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

[Bmju]

The first post has been updated with a link to @flaubert's excellent review. You'll also find a historical account of OpenCore. Enjoy!

There was definitely a period when the MacRumors "Big Sur on Unsupported Macs" thread existed, before OCLP existed, and when people such as @jackluke were already producing usable OpenCore configs for non-Mac Pro unsupported Macs... I guess I was just mentioning that the idea of using OC to run macOS on non-Mac Pro unsupported Macs was gaining traction on that thread already, before OCLP, though I agree took off to being more mainstream (or well, _the_ mainstream, as opposed to just an alternative to the various patchers) when OCLP came along! (All very probably inspired by this thread, ofc - though I didn't know that then!)

 

[aviator84]

So I've continue to work on my graphics issue. I couldn't get my flashed r9 280x to run in windows on anything but the basic Microsoft display drivers.(Mac pro 5,1) After digging I found a post on a different forum about changing the bios switch. So what I had to do was boot into windows on the flashed bios and install the amd drivers. The screen will go black. I waited about 10 minutes and then shut the computer down by the power switch on the front. Then I flipped the switch on the graphics card and booted the system with the stock 280x bios. There is no output so your flying blind a bit but once windows starts the login screen appeared. Now the system recognizes the graphics card and seems to have full acceleration support on the latest stock amd drivers. The issue I have now is I only get display output in windows on the stock bios so I lose boot screen support. I don't see the opencore boot picker either. No display at all until windows login. Before I installed windows I also attempted to boot into big sur as well on the stock bios. It does boot but no display until the os launches.(it also mis identifies the card in the about info but I'm not sure if that is a major issue) Is there a way to get it so I can at least see the opencore boot picker? That way I would only need to flip the bios switch if something happened and I needed to see the boot screen.

 

[cdf]

All very probably inspired by this thread, ofc - though I didn't know that then!

That’s my understanding. I also believe that early on, OC was more of a curiosity than a complete solution for the wider unsupported-Mac crowd.

Tracking down the early events and recreating a concise timeline is not an easy thing! I did manage to find what I believe is the earliest use of OC on unsupported Macs (Catalina Loader on the corresponding unsupported-Macs thread) and mentioned it. Of course, if anybody feels that I’ve missed something important, I encourage them to either mention it here so that I can add it, or edit the wiki directly.

 

[donvito4ever]

I have a "problem"... and need to resolve as fast as possible becouse I have to ship the computer tomorrow...

I have in the Mac Pro 5.1 Monterey working perfect, but I need to install too Windows 10. I follow the instructions from the first page and, after do "bcdboot C:\Windows /s D: /f uefi" and exit, Monterey didn't work more... always reset... I can entry in recovery mode without problem...

What can I do to recover Monterey and continue with the next steps in the installation of Windows?

 

[macguru9999]

I have a "problem"... and need to resolve as fast as possible becouse I have to ship the computer tomorrow...

I have in the Mac Pro 5.1 Monterey working perfect, but I need to install too Windows 10. I follow the instructions from the first page and, after do "bcdboot C:\Windows /s D: /f uefi" and exit, Monterey didn't work more... always reset... I can entry in recovery mode without problem...

What can I do to recover Monterey and continue with the next steps in the installation of Windows?

You should only sell it with mojave, and maybe windows on another drive. I would never sell a 5,1 with opencore in case something goes wrong ...

 

[donvito4ever]

You should only sell it with mojave, and maybe windows on another drive. I would never sell a 5,1 with opencore in case something goes wrong ...

It's a requeriment from buyer... He wants it with OC...

 

[6DecadesLater]

You should only sell it with mojave, and maybe windows on another drive. I would never sell a 5,1 with opencore in case something goes wrong ...

I agree with not selling with OC. Next OS update may break OC again. Your customer will need to be OC proficient to keep Monterey running.

 

[donvito4ever]

I agree with not selling with OC. Next OS update may break OC again. Your customer will need to be OC proficient to keep Monterey running.

Thanks for your answers, but this is not the problem... If the buyer wants to test, it's her choise... He knows the risk... The problem is that I wanted to do a favour, and now I don't have OS working... only OC...

 

[sfalatko]

Thanks for your answers, but this is not the problem... If the buyer wants to test, it's her choise... He knows the risk... The problem is that I wanted to do a favour, and now I don't have OS working... only OC...

Just a wild guess - did the windows install mess up your OC EFI partition or its blessing?

 

[donvito4ever]

Just a wild guess - did the windows install mess up your OC EFI partition or its blessing?

I think that the MacOS EFI with OC is blessed, because I see the bootpicker and can enter in recovery mode...

 

[donvito4ever]

Solved Windows 10 working and MacOS Monterey... partially...

The last issue is in the bootpicker, shows "MacOs Installer" and is the first boot option... How can I hide it? And how can I select the default boot drive?

 

[sfalatko]

Solved Windows 10 working and MacOS Monterey... partially...

The last issue is in the bootpicker, shows "MacOs Installer" and is the first boot option... How can I hide it? And how can I select the default boot drive?

You should only see MacOS Installer when an installation is not complete. Have you tried selecting it from the boot picker?

 

[quiff]

I have madde my NVMe drives internal, but I was hoping to do the same to my Raid Drives I have RocketRAID 2720 SAS Controller and would like to make them internal.


[I]system_profiler SPPCIDataType | grep -B 2 'AHCI Controller\|NVM Express Controller' | grep 'pci' | sed 's|:||' | sort | uniq | xargs -n 1 ./gfxutil -f | sed 's|.*= ||'[/I]

I modified the code above but changed the NVM Express controller to the Raid Controller, as it is below but this returns nothing. How can I find the relevant details to add to the config script?

system_profiler SPPCIDataType | grep -B 2 'RocketRAID 2720 SAS Controller' | grep 'pci' | sed 's|:||' | sort | uniq | xargs -n 1 ./gfxutil -f | sed 's|.*= ||'

Thanks

Matt

 

[Zobec]

Hi Mac rumors
I’m kind of sorry to bother anyone and really don't have much experience on these matters and I did kind of read a little bit on the first page on this forum about the basics and watched a few videos I just have some questions.

I am on a Mac Pro 5.1 2x 3.46 Xeon Cpu version 10.14.6 Mojave Radeon RX 580 8GB everything is fine but cubase just released 12 and minimum os is Big Sur so I wanted to see if I can upgrade to OSX Big Sur

I kind of don’t where to start but I kind of did start I followed this video Open core the basic way on a USB drive part 5

I wanted to test Opencore so I done like the video said and everything seems okay loaded up into my OSX Mojave through this USB Opencore and when looking at "about this Mac software update" it would allow me to download Monterey OSX the OSX after Big Sur I did not download or upgrade. As I wanted to know what would happen if carried on and I tried to install Monterey and upgrade just like that from Mojave on my 5.1 mac? Would it crash my system, brick my main hard drive? and I don’t have a back up of main hard drive so I am kind of looking for some help to point me in the right direction.

What would I need to upgrade to Big Sur from Mojave using this OpenCore USB Test as that is not on the Apple App Store either?

If it all goes good I would later buy a SSD and clone my main drive then that would become the back up and install OpenCore on the new one and then upgrade the new drive but for now I kind of just want to test, is there anything I should be aware of when doing anything like testing and upgrading to Big Sur or Monterey OSX from Mojave with the USB?

Any help would be great thanks

 

[flaubert]

Hi Mac rumors
I’m kind of sorry to bother anyone and really don't have much experience on these matters and I did kind of read a little bit on the first page on this forum about the basics and watched a few videos I just have some questions.

I am on a Mac Pro 5.1 2x 3.46 Xeon Cpu version 10.14.6 Mojave Radeon RX 580 8GB everything is fine but cubase just released 12 and minimum os is Big Sur so I wanted to see if I can upgrade to OSX Big Sur

I kind of don’t where to start but I kind of did start I followed this video Open core the basic way on a USB drive part 5

I wanted to test Opencore so I done like the video said and everything seems okay loaded up into my OSX Mojave through this USB Opencore and when looking at "about this Mac software update" it would allow me to download Monterey OSX the OSX after Big Sur I did not download or upgrade. As I wanted to know what would happen if carried on and I tried to install Monterey and upgrade just like that from Mojave on my 5.1 mac? Would it crash my system, brick my main hard drive? and I don’t have a back up of main hard drive so I am kind of looking for some help to point me in the right direction.

What would I need to upgrade to Big Sur from Mojave using this OpenCore USB Test as that is not on the Apple App Store either?

If it all goes good I would later buy a SSD and clone my main drive then that would become the back up and install OpenCore on the new one and then upgrade the new drive but for now I kind of just want to test, is there anything I should be aware of when doing anything like testing and upgrading to Big Sur or Monterey OSX from Mojave with the USB?

Any help would be great thanks

@Zobec, it sounds like your setup is ready to go, but you really should purchase a second disk and make a clone of your current disk before going forward. Likewise, you don't want to re-use that original disk as a backup, either; it's just a good practice to always have a natively bootable disk with a working copy of Mojave on it. You don't mention what your firmware revision is, but I'm assuming that you're on 144.0.0.0 since you're running Mojave.

If you followed the video then I believe you loaded Martin Lo's OpenCore package on a USB drive. After cloning your current disk when you reboot with the OpenCore USB drive inserted you should get a picker screen where you can choose to boot your original drive, or the new SSD. Boot the new SSD, and then perform the upgrade to Monterey; it shouldn't crash your system or brick your hard drive. I think you'll be off and running then, and if anything goes wrong you can always revert back to booting your original disk by pulling the USB drive and the SSD prior to booting.

Unless you know that cubase won't run past Big Sur I would bypass Big Sur and go straight to the latest Monterey. If you really need to install Big Sur there is this page from Apple Support that tells you how to download the older versions:

How to download and install macOS - Apple Support

Download and install current or previous versions of the Mac operating system on compatible Mac computers.

support.apple.com

If your browser doesn't redirect you to the App Store, try a different browser; some of them don't seem to understand App Store links.

 

[TECK]

I have RocketRAID 2720 SAS Controller and would like to make them internal.

Use Hackintool to get the device path. Find the PCIe component from the list, right click on it and copy the device path. Example for one my NVMe disks:

PciRoot(0x0)/Pci(0x7,0x0)/Pci(0x0,0x0)/Pci(0x8,0x0)/Pci(0x0,0x0)

 

[morgus1]

Are OpenCore packages backward compatible with operating systems. Does the latest version work with Catalina and Big Sur or should I use an earlier OpenCore package for those operating systems?

 

[OVERKILL338LM]

Are OpenCore packages backward compatible with operating systems. Does the latest version work with Catalina and Big Sur or should I use an earlier OpenCore package for those operating systems?

Yes, they are backwards compatible, the newer releases have bug fixes and stuff in them, always a good idea to use the latest OCLP.

 

[cdf]

Are OpenCore packages backward compatible with operating systems. Does the latest version work with Catalina and Big Sur or should I use an earlier OpenCore package for those operating systems?

Yes, they are backwards compatible, the newer releases have bug fixes and stuff in them, always a good idea to use the latest OCLP.

As far as I know, OCLP is only officially compatible with Big Sur and later. For Catalina, the recommendation over there is to use the dosdude1 patcher. If you're interested in learning how to configure OC on your own, take a look at the first post here. You'll also find settings for Catalina.

 

[OVERKILL338LM]

They state compatible with 10.7+ in their FAQ, but they only have OS patches for Big Sur and newer.

Benefits and Drawbacks between OpenCore Legacy Patcher and other patchers | OpenCore Legacy Patcher

So yeah, their support focus is on Big Sur and Monterey in terms of providing patching support but Catalina should still work is my takeaway.

 

[719c6]

Yes, if the value is in any way invalid (like zero or negative), it returns EPOCH. That's why I asked about the RTC, common when the battery failed.


Mojave with an unsupported GPU is running without any GPU power management. Test with a supported GPU.

Put in a RX580 and the sleep issue is fixed. Thanks.

 

[amstel78]

Apologies if this has been asked and answered (searched but couldn't find a definitive answer), but I'm considering upgrading my cMP5,1's installation of Big Sur (11.6.4) to Monterey. I have a BCM94322MC WiFi/BT card installed, which was the original factory option for many 2010-2012 cMP5,1s if I'm not mistaken. Does the latest iteration of OC support this card fully with regards to Monterey?

 

[OVERKILL338LM]

Apologies if this has been asked and answered (searched but couldn't find a definitive answer), but I'm considering upgrading my cMP5,1's installation of Big Sur (11.6.4) to Monterey. I have a BCM94322MC WiFi/BT card installed, which was the original factory option for many 2010-2012 cMP5,1s if I'm not mistaken. Does the latest iteration of OC support this card fully with regards to Monterey?

Mine has the OE card too (BCM43xx showing up under WLAN info) and it works under Monterey with the OCLP patcher for both Bluetooth and WiFi.

 

[amstel78]

Mine has the OE card too (BCM43xx showing up under WLAN info) and it works under Monterey with the OCLP patcher for both Bluetooth and WiFi.

Thanks for confirming. I can probably assume latest iteration of OC plus necessary kexts will ensure proper functionality.

BTW, and totally OT... I like your screen name. I hope you're rolling your own given factory prices these days. I'm still using 308 for up to 800 meters. Past that, and I'm using a 6.5CM. I hand load for both...

 

[OVERKILL338LM]

Thanks for confirming. I can probably assume latest iteration of OC plus necessary kexts will ensure proper functionality.

BTW, and totally OT... I like your screen name. I hope you're rolling your own given factory prices these days. I'm still using 308 for up to 800 meters. Past that, and I'm using a 6.5CM. I hand load for both...

Sound like safe assumptions