MP 1,1-5,1 Manually Configured OpenCore on the Mac Pro

[Dayo]

The obvious guess would be that FirmwareFeatures is populated by something reading the actual hardware/firmware, and FirmwareFeaturesMask provides a simple way to disable features without kludging the actual hardware/firmware results.

Which is what one would expect.

The oddity is that the Mask seems to be switched ON (supposedly allowing an available feature) when the Flag is OFF (feature is not available) for several items. The code you posted would end up thinking such features are present when they are actually not.

That's the part that is confusing as to why ... assuming the Masks in use are accurate ones. What is the origin of the Mask ... @cdf?

EDIT: Just looked at the function again and it seems only what is ON in both sets is the final output which would make sense and everything would work fine. Still begs the question as the why the Mask would have stuff ON that should be "OFF" based on the Flag setting. Again assumes the Mask is accurate.

EDIT2: Other option is the "lazy" programmer angle. Basically recycling code where the Mask covers an existing wide or imminently potential scope and therefore only need updates in one aspect, the Flag, to implement.

 

[zentex]

Is there a way to make a bootable USB (BigSur based) so I can have a recovery console for when I break OC, since I can't boot off my Mojave drive any longer?

Maybe I'm just not using the right search terms

 

[Dayo]

Maybe this thread should change its name to something else like "OpenCore on the Mac Pro minimal manual configuration"?

That assumes that the thread starter is actually in sync with those that have taken it upon themselves to define what this thread is for, to set the boundaries and to fiercely guard this.

What the thread starter has said on record is actually the opposite though. I do however sympathise with the feeling of having distractions and feeling irritated with some of the antics of the OCLP crowd. (talking about those sort of associated with it that have posted some nonsense in the past here).

The issues with scope actually first came to the fore several months ago when the Nutty Professor himself, @Bmju, first turned up with heretical questions about switching the "Automatic" flag on. I had reached for my pitchfork at the time and was ready to join the deserved burning at the stake but CDF tamped things down and engaged the damned heretic instead.

As it transpired, the Prof later went on, while still holding on to his heresies, to hound the OC devs into greatly improving OC for Macs and making it now basically unlikely to brick our cMPs as had been the case before. They gave up and made him an OC dev himself!

With respect to the OCLP (in particular), again, CDF has indicated that queries regarding these are not unwelcome in principle. So really, some really need to relax.

People can indeed be pointed to relevant support channels, or ignored, but if someone does decide to answer them, this is not anathema ... at least not according to CDF; who, from repeated stated opinion and action, does not appear to see this thread as one purely for those that follow the manual steps in Post 1 ... contrary to the oft stated "fact".

As said though, I can get the irritation. Just needs to be better handled and maybe @cdf might want to clear the air once and for all on the matter.

 

[paalb]

Is there a way to make a bootable USB (BigSur based) so I can have a recovery console for when I break OC, since I can't boot off my Mojave drive any longer?

Maybe I'm just not using the right search terms

You can make an Emergency CD, CDF describes it here: OpenCore Rescue CD

 

[PeterHolbrook]

Is there a way to make a bootable USB (BigSur based) so I can have a recovery console for when I break OC, since I can't boot off my Mojave drive any longer?

Maybe I'm just not using the right search terms

Instead of creating an OC Recovery CD, long ago I found another solution that works for me. The way I use it, it's not a recovery solution; it's a trial solution. I simply took a small thumb drive and formatted it as GPT/APFS with no operating system of any kind. Then I took my regular OpenCore EFI volume and copied its EFI folder to the thumb drive's EFI volume. As simple as that.

So, how do I use it? Easy. Whenever something worth considering (like a new OC release, or the recent introduction of SurPlus) appears, I make all the relevant changes (including an edited/improved version of config.plist) in the thumb drive's EFI volume and then I boot my computer (I happen to have a Mac-flashed GPU) selecting the thumb drive EFI boot. If that launches OpenCore and then I can proceed to whatever I want to run (Big Sur, Monterey or whatever), I know the changes on the thumb drive pose no harm. If something does not work, I can easily recover by booting through my unmodified main EFI volume and then edit whatever I did wrong on the thumb drive.

So, once I know the thumb drive's EFI works, I simply copy the new EFI folder of the thumb drive back to my stable EFI volume. That's it. My "trial" thumb drive is then ready for an upcoming release of OpenCore in roughly one month's time.

 

[0134168]

@tsialex What do you think?

 

[TECK]

should I get rid of the PlatformInfo->SMBIOS->FirmwareFeatures values

Yes, you don’t need them in Monterey. BTW, I never used anywhere the FirmwareFeatures and FirmwareFeaturesMask prior Monterey.

 

[tsialex]

@tsialex What do you think?

This is not really news, lot's of people here run macOS over KVM.

Btw, OCLP yesterday incorporated the VMM branch into the mainline and now macOS thinks that is running inside a VM - even the macOS installer thinks that is running hosted. I'm testing it with my MacBookPro5,5 and works a lot better than spoofing.

One thing to note, H265 is not accelerated, so you can't use it if you need VideoToolBox hardware assisted acceleration. https://github.com/dortania/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher/issues/543#issuecomment-953441283

 

[markpaterson]

Big Sur and Monterey removed support for Legacy USB 1.0 peripherals. They work as long as they were plugged into the USB ports at boot time and never removed. If you remove them and replug them then they are not detected.
Workaround is to connected those peripherals to an external powered USB Hub. If you then removed and re-attached those peripherals from the USB Hub, then they work fine.
Try connecting your KVM switch to an external USB Hub.

Thanks! Plugging the KVM into a USB Hub brought it back to life without even rebooting. What a strange decision to (kinda) drop USB 1.0 support. Many mice and keyboards are still USB 1.0.

 

[cdf]

As said though, I can get the irritation. Just needs to be better handled and maybe @cdf might want to clear the air once and for all on the matter.

It is perfectly fine to discuss all OpenCore solutions, including OCLP in this thread, but at the OpenCore level. In fact, the main objective of this thread is to make that level accessible, so that we can experiment and discuss the best strategies moving forward. The recent discussions on firmware features typify what this thread is about.

On the other hand, if you're looking for support with no intention of touching your configuration file, if your idea of an answer is simply "use OCLP", then please know that many here will be irritated and that you should probably look elsewhere.

 

[AnimeFunTv]

Just my two bits, Installed Monterey using OpenCore on my cMP(flashed)5,1, and everything is working like a charm. Also installed on my MacBookPro9,1 (mid-2012) working great.

One thing I have to say though, haha. I still wanted to run Windows 10 on my MacBookPro, had it previously running under Bootcamp, but since that is now broken. I used dortania's Windows 10 guide to install, windows installed just fine.

I used Brigadier to download and install the bootcamp drivers, and everything works except my display brightness, under windows display settings it just comes up as LCD display. I can't change the brightness via software or hardware (F1-F2) Also, used bootcamp.app in MacOS to download the support drivers and attempted to install those, and still nothing. I know before I had erased bootcamp partition to install Monterey that my brightness function was working.

I'm just not sure if anyone else has run into this. oddly, if I set the brightness in MacOS, it stays the same brightness when i boot up into windows.

 

[zentex]

So, once I know the thumb drive's EFI works, I simply copy the new EFI folder of the thumb drive back to my stable EFI volume. That's it. My "trial" thumb drive is then ready for an upcoming release of OpenCore in roughly one month's time.

Holy crap that’s genius! This would be valuable to others in the OP.

I think I’ll do both, though, since I use the Mac for work and always paranoid that I’ll have to spend half the day fixing things. But definitely break the thumb drive before breaking my Mac.

 

[orangepop]

How is your experience relevant to this thread, which advocates an altogether different method from the one you are endorsing? It flies in the face of this entire thread and, therefore, is disrespectful. If you endorse OCLP, why don’t you share your expertise in the relevant support thread?

I'm fairly new to all this and have been, what I suspect like many, lurking and reading trying and basically flying blind trying to figure out how to do this, which I for one think its just great. That's why I give a blanketed thanks to everyone posting and sharing. So I mean no disrespect as I am truly ignorant to where anything is and the proper place to post and do understand keeping things orderly so no worries you're not completely outta line.

I had no idea what OCLP even is or does and the differences as well as the whole new OC world. I'm a 100% noob but will try my best to learn and learn quickly. This is fun stuff afterall.

 

[6DecadesLater]

The only issue I have encountered running Monterey with OC 0.7.4 is a VERY slow boot (7-10 minutes), between Monterey login and desktop. OC GUI boot picker comes up quickly. I think this is related to the Samsung EVO 970 I am using. I see posts that it does not implement TRIM well. I disabled TRIM and it does boot faster - trimmed 5 minutes off - but still seems a little slow.
Can someone comment of the downside of disabling TRIM?
Is there anything in OC that can be used to correct this slow boot? I realize the Samsung EVO 970 is likely a small subset of systems using OC and I can't afford to brick my system testing as I am using it working from home.

Thanks

 

[startergo]

New Features in macOS Monterey 12.1 beta​

• You can now use graphics cards that integrate the AMD Radeon 6600XT GPU

macOS Monterey 12.1 Release Notes | Apple Developer Documentation

Update your apps to use new features, and test your apps against API changes.

developer.apple.com

 

[PeterHolbrook]

^

The only issue I have encountered running Monterey with OC 0.7.4 is a VERY slow boot (7-10 minutes), between Monterey login and desktop.

That's odd on an SSD or NVMe drive like yours. I have a really slow Monterey spinner and I can get to the Desktop in roughly five minutes after powering my Mac Pro.

 

[PeterHolbrook]

@orangepop:
Post #1 contains about 95% of everything you really need to know about OpenCore on a classic Mac Pro

 

[Enricote]

New Features in macOS Monterey 12.1 beta​

• You can now use graphics cards that integrate the AMD Radeon 6600XT GPU

macOS Monterey 12.1 Release Notes | Apple Developer Documentation

Update your apps to use new features, and test your apps against API changes.

developer.apple.com

I am reading Mac Pro 5,1 and older must stay on 12.0.1 and avoid installing Monterey 12.1 beta. New booting problems for our old machines :

macOS Monterey 12.1 Beta 1 (21C5021h) and RDRAND requirement · Issue #650 · dortania/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher

With today's latest Beta, XNU now unconditionally requires all machines to have RDRAND support to boot. Because of this, all pre-Ivy Bridge Macs will no longer boot 12.1. For the time being, users ...

github.com

 

[Dewdman42]

oh geez, apple is playing hard ball now. That very well might be the end of it then... aside from VM solutions.

 

[MisterAndrew]

It might be because they enabled support for GPUs that would be a good match for the cMP, but who knows if they'd work anyways since the drivers might require AVX.

 

[Syncretic]

I'm not in a position to install 12.1b1 right now, so I can't test - but almost two hours ago, I sent a potential patch for this problem to @khronokernel to see if he could test it. I haven't heard back yet; I don't know how often he checks his messages here (and being absent most of the time myself, I completely understand). Based on my quick look, this should be just another speed bump, not a brick wall. (That's subject to change as we dig deeper, of course.)

If anyone has a 12.1b1 installation already, or wants to put one together, PM me and maybe we can do some testing.

EDIT: see this thread

 

[Dewdman42]

@Syncretic you are seriously awesome..

 

[avro707]

I'm not in a position to install 12.1b1 right now, so I can't test - but almost two hours ago, I sent a potential patch for this problem to @khronokernel to see if he could test it. I haven't heard back yet; I don't know how often he checks his messages here (and being absent most of the time myself, I completely understand). Based on my quick look, this should be just another speed bump, not a brick wall. (That's subject to change as we dig deeper, of course.)

If anyone has a 12.1b1 installation already, or wants to put one together, PM me and maybe we can do some testing.

Superb. I sent a modest donation to you in appreciation of your work on this - reading on this before it sounded ominous.

I've also offered to give it a go since I'm in the beta program.

 

[khronokernel]

@Syncretic's done their magic again, was able to boot a MacPro4,1 to 12.1 Beta 1!

 

[Syncretic]

Given the nature and location of the issue, I do not recommend even attempting to install 12.1b1 on a pre-Ivy Bridge Mac until my new patch is made public, or it's made available in OCLP or other packages. It's being tested even as you're reading this; please be patient. (Again: it's a speed bump, not a brick wall.)

EDIT: see this thread