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MP 1,1-5,1 Manually Configured OpenCore on the Mac Pro
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Hello. I need to revitalize my Mac Pro 5.1 (8 core). It is roughly the original hardware config except a bootable High Sierra SSD on a PCIe card and many HDD. I recently bought a Gigabyte RX 5700xt.
Anyway I am lost with Opencore after reading many threads.
I have an existential question (yes or no). Is it actually possible — through OpenCore — to update from High Sierra & ATI 5870 GPU to an OS which will be compatible with a RX 5700xt?
If your answer is yes, may I prefer to update High Sierra primarily installed on a "classic" SATA drive ?
Anyway I am lost with Opencore after reading many threads.
I have an existential question (yes or no). Is it actually possible — through OpenCore — to update from High Sierra & ATI 5870 GPU to an OS which will be compatible with a RX 5700xt?
If your answer is yes, may I prefer to update High Sierra primarily installed on a "classic" SATA drive ?
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First, yes it is absolutely possible, however, for your RX-5700XT to work, you will need to perform the Pixlas mod otherwise you risk burning out your backplane.
Second, you need to be running at least macOS Catalina 10.15.1 (for 5700XT drivers), but I would recommend just going for Monterey 12.6.5 -- for the easiest method to get OpenCore running please see: THIS
*You can also read The Guide at the top of page 1 of this very thread <-- this is highly recommended, though not required.
As to your very last point -- I would move the drive that you plan on using as you main macOS drive (which will also have OC on it) to SSD bay 1 in your cMP, but you will still be able to use the OC bootpicker to boot off of other drives (i.e. with other OS') whenever you want.
Hope this helps.
Many thanks Prefuse07. I went trough this post #8 from 2020 (outdated?). My concern is that while on High Sierra with the original ATI 5870, I haven't the boot rom 144.0.0.0 to allow Catalina working with the 5700xt.
What would be the best procedure?
— Install OC under High Sierra (ideally on a SATA drive)
— Update to Big Sur or Monterey (with the ATI 5870 GPU ?)
— Install the RX 5700XT GPU
What would be the best procedure?
— Install OC under High Sierra (ideally on a SATA drive)
— Update to Big Sur or Monterey (with the ATI 5870 GPU ?)
— Install the RX 5700XT GPU
Yeah, that post is outdated. Use the one I linked above -- grab Martin's latest config file: Version 0.9.1 (attached here to make your life easier)
I don't think OC works with HS, so you have to go this route:
1. Pixlas mod
2. Upgrade to Mojave
3. Setup OC (move the drive you want to use to SATA bay 1)
4. Upgrade to BS or Monterey (Seriously, just go for Monterey, it runs great on the cMP)
5. Install RX-5700XT
The ATI 5870 doesn't support metal, so there will be no HWAcceleration, but you can still use the GUI although it will just be painful, however, since you are just doing this to get setup in Monterey, it will be tolerable.
Once you've got Monterey up and running, power off and install the 5700XT.
*Note that Monterey takes many reboots to fully install, so don't freak out. Once you no longer see "Install macOS Monterey" from the OC Bootpicker -- that is when you know it has fully installed.
Good luck!
Oh yeah, last thing -- how is your Bluetooth/Wifi? If you have not upgraded that, then you will have problems with both Big Sur and Monterey. If you use ethernet instead, then you're fine.
Very good news. The method is becoming clearer. I will follow your instruction.
I am just asking if it would be possible to install directly Monterey on the drive and then plug an play in bay 1. However I will start with Mojave.
I need to check the wlan card chipset I installed years ago.
Then carbon copy of Monterey on a nvme lane, RAM and CPU upgrade and a second PCIe with nvme SSD.
The quality work of the teams and your Mac community attention are truly magnificent.
I am just asking if it would be possible to install directly Monterey on the drive and then plug an play in bay 1. However I will start with Mojave.
I need to check the wlan card chipset I installed years ago.
Then carbon copy of Monterey on a nvme lane, RAM and CPU upgrade and a second PCIe with nvme SSD.
The quality work of the teams and your Mac community attention are truly magnificent.
Re-reading your OP above, I should've mentioned -- if you have NOT flashed your BootROM, then you should get that taken care of before going to Mojave. Sorry that I missed that in my instructions above.
Do the BootROM first -- then Pixlas, Mojave, OC etc...
Given the age of the 4,1/5,1 -- I would recommend you PM @tsialex and ask him to do a rebuild, he can get you up to date with the latest BootROM, as well as a copy that you can flash every ~3 months or so. I also highly recommend you to buy a MATT card.
This way you will ensure that your EFI is never corrupted, instead of having it become corrupted in the future and freaking out... mitigate that risk now.
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@zazaki , don't underestimate the attention to detail that updating your bootrom to 144.0.0.0 will require! The first posting in the bootrom sticky thread lays it all out for you, so read it very carefully!
forums.macrumors.com
In your case I believe that your procedure is complicated by the fact that you need a Metal-compatible GPU in order to upgrade properly to Mojave with the bootrom upgrade, BUT the Metal-compatible GPU you have isn't compatible with High Sierra (it has to be recognized as Metal capable and functioning in High Sierra to progress to Mojave). You might want to post in the bootrom thread what your situation is, and likely Alex or another member will advise you on how to navigate through the bootrom upgrade. You might end up having to buy or borrow a cheap, low end Metal GPU that you use just for the bootrom upgrade process, and then get going with OpenCore and your RX-5700XT under Monterey.
In any case, questions about the bootrom upgrade should be placed in the bootrom thread. Good luck!
Edit: in the bootrom thread Alex specifically calls out the RX-5700XT as not suitable for upgrade to Mojave: "RX 5500/5600/5700 (NAVI GPUs only work with 10.15.1+) won't work for upgrading the Mac Pro BootROM"
MP5,1: What you have to do to upgrade to Mojave (BootROM upgrade instructions thread)
Please fully read this first post, you will probably find that you have one or more problems described into the various notes below. Mojave will only install if you have upgraded your BootROM to the current release and your Mac Pro have a Metal capable GPU*. If you are trying to install Mojave...
forums.macrumors.com
In your case I believe that your procedure is complicated by the fact that you need a Metal-compatible GPU in order to upgrade properly to Mojave with the bootrom upgrade, BUT the Metal-compatible GPU you have isn't compatible with High Sierra (it has to be recognized as Metal capable and functioning in High Sierra to progress to Mojave). You might want to post in the bootrom thread what your situation is, and likely Alex or another member will advise you on how to navigate through the bootrom upgrade. You might end up having to buy or borrow a cheap, low end Metal GPU that you use just for the bootrom upgrade process, and then get going with OpenCore and your RX-5700XT under Monterey.
In any case, questions about the bootrom upgrade should be placed in the bootrom thread. Good luck!
Edit: in the bootrom thread Alex specifically calls out the RX-5700XT as not suitable for upgrade to Mojave: "RX 5500/5600/5700 (NAVI GPUs only work with 10.15.1+) won't work for upgrading the Mac Pro BootROM"
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You are correct, for native BootROM upgrades the METAL supported GPU needs to have HighSierra support. Let's say, if your GPU is only supported with Mojave (like the Radeon VII) you can workaround installing Mojave with another Mac and then installing it to the Mac Pro you want upgrade the EFI firmware and then opening the Mojave installer to upgrade the firmware, but with a GPU that is only supported with Catalina/BigSur/Monterey, you gonna need to borrow a High Sierra METAL supported GPU or go for a BootROM reconstruction service, no workarounds.
I've sent you a PM.
Howdy - I'm finally going to install Monterey via OCLP on my Mid 2010 Mac Pro 5,1 (2 x 3.46 gHz 6-core Xeon, 96GB, Radeon RX580 currently running well on 10.14.6 Mojave)
QUESTION: Is it possible to keep using my 1TB SSD on PCI as system drive or should I avoid PCI for the clean install of Monterey? (I do also have installed and working an NVME on PCI: OWC Aura P12 Pro 1.0TB used for audio recording.) The non-NVME SSD on the PCI bus is fast enough but I cannot find info as to whether it will boot the new OS. Or maybe I should use the NVME for system drive? Thanks!
QUESTION: Is it possible to keep using my 1TB SSD on PCI as system drive or should I avoid PCI for the clean install of Monterey? (I do also have installed and working an NVME on PCI: OWC Aura P12 Pro 1.0TB used for audio recording.) The non-NVME SSD on the PCI bus is fast enough but I cannot find info as to whether it will boot the new OS. Or maybe I should use the NVME for system drive? Thanks!
For the opencore method discussed here using an NVME boot drive is fine. This thread is not for OCLP though. It should be fine I don’t see why an NVME boot drive wouldn’t work with OCLP but if you want to be certain you should ask the OCLP discord, this thread is for a different type of opencore setup
D'oh! Geez, I apologize for not being more careful. And thanks for the generous info.
I have a most basic question, if were to start from scratch and build out OpenCore on my MacPro 5,1 (It's already running Monterey and OpenCore 0.8.8) should I start my customization for 0.9.1 from the config.plist that is inside Martin's package, or the one in post #1 that is the downloadable attachment?
If you want to create a custom config from scratch, then you would use the sample config in post #1.
OC 0.9.2 released
replaced everything that is needed, plus a new LILU
works with old config (but but correctly you need to make 2 changes see post#1)
replaced everything that is needed, plus a new LILU
works with old config (but but correctly you need to make 2 changes see post#1)
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The guide has been updated to OpenCore version 0.9.2 (see Maintenance>Updating OpenCore).
Hello guys, I'm currently running OpenCore REL-091-2023-04-03 on my Mac Pro 3,1 which I have installed with the aid of OCLP. It certainly is a fantastic piece of software and works great on my beloved Mac Pro for the most part but I do have issues with two of my PCIe cards. One is a Sonnet 2 port eSATA card and the other card is a generic 2 port SATA controller card sitting in the mini PCIe slot (my Airport card is in a riser card with external antennas for better reception – so that's why). I checked and both cards use the ASMedia 1061 chip which works great in patched Mojave and Catalina (dosdude1 hacked installs). However, when I boot Mojave, Catalina or Big Sur with OpenCore said 2 cards cease to work. I do have some basic understanding of hackintoshing and poked around the config.plist but I don't really know what to change there ...
System Profiler after booting a hacked Mojave and Catalina (dosdude1) install:
![Bildschirmfoto 2023-05-09 um 12.26.59 AM.png]( "Bildschirmfoto 2023-05-09 um 12.26.59 AM.png")
System Profiler when any of my installed macOS versions are booted with OpenCore:
![Bildschirmfoto 2023-05-09 um 00.42.14.png]( "Bildschirmfoto 2023-05-09 um 00.42.14.png")
Basically the issue is that none of my drives are recognized (except the ones on the Mac Pro's logic board of course). Third party SATA controllers do not seem to work for whatever reason.
Anyone got an idea on how to fix this?
Thanks!
System Profiler after booting a hacked Mojave and Catalina (dosdude1) install:
System Profiler when any of my installed macOS versions are booted with OpenCore:
Basically the issue is that none of my drives are recognized (except the ones on the Mac Pro's logic board of course). Third party SATA controllers do not seem to work for whatever reason.
Anyone got an idea on how to fix this?
Thanks!
This thread is about a different opencore setup not OCLP. The opencore legacy patcher discord will be able to help you more that we can
Honestly I thought so but I was having a quick glance on the first page before posting and it didn't say anything like "don't ask anything about OCLP here". I very well do get your point though and will ask in the OpenCore Legacy Patcher Discord. Thanks!
Just trying to bed down a few ideas before I read the thread with serious intent (I've never been very good at learning by reading), so I have the concept in my head...
- Does every bootable disk in your system, say you have Catalina, Big Sur & Monterey boot drives, does each one need a separate Opencore partition, or does the system only need a single Opencore "volume" for the initial boot, and that then hands off to a vanilla macOS install from the boot picker?
- Is that the basis of the thing I've seen with folks talking about having Opencore on a (permanently installed) USB stick?
- Is there any rationale to having a dedicated small physical SSD (if you have the spare small SSDs) whose only job is to be the Opencore partition - say in the optical bays, and then having separate OS drives in each sled?
No. Only a single partition for OC is required. It is good practice to have only one ESP.
Such a practice is typically for debugging. Using it permanently is not recommended, especially now that EnableGop provides native boot screen support.
I suppose this approach could provide better isolation between OC and various unsupported operating systems installed across multiple disks (allowing any of these to be removed from the system without removing OC). Note, however, that due to APFS incompatibility between various macOS versions, multi-booting macOS is not recommended without careful disk management (with /etc/fstab, for example).
OK.
Right... I'll make a note to look up the EnableGop function / feature when I begin reading.
OK this is something interesting to me, because I'e ben keeping my High Sierra installs on HFS+ I'm using Tinkertool System to prevent mounting of some drives, but that requires them to hav been mounted in the first place to select. Is the problem literally "mounting a Monterey APFS drive in Mojave / Catalina / Big Sur can damage it" issue, or is it more once you start writing to it that things go wrong?
