Junker 4,1 Mac Pro --> 5,1 Mojave - plan of attack?

[Byrd27]

Hi all,

A while back I picked up a "mystery" 2009 4,1 Mac Pro with faulty single CPU tray, no OS installed. It has a fair few knocks on the casing but apart from the bad CPU card, +++ dust, it appears to work OK. I suspect this machine has had some sort of 5,1 firmware update as the single tray had a hex core X5650 CPU installed. I believe the CPU tray died from a loose northbridge heatsink and wads of dust.

Ditching the single tray, I found a dual CPU tray with stock E5520 (Nehalem) CPUs, with the intention of going netkas 5,1 firmware patch, then dual X5680 CPUs and to run Mojave, with a spare GTX 760 graphics card I have (currently using the stock GT120 of course).

Can I request help from here - should I start with getting High Sierra 10.13.6 for the firmware update, or would you recommend I go back somewhere to apply an earlier patch/check?

Thanks

JB

 

[h9826790]

My recommendation is after you make it bootable. Check the actual firmware version first, then plan your action.

 

[tsialex]

Hi all,

A while back I picked up a "mystery" 2009 4,1 Mac Pro with faulty single CPU tray, no OS installed. It has a fair few knocks on the casing but apart from the bad CPU card, +++ dust, it appears to work OK. I suspect this machine has had some sort of 5,1 firmware update as the single tray had a hex core X5650 CPU installed. I believe the CPU tray died from a loose northbridge heatsink and wads of dust.

Ditching the single tray, I found a dual CPU tray with stock E5520 (Nehalem) CPUs, with the intention of going netkas 5,1 firmware patch, then dual X5680 CPUs and to run Mojave, with a spare GTX 760 graphics card I have (currently using the stock GT120 of course).

Can I request help from here - should I start with getting High Sierra 10.13.6 for the firmware update, or would you recommend I go back somewhere to apply an earlier patch/check?

Thanks

JB

You have to start with El Capitan. It's the last OS that can boot MP4,1 and don't need any firmware updates with MP5,1. Sierra can boot a MP5,1 without any firmware updates too.

After Sierra, all macOS releases needs firmware updates to boot with a MP5,1.

You can still get previous macOS versions:

El Capitan: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT206886

Sierra: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208202

High Sierra: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208969