MP 1,1-5,1 MacPro5,1: What you have to do to upgrade to Mojave (10.13/10.14 BootROM upgrades instructions thread)

[Melbourne Park]

In my opinion, what you really need is two different machines: one running 10.9 and the other one running High Sierra / Mojave.

I've got a double mirror door sitting on the other side of my monitor - will that do? Or my MacBook 15.4" circa 2017? Or the PC next door to the double mirror door (what a piece of goo that PC thing is). The PC's numerous fans run out of control and they were designed noisy (who cares about fan noise on a games machine) and the PC makes the double mirror door sound like a purring Lexus LS470. Which the twin CPU PowerPCs never never were until the G5s and I guess with their metal eating water cooling ...

When I've downloaded all the analogue video tapes, I won't need 10.9. I bought a device that does the same thing outside of the good software that did that job back around 2012/3. But Apple dropped the software function that could import such Hi8 videos. I was not convinced the alternative device I bought would do as good a job as connecting directly to the Mac. So I'll test and perhaps 10.9 won't be necessary. But sheesh it boots quick. But not as fast as the PowerPC - that things boots almost instantly. RISC works. Now Apple brought via "M" a cool RISC to OS X ...

Right now, I cannot install Mavericks, I continue to get the same errors. So I'll have to install a clean High Sierra onto a formatted drive, and then boot from that, and install onto another formatted single drive ... I did buy a 1 TB Green WD SSD, and it worked. I pulled the top DVD drive. Well - it sort of fell out of the alloy cage!

And my internal alloy looks second hand. Outrageous! I need an alloy cleaner that will not damage the anodisation ... I think our Australia "Brasso" might. The alloy on the drive cages looks dirty, but I've cleaned it with alcohol and that made no difference. Its the alcohol season too, but I have tried spraying that alcohol directly into me ... the way things are going, I may have too.

But its been a good excuse to not see my mother in law today!!! (My wife wasn't intoning me to come anyway but its a computer can be a great excuse).

There's upsides after all!!

Now, its time to try macadamia scripts linked here sfalatko - thanks man - I'm only a couple of hours from having to spray the cleaning alcohol into my mouth.

Cheers Guys.

 

[Melbourne Park]

Hmm and eventually, the computer is again installing from a newly formatted and clean installed High Sierra drive, with no partitions or volumes etc on it.

And onto a 1 TB SSD, also clean formatted with the a capital differentiation format, and nothing else on it.

But as before, the install is taking forever. Two and a half hours already. I suspect tomorrow, it will still be trying to install. The internet connection is ethernet and a 100 MB/S download speed ... although the file is likely from the USA.

So I suspect I am back to square one ...

At least I have the clean install High Sierra without anything else on it.

That install didn't take long at all ... but Mojave - it doesn't look like installing. What is so crap with Mojave and the 5,1? Are my CPUs too slow?

Next try, I guess I will
- reformat the new SSD drive again
- maybe not have capitals on its format
- re-install clean (for the third time) onto the old 1 TB drive
- then I will boot from that 1 TB drive
- then I'll shut down and boot from that drive again
- if that boots OK, then I'll shut down the computer
- remove the other drive that is in the machine
- remove the other 250 MB SSD (both running in the DVD cavity).
- when that fails again
- I'll sell the RX 580 (for the second time)
- and get another computer.
- I'll do those Hi I and digital 8 videos on system 10.92 setup (which is solid and boots much more quickly
- wait until Apple revises their notebooks - I've been burnt too often buying first gen new archictecture Macs.

Good news is I didn't waste my time putting in the two 3.33hz 6 thread CPUs. I'd have been blaming them.

The way I feel at the moment, I might build a PC. Or rebuild the one on my desk - new fans, motherboard motherboard, etc. And switch away from Final Cut.

Cheers guys have a great Christmas. I'm going to delve into Windows 11 and see how great it is.

 

[Melbourne Park]

OK,

As expected, the install has once again failed.

It appears the install has not completed.

There is an install disc, wth several packages there, but evidently, the install hasn't happened. I've tried opening each package and they seem to be trying to install on the disk which has the clean install of High Sierra, rather than the chosen new disk drive.

The chosen new disk drive has lots installed on it , but no user data:

 

[KeesMacPro]

OK,

As expected, the install has once again failed.

No offense but I dont understand what's the purpose of so many posts about the problems you encountered trying to install Mojave.

IMHO installing Mojave is not more complicated than installing any other supported OS version.
Obviously there are some things you need to know before installing.

All possible scenarios and requirements are covered in the 1st post of this thread.
Maybe read the first post and check what's the culprit for a failed install.

 

[Melbourne Park]

No offense but I dont understand what's the purpose of so many posts about the problems you encountered trying to install Mojave.

IMHO installing Mojave is not more complicated than installing any other supported OS version.
Obviously there are some things you need to know before installing.

All possible scenarios and requirements are covered in the 1st post of this thread.
Maybe read the first post and check what's the culprit for a failed install.

I did that. But my installation did not go according to the instructions / advice from this excellent site.

I had the latest firmware, and one of the recommended GPUs (the "blessed" AMD Sapphire brand 8 GB SKU "11265-05-20G" GPU).

I was here because the thread is about installing Mojave ... this thread is called:

MP5,1: What you have to do to upgrade to Mojave (BootROM upgrade instructions thread​

The purely Mojave thread is hard to find and also, having the right boot rom is mandatory.

But the instructions here, for installing Mojave on a 5,1, were in my case, Wrong.

This is what was wrong for me:
Quote:

- How to do a clean install with a RX 4xx/5xx/VEGA GPU without pre-boot configuration support?

The easiest way is to do from macOS, opening the installer and then selecting the drive you want to install to.
End Quote.

For me, it was not possible to successfully install Mojave onto another drive. I tried many times.

I found that:
- I had to install a clean version of High Sierra onto a single formatted, single APFS formatted drive
- I could only install Mojave by upgrading the clean install High Sierra drive to Mojave
- Hence all attempts at installing from High Sierra to another separate single format APFS drive failed
- I found that after a Mojave was successfully installed, I was not able to import email or user information from previous drives after many attempts
- I eventually was able to I believe by fortune - I think I have a hardware issue as my drives are not appearing or recognised by Disk Utility
- Having drives not appear mean't I could not import emails, which are a mandatory issue. I have lots of mail boxes and using export of email methods were unworkable for me.
- I also encountered after a successful install of Mojave, it rejecting importing user information and my mandatory emails, because my new formatted APFS drive was case sensitive APFS, while the drive I wanted to retrieve data from was non case sensitively formatted. I felt that installation rejection (which IMO could not have allowed a clash of names), illogical and hence frustrating.

Right now, disk utility cannot see my 4TB black Western digital drive. The "About this Mac" hardware report also does not show the drive under either storage, or under the Serial ATA Device Tree. The drive is missing. If I reboot, it will likely appear.

I have also checked the drives using disk utility - the report back as error free. I suspect my Intel I/O bus is mis-behaving, due to age. But this issue never happened until I upgraded my ROM. And then tried to install Mojave.

Also strangely IMO, the original Apple drive, which I have reformatted several times as I put a clean install of High Sierra on that drive and then installed another clean High Sierra onto a new drive (which became the Mojave drive) the 1 TB original mac drive reports via the "About this Mac" information screen, the Intel ACH10 SHCI report says that the volume has an EFI volume: Capacity 209.7 MB, MS-DOS FAT 32, BSD name disk OS1, content EFI. After several formats of that drive, which reports as having 1 TB available in Apple_APFS, I suspect something is wrong there too.

In summary, I don't thinks its correct advise to format from High Sierra Mojave onto another drive. IMO what worked for me is to install clean High Sierra and then upgrade to Mojave onto the same drive that the Clean install of High Sierra was placed on.

Importing mail onto the new High Sierra drive meant also other junk came across that prevented installing Mojave.

I am lacking confidence now about my disk hardware, and while I was going to put in a RAID setup internally into the Mac Pro to protect my data, I now thing I should buy a fault tolerant external NAS solution, as I think my 5,1 has suddenly become unreliable.

 

[tsialex]

I did that. But my installation did not go according to the instructions / advice from this excellent site.

I had the latest firmware, and one of the recommended GPUs (the "blessed" AMD Sapphire brand 8 GB SKU "11265-05-20G" GPU).

I was here because the thread is about installing Mojave ... this thread is called:

MP5,1: What you have to do to upgrade to Mojave (BootROM upgrade instructions thread​

The purely Mojave thread is hard to find and also, having the right boot rom is mandatory.

But the instructions here, for installing Mojave on a 5,1, were in my case, Wrong.

This is what was wrong for me:
Quote:

- How to do a clean install with a RX 4xx/5xx/VEGA GPU without pre-boot configuration support?

The easiest way is to do from macOS, opening the installer and then selecting the drive you want to install to.
End Quote.

For me, it was not possible to successfully install Mojave onto another drive. I tried many times.

I found that:
- I had to install a clean version of High Sierra onto a single formatted, single APFS formatted drive
- I could only install Mojave by upgrading the clean install High Sierra drive to Mojave
- Hence all attempts at installing from High Sierra to another separate single format APFS drive failed
- I found that after a Mojave was successfully installed, I was not able to import email or user information from previous drives after many attempts
- I eventually was able to I believe by fortune - I think I have a hardware issue as my drives are not appearing or recognised by Disk Utility
- Having drives not appear mean't I could not import emails, which are a mandatory issue. I have lots of mail boxes and using export of email methods were unworkable for me.
- I also encountered after a successful install of Mojave, it rejecting importing user information and my mandatory emails, because my new formatted APFS drive was case sensitive APFS, while the drive I wanted to retrieve data from was non case sensitively formatted. I felt that installation rejection (which IMO could not have allowed a clash of names), illogical and hence frustrating.

Right now, disk utility cannot see my 4TB black Western digital drive. The "About this Mac" hardware report also does not show the drive under either storage, or under the Serial ATA Device Tree. The drive is missing. If I reboot, it will likely appear.

I have also checked the drives using disk utility - the report back as error free. I suspect my Intel I/O bus is mis-behaving, due to age. But this issue never happened until I upgraded my ROM. And then tried to install Mojave.

Also strangely IMO, the original Apple drive, which I have reformatted several times as I put a clean install of High Sierra on that drive and then installed another clean High Sierra onto a new drive (which became the Mojave drive) the 1 TB original mac drive reports via the "About this Mac" information screen, the Intel ACH10 SHCI report says that the volume has an EFI volume: Capacity 209.7 MB, MS-DOS FAT 32, BSD name disk OS1, content EFI. After several formats of that drive, which reports as having 1 TB available in Apple_APFS, I suspect something is wrong there too.

In summary, I don't thinks its correct advise to format from High Sierra Mojave onto another drive. IMO what worked for me is to install clean High Sierra and then upgrade to Mojave onto the same drive that the Clean install of High Sierra was placed on.

Importing mail onto the new High Sierra drive meant also other junk came across that prevented installing Mojave.

I am lacking confidence now about my disk hardware, and while I was going to put in a RAID setup internally into the Mac Pro to protect my data, I now thing I should buy a fault tolerant external NAS solution, as I think my 5,1 has suddenly become unreliable.

Just a note, thousands of people successfully followed the steps outlined on the first post and the first post is constantly revised, so, if you are not successful, you should look at what you are doing wrong…

Btw, since you don't like to follow the tried and true notes from the first post of the thread and you already have 144.0.0.0.0, to get the current firmware is the main focus of this thread, you should go to the Mojave forum and open a thread there, not here.

 

[MarkC426]

I did that. But my installation did not go according to the instructions / advice from this excellent site.

I had the latest firmware, and one of the recommended GPUs (the "blessed" AMD Sapphire brand 8 GB SKU "11265-05-20G" GPU).

I was here because the thread is about installing Mojave ... this thread is called:

MP5,1: What you have to do to upgrade to Mojave (BootROM upgrade instructions thread​

The purely Mojave thread is hard to find and also, having the right boot rom is mandatory.

But the instructions here, for installing Mojave on a 5,1, were in my case, Wrong.

This is what was wrong for me:
Quote:

- How to do a clean install with a RX 4xx/5xx/VEGA GPU without pre-boot configuration support?

The easiest way is to do from macOS, opening the installer and then selecting the drive you want to install to.
End Quote.

For me, it was not possible to successfully install Mojave onto another drive. I tried many times.

I found that:
- I had to install a clean version of High Sierra onto a single formatted, single APFS formatted drive
- I could only install Mojave by upgrading the clean install High Sierra drive to Mojave
- Hence all attempts at installing from High Sierra to another separate single format APFS drive failed
- I found that after a Mojave was successfully installed, I was not able to import email or user information from previous drives after many attempts
- I eventually was able to I believe by fortune - I think I have a hardware issue as my drives are not appearing or recognised by Disk Utility
- Having drives not appear mean't I could not import emails, which are a mandatory issue. I have lots of mail boxes and using export of email methods were unworkable for me.
- I also encountered after a successful install of Mojave, it rejecting importing user information and my mandatory emails, because my new formatted APFS drive was case sensitive APFS, while the drive I wanted to retrieve data from was non case sensitively formatted. I felt that installation rejection (which IMO could not have allowed a clash of names), illogical and hence frustrating.

Right now, disk utility cannot see my 4TB black Western digital drive. The "About this Mac" hardware report also does not show the drive under either storage, or under the Serial ATA Device Tree. The drive is missing. If I reboot, it will likely appear.

I have also checked the drives using disk utility - the report back as error free. I suspect my Intel I/O bus is mis-behaving, due to age. But this issue never happened until I upgraded my ROM. And then tried to install Mojave.

Also strangely IMO, the original Apple drive, which I have reformatted several times as I put a clean install of High Sierra on that drive and then installed another clean High Sierra onto a new drive (which became the Mojave drive) the 1 TB original mac drive reports via the "About this Mac" information screen, the Intel ACH10 SHCI report says that the volume has an EFI volume: Capacity 209.7 MB, MS-DOS FAT 32, BSD name disk OS1, content EFI. After several formats of that drive, which reports as having 1 TB available in Apple_APFS, I suspect something is wrong there too.

In summary, I don't thinks its correct advise to format from High Sierra Mojave onto another drive. IMO what worked for me is to install clean High Sierra and then upgrade to Mojave onto the same drive that the Clean install of High Sierra was placed on.

Importing mail onto the new High Sierra drive meant also other junk came across that prevented installing Mojave.

I am lacking confidence now about my disk hardware, and while I was going to put in a RAID setup internally into the Mac Pro to protect my data, I now thing I should buy a fault tolerant external NAS solution, as I think my 5,1 has suddenly become unreliable.

It sounds like there is something fundamentally wrong with your Mac.
Whether it is the model of SSD your using or an 'OpenCore' hack installed or something else.

As @tsialex says, it should be a straightforward process, when followed properly.

 

[Melbourne Park]

Just a note, thousands of people successfully followed the steps outlined on the first post and the first post is constantly revised, so, if you are not successful, you should look at what you are doing wrong…

Btw, since you don't like to follow the tried and true notes from the first post of the thread and you already have 144.0.0.0.0, to get the current firmware is the main focus of this thread, you should go to the Mojave forum and open a thread there, not here.

Except that the installation advise which you say is tried and tested, did not work for me. That installation advise is the advise listed in this thread. The thread does not say:
" To install Mojave, go the install Mojave Thread, its listed here: link named here", "install Mojave using the advise given there".

Achieving the boot Rom was done in two easy steps for me. Perhaps without using your methods which I paid you for around a year ago! and I was quite happy to pay you - your assistance here is priceless!

As I've said, I did not even realise that thread existed. Meanwhile this thread is under a major topic heading. IMO installing Mojave deserves the same. After all the boot rom is just a step required in getting to Mojave.

 

[Warrington]

I found that:
- I had to install a clean version of High Sierra onto a single formatted, single APFS formatted drive
- I could only install Mojave by upgrading the clean install High Sierra drive to Mojave

You have got the second one wrong: you can install Mojave on another clean drive. You need the full Mojave installer to be in Application folder of High Sierra and you decide on which drive will be Mojave installed.

 

[tsialex]

Except that the installation advise which you say is tried and tested, did not work for me. That installation advise is the advise listed in this thread. The thread does not say:
" To install Mojave, go the install Mojave Thread, its listed here: link named here", "install Mojave using the advise given there".

Seems you didn't get my point here.

If you follow tried and true instructions that thousands of people followed successfully over the course of four years, the logical thinking when things fail should be that you are doing something wrong or your hardware have a problem and not that the instructions are wrong.

Since I suppose you can install and run High Sierra, your hardware seems to work with it, so you should be looking at what you are doing wrong or any incompatibilities.

Achieving the boot Rom was done in two easy steps for me. Perhaps without using your methods which I paid you for around a year ago! and I was quite happy to pay you - your assistance here is priceless!

Like I've said before, you already have 144.0.0.0.0, so, your problem of installing Mojave is not related to this thread anymore. The focus of this thread is getting to 144.0.0.0.0, the major requirement installing Mojave.

As I've said, I did not even realise that thread existed. Meanwhile this thread is under a major topic heading. IMO installing Mojave deserves the same. After all the boot rom is just a step required in getting to Mojave.

There is a entire MacRumors forum exclusively dedicated to Mojave:

macOS Mojave (10.14)

macOS Mojave (10.14)

forums.macrumors.com

 

[howiest]

I'm still waiting for a Christmas miracle in this thread.

 

[MarkC426]

Care to elaborate?

 

[howiest]

Care to elaborate?

No. There's plenty of elaborating already.

 

[Melbourne Park]

You have got the second one wrong: you can install Mojave on another clean drive. You need the full Mojave installer to be in Application folder of High Sierra and you decide on which drive will be Mojave installed.

I tried that three times ... but the successful way was by installing Mojave via upgrading the clean installed High Sierra drive to Mojave.

The recommended way did not work for me. But for thousands it has. But I'd suggest for 10s of thousands, the upgrade from High Sierra to Mojave has worked. Statistically I'm arguing it is a safer way ... and for my 5,1, it was the only way that would work for me.

When tsialex helped me last year, I did not do anything ... and this time, I apparently just blundered forward. Last year tsialex sent me this:

"Please test this, I've fully cleaned up your BootROM and reconstructed your BootROM image with EFI version 144.0.0.0.0, the current one from Mojave 10.14.5 and 10.14.6.

This reconstructed BootROM is the new reference firmware for your Mac Pro. Your hardwareIDs were all checked and found to be valid, but missing System Order Number (SON) - I've added it."

This is a long thread. I guess if I had followed tsialex's instructions from September last year (2020) , I'd have had a quicker install of Mojave. I got lazy and payed the price I presume. I don't even know what the System Order number is, or what it does .... and I'm guessing I still do not have it.

For me, the upgrade from a very early ROM seemed dead easy. But I paid the price later ... so it seems I did not do it properly.

The computer upgraded to High Sierra, and it upgraded to 138.0xxx at the same time. I then flashed the Vram several times, as a precaution. I then installed the "blessed" RX 580 GPU, booted it a few times, and then formatted a drive in order to install Mojave. The install did not work and neither did the ROM upgrade to 144.0.0.0.0 happen.

I was then unable to load the OS. So I swapped back to the factory 5770 GPU, and things seemed fine. I then installed a clean install of High Sierra, and booted from that clean install High Sierra drive. I then swapped the 5770 GPU to the RX 580. The computer booted to the clean install High Sierra Drive. I then tried to install Mojave, which was the formatted and hence empty drive. However the Mojave install did not happen, although there were partial install files on that drive. But the ROM did upgrade, to 144.0.0.0.0

From there, I had major problems, and I've not found anything wrong with my hardware. But perhaps there are things wrong underneath.

The rest is off this 144.0.0.0.0 topic. But I recommend upgrading to Mojave from a clean installed High Sierra drive onto the same drive, over writing the newly installed High Sierra drive, rather than a clean install to a seperate drive. Because doing otherwise just did not work on my up to now bulletproof 5,1. Which is running just fine now on 144.0.0.0.0 and Mojave.

 

[tsialex]

I tried that three times ... but the successful way was by installing Mojave via upgrading the clean installed High Sierra drive to Mojave.

The recommended way did not work for me. But for thousands it has. But I'd suggest for 10s of thousands, the upgrade from High Sierra to Mojave has worked.

This is a long thread. But for me, upgrading from a very early ROM was dead easy. The computer upgraded to High Sierra, and it upgraded to 1:3.8.0xxx at the same time. I then flashed the Vram several times around that time. I then installed the "blessed" RX 580 GPU, booted it a few times, and then formatted a drive in order to install Mojave. The install did not work and neither did the ROM upgrade happen. I was then unable to load the OS. So I swapped back to the factory 5770 GPU, and things seem fine. I then installed a clean install of High Sierra, and booted from that clean install High Sierra drive. I then swapped the 5770 GPU to the RX 580. The computer booted to the clean install High Sierra Drive. I then tried to install Mojave, and the formatted drive empty drive. However the Mojave install did not happen, although there were partial install files on the drive. But the ROM did upgrade, to 144.0.0.0.0

From there, had major problems, and I've not found anything wrong with my hardware.

The rest is off topic. But I strongly recommend upgrading to Mojave from a clean installed High Sierra drive onto the same drive. Because doing otherwise would not work on my up to now bulletproof 5,1. Which is running just fine now on 144.0.0.0.0 and Mojave.

Once more you proved that you don't follow instructions:

• High Sierra last BootROM upgrade ever issued was MP51.0089.B00, there are no newer BootROM upgrades past that with High Sierra.
• 138.0.0.0.0 is the first ever Mojave BootROM upgrade, from 10.14.0 DP7 to 10.14.0 and no other macOS release have it, to install it you have to use 10.14.0 Mojave full installer that will fail with expired signing certificates midway install.

So, you are wrong from the start since you tried to use 10.14.0 Mojave installer, from Sep 24 2018, that have expired signing certificates back in October 24 20182019 to install Mojave - obviously it will fail, after the first reboot when the installer packages are validated/unpacked/installed.

All these posts here because you tried to use a 3+ years old installer with expired signing certificates instead of downloading the current Mojave full installer (10.14.6) that is linked on the first post of the thread and have valid signing certificates.

Edit: typo, the Apple signing certificates expiration date was October 24, 2019 at 1:27 PM US Eastern Daylight Time, not 2018.

 

[Melbourne Park]

Once more you proved that you don't follow instructions:

• High Sierra last BootROM upgrade ever issued was MP51.0089.B00, there are no newer BootROM upgrades past that with High Sierra.
• 138.0.0.0.0 is the first ever Mojave BootROM upgrade, from 10.14.0 DP7 to 10.14.0 and no other macOS release have it, to install it you have to use 10.14.0 Mojave full installer that will fail with expired signing certificates midway install.

So, you are wrong from the start since you tried to use 10.14.0 Mojave installer, from Sep 24 2018, that have expired signing certificates back in October 24 20182019 to install Mojave - obviously it will fail, after the first reboot when the installer packages are validated/unpacked/installed.

All these posts here because you tried to use a 3+ years old installer with expired signing certificates instead of downloading the current Mojave full installer (10.14.6) that is linked on the first post of the thread and have valid signing certificates.

Edit: typo, the Apple signing certificates expiration date was October 24, 2019 at 1:27 PM US Eastern Daylight Time, not 2018.

I used the first page all along actually.

I installed High Sierra using point 6 of the first page: This is the Apple Support page where you can get the link for the 10.13.6 Mac App Store Installer

I thought I did download that installer from the Apple Store - loaded by going to Apple's website. That's the way I downloaded High Sierra as well. I've got there also by searching "download old OS X Apple" ... which always landed me I thought at the same Apple site, this one: https://support.apple.com/en-au/HT211683 - followed by clicking on the OS one wants - I even quoted that site during my troubles. Weird ...

What you say makes absolute sense though. The installer must have been old ... and hence I guess, caused all my problems. Perhaps a search landed me on an old Apple page that looked just the same as the current one?

I've no idea how I could use that site to do a clean install of High Sierra - in fact several clean installs in order to get ready to install Mojave - but not use the same site for the Mojave install. In fact, I tried about 4 or 5 Mojave installs ... using that Apple support site.

But logically, somehow, I found somehow an old Mojave installer and downloaded it ... I don't know how I could have done it, but it seems I did. Very strange indeed ...

The facts were though that I tried to install Mojave numerous times after having 144.0.0. etc .

The issue for me was that it would not install on a different drive. And once when it did, I was not able to import my emails from another drive which had my High Sierra historical emails on it. So I had to start all over again.

But the "upgrade" over the top of the clean High Sierra method worked fine, first time, and i was able to import everything. Which was why I've reported that the method worked from me to everyone here ... and I don't see many downsides in that method either, if its easier to achieve.

 

[Warrington]

Install macOS Mojave.app downloaded from Apple on 8 September 2021 has 6.05 GB and version is 14.6.06

reported size: 6,051,048,165 bytes (6.04 GB on disk)

This version definitely allows a clean Mojave install, tested myself repeatedly. It also does the firmware upgrade to 144.0.0.0.0

 

[dlopan]

I got my 5,1 Macpro on Mojave, no problems.
Radeon 7970, 24 gb, lots of storage. Simple.

 

[SouthPaws]

Yesterday I flashed my 4,1 to 5,1 and attempted to upgrade from high sierra to Mojave by downloading the installer from the AppStore. Somehow along the way something went wrong. I originally had both a gt120 and rx580 in the system but whenever the 120 is in i get no signal from either gpu (as i expected because it wont support metal) but with it out of the system my 580 posts a signal, but there is no output on the screen. It idles until it restarts itself and i can’t figure out what I did wrong.

 

[tsialex]

Yesterday I flashed my 4,1 to 5,1 and attempted to upgrade from high sierra to Mojave by downloading the installer from the AppStore. Somehow along the way something went wrong. I originally had both a gt120 and rx580 in the system but whenever the 120 is in i get no signal from either gpu (as i expected because it wont support metal) but with it out of the system my 580 posts a signal, but there is no output on the screen. It idles until it restarts itself and i can’t figure out what I did wrong.

Mojave don't support dissimilar GPUs anymore, you have to use only one. Try to see if with a High Sierra disk your Mac Pro works normally, since the issue could be BootROM related.

If you can't get a working screen anymore, check EFI_DONE LED (use the forum search and see what I'm talking about).

 

[SouthPaws]

I only have the one drive and this is actually the only Mac i have access to. I’m having troubles trying reformat my original drive to put HS as its not appearing. Sorry I’m, not much of a Mac guy so is there a link to how i can get HS onto my drive from a windows machine? I did check the forms for EFI_DONE LED however and it is not lit at all. I am a little confused what that means though

 

[tsialex]

I only have the one drive and this is actually the only Mac i have access to. I’m having troubles trying reformat my original drive to put HS as its not appearing. Sorry I’m, not much of a Mac guy so is there a link to how i can get HS onto my drive from a windows machine?

Sorry, don't know any.

AFAIK, this will be extremely complicated and I don't even know how to start to explain what you will need to do.
You will need a macOS VM with direct hardware access to do it.

I did check the forms for EFI_DONE LED however and it is not lit at all. I am a little confused what that means though

If EFI_DONE is not lit the you press the DIAG button, read the Apple Technician Manual for the year model of the Mac Pro you have, you have a brick and the Mac Pro is dead until you do one:

• install a replacement backplane
• install a SPI flash replacement card (MATT card from cmizapper)
• desolder the SPI flash memory, solder a new one pre-flashed with MP51.fd

Any of these options above are outside the scope of this thread and you should use the search for the appropriated thread to know more on what/how to do it.

 

[SouthPaws]

Sorry, don't know any.

AFAIK, this will be extremely complicated and I don't even know how to start to explain what you will need to do.
You will need a macOS VM with direct hardware access to do it.


If EFI_DONE is not lit the you press the DIAG button, read the Apple Technician Manual for the year model of the Mac Pro you have, you have a brick and the Mac Pro is dead until you do one:

• install a replacement backplane
• install a SPI flash replacement card (MATT card from cmizapper)
• desolder the SPI flash memory, solder a new one pre-flashed with MP51.fd

Any of these options above are outside the scope of this thread and you should use the search for the appropriated thread to know more on what/how to do it.

Thanks a lot for your help, I had a spare motherboard and swapped it out and booted into Mac. In the future though, is there anything i can do to prevent this type of error? Some sort of preventative measure? On a side note, booting into the OS still looks… odd. It boots automatically as if i sent it into recovery, and then appears to load into the system. Once the bar shows it is full, the system flickers and sometimes i get weird graphic glitches on my screen before it boots into the main screen where i put my password.

 

[tsialex]

Thanks a lot for your help, I had a spare motherboard and swapped it out and booted into Mac. In the future though, is there anything i can do to prevent this type of error? Some sort of preventative measure? On a side note, booting into the OS still looks… odd. It boots automatically as if i sent it into recovery, and then appears to load into the system. Once the bar shows it is full, the system flickers and sometimes i get weird graphic glitches on my screen before it boots into the main screen where i put my password.

Yes, you can repair your BootROM with a BootROM reconstruction service - flashing a never booted BootROM image for your Mac Pro from time to time solves the issues of the insufficient NVRAM space of the MacPro5,1 design with modern macOS releases. Send me a PM when you need it.

 

[SouthPaws]

Is there another thread with instructions on how to do this reconstruction service? To be honest I’ve read over some of them and a lot is going over my head