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MP 7,1 Can an owner confirm it won’t boot without Apple SSD even with “No startup security”?
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T2 settings: On my Mac Mini 2018 I had to enable external booting for M.2 NVME-drives, and for booting older systems I had to activate ,Medium Security'.
It's the same procedure on the Mac Pro 7,1 ?
Or are NVME blades via PCI-E now indicated as internal?
It's the same procedure on the Mac Pro 7,1 ?
Or are NVME blades via PCI-E now indicated as internal?
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"Right to repair" is not going to change the physical hardware parameters of this machine.
No need to boot at all the Mac Pro. It's a T2 process only and the internal software is run on the Mac that is doing the T2 pair/restore process and not on the Mac Pro itself. Think that it's an iPhone/iPad that you are restoring, it's similar process.
ok, so you would just connect the mac you are restoring say, via the thunderbolt port to a live mac running the software and turn it on .. ?
Nothing changed, still external to the Mac Pro firmware. My only doubt at this time is if the two SATA connections are still internal.
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Yes, read more about the process here: https://support.apple.com/guide/app...ve-firmware-in-mac-computers-apdebea5be51/mac
OK, It sounds like that (available) software might do everything an owner might need to set up the new ssd modules himself ? (provided he has another mac)
No, as was stated, the Firmware lives on the NAND, and the Apple Configuator tool that is public can't pair the NAND to the T2 chip.
So only Apple or an authorized service provider can pair new NAND to the T2.
Shouldn't be a great issue as you are going to have to buy or get the NAND from them anyway.
Likely the NAND is going to last 10 years or greater, if it's truly more robust than EEPORMs.
I've had very few Mac's that ever failed due to the chips that store the ROM's/Firmware failing, so like I said, I was overthinking it. Tho one day maybe we'll need a third party source for the NAND chips for T2 Mac's, hopefully by that time Apple's pairing tool will have leaked or been reverse engineered, but it's likely not going to be a wide spread issue anytime soon.
Writing to an EEPROMs, NVRAM, PRAM, etc. is minimal and trivial compared to an SSD.
In the past I had the same opinion, but after I started to study MP5,1 firmware more closely, I changed my perspective. A lot of things are written inside the first two stores of the NVRAM volume and it happens constantly. 1 bit changed, whole 512byte of the sector is re-written.
SPI flash models used on MP5,1 are rated just to 100k erase/write cycles. Whenever I need to remove a MP5,1 SPI flash to reprogram, I install a new flash memory, just in case.
NANDs are much more reliable than EEPROM/Flash.
If you are primarily using a NVMe SSD holder PCI-e card why would the OEM card fail. If you don't boot off of it and don't use it much ... where is the creditable failure mode? if all that is on the T2 SSD is a maintenance macOS image that use when doing some low level maintenance and otherwise don't use it the operational lifetime for that drive is probably double digit years. NAND you don't write to hardly at all isn't gong to wear out.
The main T2 chip itself completely fails you have far bigger problems. It won't boot at all. ( not particularly new if SMC PMIC completely fail have major systemic problems there too. Not much different when the T2 subsumes those roles to some degree. )
Folks that think the T2 SSD is awful have the 256GB option. Just login once and set the security parameters the way you want and move on.
Folks buying the MP 3019 model in 2030-31 can do basically the same thing regardless of the T2 capacity. Most likely though Apple isn't going anywhere.