Okay, thanks, then it's effectively time for me to go and get one. Sometimes it feels owning a Mac while not owning a Mac hardware workshop was a dubious option -_-
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Okay, thanks, then it's effectively time for me to go and get one. Sometimes it feels owning a Mac while not owning a Mac hardware workshop was a dubious option -_-
Well, I finally did it. My Boot ROM is now MBP121.0177.B00.
That not without the help of an Apple SSD though. Eventually, I've updated the firmware manually with the original command line tools contained in the App Store High Sierra installation image, using the very drive I used to think be corrupt. Not sure if the drive is corrupt, for now, but will acknowledge it ASAP.
Interestingly, the Boot ROM update solved some concurrent problems of this rMBP unit I never saw solve. Namely:
* The time-to-boot was AF long (I often counted well over five mins).
* The mouse pointer and the keyboard lagged at the option boot screen—I mean, they lagged to the state of not being usable (had to plug USB KB and mouse, which strangely worked smoothly).
* During all the time I messed with the MBP I couldn't make any Recovery HDs nor Internet Recovery work.
Lessons learnt:
* Still no known way to flash the firmware of an rMBP without an Apple SSD.
* There is a known way to manually flash rMBPs, so High Sierra installation is not in itself mandatory for this purpose.
* Google-browsing forums can get you way ahead in having your Mac fixed. (Not really news, but I used to think it was true for PCs or Hackintoshes only.)
* Boot ROM bugs may mimic hardware insufficiency very tightly. (Not news, RTFM-style, since I saw a page of some Apple online dev manual read so.)
Now it'll be really good to know if the Apple SSD in question works or not, for this meant a lot, IMHO, if the broken Apple SSDs could still be used to flash firmware. Though I overstate the importance probably. Can't wait to check the blade out.
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Yes, you could do sudo bless etc, but that's somewhat risky with you don't know exactly what you're doing.
Your problems were caused by the unsupported NVMe SSD, not by BootROM bugs. Apple added support for NVMe on later versions of High Sierra, so it's more a case of you trying to cope with unsupported hardware.
Nice that you could update it.
Nope, didn't do any manual blesses. All blesses done by the efiupdater utility. So all I needed to do was expand the FirmwareUpdate.pkg—and voilà.
Nope that, too. The lags never resolved with the internal drive removed indeed.
It absolutely is!
At least the longer boot, it's the system rechecking the hardware. People who upgraded SSDs on MacPros 2013 know this for a long time. The system checks and rechecks every cold boot there too. Restarts are normal for them.
Should have also attached the screenshots.
Before:
After:
[doublepost=1531717753][/doublepost]
You mean, at reboot, no lag present? At reboot, it definitely lagged just the same.
Before:
After:
[doublepost=1531717753][/doublepost]
You mean, at reboot, no lag present? At reboot, it definitely lagged just the same.
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On MP6,1, people with NVMe SSDs reported 10+ minutes for boot from cold and 1 or 2 to restart, no problem waking from sleep.
I see. But unfortunately, I can't remember a single time it booted in one or two minutes—it always took no fewer than five, be it a cold boot or a reboot. No problem waking. Never mind though, as eventually, the boot ROM firmware update was the key.
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Have eventually checked the Apple SSD blade and confirm it did break: Keeps ejecting itself when trying to install a new OS on it or CCC the existing one, namely a couple of dozens of megabytes are copied, and then it ejects itself, not being recognizable with any software means anymore until the next reboot.
However, I still can format it normally, to JHFS+ included, and, as it turned out just yesterday, did manage to use it in the process of firmware update.
* Just installed the damaged Apple AHCI SSD (MZ-JPV2560/0A4 for the record) internally,
* Booted the MBP to 10.13.6 High Sierra (probably the OS version not important here—not sure about that) from an external drive,
* Formatted the damaged SSD to JHFS+,
* sudo /usr/libexec/efiupdater -p with the expanded MAS 10.13.6 FirmwareUpdate.pkg Scripts/Tools/EFIPayloads directory as argument,
* And at reboot the firmware update went smoothly (MBP121.0167.B15 to MBP121.0177.B00 as noted above).
* As a result, I am now finally able to boot my rMBP from a 970 EVO NVMe (MZ-V7E250) drive, which at MBP121.0167.B15 never got recognized at boot (previously, had to use the foxfoobar’s USB stick hack, that worked like a charm).
Hope somebody find it useful.
However, I still can format it normally, to JHFS+ included, and, as it turned out just yesterday, did manage to use it in the process of firmware update.
* Just installed the damaged Apple AHCI SSD (MZ-JPV2560/0A4 for the record) internally,
* Booted the MBP to 10.13.6 High Sierra (probably the OS version not important here—not sure about that) from an external drive,
* Formatted the damaged SSD to JHFS+,
* sudo /usr/libexec/efiupdater -p with the expanded MAS 10.13.6 FirmwareUpdate.pkg Scripts/Tools/EFIPayloads directory as argument,
* And at reboot the firmware update went smoothly (MBP121.0167.B15 to MBP121.0177.B00 as noted above).
* As a result, I am now finally able to boot my rMBP from a 970 EVO NVMe (MZ-V7E250) drive, which at MBP121.0167.B15 never got recognized at boot (previously, had to use the foxfoobar’s USB stick hack, that worked like a charm).
Hope somebody find it useful.
With the tools and info here in this thread I took my 4,1 cMP that was flashed to 5,1 and modded the .89 rom for NVMe support. Now booting from a Samsung 970 EVO in a Lycom DT-120 card. Pretty significant speed increase from the Crucial MX500 SATA SSD I had in there.
Used dd to clone the drive over so the UUID would remain the same and not break sync for Dropbox, iCloud, etc.
Much thanks to everyone in the thread because your questions and answers had already ironed out the path I had to take and made this upgrade super simple.
Running Mojave beta 4 (upgraded today from beta 3) and it is very quick. To get Mojave on the machine and not fool with odd drivers and all I got an eVGA GTX 680 from eBay and flashed it with the Apple EFI rom also discussed here on MacRumors forums.
Great community work...thank you all!
Last upgrade for the 5,1 will be to swap the 2.4GHz 5645 6-core CPUs for a pair of 3.46GHz 5690s when I can spare the extra cost.
Ross
Used dd to clone the drive over so the UUID would remain the same and not break sync for Dropbox, iCloud, etc.
Much thanks to everyone in the thread because your questions and answers had already ironed out the path I had to take and made this upgrade super simple.
Running Mojave beta 4 (upgraded today from beta 3) and it is very quick. To get Mojave on the machine and not fool with odd drivers and all I got an eVGA GTX 680 from eBay and flashed it with the Apple EFI rom also discussed here on MacRumors forums.
Great community work...thank you all!
Last upgrade for the 5,1 will be to swap the 2.4GHz 5645 6-core CPUs for a pair of 3.46GHz 5690s when I can spare the extra cost.
Ross
i have now switched the 950 pro with another 970 Evo, and now with both cards everything is perfect.
just run Mojave Developer Beta 4 Installer on my Mac Pro 5.1 with 85 Firmware. Installer asked to update Firmware. Did so - and to my surprise I got no Screen showing with my EFI GTX680 - now I am at 89.
Did Apple implemented something to update a Firmware with no EFI GPUs ?
My GPU has Bootscreen - but this time there was no GUI while Firmware Update. Just the Tray opened like usual.
Did Apple implemented something to update a Firmware with no EFI GPUs ?
My GPU has Bootscreen - but this time there was no GUI while Firmware Update. Just the Tray opened like usual.
Just tried updating to 89 from 85 using Mojave Dev Beta 4 and an RX 580 and it did not work. No change unfortunately.
Thanks to the great walkthrough, I've updated my MacPro 3,1 to be able to boot from NVME ... now to just get around to getting a NVME setup on this machine.
Found some interesting files in the latest 10.14 beta 4 installer, maybe these can be reversed engineered to flash AMD GPUs with Apple EFI.
Is this any different than the previous AMD firmware updates in Mac OS releases?
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GOP versus UGA. Mac Pro uses UGA, these firmware uses GOP EFI.Found some interesting files in the latest 10.14 beta 4 installer, maybe these can be reversed engineered to flash AMD GPUs with Apple EFI.
First of all thanks to everyone who contributed to this! You guys are incredible!
I'm having a little speed issue and was wondering if you had any clue as to why..
So I flashed my rom with the Google Drive Tutorial and everything went smooth. NVMe is booting just fine. Well detected.
But the speed are not what I expected and from all your screenshots, I think there might be a problem.
I'm getting about 350MB/s Write and 1400MB/s Read.
Here's my setup and what I did.
MacPro5,1
Boot ROM Version: MP51.0089.B00
NVMe drive :WD Black 512GB - M.2 2280 PCIe NVMe Solid State (Open box from amazon)
PCIe Card : https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B073W9R98M/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
GPU : AMD Radeon 7970 with Flashed EFI
16 gig Ram (4x4)
Mac OSX 10.13.6 (17G65)
I tried switching slots, 2/3/4.
Now it's in the third but it didn't change a thing.
GPU is in Slot 1
Weirdly, the first time I test the speed, I get 700MB/s then second time, it drops to 350MB/s
When I test with Amorphous DiskMArk, the first test is successful then the drive is disabled.
If you have any idea I would greatly appreciate it!
Thanks!
I'm having a little speed issue and was wondering if you had any clue as to why..
So I flashed my rom with the Google Drive Tutorial and everything went smooth. NVMe is booting just fine. Well detected.
But the speed are not what I expected and from all your screenshots, I think there might be a problem.
I'm getting about 350MB/s Write and 1400MB/s Read.
Here's my setup and what I did.
MacPro5,1
Boot ROM Version: MP51.0089.B00
NVMe drive :WD Black 512GB - M.2 2280 PCIe NVMe Solid State (Open box from amazon)
PCIe Card : https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B073W9R98M/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
GPU : AMD Radeon 7970 with Flashed EFI
16 gig Ram (4x4)
Mac OSX 10.13.6 (17G65)
I tried switching slots, 2/3/4.
Now it's in the third but it didn't change a thing.
GPU is in Slot 1
Weirdly, the first time I test the speed, I get 700MB/s then second time, it drops to 350MB/s
When I test with Amorphous DiskMArk, the first test is successful then the drive is disabled.
If you have any idea I would greatly appreciate it!
Thanks!
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It’s the drive you bought that is slow.
https://www.storagereview.com/wd_black_pcie_ssd_review
And
https://www.anandtech.com/show/11174/the-western-digital-black-pcie-ssd-512gb-review/2
Probably why it was an open box. Someone bought it and realized write speeds are garbage and returned it.
It’s a cheap drive.
Better off getting Samsung 970 etc if you want something that writes quickly.
https://www.storagereview.com/wd_black_pcie_ssd_review
And
https://www.anandtech.com/show/11174/the-western-digital-black-pcie-ssd-512gb-review/2
Probably why it was an open box. Someone bought it and realized write speeds are garbage and returned it.
It’s a cheap drive.
Better off getting Samsung 970 etc if you want something that writes quickly.
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That bad? How can they advertise 8gb/s and deliver 700MB/s.
Alright Let's get it back in the box!
Thanks!
Alright Let's get it back in the box!
Thanks!
In a perfect world 8Gb/s would be 1000MB/s
The 8Gb/s is likely an unsustainable peak speed meaning 700MB/s isn’t unreasonable.
What is unreasonable is 350MB/s when going to the effort of installing a PCIe NVME drive.
Wow. That is one terrible SSD. Write speeds are lower than SATA. Pathetic.
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