update.

 

[tsialex]

Seems it’s more complicated than that. I had problems with my 4,1 after upgrading the Bootrom with 10.13.5. I could boot a finished installed macOS just fine, but I can’t do system Upgrades. Also I couldn’t boot into a recovery or a macOS installer stick. All stucked with a kernel panic.
when I used a second Mac to install Mojave (or any other OS) on an external disk and then put the disk into my Mac Pro then it boots und worked fine. But nothing more.
Later I realized that there was an Intel Q1DV with C0 stepping installed (engineer sample of the W3570). I always thought it were a normal W3570. So I changed the CPU and everything’s works and I can boot everything.

It’s strange for me the Q1DV could boot a installed System, but couldn’t boot up the recovery nor a Installer or perform an update.

The explanation for this behaviour is simple.

Apple implemented a way to load/inject the current available microcodes from macOS during the macOS boot process ( see /usr/libexec/ucupdate -q ), but this don't work from Recovery or macOS installer.

This was developed so we can have very early new microcode support from Intel without the need of BootROM upgrades, that takes a lot of time to be fully tested by Apple before sending it upgrade or brick millions of Macs.

That's why you can load a fully installed/updated with ucupdate macOS disk, but your Mac Pro can't boot Recovery, do updates or run a createinstallmedia macOS installer with a non-supported anymore Xeon/i7.

 

[jrstrong69]

It's a lot easier to flash a MacBookPro, Mac Pro has the most cumbersome BootROM upgrade of all Macs -

Jobs did indeed attempt to 'live' beyond his death with his MacPro's!