"new" MP 5.1, and Mojave fresh install on NON EFI GPU

[nicko3.0i]

Hi all!
My last Mac was a MacMini G4 back in 2009, but I got for like 50 bucks a "non working" 5.1 MacPro and it's 1920x1200 monitor. Brought it home, cleaned it up in the garage using a compressor, tons of dust went out..
It has several scratches and dents, but it's no big deal. It turned out that one of the two gpus is dead.. took it off, and it normally boots high sierra! YAY!!!!

I was mentally ready to discover it to be the least equipped machine money could buy, but... 2x 6core Xeon, 16GB ram!
I know it's a 10 years old machine, but having had it basically for free, I MUST give it a go!

I have a 4GB radeon rx480 lying around, so... let's try!

Situation:
nVidia GT120 has EFI, but no METAL support
rx480 METAL SUPPORT, but no EFI

Tried the http://dosdude1.com/mojave/ patcher but after applying the patches... kernel panics, no succesful boots, errors. :-(

IDEA: let's use the patched installer to install on a blank drive using the GT120
When the system reboots, it freezes at circa 80% of boot process.
Turn off, remove GT120, put RX480 in.
Power up.
IT WORKS! as some of the system loads, you get the screens to create a user and so on

The only downside is having to swap the cards, but it's definitely better than installing high sierra every time, swapping the cards, and then upgrade to mojave!

If only EFI cards weren't priced insanely high (at least here in Italy), the problem wouldn't have even existed, but I cannot give 300bucks for a 10 yrs old gpu just because it's "mac edition"

Well, that's it! Just wanted to share experience, it's my first post!
bye!

Nicolo' "Nicko"

 

[HyperX13]

I am running non efi video card (rx 580 - non EFI). Here is what I did. I was on high sierra, I put in the rx 580. It booted fine. I then tried to upgrade to Mojave. I was prompted to do a firmware update and it updated me to 138.0.0.0. It then started to install my Mojave. Totally in the dark. I didnt see a progress bar. I waited 1 hour and 15 minutes and boom. Mojave came up. Here are my specs

[doublepost=1551191785][/doublepost]

I am running non efi video card (rx 580) . Here is what I did. I was on high sierra, I put in the rx 580. It booted fine. I then tried to upgrade to Mojave. I was prompted to do a firmware update and it updated me to 138.0.0.0. It then started to install my Mojave. Totally in the dark. I didnt see a progress bar. I waited 1 hour and 15 minutes and boom. Mojave came up. Here are my specs

I also upgraded the firmware one more time when 10.14.3 came out to 140.0.0.0 by doing the Mojave install again but then stopping it after the firmware install did the first reboot.

 

[tsialex]

Hi all!
My last Mac was a MacMini G4 back in 2009, but I got for like 50 bucks a "non working" 5.1 MacPro and it's 1920x1200 monitor. Brought it home, cleaned it up in the garage using a compressor, tons of dust went out..
It has several scratches and dents, but it's no big deal. It turned out that one of the two gpus is dead.. took it off, and it normally boots high sierra! YAY!!!!

I was mentally ready to discover it to be the least equipped machine money could buy, but... 2x 6core Xeon, 16GB ram!
I know it's a 10 years old machine, but having had it basically for free, I MUST give it a go!

I have a 4GB radeon rx480 lying around, so... let's try!

Situation:
nVidia GT120 has EFI, but no METAL support
rx480 METAL SUPPORT, but no EFI

Tried the http://dosdude1.com/mojave/ patcher but after applying the patches... kernel panics, no succesful boots, errors. :-(

IDEA: let's use the patched installer to install on a blank drive using the GT120
When the system reboots, it freezes at circa 80% of boot process.
Turn off, remove GT120, put RX480 in.
Power up.
IT WORKS! as some of the system loads, you get the screens to create a user and so on

The only downside is having to swap the cards, but it's definitely better than installing high sierra every time, swapping the cards, and then upgrade to mojave!

If only EFI cards weren't priced insanely high (at least here in Italy), the problem wouldn't have even existed, but I cannot give 300bucks for a 10 yrs old gpu just because it's "mac edition"

Well, that's it! Just wanted to share experience, it's my first post!
bye!

Nicolo' "Nicko"

I don't understand, you have all the hardware to do it the correct way and do it wrong?!? You shouldn't use hacked installs with supported Macs.

Read the first post of the thread MP5,1: What you have to do to upgrade to Mojave and do it right when you have time.

 

[retta283]

I have to agree with tsialex, don't bother with the hacked install since you're on a 5,1.

 

[nicko3.0i]

I don't understand, you have all the hardware to do it the correct way and do it wrong?!? You shouldn't use hacked installs with supported Macs.

Read the first post of the thread MP5,1: What you have to do to upgrade to Mojave and do it right when you have time.

The video card isn't "mac edition", how am I supposed to run the installer without seeing anything?

 

[HyperX13]

The video card isn't "mac edition", how am I supposed to run the installer without seeing anything?

You agree to everything in the High Sierra OS and then you just let it go for an hour or so.. It will install it while the screens are blank. Key is patience. My dual Xeon with 128 gigs or ram took 1 hour and 15 mins.

 

[tsialex]

The video card isn't "mac edition", how am I supposed to run the installer without seeing anything?

You don’t need Mac EFI GPUs if macOS already have the drivers for it, RX 480 is one that have drivers and have full macOS installer support.

Read the first post of the thread that sent you, after all the needed firmware upgrades, you can even do a clean install with createinstallmedia USB-key.

 

[nicko3.0i]

You agree to everything in the High Sierra OS and then you just let it go for an hour or so.. It will install it while the screens are blank. Key is patience. My dual Xeon with 128 gigs or ram took 1 hour and 15 mins.

The core part of my post is "fresh install", I didn't want to make an OS upgrade
Now I'm gonna check what's @tsialex is telling me..... if it works I'm getting drunk tonight, you are all invited

 

[tsialex]

The core part of my post is "fresh install", I didn't want to make an OS upgrade
Now I'm gonna check what's @tsialex is telling me..... if it works I'm getting drunk tonight, you are all invited

Yes, it works after all the needed firmware upgrades being done. You will need High Sierra, btw.

 

[HyperX13]

The core part of my post is "fresh install", I didn't want to make an OS upgrade
Now I'm gonna check what's @tsialex is telling me..... if it works I'm getting drunk tonight, you are all invited

So I did a fresh install just to test something else, and yes it was also a dark screen. What I did is create a USB boot install and then I held C on keyboard and it showed up the install screen after about 4 minutes.

 

[nemike]

If I try to boot from USB thumbdrive without an EFI video card it never boots even when I hold down C for the first 2 minutes.... The thumbdrive with mojave on it boots fine with an EFI video card installed but when I try to install it says I can't have any non-metal video cards installed. How can I get the installed to ignore the fact that I have both a metal card and an EFI card installed and just install the OS anyways????

 

[tsialex]

If I try to boot from USB thumbdrive without an EFI video card it never boots even when I hold down C for the first 2 minutes.... The thumbdrive with mojave on it boots fine with an EFI video card installed but when I try to install it says I can't have any non-metal video cards installed. How can I get the installed to ignore the fact that I have both a metal card and an EFI card installed and just install the OS anyways????

You can't have both a METAL card and an unsupported GPU with Mojave. This worked up to 10.13.6.

To boot a Mojave createinstallmedia USB installer, wipe the disk you want to install to, remove all bootable disks installed/connected, insert the Mojave createinstallmedia USB installer to one of the Mac Pro native USB ports. The Mac Pro firmware when the default boot disk is not found will start to scan the SATA drives, then PCIe drives, then Firewire drives and finally will boot from the createinstallmedia USB installer. USB drives have the lowest priority.

Btw, this won't work for NVIDIA GPUs that are not natively supported or any AMD GPUs that need newer macOS releases to work (for example AMD VII that need 10.14.5 and NAVI GPUs that need 10.15.2+ to be supported).

 

[nemike]

You can't have both a METAL card and an unsupported GPU with Mojave. This worked up to 10.13.6.

To boot a Mojave createinstallmedia USB installer, wipe the disk you want to install to, remove all bootable disks installed/connected, insert the Mojave createinstallmedia USB installer to one of the Mac Pro native USB ports. The Mac Pro firmware when the default boot disk is not found will start to scan the SATA drives, then PCIe drives, then Firewire drives and finally will boot from the createinstallmedia USB installer. USB drives have the lowest priority.

Btw, this won't work for NVIDIA GPUs that are not natively supported or any AMD GPUs that need newer macOS releases to work (for example AMD VII that need 10.14.5 and NAVI GPUs that need 10.15.2+ to be supported).

Thanks, after a while more of frustrations the problem ended up being something along the lines of the RX580 wasn't fully seated or the power or something but after trying to boot the old hard drive with mojave already installed and the video didn't come up I removed the card and reseated it and removed the old hard drive, installed the SSD and this time after waiting the expected 3-4 minutes the screen came to life and I was able to install the OS.

There were so many unknowns as I had also just changed out both processors etc.

Thanks! Mike