MP 1,1-5,1 MP 5,1 will not bring up boot selector screen.

[weckart]

My Mac Pro is on firmware 144.0.0.0.0 and has several disks inside with a range of MacOSes from Snow Leopard to Catalina. There is also one BootCamp volume with Win10 on it.

Normally, it takes a full minute or so for all the disks to show in the boot selector screen. Recently, the boot selector screen does not show. On holding the Option key down, I get a grey screen quite promptly with no activity for a minute or two until a cursor arrow appears. However, no disks show up. If I don't hold the Option key down, it boots into the default drive immediately and without any discernible delay.

I have checked all the drives with DriveX and all are clear. FirstAid under Mojave does not detect any errors with any of the installed drives. I have reset the PRAM and SMC and that has not helped. I'm stumped. Does anyone have any other suggestions?

 

[Macschrauber]

try reset pram 3 times in a row (hold the keys for a minute or two)

 

[weckart]

try reset pram 3 times in a row (hold the keys for a minute or two)

I've cleared the PRAM as well as reset the SMC. Did nothing.

 

[MarkC426]

Do you have a flashed GPU, otherwise you will not get the boot selector.

 

[Macschrauber]

I've cleared the PRAM as well as reset the SMC. Did nothing.

3 times in a row, really ?

Just had a missing bootscreen on 5.1 after swapping cpu boards from single to dual.

2nd nvram reset and I got the bootscreen back.

 

[weckart]

3 times in a row, really ?

Yes. Not sure why 3 would be a magic number. Either the PRAM is cleared or it is not. Resetting it three times doesn't make it three times as clear. In any case, I haven't added any hardware since the EFI decided to play hard to get so I'm just hoping this isn't a sign of impending hardware failure.

 

[tsialex]

Yes. Not sure why 3 would be a magic number. Either the PRAM is cleared or it is not. Resetting it three times doesn't make it three times as clear. In any case, I haven't added any hardware since the EFI decided to play hard to get so I'm just hoping this isn't a sign of impending hardware failure.

Sequentially clearing it 3-times force the re-initialization of several parameters, like MemoryConfig. It’s the only way to get 1333MHz RAM after a CPU upgrade from a 1066 Xeon to a 1333MHz one, for example.

 

[Macschrauber]

Also the boot chime gets louder after the 2nd nvram reset.

An obvious sign for the deep nvram reset.

In a computer world its hard to believe that zeroing a setting gets more zeroed after repeating an action

It must be sequentially, kept the keys holding the whole time. Does even not work with every keyboard. Best is the original Apple USB Keyboard.

 

[weckart]

Well, you learn something new every day. Didn't help in my case. I'm going to have to start pulling out drives and RAM now to see if it is any of these.

 

[Macsonic]

@weckart Maybe you can try removing only your Catalina and Mojave drives and try to option key and boot and check if the boot picker shows your HDs. Or vice versa, retain your Catalina and Mojave and remove the other drives and option boot.

 

[h9826790]

How you install your boot drives (all bootable drives)? On PCIe card? via the native SATA port?

 

[weckart]

How you install your boot drives (all bootable drives)? On PCIe card? via the native SATA port?

A mixture of both, most are spinners one or two are SSDs. Most are in the SATA ports. One is in the gap under the optical drive. I have one SSD mounted on a Sonnet Tempo SATA card. That is the one it defaults to at the moment.

All of these drives showed up until recently on the boot screen. I have not changed anything since. I did notice that the more installable volumes I added, the longer it took for the boot screen to show. I just took that as a result of having more than one drive to poll and a lot of volumes to check on POST. It did take over a minute for the boot screen to show and it takes longer now for the cursor arrow to show. I can move the arrow around but no drives appear.

 

[Macschrauber]

Pull as much drives you can.

If you got the boot picker again add them one by one until you find the culprit.

Maybe one has a messed up boot section or alike,

 

[h9826790]

I have one SSD mounted on a Sonnet Tempo SATA card. That is the one it defaults to at the moment.

Here you are

Sonnet Support

This bug only activate when boot drive exist on the Tempo SSD card. If only data drives are installed on the card, the boot manager works fine.

Also, if you remove all boot drive from the Tempo card, then perform a SMC and NVRAM reset. It has about 50% chance to bring back the boot manager (until the bug activate again).

 

[weckart]

Thanks for digging this up. No idea why this bug suddenly manifested after having caused no issue initially. And boo to Sonnet for not issuing an update to remove this bug.

I suppose that makes this card useless for the 5,1. No wonder people are dumping it left right and centre on eBay now.

 

[MarkC426]

Still useful for data ssd.

 

[weckart]

Still useful for data ssd.

Tbh, a blade would be faster and cheaper for that now. At least I can shove it in my spare MP1,1.

 

[startergo]

Here you are

Sonnet Support

View attachment 904945

This bug only activate when boot drive exist on the Tempo SSD card. If only data drives are installed on the card, the boot manager works fine.

Also, if you remove all boot drive from the Tempo card, then perform a SMC and NVRAM reset. It has about 50% chance to bring back the boot manager (until the bug activate again).

It probably depends on the firmware. I got 2 boot drives :
Catalina and Windows 10 and never had an issue.

 

[weckart]

It probably depends on the firmware. I got 2 boot drives :
Catalina and Windows 10 and never had an issue.

What firmware are you running? The only update I can see from the site is one to remove the EFI or replace it with a PC BIOS.

 

[h9826790]

It probably depends on the firmware. I got 2 boot drives :
Catalina and Windows 10 and never had an issue.

This bug's hit rate isn't 100%. If you are lucky, or may be if you have "right" config, may be you never see this bug.

I own the Sonnet Tempo card since about 2013, and this bug is there since they release the card. Despite they said that they are working on the fix (about six years ago, when I complain), they never deliver any actual fix.

 

[fastlanephil]

This bug's hit rate isn't 100%. If you are lucky, or may be if you have "right" config, may be you never see this bug.

I own the Sonnet Tempo card since about 2013, and this bug is there since they release the card. Despite they said that they are working on the fix (about six years ago, when I complain), they never deliver any actual fix.

I also have had a Samsung SSD boot drive on a Sonnet Tempo card since 2015 and I’ve never seen the boot picker on my 5,1.

 

[minifridge1138]

I’ve had my OS on an SSD in a sonnet tempo and always had the boot picker. Until I put in an RX 580 (which was expected).
It’s weird that this problem is so unpredictable.

 

[weckart]

It’s weird that this problem is so unpredictable.

I replaced the Tempo with a blade on a KryoM.2 evo adapter. I get the boot picker but the drive only appears if it feels like it. I hate hardware sometimes.