I have a 4,1 flashed to 5,1 and a 5,1. The 4,1 quit booting after an NVRAM reset (2 chimes). Wouldn't boot after that. I had no rom dump and I thought it was toast. I picked up a 5,1 because I really didn't want to buy an unknown backplane (4,1) and go through the trouble of finding a 4 core Nehalem that was originally in it. I flashed it to 5,1 and upgraded the cpu to a 3.33ghz Westmere in 2010. I would have had to find a Nehalem, install it on the cpu board, flash the boot rom to 5,1 reinstall the 3.33 Westmerre, etc. The experience made me much wiser in the care and feeding of the $2.00 part boot rom. There is so much great information on this forum that I found easily how to take a look at one of the parameters of the rom. Looking at the results, the free space was in the mid 20,000's which is very low. I understand that various trouble may occur when it gets that low. Apparently the garbage collection is failing. So, not wanting another failure I dumped the rom, very easy to do with the tools and help available on this forum. Wanting a spare I contacted a poster here, tsialex, who has a very large amount of posts regarding the rom, inner working of the machine, etc. I contacted him on the forum. He PM'd me with very detailed instructions. Once I got everything together I sent it to him. The next day I was receiving detailed listings of the rom's various problems. He cleaned up the rom dump I sent him, reconstructed it and returned it the same day. Quite impressive. Now, I have a cleaned up 144 rom with some enhancements that were only available on the last of the 5,1's. I received a folder with the new image and flashed it to the board. Everything is working perfectly. The issue is still with the rom on the backplane. But he is sending a new rom with the image he created for my machine. So if the thing just quits because the boot rom failed, I just have to replace it and keep going. I will change it pretty soon after I get it though, proactively.
I just wanted to pass my experience in all of this. It was very easy to do my part and now I have a backup. tsialex did a fantastic job. His directions were infallible and easy to follow. That in itself was a blessing. The instructions were very complete with pictures and cuts from other posts regarding the rom.
The rom is getting old in these machines. The part only costs $2.00 or so. But they seem to be the Achilies heel of the 4,1 5,1. The designers probably weren't expecting so many of these things to still be in existence. A backup rom dump is truly something everyone should make, just in case. If you have one tsialex can repair it and get your MP back running again.
A very happy customer!
Alan
I just wanted to pass my experience in all of this. It was very easy to do my part and now I have a backup. tsialex did a fantastic job. His directions were infallible and easy to follow. That in itself was a blessing. The instructions were very complete with pictures and cuts from other posts regarding the rom.
The rom is getting old in these machines. The part only costs $2.00 or so. But they seem to be the Achilies heel of the 4,1 5,1. The designers probably weren't expecting so many of these things to still be in existence. A backup rom dump is truly something everyone should make, just in case. If you have one tsialex can repair it and get your MP back running again.
A very happy customer!
Alan
