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205Maxi

macrumors regular
Nov 3, 2019
175
53
So much for:
"Opencore does not brick Macs" ;)
[automerge]1572892388[/automerge]

If you desolder the chip can you dump the firmware as it is?
To late gosh!!! Lol i am back on again after reflashing the SPI

the machine would stay black and would not pass that black screen..
 

jackluke

macrumors 68040
Jun 15, 2018
3,321
8,068
To late gosh!!! Lol i am back on again after reflashing the SPI

the machine would stay black and would not pass that black screen..

If you don't have a valid dump of your machine firmware, some on ebay sell pre-flashed EFI EEPROM chip (Macronix I guess), but of course you'll result with a different serial number, I know a bit since I also bricked a year ago, but not for using Clover or OpenCore, other tools.
 

startergo

macrumors 603
Sep 20, 2018
5,020
2,282
To late gosh!!! Lol i am back on again after reflashing the SPI

the machine would stay black and would not pass that black screen..
If you delete the EFI folder by hooking the drive to another PC you will remove the OC. Did you desolder for reflashing?
 

205Maxi

macrumors regular
Nov 3, 2019
175
53
If you don't have a valid dump of your machine firmware, some on ebay sell pre-flashed EFI EEPROM chip (Macronix I guess), but of course you'll result with a different serial number, I know a bit since I also bricked a year ago, but not for using Clover or OpenCore, other tools.

Luckily for me i had a backup lol... oufffff but thanks for tge advice much appreciated
 
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h9826790

macrumors P6
Apr 3, 2014
16,656
8,587
Hong Kong
I tried your config in the acceleration thread with imacpro1.1 identities and I got black screen. If I leave only the 5.1 identities VMM is enabled but there is no hardware acceleration.

You tried all the ports on the graphic card?

There should be only one port works with that config file.
 
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205Maxi

macrumors regular
Nov 3, 2019
175
53
You tried all the ports on the graphic card?

There should be only one port works with that config file.
I really think that i will wait for your files of post#98 and see how it goes i am just tired of trying... i am giving a try again and if it does not work then i will wait yours if you can of course send it in PM.
 

205Maxi

macrumors regular
Nov 3, 2019
175
53
Did you dump the corrupted firmware out?

That’s super critical to know why OC can brick a cMP.
Unfortunately i dod not... i am dumb and did not even though about it doing 1000 things at the time ... i am very sorry...
 

h9826790

macrumors P6
Apr 3, 2014
16,656
8,587
Hong Kong
I really think that i will wait for your files of post#98 and see how it goes i am just tired of trying... i am giving a try again and if it does not work then i will wait yours if you can of course send it in PM.

No worries, I will post that, please give me some time. As I said, I am out of town now. Remote access the config.plist file. And make such a post from a phone will be very time consuming. I prefer to do that with a proper monitor and keyboard.
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Unfortunately i dod not... i am dumb and did not even though about it doing 1000 things at the time ... i am very sorry...

So, you have a firmware backup, and use hardware flash to recover your logic board?
 

205Maxi

macrumors regular
Nov 3, 2019
175
53
No worries, I will post that, please give me some time. As I said, I am out of town now. Remote access the config.plist file. And make such a post from a phone will be very time consuming. I prefer to do that with a proper monitor and keyboard.
I know i am also doing everything from the phone... i am very sorry maybe i can try to brick agsin and we could know what happened... i will not give up on that. Here is the screenshot of my config.plist

67507E2C-9DB3-4843-B5DA-5886FBD1E8EA.jpeg
67507E2C-9DB3-4843-B5DA-5886FBD1E8EA.jpeg


it gotta be here that i am making mistakes... only using the macpro7.1 info gives the ident in more info , and overview has iMacPro 2017. So doing the second part with mac pro 5.1 i am hoping i can get the correct overview.
 
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h9826790

macrumors P6
Apr 3, 2014
16,656
8,587
Hong Kong
I know i am also doing everything from the phone... i am very sorry maybe i can try to brick agsin and we could know what happened... i will not give up on that. Here is the screenshot of my config.plist

View attachment 874955 View attachment 874955

it gotta be here that i am making mistakes... only using the macpro7.1 info gives the ident in more info , and overview has iMacPro 2017. So doing the second part with mac pro 5.1 i am hoping i can get the correct overview.

I will post the config file and explain about it later.

At this moment, the most important thing is “how you recover your bricked logic board?”

We have to know this, and decide should we give out a very serious warming to others that has no hardware to recover the logicboard.
[automerge]1572896813[/automerge]
Anyway, brick means won’t POST. You can’t hear the “Don”.

At that point, no matter how you edit the config.plist, or even remove OC, your Mac still won’t POST.

A few of us now very very care about “Did you physically extract the logic board from the case, and performed a hardware flashing to recover the logic board?”
 
Last edited:

205Maxi

macrumors regular
Nov 3, 2019
175
53
I will post the config file and explain about it later.

At this moment, the most important thing is “how you recover your bricked logic board?”

We have to know this, and decide should we give out a very serious warming to others that has no hardware to recover the logicboard.
[automerge]1572896813[/automerge]
Anyway, brick means won’t POST. You can’t hear the “Don”.

At that point, no matter how you edit the config.plist, or even remove OC, your Mac still won’t POST.

A few of us now very very care about “Did you physically extract the logic board from the case, and performed a hardware flashing to recover the logic board?”
I was not hearing the chime, i removed tge board and removed the SPI chip and reflashed it with the back up of my machine i had, i am now back on and on catalina with the notmal config.plist from post#1
At this point i will wait you to provide the files, i still don't onow how many files i need besides the config.plist to make this to happened. You were this only one i have seen getting everything working in that post #98 so i'll wait and then test with yours and see how stable the machine will be..
 

startergo

macrumors 603
Sep 20, 2018
5,020
2,282
I will post the config file and explain about it later.

At this moment, the most important thing is “how you recover your bricked logic board?”

We have to know this, and decide should we give out a very serious warming to others that has no hardware to recover the logicboard.
[automerge]1572896813[/automerge]
Anyway, brick means won’t POST. You can’t hear the “Don”.

At that point, no matter how you edit the config.plist, or even remove OC, your Mac still won’t POST.

A few of us now very very care about “Did you physically extract the logic board from the case, and performed a hardware flashing to recover the logic board?”
Is it even possible to flash the chip without desoldering? Maybe with professional flasher+external power to the chip to compensate for the power draw from the internal components?
 

h9826790

macrumors P6
Apr 3, 2014
16,656
8,587
Hong Kong
I was not hearing the chime, i removed tge board and removed the SPI chip and reflashed it with the back up of my machine i had, i am now back on and on catalina with the notmal config.plist from post#1
At this point i will wait you to provide the files, i still don't onow how many files i need besides the config.plist to make this to happened. You were this only one i have seen getting everything working in that post #98 so i'll wait and then test with yours and see how stable the machine will be..

Thanks, this is crucial.

So now we know OC has very very high chance can brick a cMP (we can’t 100% eliminate that’s a coincident. Or your firmware was partially corrupted before. And OC just a trigger)

So, I will make a hard warning on all my post that about SMBIOS spoofing.
 

205Maxi

macrumors regular
Nov 3, 2019
175
53
So here is what i was talking about, as you can see in this pic the overview shows an iMacPro 2017 the the MacPro7.1 in the system report is correctly seen.

i have only put the line seen in post #7 i do not know what to do else to show tge correct overview instead of the imacpro, the PCIcards crashes each time i try to open it, so i am looking now at what i have done wrong so that it only shows iMacPro instead of the 5.1 ident...

only getting h264, no hevc, sidecar open up but since you do not have hevc then i guess yet it useless...

Really waiting your file h9826790 thank you again
27EC1C27-8750-4342-AD7D-43FDC233D7C1.jpeg


i had forgot to activate VMM and genkbench were catastrophic ahaha single core 297 and multicore 3414 let see after the VMM is activated...
 

jackluke

macrumors 68040
Jun 15, 2018
3,321
8,068
I don't want to discourage about Sidecar but I guess allowing the HEVC won't guarantee make it working on unsupported Catalina Mac, Sidecar rely on many other elements as a native "AirPlay Display", Metal GPU (I guess with an apple firmware), XHCI internal USB 3.0 bus, Wifi 802.11ac , iCloud sync with a valid SSN and probably other combinations of a right Catalina configuration, having an iPadOS device is the last of the issues.
 
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h9826790

macrumors P6
Apr 3, 2014
16,656
8,587
Hong Kong
So here is what i was talking about, as you can see in this pic the overview shows an iMacPro 2017 the the MacPro7.1 in the system report is correctly seen.

i have only put the line seen in post #7 i do not know what to do else to show tge correct overview instead of the imacpro, the PCIcards crashes each time i try to open it, so i am looking now at what i have done wrong so that it only shows iMacPro instead of the 5.1 ident...

only getting h264, no hevc, sidecar open up but since you do not have hevc then i guess yet it useless...

Really waiting your file h9826790 thank you again View attachment 874962

i had forgot to activate VMM and genkbench were catastrophic ahaha single core 297 and multicore 3414 let see after the VMM is activated...

Thanks for keep testing even though you know the risk.

Hopefully that won’t happen again, but if really brick again, please remember to hardware dump the corrupted ROM image.

Anyway, my config file is more complicated than that. To mix 5,1 and 7,1’s info “correctly”, I use manual mode, but not auto mode.

That’s why I didn’t post it yet, awant to do that with a proper keyboard.

Even may be you only want the config file. I
still prefer to explain what I changed and why.

My config file only work for my hardware setup. Definitely won’t work for everyone automatically.

I may also need to explain more about how to edit that config to fit your own hardware.
 
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205Maxi

macrumors regular
Nov 3, 2019
175
53
I don't want to discourage about Sidecar but I guess allowing the HEVC won't guarantee make it working on unsupported Catalina Mac, Sidecar rely on many other elements as a native "AirPlay Display", Metal GPU (I guess with an apple firmware), XHCI internal USB 3.0 bus, Wifi 802.11ac , iCloud sync with a valid SSN and probably other combinations of a right Catalina configuration, having an iPadOS device is the last of the issues.

i do agree, but i think that everything is possible -

having sidecar fully working on a MacPro to me is just useless but that is my opinion, but it would be great seeing everything working ..

well we will see what can be done...
[automerge]1572901154[/automerge]
Thanks for keep testing even though you know the risk.

Hopefully that won’t happen again, but if really brick again, please remember to hardware dump the corrupted ROM image.

Anyway, my config file is more complicated than that. To mix 5,1 and 7,1’s info “correctly”, I use manual mode, but not auto mode.

That’s why I didn’t post it yet, awant to do that with a proper keyboard.

Even may be you only want the config file. I
still prefer to explain what I changed and why.

My config file only work for my hardware setup. Definitely won’t work for everyone automatically.

I may also need to explain more about how to edit that config to fit your own hardware.

yup no problem for testing...

all i would need is you config file to see where i have to modify mine, i think that trying yours will not hurt me lol, but we have the same hardware so maybe it will maybe not. I understand you do not want to post that here that is why i said maybe you can PM the file(s) ;). I will be gladly honored
To test even it bricks it , so that when it happens then i have a second chance to dump the corrupted one.
 
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h9826790

macrumors P6
Apr 3, 2014
16,656
8,587
Hong Kong
i do agree, but i think that everything is possible -

having sidecar fully working on a MacPro to me is just useless but that is my opinion, but it would be great seeing everything working ..

well we will see what can be done...
[automerge]1572901154[/automerge]


yup no problem for testing...

all i would need is you config file to see where i have to modify mine, i think that trying yours will not hurt me lol, but we have the same hardware so maybe it will maybe not. I understand you do not want to post that here that is why i said maybe you can PM the file(s) ;). I will be gladly honored
To test even it bricks it , so that when it happens then i have a second chance to dump the corrupted one.

Anyway, do you mind to PM me your BootROM dump? I want to have a look if that’s already partially corrupted.
[automerge]1572905021[/automerge]
It will be even better if you can make another dump now. So we can compare it with your backup. And see if mixing SMBIOS info improperly in OC will cause any strange entry in the BootROM.
 

205Maxi

macrumors regular
Nov 3, 2019
175
53
Anyway, do you mind to PM me your BootROM dump? I want to have a look if that’s already partially corrupted.
I'd love to do that but i did not any dump of the corrupted EFI, i just reflashed it ... sorry
 

205Maxi

macrumors regular
Nov 3, 2019
175
53
Anyway, do you mind to PM me your BootROM dump? I want to have a look if that’s already partially corrupted.
[automerge]1572905021[/automerge]
It will be even better if you can make another dump now. So we can compare it with your backup. And see if mixing SMBIOS info improperly in OC will cause any strange entry in the BootROM.
If i get an email address then yes...
 
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