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tsialex

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what happened to that?
The iMac 18,3 NVMe is totally incompatible with MP5,1.

Restarted and kaput. Maybe Apple used AVX or something along the line with the iMac DXE, I forgot to check for that.
 

LightBulbFun

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Oh wank!

sorry about that :(

how did you inject the NVMe driver and does it fail to POST at all or only with the NVMe drive installed?

since with no NVMe drive the NVMe driver should not load so it should not do anything.

(it would be interesting to see what happens if you extract it as a .efi file and load the driver manually from an EFI shell)
 

tsialex

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Jun 13, 2016
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Oh wank!

sorry about that :(

how did you inject the NVMe driver and does it fail to POST at all or only with the NVMe drive installed?

since with no NVMe drive the NVMe driver should not load so it should not do anything.
It’s not your fault.

I didn’t check for AVX/NI/etc in the DXE and I usually do that.

My Mac Pro now don’t even beep or start to post and don’t shutdown after some time, like when you get a corrupted SPI Flash. Keeps in loop forever without even initializing the GPU.

Btw, remove the DXEs from your previous posts before someone try to use them.
 
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LightBulbFun

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It’s not your fault.

I didn’t check for AVX/NI/etc in the DXE and I usually do that.

My Mac Pro now don’t even beep or start to post and don’t shutdown after same time, like when you get a corrupted SPI Flash. Keeps in loop forever without even initializing the GPU.

thats a interesting point never thought about AVX etc in a EFI application. good way to test that in an iMac18,3 is to try and drop one of the intel Kaby Lake Pentium CPUs into one as they dont have AVX or anything higher :D

but im still curious as to how you injected the DXE was it with dosdudes tool or did you do it manually? (I personally prefer to do em manually)
 

tsialex

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thats a interesting point never thought about AVX etc in a EFI application. good way to test that in an iMac18,3 is to try and drop one of the intel Kaby Lake Pentium CPUs into one as they dont have AVX or anything higher :D

but im still curious as to how you injected the DXE was it with dosdudes tool or did you do it manually? (I personally prefer to do em manually)
Did both, flashed my manually injected with UEFITool.
 

Matty_TypeR

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Oct 1, 2016
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The iMac 18,3 NVMe is totally incompatible with MP5,1.

Restarted and kaput. Maybe Apple used AVX or something along the line with the iMac DXE, I forgot to check for that.

Dam that's not good to happen, anyway you can resurrect it, or does it mean a new logic board? so it won't enter programming mode either then?
 

tsialex

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Dam that's not good to happen, anyway you can resurrect it, or does it mean a new logic board?
I'll desolder the SPI flash memory and reprogram it externally. It's "easy" to do it, but I have to remove the logic board to get sufficient access to remove and re-solder the SPI flash again.
[doublepost=1536146566][/doublepost]
Does not post/initialize, no Firmware Programming Mode.
 

Matty_TypeR

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I'll desolder the SPI flash memory and reprogram it externally. It's "easy" to do it, but I have to remove the logic board to get sufficient access to remove and re-solder the SPI flash again.

that sounds like a lot of work, and fiddley soldering to do.

when did that happen? last night?
 

tsialex

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Jun 13, 2016
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that sounds like a lot of work, and fiddley soldering to do
Yep, it’s a lot time consuming so I can only do that on Sunday.

Btw, it will be the 3rd time. One with my dual, one for a friend, and now my single.
 

Matty_TypeR

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its a shame you can't solder a socket to the board so you can just pop the SPI out if you get a bad flash, bit like the old bios chip used to.
 
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tsialex

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its a shame you can't solder a socket to the board so you can just pop the SPI out if you get a bad flash, bit like the old bios chip used to.
Mac Pros 4,1/5,1/6,1 have a connector for that, LITTLE FRANK, the problem is the high cost of the little board used to bypass the soldered one (MATT card).
[doublepost=1536147087][/doublepost]I'm thinking about installing a DIP SPI flash with a little perf board + zip socket + some kynar wire. I don't have ZIF 10p, if I found one locally maybe I'll do that.
 
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tsialex

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A lot for a little board like that, but looks useful if you know what you're doing. is that the only place that offers anything like that?
A guy in Korea sells a version for recent Air/rMBP but those have a different connector.
 

LightBulbFun

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Did both, flashed my manually injected with UEFITool.

alright I did a bit of testing in a Virtual machine

I extracted both MBP11,4 and iMac18,3 NVMe drivers as .efi files

and tried to load em in a VMware virtual machine EFI enviroment

the MBP11,4 driver loaded just fine

but the iMac18,3 hard crashed the VM.... this is probably whats happened to your MP5,1.

good news is on paper it looks like the MBP11,4 driver will work :)
[doublepost=1536147935][/doublepost]
A guy in Korea sells a version for recent Air/rMBP but those have a different connector.

IIRC one of the these MBP BootROM "adapter"/programming boards will fit and work with the Little frank connector on the MP5,1s Lobos I just cant recall which one your supposed to get...
 

tsialex

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Jun 13, 2016
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IIRC one of the these MBP BootROM "adapter"/programming boards will fit and work with the Little frank connector on the MP5,1s Lobos I just cant recall which one your supposed to get...
It's the Molex version, but it's almost the cost of a used logic board. I was thinking of doing one myself even before this early morning debacle, talked with @handheldgames yesterday about that…
 
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w1z

macrumors 6502a
Aug 20, 2013
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Tested the iMac18,3 NVMe DXE and the result is this until the weekend…

View attachment 779731

Not sure how you managed to flash the iMac NVME DXE on the cMP 2008 without any issues as it broke mine and I am only seeing a blackscreen on startup, no video, no chimes, no post, nada. I previously had the MacPro 6,1 NVME DXE flashed with the APFS patch and have a working backup of that on my NAS including my original rom.

Appreciate if you could direct me to the harness or tools I need to buy to recover my cmp, preferrably without desoldering/soldering.

Thank you.
 

LightBulbFun

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Nov 17, 2013
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It's the Molex version, but it's almost the cost of a used logic board. I was thinking of doing one myself even before this early morning debacle, talked with @handheldgames yesterday about that…

Yeah its nothing more then a small PCB and a couple connectors

we have schematics while not for the MP5,1 but for other macs that share the same connector so it should not be hard to do some reverse engineering :)

BTW I broke out my MB5,2 and did some testing with it,

from an EFI shell I can load the MBP11,4 NVMe driver but the IM18,3 hard locks the machine

in hindsight this is what we should of done from the start (extract the dxe as a .efi and load the it from a USB stick or something to avoid bricking the BootROM)
 

tsialex

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Jun 13, 2016
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Not sure how you managed to flash the iMac NVME DXE on the cMP 2008 without any issues as it broke mine and I am only seeing a blackscreen on startup, no video, no chimes, no post, nada. I previously had the MacPro 6,1 NVME DXE flashed with the APFS patch and have a working backup of that on my NAS including my original rom.

Appreciate if you could direct me to the harness or tools I need to buy to recover my cmp, preferrably without desoldering/soldering.

Thank you.
It was a inside joke. I bricked my 2009, not my 2008.

With 2008 you have to remove the TSOP FWB, I never saw anything to reflash the FWB memory using the diag connector.
[doublepost=1536149172][/doublepost]
Yeah its nothing more then a small PCB and a couple connectors

we have schematics while not for the MP5,1 but for other macs that share the same connector so it should not be hard to do some reverse engineering :)

BTW I broke out my MB5,2 and did some testing with it,

from an EFI shell I can load the MBP11,4 NVMe driver but the IM18,3 hard locks the machine

in hindsight this is what we should of done from the start (extract the dxe as a .efi and load the it from a USB stick or something to avoid bricking the BootROM)

Yep. I usually test this, talked to you about before, but since I lost my sleep at 3:30 AM, I started testing things without the needed attention…

I have the MB5,2 schematic, seems a lot similar with the MP5,1 circuit.
 

w1z

macrumors 6502a
Aug 20, 2013
692
481
It was a inside joke. I bricked my 2009, not my 2008.

With 2008 you have to remove the TSOP FWB, I never saw anything to reflash the FWB memory using the diag connector.

Hmmmm. I really wish I hadn't read your post! What's a TSOP FWB?

Edit: the joke is on me ... I rushed into it... craaaaaaaap!

Thanks
 

tsialex

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Jun 13, 2016
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Hmmmm. I really wish I hadn't read your post! What's a TSOP FWB?

Thanks
With 2008 Mac Pro, the BootROM is stored in a parallel flash memory, FWB TSOP 42pin one. With 2009 to 2013, it's a SPI flash memory, SOIC/SOP 8pin.

With a 2008, if you don't have the hardware to reprogram the FWB, it'll be more cost effective to buy a used logic board.
 
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