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NVMe for Mac Pro 5,1
- Thread starter Lauwie
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Did you try the latest version? other than that I am not sure what could be going wrong with Refind.
In any case, I cannot speak for anyone but myself, but it is my strong belief that anything that improves the capabilities of the admittedly aging Mac Pro is a good thing. How could it not be? I cannot foresee every possible usage scenario and what may not be useful for me may be vital to others. I am always wary of anyone who claims to knows what is best for all...
I am thankful to all of those who try to advance the platform and dare to explore.
Maybe you should read your own signature.
The "self-made expert" bit is particularly applicable.
The world is a vampire, sent to drain
Secret destroyers, hold you up to the flames
And what do I get, for my pain?
Betrayed desires, and a piece of the game
Even though I know - I suppose I'll show
All my cool and cold - like old job
Despite all my rage I am still just a rat in a cage
...that's all I got to say about all that. Let's not scare the OP away because some butt hurt troll doesn't like playing in the playground with others. Back to topic?
Secret destroyers, hold you up to the flames
And what do I get, for my pain?
Betrayed desires, and a piece of the game
Even though I know - I suppose I'll show
All my cool and cold - like old job
Despite all my rage I am still just a rat in a cage
...that's all I got to say about all that. Let's not scare the OP away because some butt hurt troll doesn't like playing in the playground with others. Back to topic?
I'm sorry but this is sad, people live they're lives like they want.
Don't you have anything better to do than rant ?
You can always try writing an EFI yourself
I'm sorry but this is sad, people live they're lives like they want.
Don't you have anything better to do than rant ?
You can always try writing an EFI yourself
Ignore him, he probably drives a sports car with a long hood because of a small...engine.
Don't worry about it, people who tell you not to try things are a dime a dozen.
They want you to sink to their level of non-accomplishment. If you need testers, I'll be happy to help. I have a NVME drive here someplace.
Please, go forward, and forget about the heckler(s).
Thx man
I'll try to send you a demo as soon as I can
(I have a **** ton of school also :') )
I don't think he's breaking rules though, he's just firmly expressing an opinion. If we started just reporting things we didn't like it might get some people banned that actually benefit the community no matter how coarse they are.
no, he's not breaking rules. but what about netiquette? lots of people are super annoyed and a lot of his posts aren't contributing anything positive/constructive to the threads at all, IMHO. that's it from me. back to topic!
german magzine c't has the new intel SSD on the bench. 5 GB/Sec (yeah, with PCIe 3.0).
https://twitter.com/ctmagazin/status/651424345923919872
You said you were going to leave this thread and not post anymore. When are you going to get on that.
I'm sorry but this is sad, people live they're lives like they want.
Don't you have anything better to do than rant ?
You can always try writing an EFI yourself
It's not about denying people choice. This is a tech forum(though some people are using it for profit, or emotional comfort, or psychological support, or just to bully people with personal attacks) so I am only interested in the technological aspects and hard numbers. By the time NVME becomes relevant and makes a real world difference, the apps and OS will have become more demanding on any system. When that happens Westmere processors will just feel too slow regardless of what else you installed or hacked in to a cMP.
When I read you were going to also try to attempt to hack in Thunderbolt support I knew that the research has not been done. Such cards need a header on the motherboard to connect to even if you could get firmware and driver support working.
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This is what as known as being "full of it".
Hard numbers will show it is faster, why does a guy who is "only interested in ...hard numbers" then claim it is a waste because it will "feel too slow"? Do you really not see what an enormous hypocrite this makes you?
Leave the guy alone. I'm sorry that you have such a narrow mind, but the ability to add EFI support for one form of new tech (NVME drives) is very much like another. (USB 3 boot support) (also any other thing that appears in EFI in future)
Please PLEASE disengage the "I'm so proud I can't admit to being wrong" part of your brain and just this once admit that you are 100% wrong. What this guy is doing could be revolutionary and a real breakthrough, meanwhile you sit on your couch and proclaim that the world is still flat, no matter what the rest of the world says.
You ARE wrong and this guy should be encouraged, not shet upon.
Long time ago, a guy discover that we can transmit signal wirelessly. Another guy ask him "is it useful?", he simply answer "how do I know, this is just a new born baby, who know what a baby can do in the future?"
And guess what, now we have mobile phones, Wi-Fi everywhere because of this baby.
It's not just about a faster SSD on a cMP, but the way to rewrite EFI, this is the new baby. And no one know what can this baby achieve.
May be end up it's meaningless (in science world, >80% of time we are doing the wrong thing, but that's how we achieve that 20% meaningful result), but we may also benefit from it. Even though the boot time shows no difference at this moment. How can we know that we can't benefit from the future OSX? May be the future OSX will highly optimise on using the very fast SSD, who knows?
And guess what, now we have mobile phones, Wi-Fi everywhere because of this baby.
It's not just about a faster SSD on a cMP, but the way to rewrite EFI, this is the new baby. And no one know what can this baby achieve.
May be end up it's meaningless (in science world, >80% of time we are doing the wrong thing, but that's how we achieve that 20% meaningful result), but we may also benefit from it. Even though the boot time shows no difference at this moment. How can we know that we can't benefit from the future OSX? May be the future OSX will highly optimise on using the very fast SSD, who knows?
First of all: Awesome project, keep it up!!
Well, actually it's a combination of both. The Mac's firmware will load and execute the EFI stored on the GPU's EEPROM. The MacPros were built in pre-UEFI (2.0) era, so they utilize the legacy 'UGA video driver' standard for GPUs. This isn't compatible with todays 'GOP video driver' used on UEFI compliant video cards, so they will behave exactly like standard legacy PC-vBIOS cards.
I don't see any reason why it shouldn't be technically possible to merge GOP video code from a standard UEFI motherboard into a MacPro EFI. It might be too complicated or not worth the trouble, but at least theoretically it should be possible.
But: That's only half of the story. The EFI on a Mac GPU not only contains code for basic EFI video support which will draw the boot screen, but also injects a set of ioreg keys/values, which will be used by OS X's video driver (basic stuff like the display name, but also the framebuffer for AMD cards or connector type(s) and display configuration for Nvidia cards). This is 100% Apple specific, no stock PC UEFI will contain this stuff.
It is then up to the driver what happens when it finds an EFI card but no matching ioreg entries: My own experiments showed that AMD drivers will just fall back to auto-init mode (like it does when a standard PC card is installed), so it'll use the generic 'RadeonFramebuffer' and a generic name (e.g. 'HD 7xxx'). Nvidia drivers on the other hand always crashed for my when I tried the same with a Geforce card. Might still be possible though.
Well, actually it's a combination of both. The Mac's firmware will load and execute the EFI stored on the GPU's EEPROM. The MacPros were built in pre-UEFI (2.0) era, so they utilize the legacy 'UGA video driver' standard for GPUs. This isn't compatible with todays 'GOP video driver' used on UEFI compliant video cards, so they will behave exactly like standard legacy PC-vBIOS cards.
I don't see any reason why it shouldn't be technically possible to merge GOP video code from a standard UEFI motherboard into a MacPro EFI. It might be too complicated or not worth the trouble, but at least theoretically it should be possible.
But: That's only half of the story. The EFI on a Mac GPU not only contains code for basic EFI video support which will draw the boot screen, but also injects a set of ioreg keys/values, which will be used by OS X's video driver (basic stuff like the display name, but also the framebuffer for AMD cards or connector type(s) and display configuration for Nvidia cards). This is 100% Apple specific, no stock PC UEFI will contain this stuff.
It is then up to the driver what happens when it finds an EFI card but no matching ioreg entries: My own experiments showed that AMD drivers will just fall back to auto-init mode (like it does when a standard PC card is installed), so it'll use the generic 'RadeonFramebuffer' and a generic name (e.g. 'HD 7xxx'). Nvidia drivers on the other hand always crashed for my when I tried the same with a Geforce card. Might still be possible though.
I think just to spite a Soy I'm going to get a new 950 Pro as soon as they're available on Newegg. My motherboard has a slot for it so I'm going to do it just 'cause
I think this is the most exciting part. Sure, not everyone needs 2000+ megabytes per sec read/write disk speed, but the idea of the EFI being enhanced and added upon should be encouraged. There is all sorts of things that could be added to it or just fixed/altered for the modern day tower user.
Martyr yourself much?
In case you're interested, no witches were actually burned at the stake during the Salem witch trials (which I assume you are referencing). 19 were hung and I believe the last was stoned to death. So you managed to be wrong about that too.
No one barged into your house and drug you to the town square to punish you as a heretic. Nothing nearly so glamorous. You visited an online forum, proceeded to deride and dismiss an interesting project, personally insulted people who disagreed with you instead of pursuing a respectful exchange of ideas, and you were rightly held accountable for your words.
You're no witch. I know some witches and they are some of the nicest, most polite people you will ever meet. You are a troll. Trolls belong in their dens. I, for one, am putting you on block so that I don't feel tempted to feed you any more. You can sit in your little troll den and paint on the walls with your poop, and I will never see it.
First of all: Awesome project, keep it up!!
Well, actually it's a combination of both. The Mac's firmware will load and execute the EFI stored on the GPU's EEPROM. The MacPros were built in pre-UEFI (2.0) era, so they utilize the legacy 'UGA video driver' standard for GPUs. This isn't compatible with todays 'GOP video driver' used on UEFI compliant video cards, so they will behave exactly like standard legacy PC-vBIOS cards.
I don't see any reason why it shouldn't be technically possible to merge GOP video code from a standard UEFI motherboard into a MacPro EFI. It might be too complicated or not worth the trouble, but at least theoretically it should be possible.
But: That's only half of the story. The EFI on a Mac GPU not only contains code for basic EFI video support which will draw the boot screen, but also injects a set of ioreg keys/values, which will be used by OS X's video driver (basic stuff like the display name, but also the framebuffer for AMD cards or connector type(s) and display configuration for Nvidia cards). This is 100% Apple specific, no stock PC UEFI will contain this stuff.
It is then up to the driver what happens when it finds an EFI card but no matching ioreg entries: My own experiments showed that AMD drivers will just fall back to auto-init mode (like it does when a standard PC card is installed), so it'll use the generic 'RadeonFramebuffer' and a generic name (e.g. 'HD 7xxx'). Nvidia drivers on the other hand always crashed for my when I tried the same with a Geforce card. Might still be possible though.
Thanks, that makes more sense to me now.
I wondered about that, since hackcintoshes are able to display the Apple bootscreen on regular PC hardware, so is not entirely the vid card that is dictating the "dance".
If possible and not too difficult, it would be fantastic to update that part of EFI.
Hey Lauwie, it sounds like you've been successful in what I tried and failed at. I don't know if people appreciate how big an achievement it is to modify an Apple EFI, rewrite it to the EEPROM and have a Mac switch back on. That's pretty freakin' amazing mate, well done! I extracted the newer microcode from the MacPro5,1 EFI that enables the use of hex-core Westmere Xeons in MacPro4,1s, and I tried to implant it into the Xserve3,1s EFI, seeing as they're basically a 1U MacPro4,1 with less internal expansion. Every time I flashed the FrankenEFI to my Xserve it bricked and I've had to use a RaspberryPi BusPirate to (very slowly) restore a copy of the working EFI. I've changed the CRC32 checksum but I think it's still failing at the self-check so I musn't be repackaging the EFI properly, but I don't really know what I'm doing. I haven't looked at it for several months, it became so tedious and frustrating. If you could quickly outline the tools your using and the steps you're taking to make sure your Mac's EFI passes it's self-testing during boot, I'd love to get this project going again.
Edit: I was investigating this SPI Flash reader for the Teensy 2 before I threw in the towel, definitely an improvement over the BusPirate...
Edit: I was investigating this SPI Flash reader for the Teensy 2 before I threw in the towel, definitely an improvement over the BusPirate...
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If you're doing all this NVME malarkey for something serious like video editing, just buy a Skylake mobo with native support for all this stuff if you are actually someone who does all this serious work that requires disk performance (such as editing 4K). I've posted real world benchmarks yesterday showing how Windows leaves OSX in the dust. Even if you don't want to buy new hardware, just editing in Bootcamp with the hardware you already have will give you a very large boost without any need to mess around with the EFI.
Trying to hack an old x58 system over and over again will likely just leave you with a damaged system, or a burned out Northbridge PCH, and possibly make you look really cheap and unprofessional to other video editors who are happy to invest money in new systems regardless of the operating system.
Trying to hack an old x58 system over and over again will likely just leave you with a damaged system, or a burned out Northbridge PCH, and possibly make you look really cheap and unprofessional to other video editors who are happy to invest money in new systems regardless of the operating system.
Almost 100 replies to this thread and still you didn't get what this is all about.
Every idiot can go out and buy a high end machine with modern features (shall I name one?
), only very few people can do what the OP is up to.The journey is the destination.
Just finished binge-reading this thread. It's like a good book I just couldn't put down! I find the idea (regardless of usefulness) very exciting and reminded me of my early years of experimenting with computers. We did lots of that in the 80's and 90's...it felt like pioneering, and that alone was worth the effort, regardless of the usefulness or outcome. It's a feeling that some here, obviously, have never felt.
It made me think about parenting kids with such a mindset...that would be just sad.
It made me think about parenting kids with such a mindset...that would be just sad.
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