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Problems Upgrading iMac 4,1 to 5,1

NonsensicalFox

NonsensicalFox

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 1, 2019
1
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I have an early 2006 Core Duo iMac that I've upgraded the CPU in to a Core 2 Duo 2GHz. I've tried using the Firmware Tool to upgrade the firmware of the computer, however, all I get is error 5530, which I believe is because it tries downloading the firmware from a dead link. I could not find any solutions to this anywhere, as people only talked about this issue with Mac Pros. Does anyone know the solution to this? I would greatly appreciate it if you could help me.
aP3JPTV.png
 
Encountered this exact same problem with a used iMac 4,1 17". Read up on solution found by Mac Pro guys. Modifed it for iMac and got it working.

Background

This is the post with all the hints

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/mac-pro-1-1-firmware-upgrade-issues.2174741/#post-27228336

I think what happened is Apple probably moved the firmwares to new location and the Firmware Tool dies looking for it. So the Tool setups RamDisk volume and dies. To fix this, one needs to

- find and download the 4,1 and 5,1 firmware
- manually run scripts provided by the Firmware Tool.

Steps

1. Make sure you are on the updated firmware on 4,1 before you begin

iMac EFI Firmware Update 1.1

https://support.apple.com/kb/DL305?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US

2. Locate the firmware from Apple's new location. Need

iMac EFI Firmware Update 1.2 (contains iMac 5,1 firmware)
iMac EFI Firmware Update 1.1 (contains iMac 4,1 firmware, same as in step 1)

Here are the links are time of this post.

https://support.apple.com/kb/DL205?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US
https://support.apple.com/kb/DL305?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US

3. Mount both firmware update dmgs. iMacUpdate and iMac EFI Updater volume icons will appear on the desktop

4. Run iMac41-iMac51 Firmware Tool until it crashes with 5530 Error and go ahead and quit the app. The Tool created RamDisk volume and thats where the scripts do all the work

5. Open the Tool's package Contents/Resources and copy everything to RamDisk volume

6. Run every line of the ExtractAndPatchEFIFiles.sh except the 2 hdiutil commands that open up the 1.2 and 1.1 firmware volumes since step 3 already mounted the volumes. Probably can just delete the 2 hdiutil lines and run this sh script. I ran it line by line manually to clearly understand what was going on. Probably a good idea to know whats going on updating firmware manually to avoid bricking the iMac.

7. If step 6 succeeded, pick up step 10 on the original mac pro link provided at top.

All make sense if familiar with UNIX shell scripts. Probably no need to construct the 5,1 to 4,1 firmware downgrade but I just did it anyways to avoid deviating from the script.

iMac did the firmware update and booted fine. On first boot, I lost wifi+enet but 2nd reboot got it back and its all perfect. So now 64 bit and 3GB capable. Time to get this oldie onto Mountain Lion (ML) :) and run waterfox brower for latest web features on ML.
 
Last edited:
howardc64 said:
Encountered this exact same problem with a used iMac 4,1 17". Read up on solution found by Mac Pro guys. Modifed it for iMac and got it working.

Background

This is the post with all the hints

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/mac-pro-1-1-firmware-upgrade-issues.2174741/#post-27228336

I think what happened is Apple probably moved the firmwares to new location and the Firmware Tool dies looking for it. So the Tool setups RamDisk volume and dies. To fix this, one needs to

- find and download the 4,1 and 5,1 firmware
- manually run scripts provided by the Firmware Tool.

Steps

1. Make sure you are on the updated firmware on 4,1 before you begin

iMac EFI Firmware Update 1.1

https://support.apple.com/kb/DL305?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US

2. Locate the firmware from Apple's new location. Need

iMac EFI Firmware Update 1.2 (contains iMac 5,1 firmware)
iMac EFI Firmware Update 1.1 (contains iMac 4,1 firmware, same as in step 1)

Here are the links are time of this post.

https://support.apple.com/kb/DL205?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US
https://support.apple.com/kb/DL305?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US

3. Mount both firmware update dmgs. iMacUpdate and iMac EFI Updater volume icons will appear on the desktop

4. Run iMac41-iMac51 Firmware Tool until it crashes with 5530 Error and go ahead and quit the app. The Tool created RamDisk volume and thats where the scripts do all the work

5. Open the Tool's package Contents/Resources and copy everything to RamDisk volume

6. Run every line of the ExtractAndPatchEFIFiles.sh except the 2 hdiutil commands that open up the 1.2 and 1.1 firmware volumes since step 3 already mounted the volumes. Probably can just delete the 2 hdiutil lines and run this sh script. I ran it line by line manually to clearly understand what was going on. Probably a good idea to know whats going on updating firmware manually to avoid bricking the iMac.

7. If step 6 succeeded, pick up step 10 on the original mac pro link provided at top.

All make sense if familiar with UNIX shell scripts. Probably no need to construct the 5,1 to 4,1 firmware downgrade but I just did it anyways to avoid deviating from the script.

iMac did the firmware update and booted fine. On first boot, I lost wifi+enet but 2nd reboot got it back and its all perfect. So now 64 bit and 3GB capable. Time to get this oldie onto Mountain Lion (ML) :) and run waterfox brower for latest web features on ML.
Click to expand...
Hi. Need information about installing El Capitan or Lion on iMac early 2006.
Model A1174. Processor Core 2 Duo 2.16GHz (T7400), 4Gb RAM. GPU X1600.
EFI changed from 4.1 to 5.1.

Is it possible to run on this hardware this operating system?
 
fbrcarvalho said:
Hi. Need information about installing El Capitan or Lion on iMac early 2006.
Model A1174. Processor Core 2 Duo 2.16GHz (T7400), 4Gb RAM. GPU X1600.
EFI changed from 4.1 to 5.1.

Is it possible to run on this hardware this operating system?
Click to expand...

It is not possible to install and use El Capitan. You may be able to run Lion 10.7.5.

The iMac5,1 runs a 32-bit EFI mode. Specs for the iMac5,1 series — all of them — are limited to 10.7.5. Even the iMac6,1 is limited by this same constraint.
 
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B S Magnet said:
It is not possible to install and use El Capitan.
Click to expand...
It is, but a patched boot.efi is necessary due to the 32-bit EFI plus some extra fiddling to e.g. get USB working. A much more serious problem is that there is no graphics acceleration on the ATI Radeon X1600.

fbrcarvalho said:
Need information about installing El Capitan or Lion on iMac early 2006.
Click to expand...
Lion will run out of the box.
Mavericks will also run with graphics acceleration, using NexPostFacto.
Yosemite or El Capitan need at least a patched boot.efi but won't have graphics acceleration.
 
Last edited:
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B S Magnet said:
It is not possible to install and use El Capitan. You may be able to run Lion 10.7.5.

The iMac5,1 runs a 32-bit EFI mode. Specs for the iMac5,1 series — all of them — are limited to 10.7.5. Even the iMac6,1 is limited by this same constraint.
Click to expand...
I understand, but unfortunately I can't even install Lion 10.7, it keeps giving the error "this version of mac os x 10.7 cannot be installed on this computer", I've tried several iso but nothing worked, I wanted to try to burn to a DVD but the iso is very large.
 
Amethyst1 said:
Can you post a screenshot of the iso’s content?
Click to expand...

Here's a screen of the two ISOs I have and a DMG downloaded directly from the apple website.
 

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Look fine to me. BaseSystem.dmg is hidden, so you need to mount it using the Terminal:

open /Volumes/Mac\ OS\ X\ Install\ ESD/BaseSystem.dmg
 
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paardenkapper said:
Could it be that the ISO you got is system-specific for a certain type of Mac?
Click to expand...
There were no system-specific ISOs for Lion. Macs that shipped with it used Internet Recovery. So, all ISOs are based on the retail version, but Lion's installer checks if the Mac's platform ID is listed in the PlatformSupport.plist file. The original iMac's ID isn't listed (it isn't compatible with Lion OOTB), so the installer falls over.
 
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Amethyst1 said:
There were no system-specific ISOs for Lion. Macs that shipped with it used Internet Recovery. So, all ISOs are based on the retail version, but Lion's installer checks if the Mac's platform ID is listed in the PlatformSupport.plist file. The original iMac's ID isn't listed (it isn't compatible with Lion OOTB), so the installer falls over.
Click to expand...
Now everything works around here,helped too much.
 
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