MP 1,1-5,1 2009 Mac Pro fully bricked out of the blue

[irra7ional]

Hey guys,

So something extremely weird happened with my 2009 4,1 Mac Pro that I have been using for over 4 years now. Yesterday, I was installing Wickr Pro as my organisation uses it at home and at some point I noticed messages weren't received. I was okay, thats weird, let me log out, I log out and log in and woops say it can't read the device or the encryption or something like that. So then I was like, okay, let's uninstall the app, I go to delete the app and I am greeted with a message "That action can't be performed there is not enough disk space". Please note, there was 40 GB Free.

At this point I open Disk Utility to check disk permissions. Boom, it tells me there is a problem please run recovery tool to do repair.

I am like okay no problem.

I have Mojave installed so the firmware is updated, I tried with the AMD Card booting with CMD + R, nothing, then I am thinking its firmware bootloader thing so I go and grab my original Video Card and put in while removing my AMD.

I reboot the computer and total brick.

No startup sound.

No video.

Nothing.

The power indicator is fine but that's it.

I restarted SMC, NVRAM everything - nothing. These things always worked for me in the past when I had issues like these.

In the morning I borrowed the CPU tray and hard disk of a colleague of mine with the same machine, the brick remains.

Any idea what can be done ? is there any way to downgrade the firmware to try to unbrick the device ?

Thank you!

 

[h9826790]

Hey guys,

So something extremely weird happened with my 2009 4,1 Mac Pro that I have been using for over 4 years now. Yesterday, I was installing Wickr Pro as my organisation uses it at home and at some point I noticed messages weren't received. I was okay, thats weird, let me log out, I log out and log in and woops say it can't read the device or the encryption or something like that. So then I was like, okay, let's uninstall the app, I go to delete the app and I am greeted with a message "That action can't be performed there is not enough disk space". Please note, there was 40 GB Free.

At this point I open Disk Utility to check disk permissions. Boom, it tells me there is a problem please run recovery tool to do repair.

I am like okay no problem.

I have Mojave installed so the firmware is updated, so I go and grab my original Video Card and put in while removing my AMD.

I reboot the computer and total brick.

No startup sound.

No video.

Nothing.

The power indicator is fine but that's it.

I restarted SMC, NVRAM everything - nothing. These things always worked for me in the past when I had issues like these.

In the morning I borrowed the CPU tray and hard disk of a colleague of mine with the same machine, the brick remains.

Any idea what can be done ? is there any way to downgrade the firmware to try to unbrick the device ?

Thank you!

You shouldn't need to swap GPU. You can simply hold Command + R to boot to recovery partition.

Now, you don't know if the original GPU graphic card is faulty, or your cMP suddenly brick itself.

Anyway, the original symptoms feels like the hard drive is failing.

 

[irra7ional]

You shouldn't need to swap GPU. You can simply hold Command + R to boot to recovery partition.

Now, you don't know if the original GPU graphic card is faulty, or your cMP suddenly brick itself.

Anyway, the original symptoms feels like the hard drive is failing.

Actually, I initially tried with the normal AMD card, then swapped the card. Didn't work at all. Will edit the original post so its clear.

Also if it s HD failing when I tried with my colleagues Hard Drive shouldn't it have work ?

 

[h9826790]

Actually, I initially tried with the normal AMD card, then swapped the card. Didn't work at all. Will edit the original post so its clear.

So, this eliminate GPU issue.

Also if it s HD failing when I tried with my colleagues Hard Drive shouldn't it have work ?

Because I suspected the original graphic can't boot. Therefore, even you swap hard drive, still can't boot. But of course, now we know it's not the GPU. Therefore, can't be the tray and the hard drive as well.

If all the above is true, then it's pretty much down to PSU and logicboard. Of course, it can be other PCIe cards, or other failing hard drive, or even some faulty USB connected devices. But the chance is relatively low. And I assume you remove all unnecessary items already.

Unless you have another PSU / logicboard to perform swap test. Otherwise, the first to try is usually to replace the BR2032 battery on the logicboard.

 

[irra7ional]

Going to try to replace the battery then! That would make sense to be fair. The computer has been a complete champ, and I was warming up to trying the Open Core thing and moving to Catalina and upgrading the tray to Dual 6 core one. Will be an absolute bummer if its done for, but honestly, until I did the restart it worked just fine, so I can't imagine that is the case.

 

[h9826790]

Going to try to replace the battery then! That would make sense to be fair. The computer has been a complete champ, and I was warming up to trying the Open Core thing and moving to Catalina and upgrading the tray to Dual 6 core one. Will be an absolute bummer if its done for, but honestly, until I did the restart it worked just fine, so I can't imagine that is the case.

Some hardware failure (e.g. PSU, logic board, CPU tray...) may keep working even partially failed, until next boot.

In fact, the battery is one of them. Your cMP can continue to work perfectly for years if you never reboot it. But on the next start, can't boot if the battery is dead.

 

[irra7ional]

Some hardware failure (e.g. PSU, logic board, CPU tray...) may keep working even partially failed, until next boot.

In fact, the battery is one of them. Your cMP can continue to work perfectly for years if you never reboot it. But on the next start, can't boot if the battery is dead.

Fair enough, but in fact I did restart it multiple times last week. It usually stays in sleep mode over night but I tend to do several resets a week.

 

[irra7ional]

So just wanted to say, managed to get things fixed, was several things:

1) RAM and tray needed to be fully cleaned just to get it to boot
2) SSD failure
3) GPU failure

But now replaced with new SSD and a 580 8GB via a mini pin to 8 pin connector and works more beastly than before. Tonight I will be having some fun trying to get OpenCore working on the new SSD.