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MP 1,1-5,1 MacPro5,1: BootROM thread | 144.0.0.0.0

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P1ratz

macrumors member
Jul 14, 2019
51
9
eksu said:
Someone on Netkas did it, you can read about it on that forum as well.
Click to expand...


Awesome man! Thank you for your efforts and i will also try and dig a little deeper this week and see if i cant get in contact with someone who knows whats up. I will post any info i find as well.

Would be so awesome to upgrade to westmeres!
[doublepost=1563133072][/doublepost]
donluca said:
There’s a guy who did it and wrote on this forum about it, but he vanished without a trace and didn’t tell anyone how he did this. I’ll look into netkas forum and see if I can find anything.

EDIT: ok, found some information, it seems there was a thread here where people managed to flash a cMP5,1 firmware onto a xserve 3,1, thus enabling the use of westmere CPUs and all the goodness from using the 144 bootrom from Mojave.

The problem is that, at some point there was a misunderstanding and the OP nuked his own thread with all the info in it.
I’ve tried scouring with the web archive and google cache but to no avail.

If someone here knows something or has a copy of the thread and the files involved, please share!

And sorry for the OT, maybe we should start a thread over at the Xserve forum.
Click to expand...


And thank you for your efforts as well! Glad there is such a helpful community for old apple hardware
 
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P1ratz

macrumors member
Jul 14, 2019
51
9
donluca said:
There’s a guy who did it and wrote on this forum about it, but he vanished without a trace and didn’t tell anyone how he did this. I’ll look into netkas forum and see if I can find anything.

EDIT: ok, found some information, it seems there was a thread here where people managed to flash a cMP5,1 firmware onto a xserve 3,1, thus enabling the use of westmere CPUs and all the goodness from using the 144 bootrom from Mojave.

The problem is that, at some point there was a misunderstanding and the OP nuked his own thread with all the info in it.
I’ve tried scouring with the web archive and google cache but to no avail.

If someone here knows something or has a copy of the thread and the files involved, please share!

And sorry for the OT, maybe we should start a thread over at the Xserve forum.
Click to expand...


Ive found the thread i think you referring to, it seems as if a user by the name of rominator successfully flashed his xserve to 5,1. He doesnt leave any details about the process or include any files but it is good to know there is a possibility of it working. He was active on netkas last in December last year so no clue where he can be found. Here is the link for the thread.

http://forum.netkas.org/index.php?topic=13808.0


Thanks again for your help guys!
 
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edgerider

edgerider

macrumors 6502
Apr 30, 2018
281
149
donluca said:
There’s a guy who did it and wrote on this forum about it, but he vanished without a trace and didn’t tell anyone how he did this. I’ll look into netkas forum and see if I can find anything.

EDIT: ok, found some information, it seems there was a thread here where people managed to flash a cMP5,1 firmware onto a xserve 3,1, thus enabling the use of westmere CPUs and all the goodness from using the 144 bootrom from Mojave.

The problem is that, at some point there was a misunderstanding and the OP nuked his own thread with all the info in it.
I’ve tried scouring with the web archive and google cache but to no avail.

If someone here knows something or has a copy of the thread and the files involved, please share!

And sorry for the OT, maybe we should start a thread over at the Xserve forum.
Click to expand...
look on the forum under the xserve topic we are trying to go ahead on this direction but all the guys who actually have the knowledge to make this happened have declined to do a tweaked version of the cMP5.1 firmware.
I would be a massive amount of work to do it clean, so I wouldn’t blame them for not putting effort on machine they dont even have.
a very competent person here was had gone as far as elaborating the correct strategy but for some reason it went sideway and now we are stuck until someone who actually know for a fact that he have the ability /knowledge /will/ equipement to do it !

but I agree with you : 12 core xserve with 256 gb of ram would be a sweat machine, mainly because I know for a fact that apple is bringing back cluster computing to the mac .
 
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donluca

donluca

macrumors regular
Jul 30, 2018
193
94
Italy
P1ratz said:
Thank you!

I will email him and see if he can help!
Click to expand...

Keep us updated!

@edgerider I’ve posted in that topic as well, I’m piecing together all the information available and I’ve got more or less everything down but there a couple of points which I’m still not sure of. Anyway, let’s keep this discussion on the xserve topic and not pollute this one more.
 
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P1ratz

macrumors member
Jul 14, 2019
51
9
edgerider said:
look on the forum under the xserve topic we are trying to go ahead on this direction but all the guys who actually have the knowledge to make this happened have declined to do a tweaked version of the cMP5.1 firmware.
I would be a massive amount of work to do it clean, so I wouldn’t blame them for not putting effort on machine they dont even have.
a very competent person here was had gone as far as elaborating the correct strategy but for some reason it went sideway and now we are stuck until someone who actually know for a fact that he have the ability /knowledge /will/ equipement to do it !

but I agree with you : 12 core xserve with 256 gb of ram would be a sweat machine, mainly because I know for a fact that apple is bringing back cluster computing to the mac .
Click to expand...
edgerider said:
look on the forum under the xserve topic we are trying to go ahead on this direction but all the guys who actually have the knowledge to make this happened have declined to do a tweaked version of the cMP5.1 firmware.
I would be a massive amount of work to do it clean, so I wouldn’t blame them for not putting effort on machine they dont even have.
a very competent person here was had gone as far as elaborating the correct strategy but for some reason it went sideway and now we are stuck until someone who actually know for a fact that he have the ability /knowledge /will/ equipement to do it !

but I agree with you : 12 core xserve with 256 gb of ram would be a sweat machine, mainly because I know for a fact that apple is bringing back cluster computing to the mac .
Click to expand...

I have recently purchased a 2009 single cpu xserve and I intend on purchasing dual board for it as well as anything else i need. Ideally i would like to slot in two x5690 processors, but i have no idea about how the firmware building process works.

I do have a 2009 mac pro and have flashed firmware on that and have a x5690 in that one.

What do you guys think would happen if i flashed my xserve single cpu board with the 5,1 firmware and put a x5690 in it? Would it be a for sure brick? Has anyone else tried and failed?
 
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tsialex

tsialex

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Original poster
Jun 13, 2016
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P1ratz said:
I have recently purchased a 2009 single cpu xserve and I intend on purchasing dual board for it as well as anything else i need. Ideally i would like to slot in two x5690 processors, but i have no idea about how the firmware building process works.

I do have a 2009 mac pro and have flashed firmware on that and have a x5690 in that one.

What do you guys think would happen if i flashed my xserve single cpu board with the 5,1 firmware and put a x5690 in it? Would it be a for sure brick? Has anyone else tried and failed?
Click to expand...

Please go to the Xserve forum to further discuss it, this topic is not related in any way with this thread.
 
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tsialex

tsialex

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Jun 13, 2016
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zozomester said:
If there is no Metal GPU, does the HIGH Sierra installer work with the replacement of the Firmware folder?
Click to expand...
High Sierra requires an EFI GPU, not a METAL one.

If you want to use High Sierra installer to flash Mojave BootROMs, you will have defeat the checksum check, like the Netkas MP4,1>5,1 did back in the day.

Anyway, just install a METAL supported GPU and do the upgrades - it's not worth the risk of bricking your backplane.
 
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zozomester

zozomester

macrumors 6502
Apr 26, 2017
372
267
Hungary
tsialex said:
High Sierra requires an EFI GPU, not a METAL one.

If you want to use High Sierra installer to flash Mojave BootROMs, you will have defeat the checksum check, like the Netkas MP4,1>5,1 did back in the day.

Anyway, just install a METAL supported GPU and do the upgrades - it's not worth the risk of bricking your backplane.
Click to expand...
Ok, thank!
 
tsialex

tsialex

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Original poster
Jun 13, 2016
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I just downloaded the FirmwareUpdate.pkg from the newly released 10.14.6 DP5 (18G75a), no new firmwares that I saw.

Screen Shot 2019-07-15 at 15.08.50.png
 
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donluca

donluca

macrumors regular
Jul 30, 2018
193
94
Italy
Unless I've gone completely blind, it seems that there isn't a bootrom update for the cMP5,1 anymore in the latest Mojave Installer.

I swear to god I've seen it before here.

9xcxpvl.png
 
D

drac

macrumors member
Oct 27, 2004
35
5
New Zealand
Help, I'm pretty concerned now. I've had this computer for about 9 years, I've done all the common upgrades W3690, RAM, PCI Apple SSD's and flashed 680. I'm currently on 10.13.6, with MP51.0089.B00
It all works, FaceTime, messages etc. I've held off upgrading the firmware having read about the bricking nightmares, as I had Win8 and then Win10 in UEFI installations on one of those SSDs (not at the same time).

I'd like to update to Mojave and so started to try and tidy things up. The UEFI install is gone. I've done a CSM Win10 install on a SATA SSD and today did the Binwalk. Unfortunately I've got the dual x509 certs. What do I do from here? I presume it's a pretty high stakes gamble to go ahead.



DECIMAL HEXADECIMAL DESCRIPTION

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

0 0x0 UEFI PI firmware volume

16524 0x408C UEFI PI firmware volume

24972 0x618C CRC32 polynomial table, little endian

35787 0x8BCB mcrypt 2.2 encrypted data, algorithm: blowfish-448, mode: CBC, keymode: 8bit

49948 0xC31C UEFI PI firmware volume

524288 0x80000 UEFI PI firmware volume

540812 0x8408C UEFI PI firmware volume

549260 0x8618C CRC32 polynomial table, little endian

560075 0x88BCB mcrypt 2.2 encrypted data, algorithm: blowfish-448, mode: CBC, keymode: 8bit

574236 0x8C31C UEFI PI firmware volume

1048576 0x100000 UEFI PI firmware volume

1114112 0x110000 UEFI PI firmware volume

1186315 0x121A0B Certificate in DER format (x509 v3), header length: 4, sequence length: 986

1251851 0x131A0B Certificate in DER format (x509 v3), header length: 4, sequence length: 986

1343538 0x148032 bzip2 compressed data, block size = 100k

1376256 0x150000 UEFI PI firmware volume
 
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tsialex

tsialex

Contributor
Original poster
Jun 13, 2016
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drac said:
Help, I'm pretty concerned now. I've had this computer for about 9 years, I've done all the common upgrades W3690, RAM, PCI Apple SSD's and flashed 680. I'm currently on 10.13.6, with MP51.0089.B00
It all works, FaceTime, messages etc. I've held off upgrading the firmware having read about the bricking nightmares, as I had Win8 and then Win10 in UEFI installations on one of those SSDs (not at the same time).

I'd like to update to Mojave and so started to try and tidy things up. The UEFI install is gone. I've done a CSM Win10 install on a SATA SSD and today did the Binwalk. Unfortunately I've got the dual x509 certs. What do I do from here? I presume it's a pretty high stakes gamble to go ahead.



DECIMAL HEXADECIMAL DESCRIPTION

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

0 0x0 UEFI PI firmware volume

16524 0x408C UEFI PI firmware volume

24972 0x618C CRC32 polynomial table, little endian

35787 0x8BCB mcrypt 2.2 encrypted data, algorithm: blowfish-448, mode: CBC, keymode: 8bit

49948 0xC31C UEFI PI firmware volume

524288 0x80000 UEFI PI firmware volume

540812 0x8408C UEFI PI firmware volume

549260 0x8618C CRC32 polynomial table, little endian

560075 0x88BCB mcrypt 2.2 encrypted data, algorithm: blowfish-448, mode: CBC, keymode: 8bit

574236 0x8C31C UEFI PI firmware volume

1048576 0x100000 UEFI PI firmware volume

1114112 0x110000 UEFI PI firmware volume

1186315 0x121A0B Certificate in DER format (x509 v3), header length: 4, sequence length: 986

1251851 0x131A0B Certificate in DER format (x509 v3), header length: 4, sequence length: 986

1343538 0x148032 bzip2 compressed data, block size = 100k

1376256 0x150000 UEFI PI firmware volume
Click to expand...
I'll send a PM with instructions for you gather some info and the dump, then I'll clean up for you.
 
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tsialex

tsialex

Contributor
Original poster
Jun 13, 2016
13,455
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10.14.6 released, build 18G84, downloading it now:

The macOS Mojave 10.14.6 update improves the stability and reliability of your Mac, and is recommended for all users.


This update:
• Makes downloaded issues available in the My Magazines section of Apple News+, both online and offline
• Adds all publications in Apple News+, including newspapers, to the catalog at the top of the News+ feed
• Adds the ability to clear downloaded magazine issues in Apple News+ by selecting History > Clear > Clear All
• Addresses an issue which prevents creation of a new Boot Camp partition on iMac and Mac mini with Fusion Drive
• Resolves an issue that may cause a hang during a restart
• Resolves a graphics issue that may occur when waking from sleep
• Fixes an issue that may cause fullscreen video to appear black on Mac mini
• Improves file sharing reliability over SMB

For more detailed information about this update, please visit: https://support.apple.com/kb/HT209149

For detailed information about the security content of this update, please visit: https://support.apple.com/kb/HT201222
Click to expand...
 
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