MP 1,1-5,1 Mac OS 11.3 has broken support for older Mac Pros

[thatsmeonlyme]

My pollyanna streak with 11.4 on my 5,1 finally ended I had an issue with a restart this morning.

Just before this happened, the system itself started to not feel right. Pages were loading slow in Safari and then became unresponsive. Proceeded to reboot, but Safari was busy or hung. Had to force quit Safari and then Mac proceeded to reboot.

This time:

1) I got the no symbol with link to support.apple.com/mac/startup
(I did not notice my camera was connected via USB which I then disconnected--not sure if related to this reboot hang.)

2) Pressed the power button to shut down and then performed another reboot and white progress bar slowed and hung during this attempt. (Normally its fairly fast)

3) Shut down again. Connected wired keyboard and Command+Option+P+R 3x in a row and it then started up correctly back into 11.4

Hallo,

seems to be we have very similar machines. I went back to 11.2.3. But there's one point you're describing. You have to do 3 PRAM resets til its working. The same number I got it working was 3 cold reboots and plugging out before. We also have identical ROM drives. My question now is whether you have tried to unplug these two and give the machine a try. Because there's another thing I have heard. Only when the machine gets successfully booted I could hear the initiation of these drives.

 

[Chung123]

Hallo,

seems to be we have very similar machines. I went back to 11.2.3. But there's one point you're describing. You have to do 3 PRAM resets til its working. The same number I got it working was 3 cold reboots and plugging out before. We also have identical ROM drives. My question now is whether you have tried to unplug these two and give the machine a try. Because there's another thing I have heard. Only when the machine gets successfully booted I could hear the initiation of these drives.

ROM drive? You mean my optical drives? I have the OEM apple DVD-R and a LG Blu-ray on the lower tray? You want to see if removing the drives affect the booting?

 

[thatsmeonlyme]

ROM drive? You mean my optical drives? I have the OEM apple DVD-R and a LG Blu-ray on the lower tray? You want to see if removing the drives affect the booting?

Exact

 

[Chung123]

Exact

Okay, that was interesting: ( I did a warm restart to make sure I was able to reboot normally into 11.4: OK.)

Shut down my 5,1, Removed the Optical Drive Carrier and unplugged the cables from both optical drives.

Powered back on. I see the open core picker.. it proceeds to boot and then fails and I get the Apple Startup probibited symbol.

Shut down by holding the power button.

I did the Command+Option+P+R three times in a roll and then OC loads.. then hangs.

Force the shutdown by pressing power button.

Replaced the optical drives and reconnected the cables.

Start up--- it hangs at the same place in OpenCore.

Did another NVRAM reset 3x and then it booted back into 11.4 normally.

It appears, my systems likes the optical drives in place? (Too lazy to repeat process again by removing the optical drives again.)

 

[Enricote]

I wonder if the yesterday released Opencore Legacy Patcher 0.2.1 helps to fix our issue:

0.2.1:

• Fix NVMe Crash on build

Releases · dortania/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher

Experience macOS just like before. Contribute to dortania/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

 

[thatsmeonlyme]

Okay, that was interesting: ( I did a warm restart to make sure I was able to reboot normally into 11.4: OK.)

Shut down my 5,1, Removed the Optical Drive Carrier and unplugged the cables from both optical drives.

Powered back on. I see the open core picker.. it proceeds to boot and then fails and I get the Apple Startup probibited symbol.

Shut down by holding the power button.

I did the Command+Option+P+R three times in a roll and then OC loads.. then hangs.

Force the shutdown by pressing power button.

Replaced the optical drives and reconnected the cables.

Start up--- it hangs at the same place in OpenCore.

Did another NVRAM reset 3x and then it booted back into 11.4 normally.

It appears, my systems likes the optical drives in place? (Too lazy to repeat process again by removing the optical drives again.)

I will put a real time video here shortly.

Okay, thx. So I can exclude the optical drives. But why 3times?

 

[Macschrauber]

Okay, thx. So I can exclude the optical drives. But why 3times?

To force the garbage collection of nvram so one starts with most free space available.

 

[14dcutaneo]

I wonder if the yesterday released Opencore Legacy Patcher 0.2.1 helps to fix our issue:

0.2.1:

• Fix NVMe Crash on build

Releases · dortania/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher

Experience macOS just like before. Contribute to dortania/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

Can anyone verify this? If its true, it makes me wonder how they managed to figure it out.

 

[hwojtek]

Can anyone verify this? If its true, it makes me wonder how they managed to figure it out.

The >11.3 problems are not a NVMe issue.

 

[tsialex]

Can anyone verify this? If its true, it makes me wonder how they managed to figure it out.

It's too difficult to understand that build here referes to the OCLP build/compilation process?

 

[14dcutaneo]

It's too difficult to understand that build here referes to the OCLP build/compilation process?

Yea I thought it was referring to OCLP's compilation. Just trying to stay hopeful :/

The >11.3 problems are not a NVMe issue.

Yea, its a race condition. But from my understanding an NVME heightens the severity because of its speed and some IO kexts not being ready to be initialized during that point in the boot process.

 

[tsialex]

Yea, its a race condition. But from my understanding an NVME heightens the severity because of its speed and some IO kexts not being ready to be initialized during that point in the boot process.

Wrong, NVMe enumeration is SLOWER than any other PCIe drive with a MacPro5,1.

If anything, this alone would help a normal boot.

 

[guizao]

Can anyone verify this? If its true, it makes me wonder how they managed to figure it out.

I've already checked, not worked for me. Same problem. Actually the 11.4 update works after 4 or five reeboots but stucks again in boot after 1 day of use. I'm using just a 512 Gb Kingston NVME.

 

[lovely666]

It's too difficult to understand that build here referes to the OCLP build/compilation process?

Looks that only changes a flag that would prevent OCLP from building a config, when you have an nvme drive.

Comparing 0.2.0...0.2.1 · dortania/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher

Experience macOS just like before. Contribute to dortania/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

 

[startergo]

macOS Monterey 12 Beta 2​

Apple Developer Documentation

developer.apple.com

 

[TECK]

Not sure how to force python 2

If is a script you use, set the shebang to:

#!/usr/bin/env python

These are the Python versions I have on MacOS 11.4:

[floren@zeus ~]$ sw_vers -productVersion
11.4

[floren@zeus ~]$ which python
/usr/bin/python
[floren@zeus ~]$ python --version
Python 2.7.16

[floren@zeus ~]$ which python3
/usr/local/bin/python3
[floren@zeus ~]$ python3 --version
Python 3.9.5

 

[TECK]

I wonder if the yesterday released Opencore Legacy Patcher 0.2.1 helps to fix our issue

What issue are you referring to, the race condition on reboot? Then the answer is no.
Edit: Just saw @tsialex's post

 

[Kmilot]

The silent in this thread is so sad ?!

 

[socamx]

The silent in this thread is so sad ?!

It's one of those things where there's nothing really to report until there's some sort of breakthrough at this point. There's not much people like us can add to this discussion anymore because they know it's all 4,1 and 5,1 models (and hackintoshes and so forth) at this point and not much has changed with any recent betas for 11 or 12.

Just need to sit back and wait unfortunately.

Trying to be optimistic but sooner or later I'll be throwing in the towel on my cMP for various, mostly unrelated reasons. I'm just curious if this will get figured out before then.

 

[paalb]

I have been thinking of a different solution to keep our MacPro’s running securely for another 2 1/2 years. Since I am not a developer, I do not know if this is possible.

Would it be possible to reverse engineer the security updates to install with Big Sur 11.2.3?

 

[Auggie]

Trying to be optimistic but sooner or later I'll be throwing in the towel on my cMP for various, mostly unrelated reasons. I'm just curious if this will get figured out before then.

I'm reaching the end of the road, too, with the cMP if it can't get past 11.2.3. I'll definitely keep one of the of the two 5.1 cMP's I have, but I'm already casually gandering at the 7,1's. Not sure if Apple will be releasing a 7,2 within the next year or so, which is the only reason why I haven't yet sprung for a 7,1.

But the writing is finally on the wall for me and it's nigh time I start letting go...

 

[PeterHolbrook]

Might the cMP Xeon processors themselves be the cause of the current impasse? Can a different type of processor (something like an i3/5/7/9 or the like) be fitted in the 5,1 processor socket?

 

[tsialex]

The silent in this thread is so sad ?!

Why post about it? Making unnecessary noise is not going to make any development faster.

I have been thinking of a different solution to keep our MacPro’s running securely for another 2 1/2 years. Since I am not a developer, I do not know if this is possible.

Would it be possible to reverse engineer the security updates to install with Big Sur 11.2.3?

No. While Darwin is open-source, macOS is not.

Might the cMP Xeon processors themselves be the cause of the current impasse?

Same problem happens even with IvyBridge (4th generation Core processors) hackintoshes, just to a lesser degree.

Can a different type of processor (something like an i3/5/7/9 or the like) be fitted in the 5,1 processor socket?

This is the type of thing that should not be asked here, since you can look at the table of supported processors of the stickie thread:

Mac Pro CPU Compatibility List

Bokkow and I have created a Mac Pro CPU compatibility list. The intent is to cover all relevant and compatible CPU upgrades for all Mac Pros. These are asked about over and over and over again, so I thought it would be nice to have it all in one place. Constructive criticism, corrections to...

forums.macrumors.com

Anyway, the answer is no, X5690 is the fastest/newest LGA-1366 processor that works with a MacPro5,1 and there are no other processors that can be used, or even fit the socket, besides the processors listed on the table of the post above.

 

[nekton1]

Removed at tsialex request

 

[tsialex]

Apologies for semi-crossposting. I need to learn how to mod a config.plist and SSDT-TBOLT3.aml file written for cMP 5,1 to work under with cMP 3,1. The relevant thread where I posted is pretty much moribund but it would be a great help if someone here with the relevant skills and advice could read it (last post on page 64).

testing TB3 AIC with MP 5,1

Thanks for the quick answer. Ok, Open Core, I hope I still can do this kind of stuff. Which one of the various firmwares ? Cold boot from MacOs to MacOs right ? Would be cool to have a sticky with the most important stuff. I read a couple of interesting posts which would do what I need. The...

forums.macrumors.com

Why post this here? Please don't hijack threads.