Ok so a bunch of people seem to also have this problem but no one has seemed to be able to fix it. anyways the title explains it all. i have followed everything perfectly, doing the whole csrutil disable thingy and trying a couple different downloads for the firmware and tools, but nothing has wroked. some guy told me that "there is the variant of manually building the firmware" but i have no clue what he meant by that. he also told me to make sure that my drive is guid formatted, and it is. anybody have any ideas?
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MP 1,1-5,1 Can't flash mac pro 2009 to 5,1 firmware
- Thread starter Diztance
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These are the two tutorials I have tried. They are pretty much identical. The only differences are the download links I think
Turning a 2009 4,1 Mac Pro into a 2010/2012 5,1 Mac Pro - 2021 Edition - The House of Moth
Your 2009 (4,1) Mac Pro has many upgrade possibilities that are enabled by updating the firmware to that of a 2010/2012 (5,1) Mac Pro. This guide will tell you how to go about doing that update and more!
thehouseofmoth.com
&
How to Upgrade the Firmware of a 2009 Mac Pro 4,1
The 2009 Mac Pro shares an identical motherboard with the 2010 model. With a firmware update, you can use newer CPUs and upgrade all the way to...
www.ifixit.com
"Manually building the firmware" seems like a great path ahead and I think us failures should get together and try to work on this. The scripts/programs are great when all the variables are stable & constant but to accomplish things like this it's better to have an annotated procedure where we can adjust to differences and problems during implementation. I'm looking at the underlying scripts for the Tool to try to develop such a manual procedure but struggling a bit.
I'm also looking back to old posts around flashing the Mac Pro 1,1. A lot of the discussion then was more "hands on" and conceptual then, as opposed to now everybody just trying to get the damned Tool to run when obviously in some environment it just can't anymore. I'm hoping I can learn enough about the firmware updating process from these 1,1 flashing posts to get my head around ithe current situation with the 4,1. It's become an obsession far beyond reason. I've done a whole bunch of these in the past mindlessly just running the Tool and it annoys me that something has changed and by just blindly using the Application I never learned what was actually going on and can't readily adapt.
What does your System/Library/CoreServices/Firmware Updates folder look like? Mine looks like this and I think it's wrong (obviously the USB thing is irrelevant but just being complete):
What does your RamDisk look like. Mine looks like this and I think it's wrong, mostly because I get the same RamDisk even when Tool fails.
Most of the people are getting it done just fine and some of us are failing. It's genetic probably.
Conclusion: I gave up and got rid of the 4,1. I don't often do that.
I'm also looking back to old posts around flashing the Mac Pro 1,1. A lot of the discussion then was more "hands on" and conceptual then, as opposed to now everybody just trying to get the damned Tool to run when obviously in some environment it just can't anymore. I'm hoping I can learn enough about the firmware updating process from these 1,1 flashing posts to get my head around ithe current situation with the 4,1. It's become an obsession far beyond reason. I've done a whole bunch of these in the past mindlessly just running the Tool and it annoys me that something has changed and by just blindly using the Application I never learned what was actually going on and can't readily adapt.
What does your System/Library/CoreServices/Firmware Updates folder look like? Mine looks like this and I think it's wrong (obviously the USB thing is irrelevant but just being complete):
What does your RamDisk look like. Mine looks like this and I think it's wrong, mostly because I get the same RamDisk even when Tool fails.
Most of the people are getting it done just fine and some of us are failing. It's genetic probably.
Conclusion: I gave up and got rid of the 4,1. I don't often do that.
Last edited:
Read through the first post of this thread...
forums.macrumors.com
MacPro5,1: BootROM thread | 144.0.0.0.0
For MacPro5,1 BootROM upgrades, please read the first post of the thread below to know how to do the firmware upgrade: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/mp5-1-what-you-have-to-do-to-upgrade-to-mojave-bootrom-upgrade-instructions-thread.2142418/ For MP4,1 to MP5,1 cross firmware flashing...
forums.macrumors.com
Well I've done some work from info within the scripts and from excellent work by pigsyn on GitHub. I've basically hand-constructed a RamDisk and even just put a manually-processed file into the Updates folder. it looks like the Tool is working correctly in my environment. The problem seems that my specific 4,1 (unlike others I've successfully upgraded in the past) simply has some inherent impediment. It simply doesn't want to burn this even though it seems to have been set up correctly to perform it.
The confusing thing to me is the many reports from people who have changed OS's and suddenly the burn took. From El Cap to Mavericks and Yosemite or the other way around. I can only suspect at this point that they were making some other procedural error and the change of OS was just coincidental with them simply doing it right at last.
The confusing thing to me is the many reports from people who have changed OS's and suddenly the burn took. From El Cap to Mavericks and Yosemite or the other way around. I can only suspect at this point that they were making some other procedural error and the change of OS was just coincidental with them simply doing it right at last.