MP 1,1-5,1 MP 5,1 -Won't boot up with black screen and continuous chime

[greg97]

Hi! My Mac Pro 5,1 Mid 2010 has been running fairly well recently, apart from an issue where I cannot seem to get it to upgrade past OS X 10.13.4, Boot ROM version MP51.0089.B00, over the last few months.
But the other day, after I powered it up and was on it for about five minutes, the screen suddenly went grey with thin white lines running horizontally across it, then it powered itself down after about 30 seconds and immediately tried to power itself on again, only this time unsuccessfully with a black screen and the sound of the start up chime every five seconds (the chime was very faint, barely audible above the sound of the fans). I shut it down and tried a PRAM and SWC reset but to no avail. I also noticed that no power was coming from the rear USBs, and a keyboard plugged into the front USBs I believe was also not recognized as I tried to do a SHIFT restart, which also didn't work. I then tried to follow the diagnostics from this thread: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/mac-pro-5-1-no-boot-up-black-screen.2124447/
Inside the Mac, there were no LEDs lit up, all the fans seemed to be running, and the little white light on the outside start button was on (all the while the chime would continuously sound every 5 secs). Upon pressing the LED Diagnostic button, I have the PWROK (green), 5V STBY (amber), SYS.PG (green), and GPU OK (green). The red light on the left of the processor flashes once for a millisecond upon startup, as does the LEDs for OVTMP CPUA and OVTMP CPUB briefly flash red when connecting the AC power cord (I'm assuming both LEDs as I only see a quick glow of red since they are partially hidden by hard drive bay 1). The monitor I doubled checked hooked up to another source and it works fine.
I have a fairly new SSD as the boot drive and a HDD to store everything else, both changed about a year ago. The RAM was upgraded a few years after buying the Mac. The ATI Radeon HD 5770 1024 MB is original. Thanks for reading, and for any assistance you can provide!

 

[crjackson2134]

Have you tried removing all but 1 stick of RAM, and all PCIe cards (including GPU) to see if it stops boot chime loop?

Also remove all extra HDDs/SSDs, and unplug peripherals during testing.

You didn’t tell us the full specs of it our machine. Is it a single, or dual processor unit.

Also, your BootROM needs to be upgraded.

 

[greg97]

Thanks for the speedy reply Crjackson2134! My MP 5,1 is the 3.33GHz Intel Six Core Xeon W3680 (single processor) with 4x4GB RAM. I thought that if the RAM was failing that there would be lit up LED beside it? Nevertheless, I did try removing all the sticks of RAM and tried them in another slot (but again all at once). I will try the single stick when I get home tonight. I also removed the GPU and then reseated it to see if that would help. The only PCIe card I have installed is a 4x USB 3.0 card. When you say 'extra' HDDs/SSDs do you mean in addition to the single SSD boot drive and HDD 'other' drive (the only two drives in there)? If I remove these two, how will the MP be able to boot itself up?
Also, as I originally posted, I wasn't able to update my MP past 10.13.4, Boot ROM version MP51.0089.B00 no matter what I tried, and was lucky to get my computer back to that state after much trials and tribulations! You can follow what happened with that here: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250378132?page=3

 

[crjackson2134]

When you say 'extra' HDDs/SSDs do you mean in addition to the single SSD boot drive and HDD 'other' drive (the only two drives in there)? If I remove these two, how will the MP be able to boot itself up?

You won't be able to fully boot, but you will be able to see if it stops looping through the boot chime (POST). If it stops the looping, then add back your boot drive only. If the boot loop starts again, it's associated with that drive/OS install. At this point, hopefully you have all your data backed up, and you are prepared to wipe the drive, and do a clean install. Even better would be using a spare drive to do the clean install on (if you have one).

If it has no effect, then you have eliminated both the drive and the OS as the cause.

The only PCIe card I have installed is a 4x USB 3.0 card.

Hopefully you removed it while testing.

I thought that if the RAM was failing that there would be lit up LED beside it? Nevertheless, I did try removing all the sticks of RAM and tried them in another slot (but again all at once). I will try the single stick when I get home tonight.

Probably not going to be the problem, but you have to eliminate it...

 

[greg97]

Ok, will try those things when I get home tonight. Just curious, are the LED diagnostic lights that light up normal behaviour?

 

[crjackson2134]

Ok, will try those things when I get home tonight. Just curious, are the LED diagnostic lights that light up normal behaviour?

They do flash for a moment when power is 1st applied. That's normal. If none of the above steps help run the problem down, you should download the Apple Tech Manual, and it has the procedure for using the DIAG button and indicator LEDs. I've never needed them personally but you may have to familiarize yourself with the procedure.

Given the problems you indicated with your BootROM upgrades (I didn't read the thread, and don't have time to at the moment), it’s possible that you have a BootROM corruption problem, and even a LogicBoard problem. I didn't want to mention this right now, because you have so many other things to test at this point. You have to eliminate all the individual parts that you can first.

 

[crjackson2134]

Ok, will try those things when I get home tonight. Just curious, are the LED diagnostic lights that light up normal behaviour?

I don't know personally. You need to look up the behaviors in the tech service manual, or perhaps @tsialex, or someone else with more knowledge than I will jump in here.

I'm a novice at best with this. I know only basic troubleshooting steps, and generally all I've needed in most cases. If it gets more difficult than mentioned above, I read a lot, and if all else fails, ask for more technical help. Sometimes all you can do is swap parts until you find the bad one. I my case, I replaced my LogicBoard (twice), but I already knew the problem beforehand (once was a lightening strike, the other was a bad beta BootRom from Apple).

 

[donluca]

EFI should be green, something's wrong with your firmware I'm afraid.

EDIT: if you haven't done so already: remove the graphic card, underneath you'll find a battery.

Disconnect AC Power, wait 1 minute, remove battery, check with a multimeter if the battery has 3V while you're at it. Wait 1 minute, put battery back in, put GPU back in, connect AC cord and cross your fingers.

 

[tsialex]

View attachment 849744 View attachment 849743 Ok, will try those things when I get home tonight. Just curious, are the LED diagnostic lights that light up normal behaviour?

You have a brick. When the EFI Done diagnostics led is off, the BootROM can't be successfully read. You probably have a corrupted SPI flash.

It's a "easy" repair, but very time consuming. If you don't have the tools, it's better to just buy a replacement backplane on eBay, but if you live in a country where Mac parts still costs an arm and a leg and your are handy, you can repair it your self. If you are handy with a hot air station, you can remove the SPI flash and reprogram it with a SPI flash programmer like ch341-a in a afternoon.

I posted on the BootROM thread my step-by-step to do remove the SPI flash and re-program it #928.

If you are handy, even needing to buy a Chinese shittty hot-air station like this one, will be cheaper than matt card needed to confirm the brick. Amazon has SPI flash programmers like ch341-a for less than $10, MercadoLivre and AliExpress have both on the cheap too.

Btw, if you want to buy a ZIF adapter, you need the 20mm wide and not the 15mm wide. I bought it wrong two times, so I'm warning you to not do the same.

 

[greg97]

So last night I followed some of the steps from the Apple Technicians Guide to try and diagnose the issue. I removed my hard drives, USB 3.0 card, GPU and all but one of the RAM cards and started it up. I was able to get just the single chime at this point (yay!) and the DIAG button lit up the 5V STBY LED. I then installed my SSD boot drive in the PCIe slot and again powered it up. Again I got the single chime and verified that the red-colored LED was illuminated within the optical audio-out jack at the rear of the Mac Pro, which according to the Guide, means that the software drivers have been loaded. Pressing the DIAG button showed the EFI Done LED light up green, which I had never seen lit up before until now. I connected the keyboard to the front USB and did another restart, this time resetting the PRAM (cmd+opt+P+R), verified since I did get the second chime. I also reset the SMC by pressing the button beside the battery. (FYI I had also previously tested the battery with a multimeter and it was good). I also reinstalled the SSD into the other PCIe and the boot up also seemed fine.
I then installed the GPU at which point the MP went back into the continuous chime! Oddly enough though, pressing the DIAG button showed the GPU OK as green but no light on the EFI Done. I also tried connecting it into the other PCIe slot and got the same continuous chime, in order to rule out a bad slot. So I'm guessing that I'm just dealing with a bad GPU and further guessing that if a bad GPU is installed, then a Mac won't load up it's OS which is the reason for the continuous chime and lack of the EFI Done light? I'm further confirming this since with the GPU installed I didn't get the red LED inside the optical audio-out jack at the rear of the MP.
Hopefully you can all follow what I did, and confirm that all I need is a new GPU?? Odd that nowhere in the Apple Technicians Guide does it say that a continuous chime upon boot with a black screen equals a bad GPU??

 

[crjackson2134]

So last night I followed some of the steps from the Apple Technicians Guide to try and diagnose the issue. I removed my hard drives, USB 3.0 card, GPU and all but one of the RAM cards and started it up. I was able to get just the single chime at this point (yay!) and the DIAG button lit up the 5V STBY LED. I then installed my SSD boot drive in the PCIe slot and again powered it up. Again I got the single chime and verified that the red-colored LED was illuminated within the optical audio-out jack at the rear of the Mac Pro, which according to the Guide, means that the software drivers have been loaded. Pressing the DIAG button showed the EFI Done LED light up green, which I had never seen lit up before until now. I connected the keyboard to the front USB and did another restart, this time resetting the PRAM (cmd+opt+P+R), verified since I did get the second chime. I also reset the SMC by pressing the button beside the battery. (FYI I had also previously tested the battery with a multimeter and it was good). I also reinstalled the SSD into the other PCIe and the boot up also seemed fine.
I then installed the GPU at which point the MP went back into the continuous chime! Oddly enough though, pressing the DIAG button showed the GPU OK as green but no light on the EFI Done. I also tried connecting it into the other PCIe slot and got the same continuous chime, in order to rule out a bad slot. So I'm guessing that I'm just dealing with a bad GPU and further guessing that if a bad GPU is installed, then a Mac won't load up it's OS which is the reason for the continuous chime and lack of the EFI Done light? I'm further confirming this since with the GPU installed I didn't get the red LED inside the optical audio-out jack at the rear of the MP.
Hopefully you can all follow what I did, and confirm that all I need is a new GPU?? Odd that nowhere in the Apple Technicians Guide does it say that a continuous chime upon boot with a black screen equals a bad GPU??

At this point, it seems you have narrowed it down to the GPU. I hope you have a different one you can install to test this out. You are at the point where changing parts is the next step of your diagnostic, but it looks like you have likely sussed out your problem. Keep us updated...

 

[tsialex]

So last night I followed some of the steps from the Apple Technicians Guide to try and diagnose the issue. I removed my hard drives, USB 3.0 card, GPU and all but one of the RAM cards and started it up. I was able to get just the single chime at this point (yay!) and the DIAG button lit up the 5V STBY LED. I then installed my SSD boot drive in the PCIe slot and again powered it up. Again I got the single chime and verified that the red-colored LED was illuminated within the optical audio-out jack at the rear of the Mac Pro, which according to the Guide, means that the software drivers have been loaded. Pressing the DIAG button showed the EFI Done LED light up green, which I had never seen lit up before until now. I connected the keyboard to the front USB and did another restart, this time resetting the PRAM (cmd+opt+P+R), verified since I did get the second chime. I also reset the SMC by pressing the button beside the battery. (FYI I had also previously tested the battery with a multimeter and it was good). I also reinstalled the SSD into the other PCIe and the boot up also seemed fine.
I then installed the GPU at which point the MP went back into the continuous chime! Oddly enough though, pressing the DIAG button showed the GPU OK as green but no light on the EFI Done. I also tried connecting it into the other PCIe slot and got the same continuous chime, in order to rule out a bad slot. So I'm guessing that I'm just dealing with a bad GPU and further guessing that if a bad GPU is installed, then a Mac won't load up it's OS which is the reason for the continuous chime and lack of the EFI Done light? I'm further confirming this since with the GPU installed I didn't get the red LED inside the optical audio-out jack at the rear of the MP.
Hopefully you can all follow what I did, and confirm that all I need is a new GPU?? Odd that nowhere in the Apple Technicians Guide does it say that a continuous chime upon boot with a black screen equals a bad GPU??

Remove your GPU, your Mac Pro can boot without a GPU installed and you can access it via ScreenSharing/SSH from another Mac. If it boots correctly, you found what is causing the EFI corruption.

 

[greg97]

I do have access to a Macbook that I can try ScreenSharing with, but don't I need to have enabled a few things on the target computer beforehand for this to work? Sorry, I've never had to do this before.
Also, if it is indeed the GPU, does anyone have any suggestions for what I should get? Again, I've never had to shop for a GPU before! Since things have advanced so much since 2010 when this MP came out, at what point does a GPU, no matter how expensive, max out the capabilities of an almost 10 year old machine? FYI the machine is mostly used for Adobe Creative Suite applications, and light gaming such as Sims and X-Plane.
Thanks!

 

[tsialex]

I do have access to a Macbook that I can try ScreenSharing with, but don't I need to have enabled a few things on the target computer beforehand for this to work? Sorry, I've never had to do this before.

Yes, connect your drive to another Mac and enable Screen Sharing, File Sharing and Remote Login.

Also, if it is indeed the GPU, does anyone have any suggestions for what I should get? Again, I've never had to shop for a GPU before! Since things have advanced so much since 2010 when this MP came out, at what point does a GPU, no matter how expensive, max out the capabilities of an almost 10 year old machine? FYI the machine is mostly used for Adobe Creative Suite applications, and light gaming such as Sims and X-Plane.
Thanks!

To choose a new GPU you have to pick one that fits your use case and can be installed in your Mac Pro. The usual, and recommend by Apple, choice is Sapphire Pulse RX 580. You will need a dual mini-PCIe to 8-Pin PCIe cable to power the RX-580.

If you use all your slots, you probably will have problems fitting with a lot of current GPUs, even the Pulse RX-580 is a little over 2-slots wide and interfere with some cards installed on the PCIe slot-2. You have to do your homework and check everything before buying anything.

 

[greg97]

Yes, connect your drive to another Mac and enable Screen Sharing, File Sharing and Remote Login.

I hooked up my MP SSD boot drive to an external case and plugged it into a MacBook. I then restarted the MB using ‘option’, but the boot drive didn’t show up in the list? I’m not sure how to proceed? I put the boot drive back into the MP and once again it seemed to boot up fine, with the EFI button still lit, so I’m sure the SSD is ok?

 

[tsialex]

I hooked up my MP SSD boot drive to an external case and plugged it into a MacBook. I then restarted the MB using ‘option’, but the boot drive didn’t show up in the list? I’m not sure how to proceed? I put the boot drive back into the MP and once again it seemed to boot up fine, with the EFI button still lit, so I’m sure the SSD is ok?

If you have a 2018 or newer Mac with T2, you need to enable external boot, ”Allow booting from external media", with Startup Security Utility https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208198

 

[MrRedfield]

I actually had this same problem today. After taking my GPU out and putting it into my wifes system, to only have the same issue there. Plus I was able to boot using my old GTX 680 and HD 5770. So (new) video card ended up being the issue. Since I just bought the video card, I'm able to exchange it.

Good Luck.

 

[greg97]

Unfortunately my MBP is an older model, so I guess I’m stuck then. Since I’m pretty sure it has to be the GPU, I’m just going to order a new one anyways and give that a shot.
Speaking of which, I was looking up the Sapphire Pulse RX 580 and it mentions that it doesn’t enable the Apple logo and boot screens. How important is this and shouldn’t I opt for a GPU which is more compatible?

 

[tsialex]

Unfortunately my MBP is an older model, so I guess I’m stuck then. Since I’m pretty sure it has to be the GPU, I’m just going to order a new one anyways and give that a shot.
Speaking of which, I was looking up the Sapphire Pulse RX 580 and it mentions that it doesn’t enable the Apple logo and boot screens. How important is this and shouldn’t I opt for a GPU which is more compatible?

No GPU besides original Apple Mac Pro GPUs from 2008 to 2012 (HD 2600XT, 8800GT, Quadro FX 5600, GT120, HD 4870/5770/5870) or 3rd party Mac EFI cards like Sapphire HD 7950 Mac Edition, eVGA GTX 680 Mac Edition, NVIDIA Quadro 4000/K5000 or self-flashed/MVC flashed cards have what you are calling boot screens - this is not the correct term and the correct denomination is pre-boot configuration support.

Mac Pro 1,1 to 5,1 supports UGA and a GPU that has UGA pre-boot configuration support has:

• Single user support,
• Verbose boot,
• Startup Manager, the new name for the BootPicker/BootSelector,
• FileVault support (for macOS versions before Mojave),
• EFI shell support,
• GPU OK backplane diagnostic with Apple OEM GPUs,
• AHT and ASD support.

Any card that has native macOS drivers has Recovery support, no one has Internet Recovery - only Mac Pro late-2013 has Internet Recovery (MP6,1 has GOP pre-boot configuration support).

Nvidia cards that need web drivers don't have any pre-boot configuration support, Recovery support or createinstallmedia USB installer support.

AMD cards that have native macOS drivers don't have pre-boot configuration support but have Recovery and createinstallmedia USB installer support and work after the drivers are loaded by Recovery or USB installer.

 

[Dan Streaman]

No GPU besides original Apple Mac Pro GPUs from 2008 to 2012 (HD 2600XT, 8800GT, Quadro FX 5600, GT120, HD 4870/5770/5870) or 3rd party Mac EFI cards like Sapphire HD 7950 Mac Edition, eVGA GTX 680 Mac Edition, NVIDIA Quadro 4000/K5000 or self-flashed/MVC flashed cards have what you are calling boot screens - this is not the correct term and the correct denomination is pre-boot configuration support.

Many GeForce RTX cards support pre-boot cfg too, although they are not yet supported “post-boot” by the OS (no acceleration and graphics issues).

 

[tsialex]

Many GeForce RTX cards support pre-boot cfg too, although they are not yet supported “post-boot” by the OS (no acceleration and graphics issues).

RTX cards only have drivers for Windows, so it's only useful for someone that gonna use Windows exclusively. They don't work with macOS for anything besides showing the screen, you can't even play a video or open a 3D app.

 

[Dan Streaman]

Unfortunately my MBP is an older model, so I guess I’m stuck then. Since I’m pretty sure it has to be the GPU, I’m just going to order a new one anyways and give that a shot.
Speaking of which, I was looking up the Sapphire Pulse RX 580 and it mentions that it doesn’t enable the Apple logo and boot screens. How important is this and shouldn’t I opt for a GPU which is more compatible?

It is quite important to have “boot screen” support. I’d get a HD7950 Mac Edition, until we get Geforce RTX drivers (if ever...).

 

[tsialex]

It is quite important to have “boot screen” support. I’d get a HD7950 Mac Edition, until we get Geforce RTX drivers (if ever...).

This is debatable, a lot of people don't need pre-boot configuration support at all or can use another Apple OEM GPU like GT120 when it's needed for debugging purposes. People who needs it are usually people that need multiple OS support, like triple booting between macOS, Windows and Linux and need the BootPicker/Selector.

NVIDIA support post 10.13.6 is non-existent and probably will continue the same status quo while the feud between Apple and NVIDIA goes on. If you have a NVIDIA GPU from the Kepler generation, GTX 680/780/Quadro 4000/K5000, Apple will support it natively while the last Mac (like rMBP 2014) that have a Kepler GPU is still supported.

 

[greg97]

Another question, once I get my machine up and running again, do you have any idea how I’ll be able to get it to update past OS X 10.13.4, Boot ROM version MP51.0089.B00?
You can follow everything I tried here (along with some other issues I was having): https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250378132?page=3

 

[tsialex]

Another question, once I get my machine up and running again, do you have any idea how I’ll be able to get it to update past OS X 10.13.4, Boot ROM version MP51.0089.B00?
You can follow everything I tried here (along with some other issues I was having): https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250378132?page=3

Just follow the instructions on the first post of the thread MP5,1: What you have to do to upgrade to Mojave (BootROM upgrade instructions).