MP 1,1-5,1 Losing video from a working GTX 780Ti after Mojave update on, how to recover without OEM video card?

[Alfa-Indigo]

Hi,

Mac Pro 3,1

Using DosDude patcher I was able to install Mojave on a RAID SATA SSD setup as boot drive with no EFI but working video with a Nvidia GTX 780Ti 3Gb.

The volume was not APFS but OS Journaled, as booting from an APFS seemed impossible despite updating the ROM using a patcher by DosDude.

Mojave restarted to install updates, now
I can tell from disk activity LEDs the SSDs are being accessed but theres no video.

Done NVRAM and PRAM resets, no video. Tried the MacOs El Capitan bootdrive and removed SSDs, lots od disk activity but no video.

I do not have an OEM video card at hand. Is there a way around this?

 

[Dayo]

booting from an APFS seemed impossible despite updating the ROM using a patcher by DosDude.

I don't believe the DosDude patcher does any ROM updates or any kind and there is no ROM update for the MP31 to speak of since most units already have the single issued update from the factory as it was issued barely a month after release.

Anyway, not clear what ROM updates you got as there should be none.

 

[Macschrauber]

He talks about adding the apfs module to the firmware with dxeinject.

APFS ROM Patcher

Since @dosdude1 released the APFS ROM Patcher utility, has anyone used it to successfully enable APFS in their unsupported Mac's ROM? Has anyone been adventurous enough to try and fail? I've searched and searched and it is hard to find success and fail stories and I hope there could be a central...

forums.macrumors.com

 

[Dayo]

Aha. That one.

I am one of the 11 that have given adding APFS to the MP31 BootROM a shot although I am now back on vanilla firmware. Should definitely boot APFS instances and something wrong if not working.

Wonder whether not talking about something else.

 

[Macschrauber]

Btw: the Dumper will indicate apfs and nvme modules in Mac Pro 3,1 firmwares.

 

[Alfa-Indigo]

Yep- thats the patcher.

At present I have an OS Journaled RAID boot drive on Mojave and an El Capitan HDD drive.

It seems the system is booting but there is no video from the non-EFI bootable GPU that is installed. Its a GTX 780 Ti (PC version).

Before the autoupdate, I had video in Mojave.

Any clever ways around this? Buying an EFI GPU isn't an option at present

 

[Alfa-Indigo]

Btw: the Dumper will indicate apfs and nvme modules in Mac Pro 3,1 firmwares.

Thats the one

 

[Alfa-Indigo]

Aha. That one.

I am one of the 11 that have given adding APFS to the MP31 BootROM a shot although I am now back on vanilla firmware. Should definitely boot APFS instances and something wrong if not working.

Wonder whether not talking about something else.

Its probably the Bootable RAID SSD APFS thats confusing the system. I'll look into this later but at present I have an OS Journaled Mojave Raid

 

[h9826790]

Before the autoupdate, I had video in Mojave.

As a general rule, do NOT update any patched OS unless you absolutely know what you are doing. Therefore, you should keep auto update disabled.

Use RAID is adding another layer of complexity. Which can only make the situation worst. Especially you are using HFS+, but native Mojave update will convert your boot partition to APFS. Which most likely will make the software RAID array unbootable. RAID SSD together won't make the system more responsive, but just increase the failure rate, you better avoid this in future.

Anyway, if you have a native El Capitan, you should able to boot to its desktop. Just remove all other drive, but only keep the El Capitan drive + 780Ti, then perform a NVRAM reset, and you 3,1 should boot to El Capitan on the next boot. (Assuming that's a known working natively installed El Capitan on a single drive, and the drive itself is bootable natively on the 3,1)

If you don't have any EFI graphic card on hand, you should really have an emergency boot drive (recommend a clean El Capitan on a SATA SSD / HDD)

 

[h9826790]

If you have proper backup. I will suggest you just boot back to El Capitan, then install patched clean Mojave onto a single SSD (assuming you want / need Mojave for whatever reason). And forget about that RAID array.

If you need to recover the data from that RAID array. Then you may install the RAID drives after you can boot to El Capitan. As long as the RAID is still in HFS+, you should able to read the data from that RAID array from El Capitan.

However, if the problem is actually caused by the Mojave updater was trying to convert your HFS+ RAID array into APFS, then all data may be already gone. And you have to install a clean Mojave onto another drive, then boot to that Mojave, and see if you can still recover any data from the RAID array.

 

[Macschrauber]

Be aware that some Kepler GPUs crash sometimes into the Apple NvidiaGK driver.

I had some trouble booting El Capitan with Keplers, solution is: use webdriver and append the boot-arg to force the webdrivers.

That comes with the latest security update.

I am not me if I do not made a little script for checking the boot-args and applying the switch arg if missing...

attached it, it adds a boot-arg if it's missing, keeping the previous. If it's there it simply does nothing. I have it in the startup items of the OS in my test box.

One can add whatever he wants with editing the line (like -no_compat_check):

set wanted_boot_arg to "nvda_drv=1"

edit: also added a little script to edit boot-args to undo the change

 

[Alfa-Indigo]

I keep a clean MacOS copy of El Capitan with recovery drive on a separate HDD. Tried booting with it. Lots of disk activity but no video.

Be aware that some Kepler GPUs crash sometimes into the Apple NvidiaGK driver.

I had some trouble booting El Capitan with Keplers, solution is: use webdriver and append the boot-arg to force the webdrivers.

That comes with the latest security update.

I am not me if I do not made a little script for checking the boot-args and applying the switch arg if missing...

attached it, it adds a boot-arg if it's missing, keeping the previous. If it's there it simply does nothing. I have it in the startup items of the OS in my test box.

One can add whatever he wants with editing the line (like -no_compat_check):

set wanted_boot_arg to "nvda_drv=1"

edit: also added a little script to edit boot-args to undo the change

View attachment 2247909

Thanks, but how do i insert the script when I cannot see anything? There is no video whatsoever.

If I were to access the original El Capitan system volume as an external drive on my MacBook, I may be able to insert folders and edit text files.

can you guide with that?

 

[Macschrauber]

You may try to boot the El Capitan disk with another machine, prepare it and turn on Screen Sharing.

With Screen Sharing you can see the Mac Pro GUI and set things up.

 

[winxmac]

Mojave and newer would convert a system drive formatted using macOS Journaled to APFS during installation while High Sierra will allow you to use a system drive formatted using macOS Journaled even though it supports APFS...

I am not sure if macOS has a tool similar to Windows FAT to NTFS converter...

 

[Alfa-Indigo]

You may try to boot the El Capitan disk with another machine, prepare it and turn on Screen Sharing.

With Screen Sharing you can see the Mac Pro GUI and set things up.

If I had access to another machine, I would simply pull out the EFI Bootable card and sort it out. It sounds like I am stuck.

 

[Alfa-Indigo]

Mojave and newer would convert a system drive formatted using macOS Journaled to APFS during installation while High Sierra will allow you to use a system drive formatted using macOS Journaled even though it supports APFS...

I am not sure if macOS has a tool similar to Windows FAT to NTFS converter...

The El Capitan volume is HFS+.

I wonder if I could inject the Nvidia Web drivers manually into this volume using my MacBook and exploring the root folder as a external HDD.

I never used the GTX for El Capitan, thats probably why theres no video.

Can anyone help guide me with that?

 

[Macschrauber]

as told, enable screen sharing and you can control and set up everything from your other Mac.

 

[Macschrauber]

GTX 750 Ti / 970 / 980 / 980 Ti / Titan X Doesn’t Finish Booting

PROBLEM : While properly installed and powered the GPU in question will show the gray boot screen with the Apple logo, the progress bar will begin to fill and the computer will reboot. The Mac Pro...

www.macvidcards.com