MP 1,1-5,1 MacVidCards rx580 and Sierra: Possible?

[josalo]

Hello, first-timer here.

I have a pair of old Mac Pros: a 3,1 which I'm trying to retire and 4,1 flashed to a 5,1 that I'm trying to replace it with.

What I need is a dual-boot system that will run Mojave for my newer stuff as well as a classic Final Cut installation for working on old projects.

I had it initially; as my old MacVidCards GTX770 would support either environment, but it died. After buying and returning several cards on Ebay, I got this Rx580 Pulse 8GB. By reputation, this would run under the final update from Sierra, 10.12.6—but, irony of ironies, the very mod that gives me the boot screen nixes the one OS that I need access to, crashing during the boot sequence if I have that card installed.

I have my old MacPro set up, but I have a Kona LHe+ and really need to not be swapping that out on the regular. I need a single chassis.

Does anyone have any idea of the nature of the conflict or if it can be resolved? Using safe mode I can boot, but that's useless as even FCP6 required VRAM. Since older OS won't even recognize my Mojave drive I really need that boot screen.

TIA

 

[saudor]

Using the opencore bootloader is an option to get that bootscreen:

OpenCore on the Mac Pro

This guide explains how to use the excellent OpenCore boot loader to install, run, and update the latest version of macOS on the MacPro5,1, resulting in a clean, unaltered operating system just like on a supported Mac.

forums.macrumors.com

EDIT: what OSes are you trying to run? OC should support a wide variety of them

 

[josalo]

Using the opencore bootloader is an option to get that bootscreen:

OpenCore on the Mac Pro

This guide explains how to use the excellent OpenCore boot loader to install, run, and update the latest version of macOS on the MacPro5,1, resulting in a clean, unaltered operating system just like on a supported Mac.

forums.macrumors.com

Appreciated. I do have a boot screen already, just enabled by a card that won't allow me to boot into Sierra, which is what I would choose if I could pick. Actually Mavericks is the last version to having the Final Cut -> Compressor pipeline working properly, but I know that I'll never get an rx 580 running under Mavericks.

Retroactive actually allows me to run FCP7 in Mojave, but I can't do proper color work without the Kona, and they removed the FCP7 support from drivers that work in Mojave.

I think that the crash that I'm seeing is coming from the macvidcards flash conflicting with the way Apple supported the rx580 in the 10.12.6 release. 10.13 apparently fixes this, but kills the classic versions of Final Cut Pro.

Perhaps a kext from 13 could be swapped into 12, but that's a crap shoot.

 

[saudor]

Well you can use SSDTs in opencore to block certain cards from being visible under certain OSes but it's a lot more involved as you need to locate where your cards are on your PCIE paths using something like hackintool from mojave

opencore can also be used to inject certain parts of the card's vbios (i use it to tweak fan curves and memory clock settings on my rx 580) Dont think you can inject an entire ROM on the fly though

I'm also not familiar with what macvidflash does to the card's vbios so that inject approach may not even work at all

 

[josalo]

Well you can use SSDTs in opencore to block certain cards from being visible under certain OSes but it's a lot more involved as you need to locate where your cards are on your PCIE paths using something like hackintool from mojave

opencore can also be used to inject certain parts of the card's vbios (i use it to tweak fan curves and memory clock settings on my rx 580) Dont think you can inject an entire ROM on the fly though

I'm also not familiar with what macvidflash does to the card's vbios so that inject approach may not even work at all

Interesting.

The first approach would get me to the desktop, but then FCP would refuse to launch because no vram.
That’s the behavior in Yosemite: gets to desktop using firmware video, so no accel or vram. But no boot crash, because yosemite never offered rx580 drivers with which to conflict.

I agree that understanding macvidcard’s methods would take the crap shoot out of it.

Anyone have insight into that?

 

[saudor]

There is one other thing you can do but it;s risky. if you know it’s Macvid rom that’s causing issues, you can dump the ROM somewhere and save it as backup and reflash the original rom for the card. You will lose boot screen support but you can use open core to get it back. That being said, i find it weird that it causes issues in sierra. One would think the macvid should work in all supported OSes

Maybe someone can chime in on the validity of that strategy

P.s. if you boot in verbose, where does it crash? I’m assuming its in the 2nd stage (the apple logo flashes) when the graphics drivers initialize ?

 

[h9826790]

if you know it’s Macvid rom that’s causing issues, you can dump the ROM somewhere and save it as backup and reflash the original rom for the card.

I won't suggest this personally unless the user have the hardware and know how to dump / flash the card by using hardware method.

 

[Borowski]

Does this card use a framebuffer personality? Some MVC-cards operate like a pc-cards in OSX/macOS, visible in system profiler "Radeon Framebuffer", which is like a default driver.
Anyway, in unsupported OS-versions cards are recognized with very small VRAM, without hardware-acceleration and some apps won't work.
So in my opinion this is a job for hackintosh-community, converting/building a kext for Sierra.

 

[josalo]

There is one other thing you can do but it;s risky. if you know it’s Macvid rom that’s causing issues, you can dump the ROM somewhere and save it as backup and reflash the original rom for the card. You will lose boot screen support but you can use open core to get it back. That being said, i find it weird that it causes issues in sierra. One would think the macvid should work in all supported OSes

There is one other thing you can do but it;s risky. if you know it’s Macvid rom that’s causing issues, you can dump the ROM somewhere and save it as backup and reflash the original rom for the card. You will lose boot screen support but you can use open core to get it back. That being said, i find it weird that it causes issues in sierra. One would think the macvid should work in all supported OSes

Maybe someone can chime in on the validity of that strategy

P.s. if you boot in verbose, where does it crash? I’m assuming its in the 2nd stage (the apple logo flashes) when the graphics drivers initialize ?

Maybe someone can chime in on the validity of that strategy

P.s. if you boot in verbose, where does it crash? I’m assuming its in the 2nd stage (the apple logo flashes) when the graphics drivers initialize ?

Last first:IOConsoleUsers: gIOScreenLockState 3
This is the crash point for many hackintosh folks with graphics driver issues.

The MacVidCards page for the RX 580 states that it's for Mojave (which correctly identifies the card); it also mentions "works in 13," but High Sierra won't launch FCP7. So they never vouched for Sierra: Apple did, for unflashed RX580s.

Reflashing the card is a last resort. I have a Windows 7 installation on my 3,1 but it would be my maiden voyage for that kind of thing.

 

[saudor]

Yeah i wouldnt flash it to be honest. Anything can happen. I only experimented with mine since mine is dual bios and if i do brick it, all i have to do is switch the bios and reflash the stock rom back.

Have you used opencore at all? The Whatevergreen.kext and lilu.kext (make sure the lilu loads before the whatevergreen) fixes a lot of issues with aftermarket cards

Anyways, seem like SSDT is the best approach if the WEG+Lilu kexts + OC method doesn't work

 

[Daveiggy]

It’s my understanding that Mac vid cards use a flash chip with some sort of encryption. They flash the chip separately and physically swap original with the special one. This is to prevent a dumped rom working on another card. I’m not sure this chip is flashable on the video card but if it is it may loose it’s special bios. I would not risk messing with it. You could buy a usb reprogrammer and a blank chip then put the original rom on it and soulder it to the board if you have the skills

 

[Spacedust]

RX580 doesn't work under Sierra. You need 10.13.4 at least. Flashing won't help in this matter.

 

[MarkC426]

Yes it does.
I got my RX580 when I was using Sierra, it shows as R9 gpu.

 

[Ludacrisvp]

I think you had to use the final version of Sierra to get it to show up at all.
I've booted Sierra with RX 580 and it is pretty rough experience, that early driver is very poor quality.
The 580 really shines in 10.14.6 though.

Side note: I've also booted 10.5 with the RX 580, you just get basic non-accelerated VESA mode graphics as obviously there's no driver.

 

[StuAff]

All versions of Sierra work with RX 580s- though prior to 10.12.6 you needed kext mods to get Polaris cards to work. I started with HS, though. Agreed, 10.14.6 (plus OC or the Lilu/WhateverGreen mod) is optimal for performance.