Xs 1,1-3,1 Xserve 2020 [Xs3,1]

[natjonesart]

The DIMM slots that are 'disabled' are slots A4 and A5, if you have DIMMs in there without correct smbios configuration you get odd behavior from macOS (unstable, iStat Menus reports using thousands of terrabytes of RAM, and the panics).
The presence of DIMMs in those slots is what caused the panics during boot.

It will now boot the existing 10.14.6 install properly, putting my WX4150 back in (after having modded the 144 ROM to add CoreEG2 and EDIDParser and flashing the modded rom in ROMtool)

I am still waiting for four more DIMMS to come in to see if all slots are seen with the blank 5,1 rom and OC 0.5.9 xserve SMBIOS. My xserve displays correctly as an xserve but I lost the ram tab in About this Mac. Under the Memory tab in System Report I see all eight DIMMS I have installed reporting correctly as ECC but under Upgradeable memory it says NO.

 

[ScrumpyDaniel]

This is brilliant.

Just tried on an Xserve we have here at work. Got it to update to 144.0.0 correctly using the tool and also have been able to PRAM using the usual method of cmd+alt+p+r.

However it won't boot into any 10.13 drive at all? I've tried using SSD connected to the SAS carrier, Externally via USB and on a PCI-e adapter.

Not changed the CPU's yet, just using the stock 2.26Ghz.

Any ideas?

 

[Ludacrisvp]

This is brilliant.

Just tried on an Xserve we have here at work. Got it to update to 144.0.0 correctly using the tool and also have been able to PRAM using the usual method of cmd+alt+p+r.

However it won't boot into any 10.13 drive at all? I've tried using SSD connected to the SAS carrier, Externally via USB and on a PCI-e adapter.

Not changed the CPU's yet, just using the stock 2.26Ghz.

Any ideas?

dual cpu? i would try with remove DIMMs in slots A4/A5 and B4/B5 (assuming that cpu2 has them named the same way) mine was panicking during boot early attempting to go into 10.14, I think because it was trying to do a kextcache update / refresh during the boot causing a boot loop.
also check that you have the “-no_compat_check” argument in your nvram settings.

boot to any os (or single user mode) and either as root or use sudo run this:

nvram boot-args=“-v -no_compat_check”

that will give you verbose boot for any macOS you boot and bypass the typical compatibility checks and should boot if it’s a simple thing like that.
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I am still waiting for four more DIMMS to come in to see if all slots are seen with the blank 5,1 rom and OC 0.5.9 xserve SMBIOS. My xserve displays correctly as an xserve but I lost the ram tab in About this Mac. Under the Memory tab in System Report I see all eight DIMMS I have installed reporting correctly as ECC but under Upgradeable memory it says NO.

This is all being made available due to the OpenCore smbios injection. I’d bet you would see the same behavior I do (With DIMMs at least) if you bypassed opencore. you could probably test putting DIMMs in the “bad” slots I mentioned to get the same info.
if I’m feeling more ambitious this weekend I may get further into OpenCore injection.

using the blank rom combined with some injection from OpenCore we could probably get all the things working like iMessage and other cloud stuff.

 

[Ludacrisvp]

So I've been poking at OpenCore 0.6.0 lately on the xserve using the 144 rom from my modified tool.
the SMBIOS config changes it can do are apparently not as robust as clover's setup, it doesn't offer a way to tell macos how many dimm slots there are. Which means that with OpenCore i'm not sure we can get all 6 / 12 DIMMs to work properly, and clover is too risky on a real mac.

Mine also reports that the memory is not upgradable.

I'm starting to wonder if there is a way we can get the Mac Pro 7,1 identity used if that would give us correct slot counts as that contains 12 dimms. (simple enough to test, i just ran out of time when i was testing)

 

[natjonesart]

So I've been poking at OpenCore 0.6.0 lately on the xserve using the 144 rom from my modified tool.
the SMBIOS config changes it can do are apparently not as robust as clover's setup, it doesn't offer a way to tell macos how many dimm slots there are. Which means that with OpenCore i'm not sure we can get all 6 / 12 DIMMs to work properly, and clover is too risky on a real mac.

Mine also reports that the memory is not upgradable.

I'm starting to wonder if there is a way we can get the Mac Pro 7,1 identity used if that would give us correct slot counts as that contains 12 dimms. (simple enough to test, i just ran out of time when i was testing)

This was my finding using the blank 5,1 144 rom as well. I haven't tried the 7,1 ident yet but it is on my list when I find time to get back to it.

 

[natjonesart]

I played around with the 7,1 SMBIOS and the Memory tab returned but only showed 8 DIMMs.

 

[someuserxsvr]

Any ideas?

Got same issue when update to 144 send it back from datacenter to my house and will be try play it. When had old CPUs got apple logo then get stop apple logo. When replace it with new its stop loading need play it with maybe user windows installer

 

[hydrostaticpdx]

Part 8: Cooling and noise

If the Xserve main location is a server rack in the server room with a good cooling this point is not a prerequisite. But if there are plans of some desktop-replacement daily usage the default 17k rpm fans are going to drive people around you nuts. The solution is in process, but long story short 20 Noctua fans coupled to 2009 Mac Pro heat-sinks B provided a silent operation suitable for music production in studio environment. Mind that a decent cooling under sustained load requires 3U height in your rack.

Hi together,
I wanted to come back to the original post of this thread and as whether there is any progress on Part 8: Cooling and noise. Is it possible to upload some photos of the installation with Noctua fans coupled to 2009 Mac Pro heat-sinks B to get the silent operation of the XSERVE.

Thanks a lot!

 

[jessecampbell]

My xserve was at work when covid happened so I hadn't touched it until this week.
Just to follow up on the 'hard way' of putting in a pci-e raid card, a g5 xserve hard drive backplane board, and SSDs in sas trays...
The power connector on the g5 board hits one of the brackets and fans on the cpu/ram cooler, I had to basically take out one of the fans and bend the bracket out of the way.
Then, ran into yet another issue: the trays and g5 backplane are 3gb/s max. My 9 year old raid card supports 6gb/s, and my new SSDs are 6gb/s. The card is not smart enough to notice that the backplane only handles 3, so I'm getting endless bus resets. So, now I'm looking at buying an *even older* raid card to limit the speed to 3gb/s.
I kinda wish I'd just stayed with the old backplane, used only power from sata trays, and just snuck the data cables for the raid card directly to the drives.
Or followed the advice here and picked up a couple nvme pci-e cards

 

[graffa.fi]

Does anyone have experience on how to get the serial number recovered after a firmware upgrade? Is it worth using a Blank Board Serializer or is OpenCore a better way? Thinking about the future and customization...

 

[stcm]

I got Xserve 3,1 two months ago.
It's a very beautiful machine, so I thought I would spare no time and money for this cool computer.

First, I added 24GB of RAM. Next, I changed the CPU to W5590. And I have no plans to use an optical drive, so I changed to a 2.5-inch HDD using an adapter.
Finally since the original gpu is very poor, I've removed the MXM-b Nvidia GT 120M then attached the Macvidcards GTX 645 (efi) to the PCIe. Yea.

Now I'm considering further upgrades (changes to 2CPU-logic boards and SSDs or), but at this stage it is difficult due to costs, heh. I'll improve it little by little in the future.
Btw, main OS are Debian and Catalina. I installed Big Sur unpatched just last weekend, but it's still for experimental testing as many of the stock-apps crashed (eg. App Store, Mail... etc)

Well, what I wanna know is the method for "silencing".
I'm currently racking in a room a little further away, but if possible I'd like to have this "world's most beautiful blade" on my desktop. In short, Please let me know if you have any specific information.

Regards🙏

 

[spookfx]

Has anyone tried an ECC ram stick larger than 8GB? The Mac Pro and newer CPU's should support this, I'm wondering if there is a hardware limit on the 8GB...

Thanks.

 

[Ludacrisvp]

So I’ve made some progress with opencore 0.6.4 which adds memory configuration options. I still need time to test more and tweak some of the cosmetics but I’m now booting my xserve 3,1 running Mac Pro 5,1 firmware 144 pretending to be an iMac Pro 1,1 with the MXM wx4150 amd gpu and still the original nehalem cpu with 6 DIMMs populated with no apparent issues. (Like panic during boot that was seen before the opencore memory config)

I didn’t have a ton of testing / uptime due to having what appears to be an SSD failure forcing me to boot up using the stock 1TB HDD that is slower than slow.

i do also have a new spares kit dual socket board but I’ve not gotten motivated enough to swap the board.

Edit: In other words this allows us to use the Mac Pro 5,1 ROM and Westmere CPUs and utilize all 6 / 12 DIMM slots on the board inside macOS. I only have 8Gb sticks of DDR3-ECC, so I have no way to test the max amount of RAM the xserve could run with the aid of this memory option.

 

[Ludacrisvp]

...

Decided to swap in the L5640 I had laying around, didn't de-lid it, the new thermal compound (AS5) and slightly lower TDP has reduced heat on CPU by about 10-12C even under load with idle fans and 74F ambient temps.

no issues with memory have cropped up, no panics, will need to get more thermal paste before i can do the board swap to the dual CPU. I do have an extremely long boot time, but i think that is related to the Thunderbolt card and this ancient HDD I'm using as I don't have a spare SSD at the moment.

 

[spookfx]

So I’ve made some progress with opencore 0.6.4 which adds memory configuration options. I still need time to test more and tweak some of the cosmetics but I’m now booting my xserve 3,1 running Mac Pro 5,1 firmware 144 pretending to be an iMac Pro 1,1 with the MXM wx4150 amd gpu and still the original nehalem cpu with 6 DIMMs populated with no apparent issues. (Like panic during boot that was seen before the opencore memory config)

I didn’t have a ton of testing / uptime due to having what appears to be an SSD failure forcing me to boot up using the stock 1TB HDD that is slower than slow.

i do also have a new spares kit dual socket board but I’ve not gotten motivated enough to swap the board.

Edit: In other words this allows us to use the Mac Pro 5,1 ROM and Westmere CPUs and utilize all 6 / 12 DIMM slots on the board inside macOS. I only have 8Gb sticks of DDR3-ECC, so I have no way to test the max amount of RAM the xserve could run with the aid of this memory option.

Can you share that EFI folder? That would be awesome!

Great work!

I finally have all the parts to populate the sata header and the motherboard sata port... I'm still trying to find the GPU at a good price... but this has thread has excited me to get my xServe doing more again!

Thank you all!

 

[Ludacrisvp]

Can you share that EFI folder? That would be awesome!

Great work!

I finally have all the parts to populate the sata header and the motherboard sata port... I'm still trying to find the GPU at a good price... but this has thread has excited me to get my xServe doing more again!

Thank you all!

https://www.ebay.com/p/6036138714 currently $69.55 USD, not sure that you'd find a better price than this for a 'modern' MXM GPU.

Not sure if i mentioned, but i've also got the GC-Titan ridge (flashed) installed in this xserve in slot-1, i tried using the SSDT modified for slot 1 instead of slot 4 that is used by the mac pro group, but couldn't get it to inject the information properly back in the early opencore versions, i've not tried to use the SSDT again. What I did do back then was manually incorporate that info into the DSDT so that it would be properly detected.

 

[stcm]

I bought a sas-tray (620-4575) a few days ago.

as a test, I connected my stock HDDs (sas*4 / sata*2) and SSDs (sata*3) via sas IF.
Oh! Contrary to my expectation, all disks were recognized correctly (detection, read/write and boot)
interestingly, the sata SSD is now working properly without any hassle. awesome.

 

[spookfx]

While we can run the MP5,1 firmware like this we do have a hybrid rom in the end that seems to confuse the macOS installers. At this point since the hardware is not officially able to run 10.15 / 11 and we have to use patched installers I don't think it is a big deal.

Sounds like you either go this route and keep some of the xserve's identity or you flash the blank 5,1 ROM and have other issues.

For me, this seems like the safer play (hybrid) if you really just want to get better CPU support and can work around the behaviors.

Note PRAM/NVRAM reset now uses the same thing the mac pro does (CMD+Opt+P+R) not the front panel option.

NOTE: macOS 10.14.6 will not boot even on the 144 firmware using this flashing method, it gives the "no entry" sign.
This means we aren't fully seen as a 5,1 somewhere (maybe board-id?) so it will refuse to boot without the nvram entry for "-no_compat_check" and it still panics during boot of an existing Mojave install that worked fine on the xserve firmware, but it was able to boot to a 10.14.x dosdude installer

EDIT to avoid panic booting 10.14 remove DIMMs from slots A4 and A5.

funny side note ... it does boot to 10.5.8 just fine (probably due to -no_compat_check in the nvram), Leopard boots so fast from the SSD!

I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong here...
I'm on OS X 10.13.6 (High Sierra)
I have the prerequisites in the right places... (MacProEFI mounted and Mojave installer in the applications folder...) The tool looks like it is ready to flash...
I shutdown, and power on, holding the power button....(it starts to flash after about 30 seconds) The grey apple and FW flash appears on screen and flashes off...But no dice... I'm still on FW XS31.0081.B09... Do I need to swap CPUs? I'm on a Dual x5570... I even pulled half the ram in case that was the issue...

 

[Ludacrisvp]

I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong here...
I'm on OS X 10.13.6 (High Sierra)
I have the prerequisites in the right places... (MacProEFI mounted and Mojave installer in the applications folder...) The tool looks like it is ready to flash...
I shutdown, and power on, holding the power button....(it starts to flash after about 30 seconds) The grey apple and FW flash appears on screen and flashes off...But no dice... I'm still on FW XS31.0081.B09... Do I need to swap CPUs? I'm on a Dual x5570... I even pulled half the ram in case that was the issue...

I think I did the flash using the tool while running 10.11 maybe you need to do this firmware update from an older os?

you can’t swap in the westmere chips until you’ve completed the flash.

I seem to recall having this happen where the efi flash screen comes up for a second and goes away as it has been a long time since I did the flash I’m going from memory here but I think I had to manually mount the efi partition and remove the entire APPLE folder from inside the EFI folder. Then rerun the tool to make the flash.

 

[graffa.fi]

I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong here...
I'm on OS X 10.13.6 (High Sierra)
I have the prerequisites in the right places... (MacProEFI mounted and Mojave installer in the applications folder...) The tool looks like it is ready to flash...
I shutdown, and power on, holding the power button....(it starts to flash after about 30 seconds) The grey apple and FW flash appears on screen and flashes off...But no dice... I'm still on FW XS31.0081.B09... Do I need to swap CPUs? I'm on a Dual x5570... I even pulled half the ram in case that was the issue...

i tried to change the firmware myself thousands of times but failed. until in trouble I came across that I had too fine a 4k monitor and too new a cable that was not supported. after noticing this i replaced the old monitor and bought an adapter and all the problems disappeared. the firmware went like by itself and for the first time and then another time when i restored the test of the old one and again the update. then i lost the series but i got it restored by manually stabbing the firmis file.

no need to change processors to change firmware. the old ones will work on the replaced one, while the new ones may not work on the old firmware

 

[stcm]

When I installed the fan array of 2008 on 2009, I was able to set lower than the built-in one.
Naturally, the noise has also become a little quieter

e: It's still March, so I think the fan's air is enough even if I play music or games, drawing and chatting at noon.
however, the temperature will rise little by little, so IDK how far it will work.
btw, I'm in Japan.
11.2.2 (20D80) / 1*W5590 / 24GB

 

[Jimmyc751]

Ok so I have a question, I’m new here so go easy on me lol!!
Ok so I have a 3,1 and have been running High Sierra and it runs fine, I have purchased a Radeon rx560 which is double with(no big deal have a pcie extention and a box for the card) my question is there a way to add a 6 pin connector for the graphics card to the power supply? I am usually really good with electronics stuff and have been searching everywhere on how to do this but have come across nothing.
anyway thanks in advance!!

 

[stcm]

Ok so I have a question, I’m new here so go easy on me lol!!
Ok so I have a 3,1 and have been running High Sierra and it runs fine, I have purchased a Radeon rx560 which is double with(no big deal have a pcie extention and a box for the card) my question is there a way to add a 6 pin connector for the graphics card to the power supply? I am usually really good with electronics stuff and have been searching everywhere on how to do this but have come across nothing.
anyway thanks in advance!!

Have you tried such a conversion adapter?

Cable Matters 2-Pack 6 Pin to SATA Power Cable (SATA to 6 Pin PCIe) - 8 Inches

Cable Matters 2-Pack 6 Pin to SATA Power Cable (SATA to 6 Pin PCIe) - 8 Inches

www.amazon.com

 

[Jimmyc751]

Have you tried such a conversion adapter?

Cable Matters 2-Pack 6 Pin to SATA Power Cable (SATA to 6 Pin PCIe) - 8 Inches

Cable Matters 2-Pack 6 Pin to SATA Power Cable (SATA to 6 Pin PCIe) - 8 Inches

www.amazon.com

Yes that option could work, now my question is does it put out enough wattage from the sata connector? Ive watched several videos and have read they can only put out like 50 watts or something like that? Please correct me if I’m wrong.

 

[stcm]

Yes that option could work, now my question is does it put out enough wattage from the sata connector? Ive watched several videos and have read they can only put out like 50 watts or something like that? Please correct me if I’m wrong.

fmm... how is this thread?
https://www.reddit.com/r/EtherMining/comments/705xmd