MP 1,1-5,1 MP 2009 B08 >> 2010 Firmware...Error 5570 death match

[fhturner]

Hey Everyone—

Sorry to start a new thread on this, but I wasn't sure which old one to tag onto, and most of them are, well, old. And I'm in a time crunch. I've got a 2009 Mac Pro 4,1 that I need to upgrade to 5,1 firmware, but it just isn't having it. I've upgraded probably a dozen machines in my "career", but this one is SUPER stubborn. It appears to be a refurb, with the B08 firmware and serial number starting with 'H', so I know there have been questions about upgrading from that in the past.

I have looked at threads on at least 3 or 4 different forums/communities, and most suggest similar things, which I'd normally suggest too. I've tried using 10.6.8, 10.9.5, 10.10.5, and 10.11.6 in various configurations: USB attached, built-in SATA, HD, SSD, etc. I've tried reverting the machine date in case the 2019 Certificate-pocalypse was to blame. I get Error 5570 almost every time, with the exception being 5530 when I had the date reverted. I've also tried hacking the shell script inside the Firmware Tool and running that in Terminal, as suggested on Netkas, I believe. That resulted in a ton of errors about not finding files or paths, so perhaps it needed to be run on a different OS version than I did (10.6 at that time, I believe)...anyone know if that hack is OS-specific?

Anyway, I'm onsite at a client location that's 4 hrs away from me, so I really need to figure this out today. Any updated tips or recent experiences w/ this would be welcomed. Again, I've done this a bunch, so I know what I'm doing...except in this case I don't!

Thanks for any help,
Fred

 

[tsialex]

Removed, it was a very ugly hack that makes MP4,1>5,1 susceptible to bricking.

 

[fhturner]

Forget all this mess, dump the BootROM and reconstruct it.

Hey Alex—

You've helped me w/ that before on the Mojave v140+ upgrades, which I'm extremely grateful for. Is this something you would be able to help me do on this as well? You help w/ so many things already, I didn't want to bug you or single you out!

Thx,
Fred

 

[majus]

It appears to be a refurb, with the B08 firmware and serial number starting with 'H', so I know there have been questions about upgrading from that in the past.

I have an "H" serial bought new in 2009 and did not have any trouble updating it. Also, I thought the refurbs get re-serialized with an "R" prefix?

I don't find those error codes in any list I have. If the machine is bootable, or if you have another one handy, try this command in Terminal: macerror followed by the error code, with a hyphen prefix. It might give you some information.

 

[tsialex]

Removed, it was a very ugly hack that makes MP4,1>5,1 susceptible to bricking.

 

[fhturner]

I have an "H" series bought new in 2009 and did not have any trouble updating it. Also, I thought the refurbs get re-serialized with an "R" prefix?

You're probably right. I was reaching back into my memory, and I *thought* I recalled the H-serial and B08 being a refurb machine.

You can do it your self, just use my instructions in reverse to extract the NVRAM and MLB sector from the MP4,1 dump, edit the jump point at the very end of the BootROM, then insert into 144.0.0.0.0 MP51.fd.

Okay, thanks. I am looking through this and will give it a try. A little more into the guts than I normally go, but hopefully I can manage!

 

[tsialex]

Removed, it was a very ugly hack that makes MP4,1>5,1 susceptible to bricking.

 

[fhturner]

Okay, I think I got steps 1–4 done. Did not realize I needed step 5, so thanks for that clarification. When I save the reconstructed file in step 4, do I suffix as .bin, since that's what ROMTool extracted and expects? Then I use that .bin file in step 5 and just manually type in those 5 hex blocks highlighted in green?

Thx, FT

 

[tsialex]

Removed, it was a very ugly hack that makes MP4,1>5,1 susceptible to bricking.

 

[tommy chen]

You can do it your self, just use my instructions in reverse to extract the NVRAM and MLB sector from the MP4,1 dump, edit the jump point at the very end of the BootROM, then insert into 144.0.0.0.0 MP51.fd.

I still don't get it.

especially how I create the intermediate files

 

[tsialex]

Removed, it was a very ugly hack that makes MP4,1>5,1 susceptible to bricking.

 

[fhturner]

Any errors and problems inside the MP4,1 dump will migrate to the MP5,1 firmware. Again, it's a quick and dirty way to help @fhturner out of a problem.

And help me it did! Thanks so much for the guidance, Alex...you are a saint! St. Alex, you shall be! I was able to do exactly as you said, saved it as a .bin file, and was able to set programming mode and flash the new ROM w/ ROMTool. So relieved! Thankyouthankyouthankyou!! 🍻

@IndioX, if you are having a similar issue to mine, I saved my own "intermediate" files by selecting those 2 parts I needed— NVRAM and LSBN— and right-clicking to choose "Extract as is...", then saved them w/ the same suffix conventions as in Alex's example. Then I was able to use those 2 extractions to "personalize" the generic MP51.fd file.

Thx again,
Fred