MP 1,1-5,1 MacPro5,1: What you have to do to upgrade to Mojave (10.13/10.14 BootROM upgrades instructions thread)

[fabio67]

hey Fabio,

I did it my self some years ago with the GT 120 card . Most basic Metal card . Just bought as second hand.
And look at these link(s) in the text are more links..

Foolproof way to update the 2010 - 2012 Mac Pro 5,1 to the 144.0.0.0.0 firmware

A video / pictorial guide on how to update a 2010 - 2012 Mac Pro 5,1's firmware.

blog.greggant.com

And after that I bought a AMD 6800 PC Card and flashed it myself in a normal Windows PC , was so easy.
Runs very good.

Thank you for your answer
I had a doubt about GT 120 card if it was metal or not (good for my goal I mean)
I have a flashed 6600 I use in Monterey and I said in this forum that it works also on MacPro 3.1

 

[Macschrauber]

hey Fabio,

I did it my self some years ago with the GT 120 card . Most basic Metal card . Just bought as second hand.
And look at these link(s) in the text are more links..

Foolproof way to update the 2010 - 2012 Mac Pro 5,1 to the 144.0.0.0.0 firmware

A video / pictorial guide on how to update a 2010 - 2012 Mac Pro 5,1's firmware.

blog.greggant.com

And after that I bought a AMD 6800 PC Card and flashed it myself in a normal Windows PC , was so easy.
Runs very good.

The GT120 is no Metal card.

 

[fabio67]

a step forward

 

[moran18guerra]

Hello I have a 5.1 cMP and wanted to update the BootROM. Following the instructions from the main thread didn't work and when updating directly from the HS usb drive the shutdown button won't do anything. Any help or guidance is appreciated.

 

[tsialex]

Hello I have a 5.1 cMP and wanted to update the BootROM. Following the instructions from the main thread didn't work and when updating directly from the HS usb drive the shutdown button won't do anything. Any help or guidance is appreciated.

Nvidia GPU? PC GPU?

 

[moran18guerra]

Nvidia GPU? PC GPU?

I'm using an AMD r9 nano.

 

[tsialex]

I'm using an AMD r9 nano.

Seems you did not fully read the first post, the first step of the firmware upgrade (MP51.007F.B03 -> MP51.0089.B00) requires a MacEFI flashed or an AppleOEM GPU:

If you have an earlier than MP51.0089.B00 BootROM version, these are the steps to upgrade your BootROM to have Mojave support:

This part of the BootROM upgrade require a GPU with pre-boot configuration support. Apple OEM GPUs or Mac EFI flashed GPUs are a requirement for upgrading to MP51.0089.B00.

1. Install a Mac EFI64 GPU. Any original Apple card from 2008 to 2012 (HD 2600XT, 8800GT, Quadro FX 5600, GT120, HD 4870/5770/5870) or 3rd party Mac EFI cards like Sapphire HD 7950 Mac Edition, eVGA GTX 680 Mac Edition, NVIDIA Quadro 4000/K5000 or self-flashed/MVC flashed cards. Please note that if your flashed GPU is not macOS installer compatible, like NVIDIA GPUs from Maxwell and Pascal generations, you need to install one that is.
2. For GPUs that support DP v1.2/1.4, disconnect any 4K or DP1.2 display. You can't update to MP51.0089.B00, or newer firmwares, with a 4K/DP v1.2/1.4 screen connected to a GPU that has hardware support for DP v1.2/1.4 (read the note). If you monitor has a option to downgrade to DP v1.1 or a DVI port, use it, if not, you will need another monitor.
3. Disable FileVault2 if enabled, since FV2 is not supported anymore with a Mac Pro 5,1 running Mojave.
4. If you use a SATA III PCIe card, remove the card from your Mac and move the drive to one of the backplane native SATA ports, a lot of people report trouble doing the firmware upgrade with SATA III PCIe cards installed.
5. If you ever downloaded any previous version of High Sierra, have it saved in any of Mac Pro external drives, you have to delete it/move to a offline disk and then restart your Mac. You need the current High Sierra 10.13.6 full installer from the Mac App Store, no previous version have the needed MP51.0089.B00 BootROM.
6. This is the Apple Support page where you can get the link for the 10.13.6 Mac App Store Installer (you need this even if you already are on 10.13.6). see the image below. Note, if you never used Mac App Store before, you need to validate your account first and download a free app before trying to get High Sierra View attachment 793503
7. Open the High Sierra 10.13.6 Mac App Store full installer, do the firmware upgrade as asked.
8. After the firmware upgrade, High Sierra installer will open again, you can close it.
9. Now check if your Mac Pro BootROM is MP51.0089.B00, if yes you can shutdown, remove all non-METAL GPUs (a non-METAL GPU installed will block you from installing Mojave) and install your Metal capable GPU (any AMD equal or newer than HD 7xxx, NVIDIA GTX 680 Mac Edition, Quadro K5000 and other NVIDIA Kepler cards). [If you have a NVIDIA card that need the web driver, Maxwell and Pascal ones, wait for NVIDIA release it for Mojave if ever…]
10. Download the full Mac App Store installer for Mojave. If you ever downloaded any previous version of Mojave, have it saved in any of Mac Pro external drives, you have to delete it/move to a offline disk and then restart your Mac. You need the current Mojave 10.14.5 or 10.14.6 full installer from the Mac App Store, no previous version have the needed 144.0.0.0.0 BootROM.
11. Open the installer, do the firmware upgrade as asked. (Note, if you never used Mac App Store before, you need to validate your account first and download a free app before trying to get Mojave).
12. After the reboot, open System Information and check if you have BootROM 144.0.0.0.0, if yes, you can do a createinstallmedia USB clean install (read NVIDIA GTX 680/780/Quadro K5000 note) or upgrade your previous High Sierra install.

 

[moran18guerra]

Seems you did not fully read the first post, the first step of the firmware upgrade (MP51.007F.B03 -> MP51.0089.B00) requires a MacEFI flashed or an AppleOEM GPU:

Could it be possible to use a flashed GTX Titan X Pascal?

 

[tsialex]

Could it be possible to use a flashed GTX Titan X Pascal?

You can try, will possibly work for the upgrade to first step firmware upgrade, to MP51.0089.B00, via the flashed MacEFI, but not for 144.0.0.0.0, since it’s not a High Sierra Recovery supported GPU.

 

[synthetic888]

I had this working for years but now it's broken and I'm not sure how to fix it. 5,1, Mohave, Gigabyte RX680GAMING were all working great. But I had to do a fresh install of the OS and now I can't get any display. I have tried:

* Booting in recovery mode
* Booting to Open Firmware
* Flashing PRAM
* Replacing PRAM battery and flasdhing it again
* Reseating video card
* Booting with a different video card (all I had was a "3D Force FX-5200LE 128M" but it didn't work
* Multiple monitors, cables, and keyboards

No matter what, I get a chime but no display. (Even if I wait 20 minutes) If I plug the keyboard in I see caps lock flash green but that's it. If I press caps lock, nothing happens. Nothing happens if I hit eject. Dual Xeon X5690 64GB RAM. Thanks.

 

[tsialex]

I had this working for years but now it's broken and I'm not sure how to fix it. 5,1, Mohave, Gigabyte RX680GAMING were all working great. But I had to do a fresh install of the OS and now I can't get any display. I have tried:

* Booting in recovery mode
* Booting to Open Firmware

There is no Open Firmware with Intel Macs, the last Mac with Open Firmware was the Power Mac G5.

* Flashing PRAM

This doesn't even make sense since at least 2007, there is no PRAM with modern Intel Macs - MacPro4,1/5,1 have a SPI flash memory to act as a NVRAM volume and store settings/configuration parameters - and you can't literally flash anything to the NVRAM, you can only reset it (via a completely different process from the PRAM, where the non volatile data is erased from the SPI flash memory) or bypass it temporarily.

Seems you are using long obsolete technical terms from the PowerPC era that do not directly apply to a Mac Pro.

* Replacing PRAM battery and flasdhing it again

The BR2032 battery function is to keep the RealTimeClock controller powered while the Mac Pro is disconnected from power/deep sleeping/etc.

While the RTC controller have a battery backed SRAM internally, this tiny memory (around 512 bytes) is used exclusively for RTC related variables/counters that need to be constantly updated like timesinceboot and is nothing similar to an Open Firmware PRAM where general configuration data was stored in a battery powered SRAM.

MacPro4,1/5,1 have a completely different design from Power Macs and nothing applies directly here.

* Reseating video card
* Booting with a different video card (all I had was a "3D Force FX-5200LE 128M" but it didn't work
* Multiple monitors, cables, and keyboards

No matter what, I get a chime but no display. (Even if I wait 20 minutes) If I plug the keyboard in I see caps lock flash green but that's it. If I press caps lock, nothing happens. Nothing happens if I hit eject. Dual Xeon X5690 64GB RAM. Thanks.

Install a confirmed working GPU and a disk with a working/supported macOS install, remove everything else. Now remove the RTC battery from the backplane battery holder and power on, this procedure will instruct the Mac Pro EFI firmware to temporarily bypass the NVRAM and enter a fail-safe mode. If you now can finally boot, you will need a BootROM reconstruction service.

Doing anything besides that will be literally useless for the diagnostics.

 

[synthetic888]

Sorry for the dated terminology. I found an old startup drive with High Sierra on it, and this boots. But I see the error,
"logging in to the account failed because an error occurred," and can't get any further than that.

The solution to this appears to be to boot into single-user mode, but this isn't working on my system. The screen never shows anything. I can boot into recovery mode, but First Aid won't run on the startup drive and terminal can't access anything else on the drive. I could install a fresh system on the drive, but that's how I got into this mess in the first place.

 

[tsialex]

Sorry for the dated terminology. I found an old startup drive with High Sierra on it, and this boots. But I see the error,
"logging in to the account failed because an error occurred," and can't get any further than that.

The solution to this appears to be to boot into single-user mode, but this isn't working on my system. The screen never shows anything. I can boot into recovery mode, but First Aid won't run on the startup drive and terminal can't access anything else on the drive. I could install a fresh system on the drive, but that's how I got into this mess in the first place.

You have more than one problem.

For sure your BootROM is not working correctly since you can reset it, enter single user mode or have pre-boot configuration support.

The second one seems related to the macOS install. Do what I've suggested, it's the only way you can start solving your issues.

You gonna need a BootROM reconstruction service, for sure.

 

[synthetic888]

Thank you for your help. I've been searching for "BootROM reconstruction service" and can't find that, can you point me to a link on how to do that?

 

[tsialex]

Thank you for your help. I've been searching for "BootROM reconstruction service" and can't find that, can you point me to a link on how to do that?

I've sent you a PM about the BootROM reconstruction service - with instructions on how to get everything required to validate your BootROM dump, the service cost and the turnaround time.

 

[bornnslippy]

Hi

I just picked up a Mac Pro 2010 but with out a HDD so unsure on the MacOs it was running

So i booted with a external hdd and found out it was on mp51.007f.b03

I did a fresh install of Sierra to a external sata and to a sata in slot 1 downloaded High Sierra for app store as expected its asked for a Firmware Update, it shut down so i held the button to start the MAC started to flash heard chime let go no dvd extracted and them booted back into Sierra with the same thing asking restart for a firmware update

This is going on and on and on i cant get it to take

Thinking it was the graphics card as it has a RX560 in there i put a GT120 in but when i do the fans for the graphics card go mad and i get no picture no boot screen nothing same thing with a HD5770 1GB

Any help would be great as its driving me nuts

Thanks

 

[tsialex]

Are you sure that the GPUs you installed works?

The display you are using is a standard resolution - pre-boot configuration support only works with very standard resolutions and only with DP v1.1.

There is a stickie for this exact type of issues, no need to open a new thread, follow each one of the notes from the first post below:

MacPro5,1: What you have to do to upgrade to Mojave (10.13/10.14 BootROM upgrades instructions thread)

If you have further questions, ask there.

 

[Don_Con]

Decided to upgrade to Mojave after everything seemed stable with the GPU and BootRom update. Everything went super smooth:

View attachment 1707645

View attachment 1707599

All,

Following up on this upgrade above several years ago. I am still on 10.14.6 with the specs listed above. But I am reaching a critical point with work software and other app updates that I am beginning to feel cornered to upgrading past Mojave.

My question is, given I am on a MacPro 5,1, Mid 2010 with the updates above, what is the sweet spot of most stable/useable OS with the 5,1 that gets me past some of these critical updates (specifically Outlook Office, Chrome, and a few others are really raging at me to update).

 

[tsialex]

All,

Following up on this upgrade above several years ago. I am still on 10.14.6 with the specs listed above. But I am reaching a critical point with work software and other app updates that I am beginning to feel cornered to upgrading past Mojave.

My question is, given I am on a MacPro 5,1, Mid 2010 with the updates above, what is the sweet spot of most stable/useable OS with the 5,1 that gets me past some of these critical updates (specifically Outlook Office, Chrome, and a few others are really raging at me to update).

Completely off-topic, but with OpenCore help you can install Monterey without much trouble - Apple will support it up to September/October this year.

macOS 12 Monterey on Unsupported Macs Thread

This thread will be dedicated to the discussion of running macOS 12.0 on unsupported Macs At the time of writing, WWDC has wrapped up and Developer Seeds have been sent out. We're eagerly awaiting for all our community developers and enthusiasts to test out the new version of macOS We will...

forums.macrumors.com

Manually Configured OpenCore on the Mac Pro

In this guide, you'll learn how to use OpenCore to install, run and update macOS Catalina, Big Sur and Monterey on the 2009–2012 Mac Pro, ending up with a clean unaltered operating system just like on a supported Mac. The approach described in this guide is for setting up and configuring...

forums.macrumors.com

 

[Cave Man]

I need to get my Mac Pro 5,1 from 140.0.0.0.0 to 144.0.0.0. I understand this must be done with the last “Install macOS Mojave” installer (10.14.6). My Mac Pro has 10.14.6 already installed so I just need to get from 140 to 144. I have a 12-core dual processor, 128 GB RAM, and a Sapphire PULSE Radeon RX 580 8GB GDDR5 PCI-E graphics card. Of course, when the computer powers on, there is just a black screen until it’s in the middle of the boot process, then the display becomes active (presumably because the AMD kext loads?). The drive is a 500 GB SSD formatted as APFS, of course.

But I’m unclear on how to get the installer to apply the firmware update. With the computer off, do I just need to press and hold the power button until I hear the long tone? Or do I need to launch the Mojave installer first? I’m nervous about the screen being black at power-up and don’t want to brick the computer. TIA.

 

[tsialex]

I need to get my Mac Pro 5,1 from 140.0.0.0.0 to 144.0.0.0. I understand this must be done with the last “Install macOS Mojave” installer (10.14.6). My Mac Pro has 10.14.6 already installed so I just need to get from 140 to 144. I have a 12-core dual processor, 128 GB RAM, and a Sapphire PULSE Radeon RX 580 8GB GDDR5 PCI-E graphics card. Of course, when the computer powers on, there is just a black screen until it’s in the middle of the boot process, then the display becomes active (presumably because the AMD kext loads?). The drive is a 500 GB SSD formatted as APFS, of course.

But I’m unclear on how to get the installer to apply the firmware update. With the computer off, do I just need to press and hold the power button until I hear the long tone? Or do I need to launch the Mojave installer first? I’m nervous about the screen being black at power-up and don’t want to brick the computer. TIA.

Please read the first post first, pay attention to the notes. Open 10.14.6 Mojave full installer, after shutting down, you enter Firmware Programming Mode as instructed.

 

[Cave Man]

Thanks much - I appreciate the reassurance. I was just a bit nervous about it. But I am now up to 144 and the computer boots fine (other than the black screen until the middle of the boot process).

I currently have a hard drive as my boot volume. I have an older Other World Computing 500 GB SSD Pro 6G that I'd like to make as the boot drive for this Mac Pro. (The drive is fine - I can mount it on my M1 Mini with a USB adapter.) I have it in a 2.5" to 3.5" adapter but when I insert it into bay 3 and turn the computer on, I hear the Mac chime but the computer doesn't boot and I don't hear the boot hard drive spinning at all. Are there compatibility issues with SSDs and Mac Pros? TIA.

 

[tsialex]

Thanks much - I appreciate the reassurance. I was just a bit nervous about it. But I am now up to 144 and the computer boots fine (other than the black screen until the middle of the boot process).

I currently have a hard drive as my boot volume. I have an older Other World Computing 500 GB SSD Pro 6G that I'd like to make as the boot drive for this Mac Pro. (The drive is fine - I can mount it on my M1 Mini with a USB adapter.) I have it in a 2.5" to 3.5" adapter but when I insert it into bay 3 and turn the computer on, I hear the Mac chime but the computer doesn't boot and I don't hear the boot hard drive spinning at all. Are there compatibility issues with SSDs and Mac Pros? TIA.

View attachment 2355040

Yes, there are compatibility problems with recent SSDs and the ancient Intel SATA 300 controller of MacPro5,1, but you should nuke the SSD and start from scratch to be sure, could be that the SSD have an ESP that is misbehaving or something else, like a boot coup.

Btw, this is highly off-topic here.

 

[Cave Man]

OK, message received. Thanks again for your help (I copied the EFI folder from the boot hard drive to the SSD and it now works).

 

[TEFGAF]

Since I've lost some necessary drivers when updating mac OS's, it was recommended that I downgrade to Mojave (or High Sierra), but I've no luck down loading these from Apple's site. I've tried numerous key combinations in to restore my 5,1 to its original configuration (High Sierra) when acquired two months ago, but Apple continues to drag me back to my most current OS (Ventura) or pushes me forward to Sonoma. Presumably, Apple recognizes my PC and won't allow downgrades. Is there a private source for older operating systems that would help me?