Just want to write to say good job on the instruction. It was a good read. I was thinking to do it but after seeing the potential bricking of the Mac Pro I decided to not go with it. It works great with no issue and it’s my main machine so I think I’ll just leave high Sierra as it is. As I really only care about the dark mode. Haha.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
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
- WikiPost WikiPost
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
- Status
It's a very safe process and most, if not all, pitfalls are already listed on the first post after almost two years.
Only a few people ever bricked and usually those are the Macs that already had problems and people tried to upgrade without solving it first or people that had power failures during the firmware upgrade process.
[automerge]1591738288[/automerge]
High Sierra will be obsolete around September/October time frame, no more Security Updates at all. Apple only supports the current macOS release (will be 10.16) and the two previous (will be 10.15 and 10.14).
Edit:
Typo corrections.
Last edited:
Thanks that last point you brought up is a good point. I’ll study the instruction a bit more.
Apple will announce 10.16 at this month WWDC, you have around three months to prepare and buy a METAL supported GPU, if you don't have one already, before High Sierra is not supported anymore. Get a new drive too, do the upgrade from a clean install on an empty disk.
So, I have decided to go with it after what you said. I removed the PCIe SSD card that I have and stripped basically everything. I have an old HDD so I'm using that to install the High Sierra. I tried close to 10 times but I can't get the High Sierra to enter the firmware screen. I'm not trying method two.
Just want to confirm, I have the ATI Radeon HD 4870 (according to system info). Based on what you wrote that should be good enough right? That's the stock GPU? I assumed all the HD 4870 GPU are the same? I got my Mac Pro from a university surplus store, so I'm going to assume when they bought it was stock and they won't bother to change/upgrade it. Thanks.
ATI HD 4870 was used by Apple as a GPU option for early 2009 Mac Pros. There are both PC and Mac versions of HD 4870, btw.
If you already have MP51.0089.B00 BootROM version, check with AboutThisMac / SystemReport / HardwareOverview / BootROMVersion, your Mac Pro now need a METAL supported GPU to upgrade to Mojave.
yea I did check that. Unfortunately I don’t have that Bootrom version. That’s why I was trying to flash with empty/old HDD.
As for mine HD4870 I can only assume it is the Mac version. I’ll try method two now and hope I can get it to work.
What's the current BootROM version of your Mac Pro?
Start from Sierra, follow If nothing above works for you, try this instructions.
I’m at MP51.0085.B00
yep thanks. That’s what I’m following right now. I don’t want to upgrade directly from my SSD because it’s not APFS (If it wasn’t for that I could technically just plug it into the backplane). Unless you think it would be okay? I can just run the high Sierra installer. Once it all works I can do a clean install of Mojave and format to APFS?
Always do firmware upgrades from clean installs, use another disk. After you already have 144.0.0.0.0 installed, you can erase/format your SSD, Mojave installer automatically change from jhfs+ to APFS, so you can erase and format your SSD as usual (jhfs+). It's better to let Mojave installer do it than do it format as APFS yourself. Mojave installer will correctly create Recovery and etc by itself.
Thanks, yea I'm fighting with it right now. While trying to install Sierra I'm now getting "application is damaged, can’t be used to install macOS". Boy, I didn't expect this to be easy, but this is getting a bit annoyed. I recalled when I first got the Mac pro it was equally as painful to get it going.
I guess this is both the fun and annoying part working with the Mac Pro....
If you are using an old installer, signing certificates expired October 24. You need to change the clock to a date before the certificate expiration date.
Man, this is why I love screwing with old machine. Just learned something new. Thanks, on my way to install Sierra now. Also, I totally misunderstood your instruction, I think I was trying to udpate the bootrom via USB. I had the instruction confused. But either way, I'm going with the second option here, fingers crossed.
Update: got it to work eventually. I was just being stupid. Sierra solves the program. It was very smooth after. Although I just learned that FileVault no longer works after going to Mojave, that kind of put a pause on the whole upgrade. I’ll have to rethink if I want to go though with it and how I can encrypt the entire drive. APFS encrypted? Will that work on the entire drive? I wanna make sure things like emails and such are covered as well. Thanks!
Last edited:
I checked with the GPU in both slot 1 and 2 with only that card inserted, and when checking system-report via screensharing I cannot see any attached PCI cards.
Will try the clean install also but thats basically what I am running. Got this 5,1 a while back and did the bootrom upgrade to MP51.0089.B00 with a clean install just recently and have not done much since.
Will try all outputs later today.
If the System Report shows no GPU on PCI, your GPU is dead.
[automerge]1591778677[/automerge]
OpenCore can re-enable FileVault 2 for Mojave and Catalina.
Hi, I'm wondering if tsialex can help with this.
Last year, I did the firmware upgrade for my (flashed 4.1) 5.1 to get the boot rom to 144.0.0.0.0 for a Mojave install. I went through all the necessary steps using an older GPU etc and installed Mojave onto a DIY Fusion drive.
I'm still running Mojave as you can see here and it's been updating fine over the past year.
I've purchased a new 2TB SSD and was planning to do a fresh Mojave install on that so I could get off the Fusion drive.
I was in the process of creating a bootable USB when I checked the firmware and now for some reason I'm back to Boot Rom 138.0.0.0.0!!!
I have no idea how this happened and now I'm wondering what the consequences will be for my proposed fresh install?
When I downloaded the Mojave Installer for the USB it initially opened and said that I'd need to do the firmware upgrade. In fact it was that message, that prompted me to do a recheck of my firmware.
I'd appreciate any help please.
Last year, I did the firmware upgrade for my (flashed 4.1) 5.1 to get the boot rom to 144.0.0.0.0 for a Mojave install. I went through all the necessary steps using an older GPU etc and installed Mojave onto a DIY Fusion drive.
I'm still running Mojave as you can see here and it's been updating fine over the past year.
I've purchased a new 2TB SSD and was planning to do a fresh Mojave install on that so I could get off the Fusion drive.
I was in the process of creating a bootable USB when I checked the firmware and now for some reason I'm back to Boot Rom 138.0.0.0.0!!!
I have no idea how this happened and now I'm wondering what the consequences will be for my proposed fresh install?
When I downloaded the Mojave Installer for the USB it initially opened and said that I'd need to do the firmware upgrade. In fact it was that message, that prompted me to do a recheck of my firmware.
I'd appreciate any help please.
Download 10.14.6 full installer from the Mac App Store, open it to upgrade to 144.0.0.0.0. Depending on the way you created your Fusion drive, Mojave has a different Fusion drive, you will need to do a clean install to another drive then upgrade the firmware.
Hey tsialex, thanks for replying.
given that I’m already in Mojave now, does that mean I can do the firmware update with my metal (Rx580) gpu installed?
Amazing thread and an incredible amount of knowledge here...
I read through the thread but can't seem to find the answer I'm looking for. Apologies if I overlooked the information.
I'm trying to upgrade the bios to 144.0.0.0.0 on my 2010 Mac Pro 5,1. It already has High Sierra, and I recently updated the bios to MP51.0089.B00.
When I attempt to install 144.0.0.0.0 it doesn't get past the Mojave installer splash screen because I don't have a graphics card with Metal support. Just to be clear; I don't actually want to install Mojave - I just want to update the bios so I can install a pcie M.2 SSD and have it be a bootable drive. I understand from what I've read on Macrumors that 144.0.0.0.0 has native support for bootable pcie drives.
I attempted to update the bios by following your first post in this thread @tsialex but again - the installer won't get past the splash screen because the video card is the original ATI Radeon HD 5770 which does not have Metal support.
Is there any way to update the bios without having a Metal card?
My end goal here is a refresh of an aging machine. It's still pretty fast for a 10 yr-old Mac, with a 10k RPM Raptor boot drive, dual 6-cores and 16Gb of ram, but even at that, the read/ write speeds are still only ~115MB/s. I'd like to improve it a bit more so I can eventually do some 4k video editing. (I've got 32Gb of RAM and a Samsung 970 Evo SSD with pcie adapter on the way - should be here tomorrow.)
Help is appreciated!
-Chris
I read through the thread but can't seem to find the answer I'm looking for. Apologies if I overlooked the information.
I'm trying to upgrade the bios to 144.0.0.0.0 on my 2010 Mac Pro 5,1. It already has High Sierra, and I recently updated the bios to MP51.0089.B00.
When I attempt to install 144.0.0.0.0 it doesn't get past the Mojave installer splash screen because I don't have a graphics card with Metal support. Just to be clear; I don't actually want to install Mojave - I just want to update the bios so I can install a pcie M.2 SSD and have it be a bootable drive. I understand from what I've read on Macrumors that 144.0.0.0.0 has native support for bootable pcie drives.
I attempted to update the bios by following your first post in this thread @tsialex but again - the installer won't get past the splash screen because the video card is the original ATI Radeon HD 5770 which does not have Metal support.
Is there any way to update the bios without having a Metal card?
My end goal here is a refresh of an aging machine. It's still pretty fast for a 10 yr-old Mac, with a 10k RPM Raptor boot drive, dual 6-cores and 16Gb of ram, but even at that, the read/ write speeds are still only ~115MB/s. I'd like to improve it a bit more so I can eventually do some 4k video editing. (I've got 32Gb of RAM and a Samsung 970 Evo SSD with pcie adapter on the way - should be here tomorrow.)
Help is appreciated!
-Chris
Sorry, METAL supported GPU is a requirement to upgrade past MP51.0089.B00, as the first post clearly says, no way to circumvent it since efiflasher checks it.
Ok - thanks for the confirmation. I guess I misread your post.
Bit the bullet and ordered a Metal GPU - arrives Wednesday!
-Chris
[automerge]1593283304[/automerge]
BTW - is the ‘Innie’ fix still required for the OS to see a pcie SSD as internal, or is that also addressed by the latest firmware?
Last edited:
IMHO, it's not a fix. It's just a cosmetic change that some folks make because they don't like a drive appearing on the PCI bus appearing as external. I have a 7,1 NcMP and it's still that way, doesn't bother me in the least as there is absolutely no penalty ? The answer to your question, the boot ROM change makes no difference to drive location identification.
Lou