Okay, I was trying to upgrade from a working Sierra install to Mojave since I've never been able to get High Sierra working on my late 2009 macPro (4.1 flashed to 5.1 a few years back) - That didn't work, so after a a lot of tips in the Mojave thread, I figured maybe I'd try to do the upgrade to High Sierra again, first. Since it seems there is an issue with the OtherWorld Computers SSD, I figured I'd go back to a conventional drive, just to be sure.
Since it takes a few hours to work through this so I decided to try again today. And I was asked to include details, so here is the best I can offer.
- Last night I pulled the SoldState Drives and time-machine restored Sierra 10.12.6 to a seagate Barracuda 1.5TB 7200rpm (conventional) drive. This morning I planned to update to High Sierra, and THEN if that works, I could do the Mojave upgrade later.
I did the Firmware Update and the reboot. Then into Terminal and typed csrutil disable- and then reboot into Sierra.
Downloaded a fresh copy of HS Installer util from Dosdude site.
Downloaded a fresh copy of HS Install from Apple. (Yep, my machine looks compatible to them)
Created a HS Install Thumbdrive (Kingston 8GB drive) and rebooted, then into installer
"A Firmware Update is required" - clicked restart, did the restart as suggested,
reboot- option and selected Installer Thumb, and into installer.
"A Firmware Update is required" - got this screen AGAIN. (??)
Again, clicked "restart" on the screen itself. Nothing happened - so I waited -
15 mins later and still, no visible change, so I clicked the Restart option from the drop down menu,
and did the technique again (hold power until tone, let it reset and
THIS TIME was different - CD tray opened, and a kind of a lower resolution screen came up
with the fatter progress bar. I let it run and it restarted on its own.
It restarted with the current system start screen (Sierra), so I rebooted, did the option-restart,
and selected the Install HS thumb drive again.
Got a progress bar, ran for 6 mins, restarted at around 2 minutes,
it went back to the install process on its own, with a 49 minute progress bar.
That ran uninterrupted - I came back after it completed and saw a grey circle with slash in it - Bad disc!
Tried to restart it a couple times, same result.
So I powered down, pulled the new HDD, put last night's working Sierra OWC SSD drive back in, just to get it going again, and restarted successfully in Sierra again. And here I am.
Been working with it all day now and I am no further along.
There is one thing -
Before I did this install, when I ran "About this mac" this morning, I got
Boot ROM Version: MP51.0087.B00
After all the work, when I run About this Mac now, I get this:
Hardware Overview:
Model Name: Mac Pro
Model Identifier: MacPro5,1
Processor Name: 6-Core Intel Xeon
Processor Speed: 3.33 GHz
Number of Processors: 1
Total Number of Cores: 6
L2 Cache (per Core): 256 KB
L3 Cache: 12 MB
Memory: 24 GB
Processor Interconnect Speed: 6.4 GT/s
Boot ROM Version: MP51.0089.B00
SMC Version (system): 1.39f5
SMC Version (processor tray): 1.39f5
(Everything else is the same, only the Boot Rom number changed)
So, the Firmware Update part of the install DID work this time, at least ...
But I'm at a complete loss as to why a theoretically supported machine cannot be updated to High Sierra,
I do want to upgrade to Mojave real soon now!
(as I said, its a late 2009 MacPro 4.1 that was updated to 5.1 a few years back, and has been running Sierra no problem for a few years)
The leap to High Sierra should have been equally painless on a supported machine - unless somehow something got cobbled up on one of the early Sierra betas that is still causing problems at upgrade time ??
I am open to suggestions!
