Mac Pro 5,1: No display on boot

[OldManGhosty]

Hello everyone, hate to be a bother, but my first post is one asking for help troubleshooting a peculiar issue I am currently having with a 2010 Mac Pro I picked up.

Other than missing ram (which I have replaced with a random stick I had laying around, and some dust, it seems to be in complete working order.

After I replaced the ram, I am able to get it to boot up to the chime, but after that, nothing.

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That is the subset of models that I’m working with. This one shipped with the Radeon 5770, in addition to the standard gpu. Neither has worked.

I have looked practically everywhere for a solution, but a fair majority already had theirs running previously, and were unable to get chime. I have tried the various solutions I’ve seen in them too:

Replacing the CMOS Battery.

SMC, NVRAM, and PRAM reset.

Re-seating the gpus (it comes with two, both of which it shipped with).

Trying the default gpu without anything plugged in.

Trying all the DVI and mini display ports on the gpu

The diagnostic leds don't light up for anything but power and standby.

Trying different monitors

Trying to boot into an install usb both windows and Lion

There are no obvious errors or damage, and the board is at least getting power, and the keyboard works when plugged into it and the ports will charge a phone.

Normally I like figuring things out myself, but I’m at the end of what I can do personally. If anyone has any advice, or some unknown method to get this Mac up and running I would be most grateful.

I know how help posts work, so if you need any more information let me know and I will do my best to provide.

 

[MacsolverUK]

Hi,
Couple of minor things in the photos:
The memory module is in the wrong slot - single module must be in slot 1
PCIe card retainer not under top clip
Was the PCIe card retainer bar moved back to allow the cards to be fully seated ? I have seen Mac Pros with the GPUs at an angle because the user did not know about the button on the rear fan housing.

If you have tried to install Windows UEFI from USB, you may have bricked the Mac ROM - from various websites:

Warning: DO NOT install Windows from a USB flash drive. It has been discovered that Windows when installed in EFI mode is corrupting the Mac Pro’s firmware by signing it with multiple Secure Boot (X.509) certificates. Also, you wouldn’t be able to boot into Windows after selecting its drive as bootable in macOS Preferences → Startup disk. Therefore Windows should only be installed in Legacy BIOS mode from an optical drive.

 

[OldManGhosty]

Hi,
Couple of minor things in the photos:
The memory module is in the wrong slot - single module must be in slot 1
PCIe card retainer not under top clip
Was the PCIe card retainer bar moved back to allow the cards to be fully seated ? I have seen Mac Pros with the GPUs at an angle because the user did not know about the button on the rear fan housing.

If you have tried to install Windows UEFI from USB, you may have bricked the Mac ROM - from various websites:

Warning: DO NOT install Windows from a USB flash drive. It has been discovered that Windows when installed in EFI mode is corrupting the Mac Pro’s firmware by signing it with multiple Secure Boot (X.509) certificates. Also, you wouldn’t be able to boot into Windows after selecting its drive as bootable in macOS Preferences → Startup disk. Therefore Windows should only be installed in Legacy BIOS mode from an optical drive.

About the ram: I know, this picture was taken after I had switched slots to test faulty slots (the previous owner had supposedly done something with the ram before selling it). It has been returned to slot one.

Yes the retainer was moved just so I could re-seat the cards. I’ve been trying different slots to try and test for dead pci-e slots, so it’s sitting disassembled at the moment, but would be put back if I got something to work.

I know what you’re getting at about bricking the Mac, I didn’t plan on installing anything at the moment, I really just wanted to see if getting something to boot would make it display anything at all (since it isn’t currently). The windows install was the only thing I had at the moment that I know would boot reliably since it didn’t come with any drives at all (I’ve been testing with 2.5 drives since that’s all I’ve got atm).

 

[MacsolverUK]

Hi,

Sorry for stating the obvious, but it is hard to judge the persons experience from an initial question.

Have you got access to another Mac ? if so, you can clone a OSX 10.11 or earlier installation onto a disk and put it in the Mac Pro, or put the disk in the Mac Pro and connect a firewire cable to the second Mac and clone it via the firewire cable in Target disk mode. Before the clone operation, set up the Mac OS with Screen sharing enabled and auto log in. Then you can boot the Mac Pro on an Ethernet network, remote in from the second Mac using Screen sharing and have a look at the System information for the PCIe slots and displays to see any errors - are the GPUs listed ?. This assumes that the Mac is booting but not showing anything on the internal display cards.

I said OSX 10.11 or earlier as older versions require a firmware update which may be missing, but you can view the current firmware using the above method and see what OSX version it will support.