- so OS compatibility will be a non-issue.
Looking at the Intel microcode for LGA771 Xeon (both 45nm and 65nm), and comparing it to MacPro firmware update packages (for 1,1, 2,1 and 3,1), i saw that all of them are 4096 bytes long.
View attachment 660629
So I'm about to do something very stupid, very soon, in that regard...
Just need to get few things first, eprommer (or a clamp), one E5440 and few more days of online digging.
I don't think i can let it go until i try it.
Looking at the Intel microcode for LGA771 Xeon (both 45nm and 65nm), and comparing it to MacPro firmware update packages (for 1,1, 2,1 and 3,1), i saw that all of them are 4096 bytes long.
View attachment 660629
So I'm about to do something very stupid, very soon, in that regard...
Just need to get few things first, eprommer (or a clamp), one E5440 and few more days of online digging.
I don't think i can let it go until i try it.
That is the only thing that holds me back for now.
And there I was thinking it would sound stupid
maybe, maybe we are going to see it happen. I'll just keep my fingers crossed!
Btw, it's maybe a stupid question but is it possible to edit SMC/Firmware so that 1,1/2,1 cMPs can run Harpertown Xeons?
There was plenty of talk before about that (topics from 2008) but today it could be the only option left for 2006/2007 MPs...
but either way i'm willing to give it a weeks of trying.
You say August, i say Jul 4th and 5th
Finally i had chance for a nice sleep, so with a rested head i'm a bit more scared of what i'm doing (and how stupid it is) but no time for that. Gotta go and bug some guys that i know and prepare for this as best as i can.
I'm still waiting for someone with some real knowledge about this to show and tear me a new one
Please do not do this. You will destroy your processor. instead. Let XNU load the modified firmware (see debug output of boot process).Looking at the Intel microcode for LGA771 Xeon (both 45nm and 65nm), and comparing it to MacPro firmware update packages (for 1,1, 2,1 and 3,1), i saw that all of them are 4096 bytes long.
View attachment 660629
So I'm about to do something very stupid, very soon, in that regard...
Just need to get few things first, eprommer (or a clamp), one E5440 and few more days of online digging.
I don't think i can let it go until i try it.
So far I've tried Clover, Enoch and VirtualBox.
All above give the same results as current boot.efi - nothing...
Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the prospect of someone finding out a way to get this to work, but for many reasons, including those echoed here, I'm not sure this will ever work well.
You've also got to stack the efforts required against the reward. If you read the review Ars Technica did on Sierra, you can see that apart from APFS, there are a few minor security enhancements, and that's about it. I doubt anyone running a 1,1 or a 2,1 is all that concerned with things like Continuity or Siri (please correct me if I'm wrong).
So, APFS is looks great, or at the very least it's good to see the back of HFS+, and I guess some would consider that alone enough of a reason to move, but if you're getting down to the level of ripping OS X apart completely, it's going a bit far, isn't it?
El Cap is the current OS you can run on these machines, which history would suggest would mean you'll still get another 2 years of security upgrades. After that, on average those who bought at launch would have had their machines 11-12 years! It's safe to say barring APFS there's not much more Apple could do to improve performance on your machine. Adding emulators is only going to add overhead and slow things down, which isn't what people want to deal with.
As I say, don't want to dampen anyone's spirits or dissuade anyone from investigating this; when I heard about the Tiamo thunk between EFI64 and EFI32, that was pretty magical. Pushing hardware to its limits and getting things to do things they were never designed for is fascinating to watch. But in this case, I fear the solution would only make these machines slower.
Happy to be proved wrong though
Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the prospect of someone finding out a way to get this to work, but for many reasons, including those echoed here, I'm not sure this will ever work well.
You've also got to stack the efforts required against the reward. If you read the review Ars Technica did on Sierra, you can see that apart from APFS, there are a few minor security enhancements, and that's about it. I doubt anyone running a 1,1 or a 2,1 is all that concerned with things like Continuity or Siri (please correct me if I'm wrong).
So, APFS is looks great, or at the very least it's good to see the back of HFS+, and I guess some would consider that alone enough of a reason to move, but if you're getting down to the level of ripping OS X apart completely, it's going a bit far, isn't it?
El Cap is the current OS you can run on these machines, which history would suggest would mean you'll still get another 2 years of security upgrades. After that, on average those who bought at launch would have had their machines 11-12 years! It's safe to say barring APFS there's not much more Apple could do to improve performance on your machine. Adding emulators is only going to add overhead and slow things down, which isn't what people want to deal with.
As I say, don't want to dampen anyone's spirits or dissuade anyone from investigating this; when I heard about the Tiamo thunk between EFI64 and EFI32, that was pretty magical. Pushing hardware to its limits and getting things to do things they were never designed for is fascinating to watch. But in this case, I fear the solution would only make these machines slower.
Happy to be proved wrong though