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MP 1,1-5,1 MacPro5,1: BootROM thread | 144.0.0.0.0
- Thread starter tsialex
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I don't see anything wrong, anyway this is clearly something to report and check with Apple support.
It’s likely your browser, browser plug-ins, or malware blocker causing the problemm.
guys you're just wasting off topic now. My bad. No need to discuss this further. I know that Safari has been updated to the version that is in the security update so I know Catalina got the update. I don't really care why Apple's certificate is all messed up and I don't plan on spending one more minute trying to figure it out. Sorry I asked.
IF you are having a problem clicking on that link and getting to the proper website I would worry about a security issue. Try another browser and try to manually type in the URL. Look at the security certificate ("Show Details" on the "Not Private" dialog). IF that works and clicking on the link doesn't something is wrong or interfering with your browser.
I made a backup dump of my ROM back in February when I was upgrading OC. I didn't look in the file at the time - I have been gradually learning more about the low-level workings of my Mac Pro over the past few months, as time allows. A huge thank you to tsialex and the other regulars on these forums - it's a fantastic resource. Thanks so much to you all!
Today I checked that ROM file to see how much free space was left and check that garbage collection was working. I wasn't very happy to discover this:
No second VSS store and low free space in the first store. But reading back through tsialex's posts I noticed he had said that exporting the ROM from an OC system can cause errors. So I removed all drives except a vanilla Sierra disk, did a 5-chime PR reset, booted into Sierra and dumped the ROM again, and got this result:
This looks much healthier - a reasonable amount of free space for a single processor and 3 DIMMs, and a 2nd VSS store. Between Feb and now the Mac Pro has been running reliably, it sleeps every night, it's probably had 2 or 3 reboots, but nothing that would have a major impact on the NVRAM store (from my limited understanding).
So I wondered if it's possible the recent increase in the number of people seeing what looks like failed garbage collection may have also exported their Boot ROM from a system booted by Open Core...?
I don't understand why OC would affect the ROM export like this - I assume ROMTool is reading directly from the flash memory chip and dumping to the file.
Apologies if this is something that's already well understood (it's impossible to read all the posts in big threads!) - it just seemed like a curious disparity between the two Boot ROM dumps.
Dumps made from systems running OC are not reliable, never dump or flash from OpenCore. All dumps you see me talking about are made from supported installs and validated with the ESN/MLB labels before anything.
Thanks very much for explaining that. I missed the part about avoiding OC when I did the Boot ROM export back in Feb. I was just curious because it looked similar to some of the examples of bricked ROMs that you and others posted. Do you know if there is an explanation anywhere of why running OC causes the ROM dump to be unreliable? It's not important though - I'm just curious to understand it better. Thanks!
It's a very complex subject and are different problems, you have the variables that OpenCore writes to the NVRAM, the NVRAM protections that you can enable - everyone has it's own recipe - and even problems with flashrom itself flashing the image to the SPI. It's a support nightmare and I reject any dumps made from OpenCore.
There are other unexpected problems also, some people like to use other Macs to install macOS and some Macs have a very different NVRAM usage, like some models of 2011-2015 MacBooks Air and MacBooks Pro needing IONVRAM or GPUROM quirks enabled or south bridge quirks for older ones with NVIDIA chipsets. This is all setup by macOS installer and then go to Mac Pro NVRAM when you boot from the disk. It's crazy the things you find inside the NVRAM volume when you have a big sample of dumps.
Apologies if this is covered elsewhere; I have looked, but there's a lot here.
I have a 5,1 Mac Pro, currently running Big Sur 11.2.3 using OpenCore. It's been working fine. I considered upgrading to the latest version of Big Sur, but discovered that's definitely not a good idea currently.
In reading the "Mac OS 11.3 has broken support for older Mac Pros" thread, I realized that many issues related to NVRAM.
Since I'd never made an NVRAM backup before, I booted into my old Mojave system and made a backup using ROMTool. I also checked it to ensure that the garbage-collection value of that dumped backup was what it should be. (It seems to be fine.)
My questions are:
1) If my system seems to be working and happy currently, would it be worthwhile to do a deep NVRAM reset and back up the NVRAM again then? Would that result in an NVRAM that's somehow "cleaner" than the one I already backed up?
2) I read about how the NVRAM chip eventually wears out; how common is that if I'm not doing anything too unusual? I'd really like to get as much life out of this system as possible -- at least until maybe an M1 Mac Pro is announced -- so anything I can do to keep it puttering along (even on 11.2.3) would be great. I'm wondering if I should buy a Matt Board to have on hand as a backup, since soldering on a new chip really isn't possible for me.
I appreciate any help you can give!
I have a 5,1 Mac Pro, currently running Big Sur 11.2.3 using OpenCore. It's been working fine. I considered upgrading to the latest version of Big Sur, but discovered that's definitely not a good idea currently.
In reading the "Mac OS 11.3 has broken support for older Mac Pros" thread, I realized that many issues related to NVRAM.
Since I'd never made an NVRAM backup before, I booted into my old Mojave system and made a backup using ROMTool. I also checked it to ensure that the garbage-collection value of that dumped backup was what it should be. (It seems to be fine.)
My questions are:
1) If my system seems to be working and happy currently, would it be worthwhile to do a deep NVRAM reset and back up the NVRAM again then? Would that result in an NVRAM that's somehow "cleaner" than the one I already backed up?
2) I read about how the NVRAM chip eventually wears out; how common is that if I'm not doing anything too unusual? I'd really like to get as much life out of this system as possible -- at least until maybe an M1 Mac Pro is announced -- so anything I can do to keep it puttering along (even on 11.2.3) would be great. I'm wondering if I should buy a Matt Board to have on hand as a backup, since soldering on a new chip really isn't possible for me.
I appreciate any help you can give!
Look I know you are newbie, but why open another yet another thread for a extensively covered topic? You should read about it on the source and ask questions there, not open another thread fragmenting the information.
Not only you should do it, you should track it over time. Read here:
OpenCore on the Mac Pro
Thank you @tsialex as always! Your knowledge overwhelms me! I have fixed my problem just reflashing BootROM using the reconstructed one that you made it for me. Now everything is ok again
forums.macrumors.com
Happens with any Mac Pro overtime. A lot of Mac Pros already failed, most are gonna fail in the near future. It's a component with finite lifetime, the SPI flash is rated for 100.000 cycles of erase/re-write and NVRAM volume inside the BootROM is constantly used.
This is one of the questions that only you can answer, MATT cards are expensive. You have to think about all options like replacing the backplane when it fails. MATT cards are valid for developers and people that can't have any downtime.
Thanks for the insight! Since my question didn't really have anything to do (AFAIK) with OpenCore on the Mac Pro nor trying to install 11.3 -- the two most-active threads that seemed tangential to the topic -- I didn't feel appropriate asking there (especially since many forums strive to avoid off-topic posts in ongoing threads).
And if any mods feel this thread needs to be deleted or whatever, I understand. No hard feelings!
That was the post I used to verify that garbage collection seems to work! But -- again -- it didn't seem really clear that re-flashing or doing the deep-reset of NVRAM was something that should be done. And since two truisms I've inferred from this forum are "if it's working, don't mess with it unless you need to" and "writing to the NVRAM too much will eventually break it," then I was trying to sort out if messing with the NVRAM when things were working (especially if that process involves additional writes to an old chip) was a good or bad idea.
Also, the linked post mentions flashing a clean dump, but I wasn't certain if the five-chime method was what generated that . . . especially since other posters have referred to you (tsialex) cleaning BootROMs for them.
Anyway, if I'm understanding correctly:
- Doing the five-chime reset will generate a clean BootROM, unless the NVRAM is already worn out and the underlying chip is already failing.
- Once you have the clean BootROM generated by that method, that should be reflashed periodically to avoid problems. And at the same time it's being reflashed, one should pull the current image on to inspect for problems.
- But, regardless of what's done, that chip is going to wear out . . . Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. But soon and for the rest of its life.
- Once that chip starts failing, the system will be unusable enough such that there probably won't be enough time to order a Matt Card, if the desire is maximum uptime.
Hi @tsialex - can you PM me for ROM reconstruction too? I'm not seeing any ill effects as yet, but the Free Space inside the first VSS store is showing as 10339. Dual CPU 4.1 > 5.1 on Catalina with OC 0.5.9, 6 DIMMs installed.
I have a couple of dumps. The last one was made when I upgraded to Catalina last summer. I believe I made it whilst booted into Mojave (I don't have ROMTool installed in Catalina), but it's possible it was booted from OC if I dumped it after rather than before installing Catalina. The value I gave above was by examining this dump with UEFITool.
If the SPI chip were to fail, would the procedure be to buy a new one, flash it with the reconstructed ROM using a cheap USB writer, then solder it to the backplane? May as well do the first two steps in advance, just in case, as the combined cost seems to be about £10. Doesn't look like a particularly hard soldering job, once the board is out of the case.
I have a couple of dumps. The last one was made when I upgraded to Catalina last summer. I believe I made it whilst booted into Mojave (I don't have ROMTool installed in Catalina), but it's possible it was booted from OC if I dumped it after rather than before installing Catalina. The value I gave above was by examining this dump with UEFITool.
If the SPI chip were to fail, would the procedure be to buy a new one, flash it with the reconstructed ROM using a cheap USB writer, then solder it to the backplane? May as well do the first two steps in advance, just in case, as the combined cost seems to be about £10. Doesn't look like a particularly hard soldering job, once the board is out of the case.
Sure, PM sent.
Always dump and flash from a native macOS install booted without OpenCore.
Correct.
Yes, it’s not too difficult to do it and you can follow the step by step procedure, including my mistakes, reading my posts starting from this one below:
MP5,1: BootROM thread | 144.0.0.0.0
I knew that isn’t gonna work, but let’s test… My Mac Pro is incredibly dirty and I cleaned with compressed air less than two months ago.
forums.macrumors.com
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Hey All. It's bee a while since I've been on this thread.
I have a major problem with my machine. It was all fine up until recently and I have no idea what caused it.
Basically no apps will launch in Mojave. I've done a clean install about 3 times. Works for a bit then all of a sudden when I start the machine back up it happens again.
I'm at my wits end with this.
It isn't my ROM cause I just re-flashed it to the 140 version @tsialex built me. Or it could be Black Magic Desktop Video v11.4 but that doesn't seem likely.
I've managed to upgrade Hi Sierra's apps so I can get going for today but any ideas would be most helpful as this is my work machine. Today I've missed most of today trying to get up and running.
Thanks
I have a major problem with my machine. It was all fine up until recently and I have no idea what caused it.
Basically no apps will launch in Mojave. I've done a clean install about 3 times. Works for a bit then all of a sudden when I start the machine back up it happens again.
I'm at my wits end with this.
It isn't my ROM cause I just re-flashed it to the 140 version @tsialex built me. Or it could be Black Magic Desktop Video v11.4 but that doesn't seem likely.
I've managed to upgrade Hi Sierra's apps so I can get going for today but any ideas would be most helpful as this is my work machine. Today I've missed most of today trying to get up and running.
Thanks
Sorry about your issues, but this have nothing to do with the topic here. Look for a diagnosing thread (there are several explaining how to run ASD/AHT and check for hardware problems) and you can also go to the Mojave forum and see if there are any reports of issues with the last Security Update.
I did that mate but I got no reply.
This forum has been the most helpful so that's why I'm here.
What's ASD/AHT?
Again, this is not the place. Use the search and find one appropriate to your issues, please don't hijack threads.
Apple Service Diagnostics / Apple Hardware Diagnostics.
How would I fix a bricked mac pro 5,1? It's not responding to any commands and the CD drive won't even open for me to try firmware restoration. Help?