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

[tsialex]

Brushed IPA around the SPI-flash

Time to choose the Kapton tape:

 

[Matty_TypeR]

Looking good, it must be heat time!

 

[tsialex]

Some heat later…

 

[Modmike]

Everything you need to know is on the forums, if you plan on upgrading the CPU in your 2009 Mac Pro you will first need to flash it from a 4.1 to a 5.1 and DDR3 1333 MHz will be come available after flashing to 5.1 although you might need to purchase new ram for this. and instructions on how to do so are a search away. also if you plan on new CPU's then you will want to go hex core 6 cores and will need to delid the CPU remove the ICH from the CPU. again instructions are a search away. or you can go with the shim method if your not confident with Deliding a CPU. use shims not stamped out washers.

Sorry should have said I am well aware of that and plan on ordering a matched pair of matched Xenon 5690s offered on ebay from china which I intend to de-lid, not in the least worried about it.

As for a GFX card Mojave the soon to be released OSX supports AMD cards and one which falls into the Mac Pro's available power usage is the AMD RX 580 sapphire pulse card. but that has no boot screens, if you need boot screen then the GTX680 Mac edition or a flashed GTX 680 will suit better.

Definitely want boot screen but want powerful card for Fusion 360 CAD and video editing. Whats the best value with boot screen, especially in light of the new boot rom.

As for NVMe boot drives this is still not available from apple direct, but as you can see from this tread there are some with substantial knowledge on how this is attained. Samsung AHCI drives are supported but becoming harder to find as they are no longer made, but offer similar speeds to NVMe drives using a single PCIe controller card.

I plan to get a 1GB NVME and 2 standard drives for large file storage.

Good luck with your build and welcome to the forums!

Thanks!
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It’s risky, but I only use it to clean boards when the humidity is high enough.
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To boot from a NVMe drive, you need to inject the NVMe driver into your Mac Pro firmware, I can help you with that.

If you gonna buy a NVMe drive, look at Samsung 970 EVO or Pro, if you want a cheaper/bigger drive, HP EX920 https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820326778

Anandtech review: https://www.anandtech.com/show/13037/the-hp-ex920-m2-ssd-review

GPU depends a lot on what you do. So it’s better that you wait until you started to use your Mac Pro. Maybe you will need boot screens, or hardware encoding or CUDA. So, it’s the last thing.

As I mentioned, will be running Autocad Fusion 360 and video editing with final cut. Video editing will be extremely lightweight and occasional. CAD and compiling software will be biggest use. So what is the most powerful card I can put in in light of Mojave and the new boot rom? Whats the next step down?

Also I don't want to go crazy on RAM, can you tell me how more ram improves the performance of what I plan to use it for? I was looking at 64gb.

Thanks!

 

[tsialex]

Fully erased, programmed and verified MP51.fd:

The command line to read/write/verify is:

Read from the SPI, dump it to a file, if the SPI flash is a MX25L3206E:

flashrom -p ch341a_spi -c MX25L3206E/MX25L3208E -r name_of_the_binary_to_be_read_from_the_SPI

Write a file to the SPI, if the SPI flash is a MX25L3206E:

flashrom -p ch341a_spi -c MX25L3206E/MX25L3208E -w name_of_the_binary_to_be_written_to_the_SPI

Verify the contents of the SPI, if the SPI flash is a MX25L3206E:

flashrom -p ch341a_spi -c MX25L3206E/MX25L3208E -v name_of_the_binary_to_be_verified

Use the correct SPI flash model with the -c parameter. You can get the full list with flashrom -L, check it.

You can read the full man page with man flashrom.

 

[misanthrophy]

Definitely want boot screen but want powerful card for Fusion 360 CAD and video editing. Whats the best value with boot screen, especially in light of the new boot rom.

I am using 10.13 for now and depending on your budget one the most powerful gfx card is the NVIDIA GTX TITAN X. I got one from eBay for 550EUR with EFI flash. If money doesn't matter, go get a TITAN XP Pascal with EFI flash.

I still have a boot screen on my card and it is very powerful. But not sure if it fully supports 10.14 with boot screen etc.

 

[marcoscc]

First of all I would like to thank very much @tsialex for the very good help and support he gave me preparing the new firmware for my MAC PRO Mid 2010 with the latest updates, version 138.0.0.0.0, with the NVMe boot and also the MAC PRO hardware descriptor from Base_20 (MID 2010) to the mid-2012 Base_21 one, and sent it to me just for burn it in my firmware chip.

This morning I was able to record the new firmware and it worked perfectly.

I installed the HIGHPoint SSD7101A card with 4 NVMe blades Samsung 960 EVO 500G to start RAID0 performance tests with 2, 3 and 4 blades, as well as performance with only 1 NVMe without RAID.

I did not get the performance I expected, and I think this is due to the highPoint's ability to manage the PCIe 2.0 slot (the HighPoint card is PCIe 3.0).

Results in MAC OSX 10.13.6 using RAID0 created by MAC OSX DISKUTIL. Slot 2

With 1 NVMe I achieved the following results:
Read: 2609.7
Write: 1925.8

With 2 NVMe in RAID0 I got the following results:
Read: 4301.3
Write: 3305.2

With 3 NVMe in RAID0 I got the following results:
Read: 4703.8
Write: 3846.1

With 4 NVMe in RAID0 I got the following results:
Read: 4793.5
Write: 3646.0

I was able also to boot from NVMe in both version 10.13 and version 10.14

NOTE:

If I create the RAID through the proprietary software of the HighPoint controller the performance gets a little better, but with the proprietary software installed I do not have visibility of the NVMe blade by MAC OSX only from RAID0.

More specifically .. my idea is to use 1 blade to boot and the other 3 as RAID0, in case I use the highpoint proprietary software I can not see the NVMe blade that I would use to boot and with that I can not install MAC OSX, so all tests was made using distil for RAID0 creation.

I would like to enphasize that without the very good support received from @tsialex will be impossible for me to change my firmware to the lates version.

Hardware Overview:
Model Name: Mac Pro
Model Identifier: MacPro5,1
Processor Name: 6-Core Intel Xeon
Processor Speed: 3,46 GHz
Number of Processors: 2
Total Number of Cores: 12
L2 Cache (per Core): 256 KB
L3 Cache (per Processor): 12 MB
Memory: 128 GB
Boot ROM Version: 138.0.0.0.0
SMC Version (system): 1.39f11
SMC Version (processor tray): 1.39f11

 

[misanthrophy]

Results in MAC OSX 10.13.6 using RAID0 created by MAC OSX DISKUTIL. Slot 2

With 1 NVMe I achieved the following results:
Read: 2609.7
Write: 1925.8

With 2 NVMe in RAID0 I got the following results:
Read: 4301.3
Write: 3305.2

With 3 NVMe in RAID0 I got the following results:
Read: 4703.8
Write: 3846.1

With 4 NVMe in RAID0 I got the following results:
Read: 4793.5
Write: 3646.0

Okay so basically the best performance is with 2 blades. I mean thats highest difference from all blades and I guess the best option based on money versus performance.

Do you think the Amfeltec Squid with 4 blades in another slot would increase the results significantly? I am currently thinking of buying a card for 2-4 blades and bring them together on a software Raid with SoftRAID. With your results I better save some money and only gor for a 2 blade option...

 

[marcoscc]

Okay so basically the best performance is with 2 blades. I mean thats highest difference from all blades and I guess the best option based on money versus performance.

Do you think the Amfeltec Squid with 4 blades in another slot would increase the results significantly? I am currently thinking of buying a card for 2-4 blades and bring them together on a software Raid with SoftRAID. With your results I better save some money and only gor for a 2 blade option...

Now that I have 4 Blades, my idea is to create two differents RAID0, with two blades in each one just to minimize my investment. The best way is to use two blades only, more than two blades will increase a litter bit the overall performance. Maybe the problem is related to PCIe 3.0 HighPoint not negotiate well the speed ... I will test also in my Hackintosh with QUO Motherboard and Sierra and upload results in the near future
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Okay so basically the best performance is with 2 blades. I mean thats highest difference from all blades and I guess the best option based on money versus performance.

Do you think the Amfeltec Squid with 4 blades in another slot would increase the results significantly? I am currently thinking of buying a card for 2-4 blades and bring them together on a software Raid with SoftRAID. With your results I better save some money and only gor for a 2 blade option...

As you can see with Amfeltec PCIe 3.0 and PCIe 2.0 tests ... PCIe 3.0 present the same results for 2, 3 and 4 blades ..

http://barefeats.com/hard220.html

 

[misanthrophy]

As you can see with Amfeltec PCIe 3.0 and PCIe 2.0 tests ... PCIe 3.0 present the same results for 2, 3 and 4 blades ..

Amfeltec told me for the Mac Pro 4.1 Gen2 would be enough, no need for the Gen3 Card. On Gen2 the performance increased a lot with 3, 4 blades in that test!

Now I am again confused hahaha.

 

[marcoscc]

Amfeltec told me for the Mac Pro 4.1 Gen2 would be enough, no need for the Gen3 Card. On Gen2 the performance increased a lot with 3, 4 blades in that test!

Now I am again confused hahaha.

Please note that these tests was made with AHCI blades not NVMe ... don't know Amfeltec performance with NVMe ...

 

[tsialex]

I forgot to find one little but crucial tool, the Pace micro-tips for my solder/desolder station. It's not something I use frequently, so maybe it's hidden in a box somewhere.

I found my Hakko ones, so tomorrow morning I'm gonna change stations and then I'll solder the SPI flash.

Another thing, don't buy cheap no-clean flux, at best you gonna get dizzy and can't desolder anything…

 

[Modmike]

I am using 10.13 for now and depending on your budget one the most powerful gfx card is the NVIDIA GTX TITAN X. I got one from eBay for 550EUR with EFI flash. If money doesn't matter, go get a TITAN XP Pascal with EFI flash.

I still have a boot screen on my card and it is very powerful. But not sure if it fully supports 10.14 with boot screen etc.

I was looking at those but was unsure which one to pick. I guess the budget choice would be the sapphire Radeon 580 8gb?

 

[Squuiid]

I guess the budget choice would be the sapphire Radeon 580 8gb?

The best choice IMO.

 

[Macschrauber]

I forgot to find one little but crucial tool, the Pace micro-tips for my solder/desolder station. It's not something I use frequently, so maybe it's hidden in a box somewhere.

I found my Hakko ones, so tomorrow morning I'm gonna change stations and then I'll solder the SPI flash.

Another thing, don't buy cheap no-clean flux, at best you gonna get dizzy and can't desolder anything…

Now its a good time to think about putting in some kind of socket with all the Firmware mods you do ? Maybe something with just short wires. Makes live less risky

 

[tsialex]

Now its a good time to think about putting in some kind of socket with all the Firmware mods you do ? Maybe something with just short wires. Makes live less risky

If I had more memory with my 2008 Mac Pro, I could do anything else than solder the SPI flash again. I can tolerate the CPU being slower no problem, but I can't work with just 12GB FB-DIMM that I have on the 3,1. I need to buy more memory for the 3,1, if I ever corrupt the 2009 again, I can just install my Angelbird Wings into the 2008 and work.

I'll buy some Aussie black ZIF connectors to install into my work and home 2009s. But let's be realist, even a ZIF socket it's not a solution for testing BootROMs, I need a fast to flash, reliable way to do it. So maybe I'll need to raise funds to buy that 150€ easy-flash from CMIzapper that connects on the LITTLE FRANK connector.

 

[Macschrauber]

I purchased server ram with small heat sinks and swapped the large heat sinks of obsolete 512MB sticks. Didnt cared about the little speed loss from 800 to 666 Mhz. Thats an affordable way to get more Ram to the 3.1.

Was an easy swap but I had a box of 512MB Sticks, not all heat sinks fit on every server Ram.

 

[tsialex]

I purchased server ram with small heat sinks and swapped the large heat sinks of obsolete 512MB sticks. Didnt cared about the little speed loss from 800 to 666 Mhz. Thats an affordable way to get more Ram to the 3.1.

Was an easy swap but I had a box of 512MB Sticks, not all heat sinks fit on every server Ram.

I don't have any unused FB-DIMMs, I bought 4x16GB from a seller on AliExpress but they sent me high density Samsung FB-DIMMs (4R4?) that don't work with the 2008 and not the one that was on the ad. Worked with a IBM server that I have, so I put there. I was gonna do the inverse, put the 64GB on the 3,1 and the 12GB on the IBM server.

 

[tsialex]

My own Mac Pro BootROM reconstructed:

Writing it to the SST25VF032B:

 

[Matty_TypeR]

Great, will soon be up and running then

 

[tsialex]

Cleaning the old solder on the pads:

Lot’s of IPA:

SST25VF032B initial solder on the pads, no-clean flux I have only create a mess, don’t work.

It’s not perfect by a mile and I’m not satisfied with the result, but will do nicely. I can use a chisel tip and the braid to clean the excess solder on the pads with my Pace station, but I need my Mac Pro working yesterday.

VDD, pin 8, it’s difficult to solder, heat sink. Had to up the heat to 450ºC to get it done.

The next one I'll have to do, I'll use a real solder flux to remove/clean pads and solder paste/hot air to reinstall the SPI flash memory.

 

[Matty_TypeR]

Cleaning the old solder on the pads:
View attachment 780248

Lot’s of IPA:

View attachment 780249

SST25VF032B initial solder on the pads, no-clean flux I have only create a mess, don’t work.

View attachment 780250

It’s not perfect by a mile and I’m not satisfied with the result, but will do nicely.

VDD, pin 8, it’s difficult to solder, heat sink. Had to up the heat to 450ºC to get it done.

View attachment 780251

The next one I'll have to do, I'll use a real solder flux to remove/clean pads and solder paste/hot air to reinstall the SPI flash memory.

Looks a good job to me, that is not easy to do, main thing is you will now have your Mac Pro back to its former glory. well done

 

[tsialex]

Looks a good job to me, that is not easy to do, main thing is you will now have your Mac Pro back to its former glory. well done

I can do a lot better than that, but without flux, I just couldn't. Did it fast, without microscope and without my preferred solder iron/solder tips.

One thing, that excess solder will make a lot easier to remove the SPI flash if I ever want to install that black Aussie SOIC8W socket.
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That poor solder job will hunt me no more.

Got the Pace with the chisel tip and did a drag soldering, now I’m in peace with that.

You will need a microscope to find the solder job now.

 

[crjackson2134]

View attachment 780260

That poor solder job will haunt me no more.

Got the Pace with the chisel tip and did a drag soldering, now I’m in peace with that.

You will need a microscope to find the solder job now.

Wow! Nice job. Big diff...

Maybe I need to dump my Hako station for a pace.... Will it magically give me you soldering skill

 

[Matty_TypeR]

I can do a lot better than that, but without flux, I just couldn't. Did it fast, without microscope and without my preferred solder iron/solder tips.

One thing, that excess solder will make a lot easier to remove the SPI flash if I ever want to install that black Aussie SOIC8W socket.
[doublepost=1536415080][/doublepost]
View attachment 780260

That poor solder job will hunt me no more.

Got the Pace with the chisel tip and did a drag soldering, now I’m in peace with that.

You will need a microscope to find the solder job now.

Again WOW looks like factory now, very nice job.