MP 1,1-5,1 Mac Pro 5.1 rx580 running mojave looking to upgrade

[zx6ninja]

I purchased this already upgraded mac pro quite some time ago.

Its running 2x 3.33ghz cpu, 128gb of ram, and a rx 580 8gb and cam installed with Mojave.

I realise this was upgraded and installed by someone else, but i am now looking at upgrading to Monterray or ventura - Having seen some recent videos online in doing so.

Am quite happy with the process using opencore, BUT i do not know what type of gpu this is (meaning if its a firmware patched pc or std mac one) or how Mojave was installed.

My thoughts are to get a new nvme pci card and install to a clean drive, but not sure if i will be able to select the drive if its a patched pc card and i do not have a std mac alternative.

What are my options that will help in this case?

thanks in advance.

 

[bookemdano]

Depending on when you bought it, I suppose it could already have been installed with OpenCore. Even though OC is not necessary to run Mojave it has other advantages too that make it worth running no matter what OS you're ultimately booting to.

Do you see the Apple logo after you turn it on? Or is your monitor black until you see the Mojave login screen?

If you see the Apple logo screen, is the background gray with a black Apple logo, or black with a white Apple logo?

If you see no Apple logo at all during boot, then it's very likely your GPU is just a normal unmodified card--which is actually preferable at this point as you can get native bootscreens yourself now by DIY modding either your cMP's bootrom or your GPU's vBIOS. Or you can just rely on OpenCore's boot screen.

 

[zx6ninja]

Depending on when you bought it, I suppose it could already have been installed with OpenCore. Even though OC is not necessary to run Mojave it has other advantages too that make it worth running no matter what OS you're ultimately booting to.

Do you see the Apple logo after you turn it on? Or is your monitor black until you see the Mojave login screen?

If you see the Apple logo screen, is the background gray with a black Apple logo, or black with a white Apple logo?

If you see no Apple logo at all during boot, then it's very likely your GPU is just a normal unmodified card--which is actually preferable at this point as you can get native bootscreens yourself now by DIY modding either your cMP's bootrom or your GPU's vBIOS. Or you can just rely on OpenCore's boot screen.

Hi, thanks for your reply and assistance.

I purchased this approx 3-4 years ago. Mojave was fairly new at the time, and this was the latest os i could get at that time (it was purchased on ebay, but from a mac specialist store).

On power on, after the apple dong, i get a white screen, small grey apple with a grey loading bar before the mojave login screen.

 

[bookemdano]

Hi, thanks for your reply and assistance.

I purchased this approx 3-4 years ago. Mojave was fairly new at the time, and this was the latest os i could get at that time (it was purchased on ebay, but from a mac specialist store).

On power on, after the apple dong, i get a white screen, small grey apple with a grey loading bar before the mojave login screen.

Ok, I believe OpenCore was first available mid-late 2019, and yes Mojave was the current OS from September 2018 to October 2019 when Catalina came out. Do you know exactly when you got your Mac Pro?

 

[tsialex]

On power on, after the apple dong, i get a white screen, small grey apple with a grey loading bar before the mojave login screen.

This can be misleading. Do you have the Apple BootPicker when you power-on and press/keep pressed ALT?

 

[h9826790]

I purchased this already upgraded mac pro quite some time ago.

Its running 2x 3.33ghz cpu, 128gb of ram, and a rx 580 8gb and cam installed with Mojave.

I realise this was upgraded and installed by someone else, but i am now looking at upgrading to Monterray or ventura - Having seen some recent videos online in doing so.

Am quite happy with the process using opencore, BUT i do not know what type of gpu this is (meaning if its a firmware patched pc or std mac one) or how Mojave was installed.

My thoughts are to get a new nvme pci card and install to a clean drive, but not sure if i will be able to select the drive if its a patched pc card and i do not have a std mac alternative.

What are my options that will help in this case?

thanks in advance.

I also recommend you do the check that Tsialex suggested (Hold Option key to boot, preferable with wired keyboard. For Magic keyboard, you may connect the USB cable into the front USB port) first.

This is the easiest (and most reliable) way to tell what your GPU can do. And then you may decide what to do next. Many guide out there are for generic Mac, not "Mac Pro with a non flashed GPU", follow them often lead you to a dead end, even in some situation that's very hard to recover.

Once figure out the GPU's capability, then there are few ways you can go.

1) If your GPU can display that boot manager natively. It will be easy, as long as you have your exsiting Mojave drive on hand, or any natively support installation media (e.g. a USB Mojave installer), then you are very safe to do whatever you want, won't be too hard to recover (if anything goes wrong).

2) If you just see a black screen in that test, then your GPU should be just a normal PC RX580. In this case, you can flash your Mac with the latest EanbleGop driver. So that your cMP will allow that RX580 to show you the native Apple boot screen. Once this is done, you are back to route 1, very safe to contune your journey.

3) You can only see black screen, and you don't want to risk your cMP (flashing firmware always associate with risk). Then you can test boot with OpenCore first. e.g. I created a "pre-configured for Mac Pro 5,1" OpenCore package.

Activate AMD hardware acceleration

I created a new "easy to install package" as per many requested (based on the official OpenCore). [The attached package updated to 1.0.0] For those who only need HWAccel, post #594 has everything you need. This new package mainly offer HWAccel + boot screen. Also, this package should work in...

forums.macrumors.com

This allow you to boot existing Mojave. You may simply install this onto a bootable USB drive (or any SATA drive), and see if you can get the boot picker to show up (I congifured that automatically show up for 10s after power up). If it works, then you can simply follow the instruction in the above post to further install Monterey.

[N.B. my package does NOT support Ventura, please don't even try it. Monterey is the highest you can go. And so far, running a unpatched Monterey via OpenCore on my cMP is super stable. I really like it]

For NVMe, please go to check your actual BootROM version first. I expect that should be 144.0.0.0.0, but if not, you better update the firmware before you start anything else. Tsialex is the expert in this area, sure he will help you if you have any trouble.

 

[zx6ninja]

Thanks for all the responses and assistance folks, a little update (i rarely turn my mac pro off as its my main workdstation and i couldnt find a wired usb keyboard lol). So this morning i raised my Wife's 5.1 and borrowed her keyboard (yes this exercise is being applied to 2 machines eventually).

So on start holding alt on the wired board i get the following disk selection screen -

 

[h9826790]

Thanks for all the responses and assistance folks, a little update (i rarely turn my mac pro off as its my main workdstation and i couldnt find a wired usb keyboard lol). So this morning i raised my Wife's 5.1 and borrowed her keyboard (yes this exercise is being applied to 2 machines eventually).

So on start holding alt on the wired board i get the following disk selection screen -
View attachment 2189106

That means your RX580 is flashed, and you can continue to install Monterey (my recommendation) onto your cMP via OpenCore. Ventura also works via OCLP, but I personally don't recommend that for anyone who don't know what's going on behind the scence (heavily patched system files to avoid AVX2, and possible sysem break down after every single macOS update).

 

[saltinbanquis]

I hope no one minds if I use this thread to pose my question, to which I cannot find a straight answer elsewhere.

I have a very similar setup to the machine on this thread save for my RX580 is not flashed. I am able to run Mojave and Monterrey successfully using Open Core. These are installed on separate Nvme SSDs (I use the I/O Syba board).

However I can only run them IF only one of the drives is mounted on the SYBA, I cannot run any of them via OC if both drives are present. Is it possible to enable OC to boot macOs from one drive OR the other; one having Mojave, the other having Monterrey... I have tried installing OC on the ESP of each drive and also installing OC only on one of the drives. So far I could not make it work...

I am not ready to fully commit to Monterrey yet. Printer drivers are not working properly and Lightroom 32bit installation from Mojave does not work in Monterrey. So wanted to try to boot into one or the other and further test what is working and what is broken (for me) in Monterrey.

Thank you all!

 

[saltinbanquis]

I hope no one minds if I use this thread to pose my question, to which I cannot find a straight answer elsewhere.

I have a very similar setup to the machine on this thread save for my RX580 is not flashed. I am able to run Mojave and Monterrey successfully using Open Core. These are installed on separate Nvme SSDs (I use the I/O Syba board).

However I can only run them IF only one of the drives is mounted on the SYBA, I cannot run any of them via OC if both drives are present. Is it possible to enable OC to boot macOs from one drive OR the other; one having Mojave, the other having Monterrey... I have tried installing OC on the ESP of each drive and also installing OC only on one of the drives. So far I could not make it work...

I am not ready to fully commit to Monterrey yet. Printer drivers are not working properly and Lightroom 32bit installation from Mojave does not work in Monterrey. So wanted to try to boot into one or the other and further test what is working and what is broken (for me) in Monterrey.

Thank you all!

In case its useful to anyone else facing similar troubles... I had used Clonezilla to clone the original drive. This means that both drives are identified exactly, 100%, the same in macOS. In Disk utility, the Monterrey and Mojave Partitions show under the same container of the first physical disk, the one used to boot, as opposed to each showing under their own individual container of each individual disk. I think this is due to how Clonezilla manages the cloning process (I suspect the disk's UUID is fully cloned), so the system cannot tell them apart. By the way, this was the case wether I used the Syba board or I put the secondary nvme on an external USB enclosure!

To solve this issue, I have formatted the secondary disk on another machine (to ensure I don't affect the good disk, since both show under a single container its hard to be sure what it would be formatting using Disk Utility in Mojave). Once formatted, I have used Carbon Copy Cloner to clone the disk once again. I have now both Mojave installations showing up in OC and also they both show up correctly in disk utility, each partition under their corresponding container attached to each individual disk. I will shortly proceed to upgrade the secondary disk to Monterrey and continue to test, particularly Lightroom.

I hope this makes sense and is useful to others.