Well, that was fun...
I had booted from an external SSD, then wanted to return to the main internal drive. I chose it in System Settings, then, instead of rebooting to the internal drive, I shut the computer down. When I booted up again, I got a string of rebootings, then the dreaded Orang Light.
I needed to restore the firmware.
Fortunately, I had my late 2015 iMac, but it was only running Monterey, and I needed it to run Sequoia.
Using OpenCore Legacy Patcher, I was able to install Sequoia on an external drive, and swap over to it.
Then came the fun bit.
Instructions say to connect a USB cable from the Restoring computer (iMac) to the Restored computer (Mac Mini), hold down the power switch on the Mac Mini, plug it in and it should appear in a Finder window. Which it did.
Then try Restore Mac, which failed with Error 4042. Then try Revive Mac, which failed with Error 4042.
Look up Error 4042 on the Internet - nobody knows what it means.
Examine setup. I had the cable plugged into one of the ports on my keyboard, which are high-speed USB A ports, and have always worked before. Just in case, I plugged it into one of the ports on the back of the iMac.
It worked perfectly. Retried Restore Mac, and it was up and running in a few minutes, with verified OS and verified Firmware.
Happy, happy, joy, joy.
So the take aways are --
I had booted from an external SSD, then wanted to return to the main internal drive. I chose it in System Settings, then, instead of rebooting to the internal drive, I shut the computer down. When I booted up again, I got a string of rebootings, then the dreaded Orang Light.
I needed to restore the firmware.
Fortunately, I had my late 2015 iMac, but it was only running Monterey, and I needed it to run Sequoia.
Using OpenCore Legacy Patcher, I was able to install Sequoia on an external drive, and swap over to it.
Then came the fun bit.
Instructions say to connect a USB cable from the Restoring computer (iMac) to the Restored computer (Mac Mini), hold down the power switch on the Mac Mini, plug it in and it should appear in a Finder window. Which it did.
Then try Restore Mac, which failed with Error 4042. Then try Revive Mac, which failed with Error 4042.
Look up Error 4042 on the Internet - nobody knows what it means.
Examine setup. I had the cable plugged into one of the ports on my keyboard, which are high-speed USB A ports, and have always worked before. Just in case, I plugged it into one of the ports on the back of the iMac.
It worked perfectly. Retried Restore Mac, and it was up and running in a few minutes, with verified OS and verified Firmware.
Happy, happy, joy, joy.
So the take aways are --
- When you switch boot drives on a Mac Mini (or at least the M4 version) reboot to the new drive before shutting down.
- Plug the restore cable directly into one of the ports on your computer, don't go via an external hub, no matter how good it is.
