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flowrider

macrumors 604
Nov 23, 2012
7,321
3,003
Looks like the 10.13.6 full installer needs to be run from an actual internal hard drive in order to flash the firmware to 0089, I tried to run it from a Samsung 840 SSD with 10.12.6 on it, hooked up to a Velocity Solo X2 in slot 3, and it kept locking up whenever I pressed the triangular "Shut Down" button.

I flashed my 5,1 cMP from an SM951 mounted to a Wings PX1 in PCI slot #4. I was running 10.13.6 at the time I flashed my FW. So, yes, it will run just fine from an SSD in a PCI slot.

Lou
 
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ShawnF

macrumors regular
May 10, 2014
196
16
Glad your flash was finally successful I am about to try on mine. Could you share the full steps that you took from A to Z?

Thanks!

Next update :

success !! (well sort of).

Swapped the video card with original HD5770 as per @gilles_polysoft advice.

Did a full flash again.
flash was wayyyyy longer to achieve (first time it was VERY quick).
Rebooted to NVME : SUCCESS.
---
Resintalled the 2600ST mac edition + GTX 970 (pc rom)
Did a reset pram and SMC : blue screen.

Press "alt" on reboot : nvme drive "finally" appeared. Boot on it is a success.

it seems i can't "cold boot" on it with the cards installed right now (2600xt and GTX 970). i have to press "alt" and select it for this to work but otherwise it roxx.

So my experience on this:
-safer to use original video card for the flash (even if a success has been achieved with another member using a non stock video card)
-Once the other cards were reinstalled : Can't cold boot on it directly, have to select it from bootscreen.
 

macguru8

macrumors member
Feb 9, 2013
42
25
Glad your flash was finally successful I am about to try on mine. Could you share the full steps that you took from A to Z?

Thanks!
[doublepost=1531490651][/doublepost]I was running 10.13.4 on my 5,1 with Boot Rom 085. I pulled the new Boot Rom 089 from the full install 10.13.6 and added the NVME driver. I used the ROMTool to flash my 5,1 to 089. I then did the update to 10.13.6 no problem. I also formatted my Samsung M.2 and did a fresh install with 10.13.6 without problems.
 

ShawnF

macrumors regular
May 10, 2014
196
16
Thanks. Could you share the Boot Rom 089 and the ROMTool? I want to give it a try and I don't know how to get 10.13.6 for my Mac Pro.

[doublepost=1531490651][/doublepost]I was running 10.13.4 on my 5,1 with Boot Rom 085. I pulled the new Boot Rom 089 from the full install 10.13.6 and added the NVME driver. I used the ROMTool to flash my 5,1 to 089. I then did the update to 10.13.6 no problem. I also formatted my Samsung M.2 and did a fresh install with 10.13.6 without problems.
 

bookemdano

macrumors 68000
Jul 29, 2011
1,514
846
Thanks. Could you share the Boot Rom 089 and the ROMTool? I want to give it a try and I don't know how to get 10.13.6 for my Mac Pro.

RomDump: ROMDump.zip
Rom Tool: ROMTool.zip

10.13.6 can be downloaded free from the Mac App Store. Just look on the home page of the app store and look for the High Sierra ad. Or you can search for high sierra. The full download will include the 0089 ROM. Installing it is just a matter of running the installer once it finishes downloading.
 

ShawnF

macrumors regular
May 10, 2014
196
16
Thanks for the files How do I do the ROM dump? Are there easy to understand instructions - sorry I have not done this before so please be patient. Alternatively, I am quite happy to send someone my ROM or Boot ROM or whatever ROM? I just need to have my Mac Pro 4.1flashed to5.1 boot and run NVME SSDs.

RomDump: ROMDump.zip
Rom Tool: ROMTool.zip

10.13.6 can be downloaded free from the Mac App Store. Just look on the home page of the app store and look for the High Sierra ad. Or you can search for high sierra. The full download will include the 0089 ROM. Installing it is just a matter of running the installer once it finishes downloading.
 

bookemdano

macrumors 68000
Jul 29, 2011
1,514
846
I think someone did a writeup--maybe h9826790? Look back in this thread for it.

First thing though is you should download 10.13.6 and do the 0089 firmware upgrade. It instructs you exactly how to do it when you run the 10.13.6 installer. Just to be clear, don't run the 10.13.6 upgrade from the Updates tab of the Mac App Store. Download the full installer by clicking on the Ad on the Featured tab (or search for it and then click Download). You need to make sure your stock video card is installed (or one that has been flashed to show boot screens). Then just run the installer and it will prompt you to install the firmware. Follow the instructions it shows exactly.

Once that's done (verify by going to the apple menu->about this mac->system report and look at the line that says "Boot ROM Version". It should show MP51.0089.B00) then you can proceed to dump your ROM.

ROMdump is pretty straightforward. The hardest part is that you have to disable SIP (System Integrity Protection) first. It instructs you how to do that but basically you have to reboot to your Recovery partition, open up a terminal window and type
Code:
csrutil disable

If successful it will tell you so and then you can reboot and run RomDump and it should dump your ROM to a file.

I haven't done the modding part so you'll have to look through previous posts, or maybe LightBulbFun or one of the other users here will mod it for you.
 
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macguru8

macrumors member
Feb 9, 2013
42
25
I can modify your rom if you like. I only need a copy of your rom after you upgrade to 10.13.6.
 

flowrider

macrumors 604
Nov 23, 2012
7,321
3,003
Thanks. Could you share the Boot Rom 089 and the ROMTool? I want to give it a try and I don't know how to get 10.13.6 for my Mac Pro.

1. Go to the "App Store"

2. Click on "Categories" in the Top in the middle.

3. Click on "Utilities" in the bottom 0f the third list

4. Click on "MacOS High Sierra on right side under "Quick Links"

5. And, there it is!

Lou
 

ShawnF

macrumors regular
May 10, 2014
196
16
Got it. Thanks Lou!

1. Go to the "App Store"

2. Click on "Categories" in the Top in the middle.

3. Click on "Utilities" in the bottom 0f the third list

4. Click on "MacOS High Sierra on right side under "Quick Links"

5. And, there it is!

Lou
[doublepost=1531552836][/doublepost]Thanks macguru. Give me a few days to reconfigure my Mac Pro with the EFI card again and use the standard drive bay. I will PM you with my email. One question: Once I receive the modified ROM from you, what happens? What should I do with it?

I can modify your rom if you like. I only need a copy of your rom after you upgrade to 10.13.6.
 

Tokaji_909

macrumors member
Nov 29, 2017
30
20
Stupid question: is it possible to do the firmware upgrade without the standard EFI GPU and is it possible to leave the second GPU in and all my drives? Trying to upgrade from
MP51.0084.B00 to a new one because of Mojave. Mojave ask me to do a firmware upgrade but if I follow all the steps:
To complete the update, click “Shut Down” and wait for your Mac Pro to power off. Next, hold the power button until the power indicator light flashes or you hear a long tone.
A gray screen with an Apple logo and progress bar will display while the update is in progress. When the update is complete, your Mac Pro will start up normally.

After Starting up it still has the 0084 on it.
At the moment I have RX 560 and a RX Vega64 installed also are all 4 drive bays are full and on the PCI there is a .M2 but just for Data (no Boot)
And latest High Sierra (non Beta) is installed.

Regards
 

tsialex

Contributor
Jun 13, 2016
13,452
13,601
Stupid question: is it possible to do the firmware upgrade without the standard EFI GPU and is it possible to leave the second GPU in and all my drives? Trying to upgrade from
MP51.0084.B00 to a new one because of Mojave. Mojave ask me to do a firmware upgrade but if I follow all the steps:
To complete the update, click “Shut Down” and wait for your Mac Pro to power off. Next, hold the power button until the power indicator light flashes or you hear a long tone.
A gray screen with an Apple logo and progress bar will display while the update is in progress. When the update is complete, your Mac Pro will start up normally.

After Starting up it still has the 0084 on it.
At the moment I have RX 560 and a RX Vega64 installed also are all 4 drive bays are full and on the PCI there is a .M2 but just for Data (no Boot)
And latest High Sierra (non Beta) is installed.

Regards

No, it's not possible to upgrade without the Mac EFI GPU on the Mac Pro. You need it. You can keep all other hardware to upgrade, just change the GPU.
 

Tokaji_909

macrumors member
Nov 29, 2017
30
20
No, it's not possible to upgrade without the Mac EFI GPU on the Mac Pro. You need it. You can keep all other hardware to upgrade, just change the GPU.

Though that :). but I was still hoping that it works without :D
But then Mojave doesn't wanna start the installer anymore because the EFI GPU is a none metal one :D
Is there an easy way to do the firmware update without the installer?
 

tsialex

Contributor
Jun 13, 2016
13,452
13,601
Though that :). but I was still hoping that it works without :D
But then Mojave doesn't wanna start the installer anymore because the EFI GPU is a none metal one :D
Is there an easy way to do the firmware update without the installer?

You need the full installer unless you know how to put the files on the correct places/bless/etc.

Download the 10.3.6 full installer on the Mac App Store and do the upgrade. You don't need Metal for 10.13.6 and the BootROM is newer, MP51.0089.B00 on 10.13.6 vs MP51.0085.B00 on Mojave betas.

Read here #1 and here #19.
 
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Tokaji_909

macrumors member
Nov 29, 2017
30
20
You need the full installer unless you know how to put the files on the correct places/bless/etc.

Download the 10.3.6 full installer on the Mac App Store and do the upgrade. You don't need Metal for 10.13.6 and the BootROM is newer, MP51.0089.B00 on 10.13.6 vs MP51.0085.B00 on Mojave betas.

Read here #1 and here #19

Thanks a lot for your Help...

Really appreciated :)

Everything worked well :)
 
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macguru8

macrumors member
Feb 9, 2013
42
25
Got it. Thanks Lou!


[doublepost=1531552836][/doublepost]Thanks macguru. Give me a few days to reconfigure my Mac Pro with the EFI card again and use the standard drive bay. I will PM you with my email. One question: Once I receive the modified ROM from you, what happens? What should I do with it?
When you are ready I am at macguru1@gmail.com
 

486dx2

macrumors newbie
Jul 3, 2018
4
2
Many thanks to our contributors for the boot rom NVME patch. Finally got my 2009 to boot from 10.13.4 with a Samsung 970 EVO 256GB NVME on a generic pcie adapter from my local Fry's.

Only issue encountered was using the ROMTool to dump the MP51.0085.B00 boot rom, under 10.13.4.
Pop up window showing DirectHW.kext failed to load during the rom dump.
- manually loaded DirectHW.kext w/kextutil and got a little more information on the load error, 2 of them
1)wrong file ownership, needed to be under root:wheel, got passed this issue but got stuck on the next error
2)"Code Signing Failure: not code signed". I thought this would have been taken care of when ROMTool was executed for the first time and had to be signed off from the Security and Privacy settings. To get around this issue, I rebooted under my backup disk with Sierra 10.12.6. Followed the google docs guide to flash the bot rom and it worked flawlessly. Rebooted back under 10.13.4 and cloned it to the Samsung NVME drive.
 

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tsialex

Contributor
Jun 13, 2016
13,452
13,601
Many thanks to our contributors for the boot rom NVME patch. Finally got my 2009 to boot from 10.13.4 with a Samsung 970 EVO 256GB NVME on a generic pcie adapter from my local Fry's.

Only issue encountered was using the ROMTool to dump the MP51.0085.B00 boot rom, under 10.13.4.
Pop up window showing DirectHW.kext failed to load during the rom dump.
- manually loaded DirectHW.kext w/kextutil and got a little more information on the load error, 2 of them
1)wrong file ownership, needed to be under root:wheel, got passed this issue but got stuck on the next error
2)"Code Signing Failure: not code signed". I thought this would have been taken care of when ROMTool was executed for the first time and had to be signed off from the Security and Privacy settings. To get around this issue, I rebooted under my backup disk with Sierra 10.12.6. Followed the google docs guide to flash the bot rom and it worked flawlessly. Rebooted back under 10.13.4 and cloned it to the Samsung NVME drive.

You just needed to disable SIP, then DirecHW load without any trouble.
 

486dx2

macrumors newbie
Jul 3, 2018
4
2
Yeah, haven't seen anyone else post on this thread regarding issues running the ROMTool to dump the rom. Here is the exact error message.

"admins-Mac-Pro:Resources admin$ sudo kextutil DirectHW.kext

Password:

Kext with invalid signatured (-67062) allowed: <OSKext 0x7fdeecc43cc0 [0x7fff88943af0]> { URL = "DirectHW.kext/ -- file:///Users/admin/Documents/EFI/ROMTool.app/Contents/Resources/", ID = "com.doresystems.driver.DirectHW" }

Code Signing Failure: not code signed

admins-Mac-Pro:Resources admin$ csrutil status

System Integrity Protection status: disabled.
"
 
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igopobed

macrumors newbie
Jul 15, 2018
8
2
Russia
Guys, my post here is really off the current discussion, but can't help asking.

I got a MBP12,1 with the internal Apple SSD broken, and I'm trying to make it boot from a PCI-E NVMe EVO 970 (with an adapter). The drive is well recognized by the High Sierra installer but is not bootable. That's no news since the Boot ROM version is MBP121.0167.B15, AFAIK this ROM hadn't received NVMe boot support yet.

Spent the last couple of days browsing the forums etc. and still can't take it: Is it really the case the firmware in this MBP can be flashed (during the High Sierra installation) only with the original Apple SSD in? Is there really no other way, like to-mess-with-ROM-EFI tools, like these for cMPs here? Here's the thing, I got no replacement Apple SSD for this MBP. Could, obviously, get it somewhere (probably will have to, too), but it would be cool if could manage without it.

What do you guys think? Thanks in advance! Probably chose an absolutely wrong thread for the question?

P. S. I've actually managed to boot the SSD via the USB stick hack, but it's a different story.
 
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tsialex

Contributor
Jun 13, 2016
13,452
13,601
Guys, my post here is really off the current discussion, but can't help asking.

I got a MBP12,1 with the internal Apple SSD broken, and I'm trying to make it boot from a PCI-E NVMe EVO 970 (with an adapter). The drive is well recognized by the High Sierra installer but is not bootable. That's no news since the Boot ROM version is MBP121.0167.B15, AFAIK this ROM hadn't received NVMe boot support yet.

Spent the last couple of days browsing the forums etc. and still can't take it: Is it really the case the firmware in this MBP can be flashed (during the High Sierra installation) only with the original Apple SSD in? Is there really no other way, like to-mess-with-ROM-EFI tools, like these for cMPs here? Here's the thing, I got no replacement Apple SSD for this MBP. Could, obviously, get it somewhere (probably will have to, too), but it would be cool if could manage without it.

What do you guys think? Thanks in advance! Probably chose an absolutely wrong thread for the question?

P. S. I've actually managed to boot the SSD via the USB stick hack, but it's a different story.
Did you tried to remove the SSD and install to a external disk? The most recent firmware for MBP12,1 is MBP121_0177_B00.fd btw.

I've updated the firmware for older MacBooksPros from external disks before, but I don't know if the modifications Apple introduced to keep the firmware secure on newer Macs will block this.

It's know that on MP6,1, you can't update the firmware with a NVMe 3rd party SSD installed.

I don't recommend you trying to update your MBP firmware with the tools for older Macs, if you brick it, it will be a extremely costly experience. Even on MP5,1, some people bricked it.
 

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igopobed

macrumors newbie
Jul 15, 2018
8
2
Russia
Did you tried to remove the SSD and install to a external disk? The most recent firmware for MBP12,1 is MBP121_0177_B00.fd btw.

I've updated the firmware for older MacBooksPros from external disks before, but I don't know if the modifications Apple introduced to keep the firmware secure on newer Macs will block this.

It's know that on MP6,1, you can't update the firmware with a NVMe 3rd party SSD installed.

I don't recommend you trying to update your MBP firmware with the tools for older Macs, if you brick it, it will be a extremely costly experience. Even on MP5,1, some people bricked it.

I run High Sierra on this MBP from an external drive alright. The point is, exactly how do I upgrade the firmware to MBP121.0177.B00 while booted from this external drive? I'm not aware of any software capable of this. Are you? (And no, I'm not trying to do this using the software discussed in this thread.)
 

tsialex

Contributor
Jun 13, 2016
13,452
13,601
I run High Sierra on this MBP from an external drive alright. The point is, exactly how do I upgrade the firmware to MBP121.0177.B00 while booted from this external drive? I'm not aware of any sofware capable of this. Are you? (And no, I'm not trying to do this using the software discussed in this thread.)
Your Mac has automatic firmware upgrades when updating macOS, like from 10.13.5 to 10.13.6, you don't have manual updates like on MP5,1.

The safest option is to install a original Gen3 SSD (SSAUX/SSUBX) from any 2013-> Macs and do the firmware upgrade.
 
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