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There are two ways to reset the RTC and I mixed one with the other:

  • First one you can disconnect the PSU power cable and remove the RTC battery for at least 20s. Then you install the battery back and reconnect the PSU power cable.
  • Second one, while the PSU power cable is still connected to the AC power, you press the RTC battery reset switch for 2s.
After doing one or the other, you need to reset the SMC and the NVRAM.

Thank you so much, and to reset SMC and NRAM without startup screen, how would I do that?

Why the pre-boot configuraton support have to do with resetting the SMC?!? You just remove the AC power cable for at least 20s.

Also, you don't need pre-boot configuration support for reseting the NVRAM. The Mac Pro beeps while doing the NVRAM reset.


If your Mac Pro is not beeping while powering on, then you have a hardware defect to solve or a corrupt BootROM to repair.

Good luck!
 
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Thanks. Well now it looks like I'm totally screwed. The spring clip on the battery snapped off when I was trying to take the battery out. I'm assuming I'm totally dead now.
 
Thanks. Well now it looks like I'm totally screwed. The spring clip on the battery snapped off when I was trying to take the battery out. I'm assuming I'm totally dead now.

For someone that knows how to use a solder iron, is piece of cake to replace it. Mouser/Digikey have RTC battery holders that are almost identical to the one Apple used.

If is not something that you can do, you can buy a replacement backplane and replace it yourself. You can get one from eBay for around $75.

Remember that if you have an early-2009 CPU tray, you need to buy an early-2009 backplane. You can't buy a mid-2010/mid-2012 one, SMC firmware mismatch and the fans will ramp up to full RPM all the time and without any software control.
 
Thanks. So are you saying I could potentially just solder that metal spring clip back on without replacing the entire holder?
 
Thanks. So are you saying I could potentially just solder that metal spring clip back on without replacing the entire holder?

Nope, replace the whole RTC holder, two points to de-solder and solder back again from the backside of the backplane. You can get an equivalent easily from any electronic components shop.

Mouser/Digikey have the current version of the one Apple used back in the day.
 
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Dumb question, but will the MacPro boot/start without any battery in it?

It will power on, but in fail-safe mode and several subsystems won't work, like anything RTC or NVRAM related, or work incorrectly, like Wi-Fi.
 
Would this be the correct battery holder?

I don't need 12 of them though, and would prefer getting something as close to OEM as possible. I'm also trying to figure out a way to MacGyver it with a piece of wire and some conductive tape or something so I don't have to remove the logic board. I'm worried about breaking more connectors taking that board off. There seem to be a lot.
 
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Would this be the correct battery holder?

I don't need 12 of them though, and would prefer getting something as close to OEM as possible.

While is a CR2032 battery holder and you can use it, is not even the same design as the OEM one.

I'm also trying to figure out a way to MacGyver it with a piece of wire and some conductive tape or something so I don't have to remove the logic board. I'm worried about breaking more connectors taking that board off. There seem to be a lot.

If you can't repair yourself correctly, ask a friend. Botching something so important as the RTC battery will bring you a lot of headaches down the road.

Good luck.
 
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Ok, well if I'm going to take off the logic board and repair it correctly, where can I find the OEM or original RTC battery holder? I looked on digikey and mouser and searched for a Mac one and nothing came up.

Thank you again so much for all your help. I really appreciate it.
 
Ok, well if I'm going to take off the logic board and repair it correctly, where can I find the OEM or original RTC battery holder? I looked on digikey and mouser and searched for a Mac one and nothing came up.

Thank you again so much for all your help. I really appreciate it.

There is no Mac specific one, you search for all the CR2032 holders and then get the one the is most similar for the OEM one your backplane have from factory.
 
Ok, so I got the new BR2032 battery, and soldered the battery holder back in place. I then pressed the reset button next to the battery for 4 seconds. But now I can't get any kind of a screen to show up and the computer seems to cycle through the boot chime repeatedly. I did reset the NVRAM by holding down the option-command P R keys, but I keep getting an endless cycle of chiming. Any thoughts on what I can do to get my MacPro to boot?
 
Disconnect the PSU mains cable, remove the RTC battery, wait one minute, connect the PSU mains cable, leave the RTC battery off, power on and see if you can boot.

If you still can boot, you'll need a MATT card to diagnose the backplane.
 
Hmm, that doesn't sound so good. Would it make sense to try booting up with an older original graphics card first? Or are there other software keys I can hold down? It had started fine before the battery replacement.
 
Ok, trying it without the battery as you outlined above. What's interesting is that when I plug the PSU mains cable into the computer it starts up by itself. I don't even have to hit the power button on the front of the Mac. That seems odd. And now it's just cycling through again like before so I'm not sure what to do. Did I need to hit the reset button next to the battery again or reset the NVRAM?
 
Ok, trying it without the battery as you outlined above. What's interesting is that when I plug the PSU mains cable into the computer it starts up by itself. I don't even have to hit the power button on the front of the Mac. That seems odd.

Normal firmware fail-safe behavior.

And now it's just cycling through again like before so I'm not sure what to do. Did I need to hit the reset button next to the battery again or reset the NVRAM?

You can try both.

The most probable is that your BootROM is corrupt, you can replace the factory installed SPI flash memory with a MX25L3206E flashed with 144.0.0.0.0 MP51.fd, to keep your costs down while diagnosing, and see if boots again and then ask for the BootROM reconstruction service. You can learn what to do with the main BootROM thread, see the first post.

If is something too much complex for you, get a replacement backplane.
 
Ok, so I put the new battery back in and also put in the original graphics card so I would have a boot screen. I get a gray screen with the apple logo. Then the spinning ball and finally the international no sign. Seems like it is not recognizing my boot drive (NVME flash card). Is there a way to tell it to boot off of something else or any other ideas? It is no longer cycling through chimes like before, I just have a spinning circle and the No sign.
 
Install anything from 10.6.4 to 10.12.6 to a spare disk using another Mac, remove all other disks from SATA/USB/FW connect to the SATA port below the ODD drive and see if you can boot the 10.6.4 to 10.12.6 disk.

Mavericks works best for this type of diagnostics.
 
Ok, after putting in the original graphics card so that I could get a boot screen, I held down the option key. That gave me the option to select either the EFI or my boot drive. I selected my 970 EVO Boot drive and it booted up! So it seems to work. Now that I have it running on the old graphics card, can I swap out graphics card or should I check any systems setting first?
 
How about you do the diagnostics instead of trying random things? Run AHT/ASD and see what is really going on.

AHT/ASD:
You need an Apple OEM GPU (HD 2600XT, 8800GT, Quadro FX 5600, GT120, HD 4870/5770/5870) to run AHT/ASD. AHT/ASD can be used with PC flashed GPUs, but will fail mid test with a sensor error when the GPU sensors are tested. Non flashed PC GPUs won't work at all. You need to boot completely vanilla, no OC, to use AHT/ASD.​
You can get AHT links and instructions on how to install it on this GitHub article.​
AHT, you need 022-4831-A.dmg:​
The ASD version that you need is 3S149. The AHT instructions are valid for creating an ASD USB key and Apple provides an installation PDF inside, after you mount the disk images.​
ASD, you need 3S149:​
For people that have an early-2009 cross-flashed with MP5,1 firmware, you will need to run the MacPro5,1 versions of AHT (022-4831-A) and ASD (3S149).

Your Mac Pro have a problem(s) for a long time, you are working around instead of diagnosing and repairing it. If you are going to test anything that you can think of, you don't need to ask me here.
 
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