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

[cdf]

First.
I have a dual display setup. They both are 27-inch models but the main one is 3840x2160 and the second one is 2560x1440. And I have the macOS UI scaling set to 150% for the primary display to match the "physical" size of the interface on the secondary display. So, if I set OpenCore UIScale to "AQ==" mode then the Apple logo on my primary 4K display looks too tiny until it switches to the OS output. If I set UIScale to "Ag==" HiDPI mode then it looks too large until it switches to the OS output. Unfortunately I can't set OpenCore resolution to 2560x1440 because my OC log shows that there is no such GOP mode for my primary display (and, respectively, only black screen until macOS starts up if I try to force such resolution). And if I switch my 1440p display to primary and set OpenCore UIScale to "AQ==" then logo sizes perfectly match. But I don't want to switch my primary and secondary displays because it would really disturb my workflow. So, how do you think guys, is there any workaround for this issue? Maybe I can somehow disable the macOS UI scaling only on the login screen?

I've faced a similar dilemma on a MacBook with non-default scaling. The first-stage and second-stage boot-screen resolutions would differ. It's an Apple thing. I don't think there is a fix.

Second.
Just before OC output switches to OS output there appear some graphical glitches for a few seconds on the top part of the screen (same on any of both displays). Horizontal black stripe and some minor coloured dashes and dots here and there around it. Maybe someone had the same issue and found any fix for that?

I've seen something similar on occasion. Thin pink diagonal lines in my case. I think this is a common issue.

 

[equals]

It's an Apple thing. I don't think there is a fix.

Kind of sad. But thank you for your reply.

I've seen something similar on occasion.

I see it on every boot and it always looks almost the same. I'll attach the photo later.
I recall a pretty similar Hackintosh issue with Haswell iGPUs about 5 years ago. It could be solved by patching one of the kexts via Clover.

UPDATE: Here it is:

I've just realised it wouldn't be so visible with a black boot screen.

 

[cdf]

I've just realised it wouldn't be so visible with a black boot screen.

Give the black boot screen a shot, especially if this is Catalina, because no supported Mac has a gray boot screen.

 

[h9826790]

Hey guys,
Thanks for your giant work and useful tips!

I finally had time to OpenCore my cMP. Used the pre-configured 0.5.8 package provided in AMD HWAccel related topic. Everything works like a charm but I still have a couple of cosmetic issues.

First.
I have a dual display setup. They both are 27-inch models but the main one is 3840x2160 and the second one is 2560x1440. And I have the macOS UI scaling set to 150% for the primary display to match the "physical" size of the interface on the secondary display. So, if I set OpenCore UIScale to "AQ==" mode then the Apple logo on my primary 4K display looks too tiny until it switches to the OS output. If I set UIScale to "Ag==" HiDPI mode then it looks too large until it switches to the OS output. Unfortunately I can't set OpenCore resolution to 2560x1440 because my OC log shows that there is no such GOP mode for my primary display (and, respectively, only black screen until macOS starts up if I try to force such resolution). And if I switch my 1440p display to primary and set OpenCore UIScale to "AQ==" then logo sizes perfectly match. But I don't want to switch my primary and secondary displays because it would really disturb my workflow. So, how do you think guys, is there any workaround for this issue? Maybe I can somehow disable the macOS UI scaling only on the login screen?

Second.
Just before OC output switches to OS output there appear some graphical glitches for a few seconds on the top part of the screen (same on any of both displays). Horizontal black stripe and some minor coloured dashes and dots here and there around it. Maybe someone had the same issue and found any fix for that?

1) No perfect solution. In general, use HiDPI is better. That mostly just affect the boot picker / Apple logo anyway. "Able to see the boot picker options clearly" should have priority, therefore, use HiDPI, let the UI go bigger, should be the better choice.

2) That's the "transition", I don't think any developer will spend time to investigate / fix that "cosmetic glitches only exist during that few seconds transition during boot which won't actually affect anything"

 

[H2SO4]

OpenCore on Legacy Apple Hardware

This guide explains how to use the excellent OpenCore bootloader on a classic Mac Pro to install, run and update macOS Catalina, resulting in a clean, unpatched operating system no different than on a supported Mac.

<snip> for the relentless testing that led to boot screen support. And thanks to all those that have contributed to this thread!

Opencore really is excellent. Thankyou all for your work. It's a shame this isn't sold on the MAS, (even though I don't use MAS).

Question. When enabling HW instructions are to copy lilu and Whatever Green to the kexts folder. When the zips decompress I have;
lilu.kext and Lilu.kext.dSYM.
WhateverGreen.kext, SSDT-PNLF.dsl, WhateverGreen.kext.dSYM, and WhateverName.
Do we copy just the kext, or the kexts and extras?

 

[TECK]

It's a shame this isn't sold on the MAS

OC is open source, let's not engage on selling discussions please.

Do we copy just the kext, or the kexts and extras?

Only WhateverGreen.kext.

 

[H2SO4]

OC is open source, let's not engage on selling things please.

Only WhateverGreen.kext.

I meant the devs may get more exposure and more recompense for their good work.

 

[equals]

Give the black boot screen a shot, especially if this is Catalina, because no supported Mac has a gray boot screen.

I just like the grey boot screen more But I can confirm that the black one looks much better in this case, only a short thin line of coloured noise is visible. So I decided to keep the black boot screen.

1) No perfect solution. In general, use HiDPI is better.

Yes, the black boot screen together with HiDPI give the best and pretty authentic look and feel.

"cosmetic glitches only exist during that few seconds transition during boot which won't actually affect anything"

Yes, I know it. Just thought maybe there is a fix for this issue. Now with the black boot screen it doesn't bother my OCD too much.

 

[naerct]

About the garbage in the progress screen, my screen displays hot magenta star track like abbreviated arcs. It looked like art to me...?
I've just got my switchover to OC underway with my 12-core 3.33 48RAM, RX 580, IO Crest bifurcation PCI with 970 and 960 EVO blades. All went well the first time, but when trying to clone Catalina, all hell broke loose, and on startup, it would not boot to the blade. After about a minute, it shuts down. I got it working again (reinstall), and everything went well. Then I tried adding the acceleration. I got to the end, and got the confirmation that the installation went fine, but on booting, I got the slashed circle. What up with dat? But fortunately I saved the old config file, so I renamed it back to original and all was well again, except no installed acceleration.
Next I made a SuperDuper clone to an external SATA SSD. It worked perfectly, and the clone booted from eSATA. But, when I told it to restart from the 960 blade, it went back to not finding the original boot and shut itself down. I have also tried it with several other external dives available, including external USB3 drives with clones of Mojave available, a SATA SSD plugged into the chassis USB2, and the bootable (OC boot) SATA SSD hooked into eSATA. They have no effect on the startup/shutdown with the blade in place, but all will boot when I remove the NVMe blades. ???
What I did to fix it last time was to take out the OC install disk (on the 960), put it in my 4-core, and reformatted. Then I did the basic install again with success. There is nothing on the 500GB 960 except the OC boot. On the 1TB 970, I have the Mojave boot and a Lightroom cache space in APFS Volumes in the same container.
Has anyone else had this problem? Can anyone help? I'm going to repeat the process of reformatting on the other Mac, and putting it back for OC installation on the 12-core.

 

[cdf]

I got the slashed circle. What up with dat?

This is macOS telling you that you are trying to boot with an unsupported Mac. Double check the hybridization step.

But, when I told it to restart from the 960 blade, it went back to not finding the original boot and shut itself down.

Your Mac is trying to boot natively here. Use the Mojave recovery to bless OpenCore again.

It's important to have a good Mojave fallback (the guide recommends a SATA disk in Bay 1). In other words, if you ever have to do an NVRAM reset (and therefore are no longer booting through OpenCore), then Mojave boots up by default.

 

[naerct]

Thanks for your timely response. I will check the Hybridization step for the acceleration, thanks.
I just finished a new copy this morning, but before I bring in all the extras, I will try the acceleration again. I will also double check the bless command on my new installation, but I did run the Check Information command, and got the correct reply code.
When I took the blade to my 4-core to erase it so I could try again, I did a disk check and got a good number of invalid bsd flags and the comment "warning: inode_val : (oid" [then the hex numbers I'm guessing]. However, DU said it was okay.
I made my first attempt with a SATA SSD in drive bay slot 1, but never wanted to use it there. I have a 5 drive RAID5 in all my drive bays as well as one of the optical bays. I got a bifurcation card and two Samsung blades so my speeds are slightly less than 3GB/s instead of slightly less than 300MB/s. This is essential for high resolution still photography and video editing. I can always get back to a boot, even if I have to remove everything and put back in the original flashed video card (GT 120). It's more important that I can use both OSs with NVMe blades, as some of my hardware doesn't have 64bit drivers.
Thanks again for you help.

 

[JedNZ]

Is running macOS Catalina as the boot OS, and then running Parallels with macOS Mojave a viable solution for people who need to run 32-bit apps and plugins? This would save having to boot from one to the other.

And likewise, booting with Catalina and using Win10 under Parallels?

I’ve got OC running on my secondary cMP 12-Core 3.33GHz 24GB RX580 that the family uses - no Win10 used. Followed the excellent instructions and had no issues.

On my main machine (see my sig) I boot occasionally to Win10 but have some 32-bit apps and plugins and games on Steam so I’m reluctant to install OC and upgrade to Catalina. But if I could run Win10 Legacy and Mojave under Parallels from within OC Catalina then I would get the best of both worlds without having to change my boot system.

Could I install OC on a light Catalina System then run my full current Mojave system under Parallels, and my full Win10 Legacy also under Parallels? And what are the pitfalls with doing this?

 

[Curtisrb]

MP5,1 High Sierra bootrom MP51.0089.B00, Sapphire RX580
I tried to upgrade to Mojave and installer doesn't work. Got installer 14.4.0 (14400) from Apple store,
I launched it pressed the "Shut Down" and the installer just sat there looking at me looking at it looking at me for almost an hour... nothing.
any ideas
Thanks in advance

 

[dataid]

MP5,1 High Sierra bootrom MP51.0089.B00, Sapphire RX580
I tried to upgrade to Mojave and installer doesn't work. Got installer 14.4.0 (14400) from Apple store,
I launched it pressed the "Shut Down" and the installer just sat there looking at me looking at it looking at me for almost an hour... nothing.
any ideas
Thanks in advance

Look at this forum thread https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...-bootrom-upgrade-instructions-thread.2142418/

 

[Curtisrb]

Look at this forum thread https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...-bootrom-upgrade-instructions-thread.2142418/

Thank dataid, already read it... this is something else. I'm working on a solution tho.. will keep you informed

 

[equals]

I've faced a similar dilemma on a MacBook with non-default scaling. The first-stage and second-stage boot-screen resolutions would differ. It's an Apple thing. I don't think there is a fix.

Okaaaay, the funniest thing ever! My first Catalina installation was only for testing, and I didn't migrate from Mojave. But now, being sure everything works smooth and nicely, I re-installed Catalina and migrated my user account with its settings from Mojave on the first boot of Catalina. And as a result of successful migration the scaling setting was also applied, but only to my user account and not to the login screen. So now the second stage boot screen resolution isn't scaled anymore and perfectly matches the first stage boot screen resolution. Problem solved! It's a very Apple thing, LOL.

 

[Curtisrb]

Ok questions, first off I am by no means an IT specialist, I know a little about computers but doing this is over my head... with that said. I am trying to install Opencore 0.5.8
I have the instructions and am following them to the letter... only problem is, the instructions here don't meet the actual folders in 0.5.8 https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/opencore-on-the-mac-pro.2207814/

Where I am at:
drives are set A and B bootrom is 144.0.0.0.0 hardware is set I am good to go... I am going to run this on Mojave and not Catalina, will install Cat at a later date, Maybe.
My installation position is High Sierra and I am installing onto a HD that has Mojave already on it.
Terminal is open and I have "disk0s1" EFI folder open, the instructions call for me to install OpenCore EFI to Volumes/EFI
where is opencore efi in the 0.5.8 folder? is the entire folder labeled OpenCorppkg-0.5.8 the "EFI"folder or is this "EFI"folder buried somewhere inside the 12 other folders inside the root folder?
Am I being too literal?, I just don't want to screw up my computer.
thanks in advance

 

[cdf]

Terminal is open and I have "disk0s1" EFI folder open, the instructions call for me to install OpenCore EFI to Volumes/EFI
where is opencore efi in the 0.5.8 folder? is the entire folder labeled OpenCorppkg-0.5.8 the "EFI"folder or is this "EFI"folder buried somewhere inside the 12 other folders inside the root folder?

Follow the link in the guide and look for OpenCore-0.5.8-RELEASE.zip. Uncompress that zip and you'll get a folder that contains three folders: Docs, EFI, Utilities. You want to copy the EFI folder to Volumes/EFI. You'll end up with Volumes/EFI/EFI.

 

[Curtisrb]

Follow the link in the guide and look for OpenCore-0.5.8-RELEASE.zip. Uncompress that zip and you'll get a folder that contains three folders: Docs, EFI, Utilities. You want to copy the EFI folder to Volumes/EFI. You'll end up with Volumes/EFI/EFI.

Thanks, I put the EFI folder inside Volumes/EFI, there is a folder in there already "Apple" so mine looks like
Volumes/EFI/Apple-EFI

 

[h9826790]

Thanks, I put the EFI folder inside Volumes/EFI, there is a folder in there already "Apple" so mine looks like
Volumes/EFI/Apple-EFI

You can keep the Apple folder as demonstrated in this video.

 

[cdf]

Thanks, I put the EFI folder inside Volumes/EFI, there is a folder in there already "Apple" so mine looks like
Volumes/EFI/Apple-EFI

Just to clarify: when you click on the EFI volume in Finder, you should see just one folder there: EFI, which originally contained the subfolder APPLE. Just merge the contents of the OpenCore EFI folder. You should end up with the subfolders APPLE, BOOT, OC.

 

[Curtisrb]

Just to clarify: when you click on the EFI volume in Finder, you should see just one folder there: EFI, which originally contained the subfolder APPLE. Just merge the contents of the OpenCore EFI folder. You should end up with the subfolders APPLE, BOOT, OC.

Copy that, Before reading this post, I went through all of the steps 2 and 3 in the OC guide and nothing happened, Now I will try it again with this new config = Volumes/EFI/Apple,Boot,OC,
will come back and let you know how it turns out...

 

[Curtisrb]

Wow, that was nerve racking,
the simple boot screen is up and running, I am able to chose between the 2 drives. as the tutorial said the hard part is done...
now for the rest. thanks for all the assistance would have been lost without it.

 

[DigitaLife]

OpenCore on Legacy Apple Hardware

This guide explains how to use the excellent OpenCore bootloader on a classic Mac Pro to install, run and update macOS Catalina, resulting in a clean, unpatched operating system no different than on a supported Mac.

Why OpenCore?

There are several advantages to using OpenCore on a classic Mac Pro:

Boot picker screen even with a standard graphics card
View attachment 912571
Software Update works just like on a supported Mac
View attachment 882160
Hardware acceleration

View attachment 912639

Requirements

Mac Pro model	Early 2009 with MacPro5,1 firmware,* Mid 2010 or Mid 2012
Processor architecture	Westmere
Boot ROM version	144.0.0.0.0*
Graphics	EFI (flashed) or standard UEFI card

* Need to upgrade? See the upgrade instructions.

PART I
Basic Installation




PART II
Advanced Configuration




PART III
Maintenance​

In the Pipeline

OpenCore is in active development and new features are constantly being added. This guide aims to stay up to date on the developments that concern the classic Mac Pro.

Upcoming additions to this guide

• Installing OpenCanopy

Depicted in the screenshot above, OpenCanopy is the official OpenCore graphical user interface. Currently, OpenCanopy has finicky input, limited HiDPI support and lacks basic features like saving the selection by holding the Control key. But don't despair: OpenCore 0.5.9 should bring several improvements!​

• Taming third-party-OS installation

Yes, it's possible. OpenCore can take care of all of your booting needs.​

Acknowledgements

A big thank you to @vit9696 and the other talented developers of Acidanthera for making all of this possible. Special gratitude goes to @h9826790 for spearheading the hardware acceleration study and @startergo for the relentless testing that led to boot screen support. And thanks to all those that have contributed to this thread!

I need your help!
My situation is as follows:
- Mojave on SATA SSD in Bay 1
- Catalina on SATA SSD in Bay 2
- Windows 10 in SATA SSD connected instead of the 2nd optical drive
- OpenCore 0.5.7
Everything works perfectly!
I have just bought:
- an IOCrest PCIe 3.0 x 16 to 2 x M.2 Adapter Card Controller
- two Samsung 970 EVO Plus NVMe M.2 1TB each
I would like to transfer Mojave and Catalina to each NVMe SSD respectively and thus free the two SATA SSDs (in Bay 1 and 2) for use as a video archive.
You can suggest me:
- how to do the transfer Mojave and Catalina (for example I thought to use Carbon Copy Cloner) in the new SSD NVMe,
- and how to install OpenCore?
Do I have to follow your guide in the same way, or is there any change to be made?
Thanks in advance!

 

[cdf]

- Windows 10 in SATA SSD connected instead of the 2nd optical drive

Is this booting through OpenCore? Does it have its own EFI partition with a Windows EFI folder?