Quick advice: Stuck in middle of firmware update

[fhturner]

Could use some advice here. While I had an RX 580 handy, I thought I'd throw it in a couple of aux/utility Mac Pros and bring their firmware up to 140.0.0.0.0. On the first one, a 12-core 2.66GHz MP4,1>5,1, I observed the first attempt caused the Mojave installer to hang w/ beachball after clicking "Shutdown" to apply firmware update. I eventually forced it to quit and rebooted the machine to start all over again. The second pass shutdown just fine, but now the machine is stuck w/ its "tongue hanging out" (optical drive tray), and won't seem to go any further. It has been like that for 15-20 min now.

What's the recommended course of action here? Don't want to force it to shut down if that makes the problem worse, but I may not have a choice. How long do I wait?

Thx,
Fred

 

[h9826790]

Download the Mac Pro 5,1 firmware restoration CD. Put that into the tray. Give it a little push to close it. And see if it helps.
[doublepost=1548439668][/doublepost]https://support.apple.com/kb/DL1320?locale=en_GB&viewlocale=en_US

 

[fhturner]

Download the Mac Pro 5,1 firmware restoration CD. Put that into the tray. Give it a little push to close it. And see if it helps.

Ah, good thought! Should I try restarting first to see if it resolves itself, THEN try the CD? Or for sure try the CD before rebooting?

 

[h9826790]

Ah, good thought! Should I try restarting first to see if it resolves itself, THEN try the CD? Or for sure try the CD before rebooting?

I think you better insert the CD into the tray before you try to do anything.

 

[fhturner]

Okay, got this sorted finally. I tried the Firmware Restoration CD, but the Mac Pro gave it a "taste test" and spit it back out. With nothing left to try really at that point, I just turned it off and started up again. All worked fine, but of course, no progression past 0089. I tried a couple more times, even pulling unnecessary HDs and reenabling SIP, which I'd had disabled. Nothing really helped.

So I moved on to the other machine, which was on 138.0.0.0.0. Installed the RX 580 in it, booted from a SSUAX, ran the Mojave installer, shut down, and got the programming/firmware tone before the startup chime (the other machine was not doing this). Everything went as expected and shortly I had 140.0.0.0.0.

My next thought was that it seemed like a funky "system thing", so I put the SSUAX from machine #2 into #1. Once I did this, VOILA!, I was able to boot properly into programming/firmware mode w/ the correct tone, and shortly thereafter had #1 @ 140.0.0.0.0 also. Anyway, not sure what the exact reason was, but trying an alternate boot drive helped. For the record, the main boot drive on #1 is an 850 EVO.

Thanks for the help, h98!