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MP 1,1-5,1 MacPro5,1: What you have to do to upgrade to Mojave (10.13/10.14 BootROM upgrades instructions thread)
- Thread starter tsialex
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After reading through all this, I feel my head is about to explode as I am still wondering just how much of a rabbit hole I would falling into if I were to up date my 2012 5,1 MacPro’s OS from OS X El Capitan 10.11.6 to Mojave.
My MP is a 6-Core Intel Xeon 3.46 GHz model (Boot ROM Version: MP51.0089.B00) which it is currently equipped with a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 (Classified model) graphics card – card specs below:
Chipset Model: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 CLASSIFIED
Type: GPU
Bus: PCIe
Slot: Slot-1
PCIe Lane Width: x16
VRAM (Total): 4096 MB
Vendor: NVIDIA (0x10de)
Device ID: 0x1180
Revision ID: 0x00a2
ROM Revision: MacVidCards
NVIDIA CUDA Driver Version: 8.0.90
NVIDIA GPU Driver Version: 10.10.14 310.42.25f02
Connectors: 2x Dual-Link DVI Port, 1x DisplayPort & 1x HDMI Port
4096x2160 maximum digital resolution via DisplayPort @ 60Hz
My MP is a 6-Core Intel Xeon 3.46 GHz model (Boot ROM Version: MP51.0089.B00) which it is currently equipped with a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 (Classified model) graphics card – card specs below:
Chipset Model: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 CLASSIFIED
Type: GPU
Bus: PCIe
Slot: Slot-1
PCIe Lane Width: x16
VRAM (Total): 4096 MB
Vendor: NVIDIA (0x10de)
Device ID: 0x1180
Revision ID: 0x00a2
ROM Revision: MacVidCards
NVIDIA CUDA Driver Version: 8.0.90
NVIDIA GPU Driver Version: 10.10.14 310.42.25f02
Connectors: 2x Dual-Link DVI Port, 1x DisplayPort & 1x HDMI Port
4096x2160 maximum digital resolution via DisplayPort @ 60Hz
Update to High Sierra first. Update to Boot ROM Version 138.0.0.0.0 -OR- 140.0.0.0.0. You "SHOULD" be able to do with this GPU (assume not flashed and non-EFI) because you are already on MP51.0089.B00.
Do you need CUDA? If so, don't go past High Sierra.
This is interesting after the problems I had updating to Mojave I decided to wait until .1 came out. I’m not sure when it came out but I went to the App Store today it was there so I downloaded it the firmware update happened just fine after reboot I went through the install process and it installed on my scratch drive which is a 128gb MBA drive not my current boot drive which is on an OWC adaptor. This whole Mojave thing has been interesting I’ve never been able to boot from the scratch now I can and my OWC seems to be not available
Just finally finished this process up on a 2010 Mac Pro with a RX 570 4 GB card. Followed the instructions and they mostly worked. For some reason I had an issue upgrading to 10.13.6 and had to reinstall with a fresh USB stick with 10.13.6 9 (that I downloaded anyway). After that the process went fine. Did an upgrade over High Sierra since I installed a fresh copy.
The only issue I'm having right now is that I was hoping to install a GT 120 as a secondary card for boot screens. However when I try this in any slot the Mac Pro stops booting about 1/2 way through the process. I thought I saw this was a valid solution to boot screens but perhaps I'm mistaken?
The only issue I'm having right now is that I was hoping to install a GT 120 as a secondary card for boot screens. However when I try this in any slot the Mac Pro stops booting about 1/2 way through the process. I thought I saw this was a valid solution to boot screens but perhaps I'm mistaken?
Don't work anymore, works with High Sierra but not with Mojave.
I’m hoping that someone can help me here. I installed a Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX580 8G GDDR5 in my Mac Pro 5,1 12 GB ram in order to be able to upgrade to Mojave.
The previous card was an ATI Radeon HD 5770 1G. I was running three Dell S2409W (DVI-D, HDMI, VGA) monitors using 1 DVI-D connection and 2 active DVI-D to mini display adapters.
Installing the card wasn’t straightforward, I experienced the same problem of the fan grating against the card above as others seem to have - I decided to remove the card above for now as it’s not totally necessary for me. Power comes from a 6 pin to double mini 6 pin cable which I bought separately.
In 10.13.6, booting in safe mode (I think, as thee is no way to confirm that afaik) I had to do a bit of connecting/ disconnecting but I managed to get two of the monitors to work with HDMI cables. All seemed ok so I went ahead with the Mojave installation.
This took a long time and at one point I got to a an endless black screen, so after 30 minutes or so I decided to power off and try again.
Eventually it worked, I logged into Mojave (10.14.1) got a message saying “optimising your system” and I let it do it’s thing. I might have been in safe mode, unfortunately I don’t remember.
So it looks like that Mojave works on my machine but the next morning I got just dark screens, I bought HDMI to DP and a HDMI to DVI-D cables to try my luck with those connections - nothing.
I’ve been trying to boot in safe mode (boot + S), I re-initialised the monitors as indicated on Dell’s website, I zapped the parameter ram, all I get on the monitors is either a floating message saying “no HDMI cable” or a message saying “entering power save mode” after which they seem to just go to sleep.
Can someone kindly let me know where can I go from here?
I have a MacBook Pro, could I try to access the Mac Pro in target mode and do something?
Many, many thanks in advance
Andrea
The previous card was an ATI Radeon HD 5770 1G. I was running three Dell S2409W (DVI-D, HDMI, VGA) monitors using 1 DVI-D connection and 2 active DVI-D to mini display adapters.
Installing the card wasn’t straightforward, I experienced the same problem of the fan grating against the card above as others seem to have - I decided to remove the card above for now as it’s not totally necessary for me. Power comes from a 6 pin to double mini 6 pin cable which I bought separately.
In 10.13.6, booting in safe mode (I think, as thee is no way to confirm that afaik) I had to do a bit of connecting/ disconnecting but I managed to get two of the monitors to work with HDMI cables. All seemed ok so I went ahead with the Mojave installation.
This took a long time and at one point I got to a an endless black screen, so after 30 minutes or so I decided to power off and try again.
Eventually it worked, I logged into Mojave (10.14.1) got a message saying “optimising your system” and I let it do it’s thing. I might have been in safe mode, unfortunately I don’t remember.
So it looks like that Mojave works on my machine but the next morning I got just dark screens, I bought HDMI to DP and a HDMI to DVI-D cables to try my luck with those connections - nothing.
I’ve been trying to boot in safe mode (boot + S), I re-initialised the monitors as indicated on Dell’s website, I zapped the parameter ram, all I get on the monitors is either a floating message saying “no HDMI cable” or a message saying “entering power save mode” after which they seem to just go to sleep.
Can someone kindly let me know where can I go from here?
I have a MacBook Pro, could I try to access the Mac Pro in target mode and do something?
Many, many thanks in advance
Andrea
Did you tried a clean install of 10.14.1 into an empty drive? Do this to troubleshoot just the hardware, seems you are having software and hardware problems now.
Thank you for your reply. No, I haven’t tried that. I’m stuck because with no monitor I can’t go anywhere. Could you kindly advise me on how to do that?
I hope it’s not hardware related - as I said yesterday it was working fine, seems strange that a hardware fault could have developed just like this.
I still have my old card, I’ve though of putting it back but then Mojave won’t run with it...
I have a time machine backup of High Sierra on an internal drive, is there a way I can roll back to that?
Create a usb-key with createinstallmedia, install an empty drive into the Mac Pro, remove all other drives, boot from the createinstallmedia, install Mojave.
Since you don't have boot selector with RX-580, you need to have just the empty drive into the Mac Pro and the createinstallmedia USB key. Zap-NVRAM, then the installer will boot.
Ok, I’ve ordered a SATA internal drive to try that, it will be here tomorrow. So if when I boot from the createinstallmedia key I’ll get a black screen again, would that signify a hardware problem?
Some kexts, like AirDisplay ones, are incompatible with the RX-560/580 + Mojave. So, I suggested for you to do the clean install.
Btw, you bought a dual mini-6Pin to 8pin or to 6pin? You need dual mini-6Pin to 8pin to power your RX-580.
Connect just one monitor to the DVI port when doing the install.
Yes I have, dual mini 6 pin to 8 pin.
Thank you for your help Tsialex, I’ll report back when I’ll have tried this.
For info, should be hold “shift” to boot to safe mode, not Command + S (I assume this is what you mean).
Command + S is for single user mode, that’s very very different than safe mode, and RX580 can’t use single user mode, nothing will be displayed.
Good god, thank you. I feel stupid, probably because I am.
Booting holding Shift I've managed to get two of the screens to work.
1) DVI-D to DP cable
2) DVI to DVI cable
The third one won't come on but it's ok for now.
So 10.14.1 does run in my machine with the new Radeon RX 580 8GB, thankfully it seems to be a software issue.
Can someone kindly advise on what I should do now? Any extensions or settings I should change or remove to avoid this happening again when I boot normally?
Hi Alex,
Thank you for your detailed post.
Hoping to upgrade to Mojave for Christmas. I currently Have a 5,1 with 10.13.6, original ATI Radeon 5770, and Boot ROM Version: MP51.0084.B00
1) Is the only way to get 0089.B00 with the full 10.13.6 installer, or do i need to go into firmware update mode somehow?
2) Do you have a good resource for EFI Roms for various RX 560 models? I would like to retain bootscreens for future sanity. Was thinking about the Gigabyte RX 560, but it could also be another brand.
Thank you kindly!
Thank you for your detailed post.
Hoping to upgrade to Mojave for Christmas. I currently Have a 5,1 with 10.13.6, original ATI Radeon 5770, and Boot ROM Version: MP51.0084.B00
1) Is the only way to get 0089.B00 with the full 10.13.6 installer, or do i need to go into firmware update mode somehow?
2) Do you have a good resource for EFI Roms for various RX 560 models? I would like to retain bootscreens for future sanity. Was thinking about the Gigabyte RX 560, but it could also be another brand.
Thank you kindly!
You have to download the full installer of 10.13.6 then open it, it will ask you to upgrade the firmware. Do as it says, Apple don't supply standalone firmware upgrades anymore. You will need to shutdown and enter Firmware Upgrade Mode.
No AMD GPU past R9-280X has boot screen support.
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Thank you for the quick reply. As I understand it, the 3 cards you listed in bold are the only ones that have EFI support. Was hoping to stay out of that price range and flash one of the other choices.
1) So not only do I need one of the cards listed in bold, I will also need to flash the bios for any of those cards as well to have boot screen support?
2) Do you find yourself ever needing bootscreen support? my 5770 was crapping out at one point, when I switched to a GT 740. At one point I couldn't upgrade the OS anymore because I was stuck on a black screen. So I put the 5770 back in to bypass the dialog box that was stopping me from getting in the OS. I guess my question is if I use an unsupported card in terms of EFI, and I have this problem again where I get stuck getting into a new version of the OS, will I no longer be able to revert to the 5770 since it wont be supported by mojave or the bootrom? And have you ever had a problem like that? Maybe that dialog never appears on full installs? Not sure if it was the initial icloud one or what. I just cant remember.
thank you again!
1) So not only do I need one of the cards listed in bold, I will also need to flash the bios for any of those cards as well to have boot screen support?
2) Do you find yourself ever needing bootscreen support? my 5770 was crapping out at one point, when I switched to a GT 740. At one point I couldn't upgrade the OS anymore because I was stuck on a black screen. So I put the 5770 back in to bypass the dialog box that was stopping me from getting in the OS. I guess my question is if I use an unsupported card in terms of EFI, and I have this problem again where I get stuck getting into a new version of the OS, will I no longer be able to revert to the 5770 since it wont be supported by mojave or the bootrom? And have you ever had a problem like that? Maybe that dialog never appears on full installs? Not sure if it was the initial icloud one or what. I just cant remember.
thank you again!
You can flash AMD HD 7xxx/R9-280 cards or Nvidia GTX 680. Everything else you can't. There's a lot threads about this, start researching.
You can workaround, usually I upgrade the firmware first from macOS, create a createinstallmedia usbkey with Mojave, then I remove all drives except the one I want to install. If the drive is empty/erased, the createinstallmedia will boot and after that the screen will work. RX-560 and RX-580 work fine for this.
Thank you for you help Tsialex. I did a clean install in a new SSD Drive using an USB key as you instructed and it works just fine, I can also connect all three monitors. As expected there is no boot screen but booting from the SSD Drive is lighting fast so it's not a problem.
Now I will have to re-install and authorise tons of software, but given that I was completely stuck I'm ok with it
Thanks again.
Thank you for you help Tsialex. I did a clean install in a new SSD Drive using an USB key as you instructed and it works just fine, I can also connect all three monitors. As expected there is no boot screen but booting from the SSD Drive is lighting fast so it's not a problem.
Now I will have to re-install and authorise tons of software, but given that I was completely stuck I'm ok with it
Thanks again.
Sometimes a clean install is needed, this seemed to be the best course of action for your Mac Pro, I'm glad that it worked.