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MP 1,1-5,1 Manually Configured OpenCore on the Mac Pro
- Thread starter cdf
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In general, no. Not at the moment. You can follow any developments on the dedicated thread:This thread is quite confusing at this point. Does macOS 11.3 work on a Mac Pro 5.1 or not at this point? Thanks for any clarification
Mac OS 11.3 has broken support for older Mac Pros
macOS Big Sur 11.3 Beta 3 has broken Mac Pro's early-2009 to mid-2012 ability to boot reliably into macOS. It's still possible to boot 11.3/11.4, but the process requires multiple restarts and a connection has been made between PCIe devices, especially storage related devices and USB controller...
forums.macrumors.com
What does EnableVectorAcceleration accomplish? Does it allow an old Xeon processor to efficiently emulate AVX/AVX2 instructions? If enabled, will the computer behave as if AVX/AVX2 was supported? Would this be recommended if one wants to run, for instance, a modern version of SpecWeb for Windows on a virtual machine?
What are you using for your config.plist? Is the file spoofing something besides a MacPro5,1?
In general, no. Not at the moment. You can follow any developments on the dedicated thread:
Mac OS 11.3 has broken support for older Mac Pros
macOS Big Sur 11.3 Beta 3 has broken Mac Pro's early-2009 to mid-2012 ability to boot reliably into macOS. It's still possible to boot 11.3/11.4, but the process requires multiple restarts and a connection has been made between PCIe devices, especially storage related devices and USB controller...
I need to clarify this some more. Does the dedicated thread refer to OC-based installations? I mean, it has to as otherwise Big Sur couldn't be installed on MacPro5,1 at all, right?
I'm wondering because up until today I ran Big Sur 11.3 on my MacPro4,1->5,1 (OC 0.6.8, hybridization) as a straight upgrade from Catalina, on a PCIe NVMe drive, without any noticeable problem.
What am I missing here? Granted, the reason why I'm here is the latest 11.3.1 update which seemingly broke my machine (stuck on 50% boot progress bar, after several reboots). Re-blessing didn't help.
So was it just lucky coincidence that 11.3 worked on my box so far...?
Thanks
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I stand corrected. I tried another boot attempt (4th or 5th?), this time enabling verbose mode to get some details. Alas, it worked! The updater continued its thing and 2-3 reboots later 11.3.1 was successfully installed. Go figure...
Yet I'm still curious how general the statement "11.3 is not currently an option for the Mac Pro 5,1" is. Not questioning cdf's expertise here at all - I'm really just wondering what I've been missing, or in other words, how likely is it that my box is going to be screwed up out of the blue, given that it seems to work just fine ™️ ?
Cheers
It probably means that this combo is not rock solid because of the booting issues. I am typing this on my machine running 11.3.1 and OC 0.69 and at least up until now everything works just fine.
Me personally, I would not trust an install where the file system integrity may have been compromised at any time by the pci bus issues being discussed. Perhaps if you don’t have any storage on pci it may be fine. I don’t boot from pci but I have a couple storage devices on sonnet tempo card. I don’t trust that until we know more.
in any case I had other BS problems with a USB midi controller so I’m in no rush to get on BS. I hope that with time a proper solution will be solved. I do think that we need to start thinking of the 5,1 more like a hack. Most likely this issue will require completely hacked drivers or boot rom IMHO.
it’s yet to be seen. The fact that BS mostly seems to run fine once it’s booted up is a very good sign that something can be figured out eventually; but I personally will not trust my filesystem until we understand definitively what the issue with PCI is.
in any case I had other BS problems with a USB midi controller so I’m in no rush to get on BS. I hope that with time a proper solution will be solved. I do think that we need to start thinking of the 5,1 more like a hack. Most likely this issue will require completely hacked drivers or boot rom IMHO.
it’s yet to be seen. The fact that BS mostly seems to run fine once it’s booted up is a very good sign that something can be figured out eventually; but I personally will not trust my filesystem until we understand definitively what the issue with PCI is.
Same. I also have a PCIe USB 3.0 card with multiple external drives and other devices connected as well as two PCIe SSD cards. While BS is running on a regular sled-mounted SSD, I don't want to take the chance of data corruption either. Right now, 11.2.3 is functioning pretty much flawlessly so no need for me to update to 11.3.x at this time.
Also only a partial implementation specific to speeding up secure boot and password verification related hashing.
I used the one from the front page of this post, tweaked as per instructions. I don't believe it's spoofing anything, because About this Mac and System Report both accurately report what it is. I'm currently running Today's update to Catalina. Am holding off on Big Sur until things are sorted out, especially since today's update for Big Sur seems pretty critical.
macOS Big Sur 11.4 Beta 2 (20F5055c) didn't improve the booting reliability, still crashes with early-2009 to mid-2012 Mac Pros.
I am using OpenCore 0.6.9 using Martin's Package with minor mods adding RefindPlus and apfs to get all my boot partitions to be found in the Boot Menu. I also enable SIP as default
What config.plist items need to be changed to preserve native NVRAM? My boot-argrs="-no_compat_check" is getting cleared when I boot from openCore.
Are there any parameters that should be set when booting Catalina instead of Big Sur? It look like it is not detecting the security updates, just Safari.
What config.plist items need to be changed to preserve native NVRAM? My boot-argrs="-no_compat_check" is getting cleared when I boot from openCore.
Are there any parameters that should be set when booting Catalina instead of Big Sur? It look like it is not detecting the security updates, just Safari.
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See "Clean up the NVRAM" in part 3 of the guide.
For Catalina, make sure to turn on the VMM flag before checking for updates.
I can't agree more. Unfortunately I missed that discussion entirely before upgrading. Post 1, at least to me, reads as if BS seems to be fine on Mac Pros when OC is configured accordingly. Maybe a warning is due there?
Heck, OC is a hack
I'm grateful that my cheesegrater has survived for so long. Yet, while issues are to be expected, storage corruption is an entirely different beast.I'll definitely read up on that issue, ASAP.
In the meantime, can someone let me know if NVMeFix plays a role here? Just read about it in the OC 0.6.9 changelog but haven't had a closer look yet. Seems to be targeting power management, though...?
Thanks
Hi everyone,
I'm using a Mac Pro 5,1 single CPU quad-core xeon W3530 with a Sapphire R9 270X 2048 MB (Dual-X OC w/ Boost) video card:
https://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/148208/sapphire-r9270x-2048-131105
flashed with a PC UEFI bios from techpowerup unverified upload database (vbios version : 015.044.000.003.000000):
https://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/169815/169815
This card originally came with no UEFI support.
This is my problem: i just installed in UEFI mode windows 10 on my sata drive in bay 2 following post # 1 cdf method. All went correctly, and i can boot directly into windows through opencore 0.6.8 except for the fact that the system is not be able to load the graphic drivers.
I already noticed after my first post installation windows boot, that the display and graphics capabilities of my card was provided by the "Microsoft Basic Display Adapter" as shown by Device Manager. So naturally, i went to install the manufacturer drivers downloaded from AMD website, namely the radeon adrenalin 21.4.1. Upon reboot, the device manager show now as expected "AMD Radeon R9 200 series" but unfortunately with the yellow exclamation mark signaling error code 34 (attached photos below). It's clear, for whatever reason the graphic driver refuse to load and i don't know until now why.
Is this related to OpenCore itself which support only certain graphic cards ? or am i missing some mod or small tweak in my config.plist file that i join below ? I'm here talking about OpenCore because weirdly if i repeat the same windows 10 installation in Legacy mode instead of UEFI all goes well without any issue and the AMD drivers load correctly. Furthermore, i also didn't see any problem with my card when using OS X after booting with OC.
If someone can help me to understand why? Thanks in advance.
I'm using a Mac Pro 5,1 single CPU quad-core xeon W3530 with a Sapphire R9 270X 2048 MB (Dual-X OC w/ Boost) video card:
https://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/148208/sapphire-r9270x-2048-131105
flashed with a PC UEFI bios from techpowerup unverified upload database (vbios version : 015.044.000.003.000000):
https://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/169815/169815
This card originally came with no UEFI support.
This is my problem: i just installed in UEFI mode windows 10 on my sata drive in bay 2 following post # 1 cdf method. All went correctly, and i can boot directly into windows through opencore 0.6.8 except for the fact that the system is not be able to load the graphic drivers.
I already noticed after my first post installation windows boot, that the display and graphics capabilities of my card was provided by the "Microsoft Basic Display Adapter" as shown by Device Manager. So naturally, i went to install the manufacturer drivers downloaded from AMD website, namely the radeon adrenalin 21.4.1. Upon reboot, the device manager show now as expected "AMD Radeon R9 200 series" but unfortunately with the yellow exclamation mark signaling error code 34 (attached photos below). It's clear, for whatever reason the graphic driver refuse to load and i don't know until now why.
Is this related to OpenCore itself which support only certain graphic cards ? or am i missing some mod or small tweak in my config.plist file that i join below ? I'm here talking about OpenCore because weirdly if i repeat the same windows 10 installation in Legacy mode instead of UEFI all goes well without any issue and the AMD drivers load correctly. Furthermore, i also didn't see any problem with my card when using OS X after booting with OC.
If someone can help me to understand why? Thanks in advance.
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This normally means modified vbios. When the signature is broken Windows will not load the correct drivers. You need to find unmodified vbios. Also make sure there is a switch or not for selecting vbios for dual vbios cards.
But with this same modified BIOS, with a legacy windows 10 install (so without OC) the graphic drivers correctly load. I noticed the trouble occur only with UEFI install (with OC). Don't have a vbios switch on the card.