MP 1,1-5,1 MacPro 5,1 Mojave >> Catalina

[Brian74]

Good morning, I may be a bit late into the game thinking about Catalina on my 5,1. I have found several treads addressing this topic, but there seems to me some contradictions (which could be the result of my misunderstandings).

My mid-2010 5,1 is running Mojave (10.14.6) with a Radeon RX 580 4 GB graphics card. RAM is 16 GB, and all bays are full and a bunch of externals giving me over 40 TB of storage. It is a 3 monitor configuration with some other peripherals hanging off the USB buses (additional PCI cards have increased my USB capacity).

The Boot ROM version is 138.0.0.0.0

My reading of the posts suggest that I would need to update the Boot ROM to 144.0.0.0. at a minimum, turn off the compatibility check, install Catalina on a fresh drive using an existing compatible Mac (I have 5), then booting my 5,1 with the newly-minted Catalina drive. Is it really that simple?

Thank you, Brian

 

[tsialex]

My reading of the posts suggest that I would need to update the Boot ROM to 144.0.0.0. at a minimum, turn off the compatibility check, install Catalina on a fresh drive using an existing compatible Mac (I have 5), then booting my 5,1 with the newly-minted Catalina drive. Is it really that simple?

Yes, if you have a fully compatible config since most AirPort Extreme Mac Pro cards are not supported after Mojave.

 

[Brian74]

Yes, if you have a fully compatible config since most AirPort Extreme Mac Pro cards are not supported after Mojave.

Thank you for your response. As you can imagine, it leads to additional questions >

1) which cards are compatible? I searched the Internet but found no information w/r/t this. I have:

Card Type: AirPort Extreme (0x14E4, 0x8E)
Firmware Version: Broadcom BCM43xx 1.0 (5.106.98.102.31)

2) assuming that I do not have a compatible card, does it matter if Wi-Fi is unimportant to me? Need I remove the existing card or just leave it in place?

Regards, Brian

 

[macagain]

...

2) assuming that I do not have a compatible card, does it matter if Wi-Fi is unimportant to me? Need I remove the existing card or just leave it in place?

Regards, Brian

I run off ethernet, and just leave the incompatible wifi card in place. Doesn't seem to hurt anything, wifi symbol just shows with no connection. Only slightly sucky thing is you can't not show the wifi symbol, since there is no way to get to that setting since the wifi card is not recognized and doesn't show up in the Network syspref.

Another little convenience tip: I got one of these SATA-USB cables (both A and C ones available), and anytime I need to update the OS, i just pull the drive out of the mp, connect to a mb, boot off it, update and pop back into mp... easy peasy...

https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B07FDTY299/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

[tsialex]

Thank you for your response. As you can imagine, it leads to additional questions >

1) which cards are compatible? I searched the Internet but found no information w/r/t this. I have:

Card Type: AirPort Extreme (0x14E4, 0x8E)
Firmware Version: Broadcom BCM43xx 1.0 (5.106.98.102.31)

2) assuming that I do not have a compatible card, does it matter if Wi-Fi is unimportant to me? Need I remove the existing card or just leave it in place?

Regards, Brian

1) BCM94322MC, not compatible with Catalina anymore.

2) You can leave it installed.

 

[EugW]

BCM94322MC, not compatible with Catalina anymore.

Ah, no wonder these WiFi modules are so cheap these days. I was wondering why, and was thinking perhaps the prices were too good to be true.

I worried for nothing though, since for my 1,1 and 2,1 the BCM94321MC and BCM94322MC work fine in both 10.7 Lion and 10.11 El Capitan, and El Capitan is as far as those generations of Mac Pros can go anyway. I get better speed with the BCM94322MC though.

I guess if I ever pick up a Mac Pro 3,1 or 4,1 or 5,1, I'll get a BCM94360CD or something.

 

[plunger]

This is very interesting, I thought you needed OpenCore (which is what I have) or DosDude's patcher to get Catalina running on a cMP.

Once you get Catalina up and running would you then be able to install Big Sur over the top?