Hi guys, this is my first post after lurking for many years and finally scoring my own vintage MP5,1. I'm making no headway with my own troubleshooting and hope to get some good ideas from the community.
In short, I am now faced with a black-screen stuck-at-boot scenario, after a seemingly okay chime sound.
Revisiting the Upgrade Sequence
I bought a used MP5,1 with 2 x 2.4Ghz E5620, a weird 10GB config (2 x 4gb OWC, 2 x 1gb) and a Radeon 5770. It booted fine and worked alright when I tested it out at the previous owner's place.
I ordered a pair of X5690, 6 x 16GB used ECC RAM, a used PowerColor Radeon 580 8GB, the Broadcom 802.11ac + BT4.0 + wires/antennae extensions, and upgraded it in the following sequence:
1) Mac OS and Bootrom using normal method to High Sierra, using stock Radeon 5770 (non-Metal)
2) New CPU swaps; booted fine and saw the updated chips reflect in the About page
3) Broadcom Wifi + BT upgrade; system info showed the right info and Wifi + BT seems to work fine, though I couldn't figure out AirDrop (BT signal weak?)
4) Swapped the 5770 for RX580 and upgraded to Mojave
5) Took out the 2 1GB sticks to see how the system performs; felt sluggish and saw the RAM saturate in Activity Monitor; chalked it off to slow disk swaps given that I'm still on SATA drives
6) Received my RAM sticks, swapped them in for slots 1,2,3 and 5,6,7; booted alright and went into Mac OS recognising 96GB. Strangely, there was some sluggishness and 2 apps (Photos, another one I forgot, browser?) were unresponsive. After a while, system completely jammed.
7) Hard-powered off and powered on, chime ok but black screen
NB1: I don't have a wired keyboard or mouse on hand, only the 1st gen Apple Magic Keyboard and Wireless Mouse
NB2: Video is going out on the DVI interface to a 30" Apple Cinema HD.
Troubleshooting Actions Taken
In short, I am now faced with a black-screen stuck-at-boot scenario, after a seemingly okay chime sound.
Revisiting the Upgrade Sequence
I bought a used MP5,1 with 2 x 2.4Ghz E5620, a weird 10GB config (2 x 4gb OWC, 2 x 1gb) and a Radeon 5770. It booted fine and worked alright when I tested it out at the previous owner's place.
I ordered a pair of X5690, 6 x 16GB used ECC RAM, a used PowerColor Radeon 580 8GB, the Broadcom 802.11ac + BT4.0 + wires/antennae extensions, and upgraded it in the following sequence:
1) Mac OS and Bootrom using normal method to High Sierra, using stock Radeon 5770 (non-Metal)
2) New CPU swaps; booted fine and saw the updated chips reflect in the About page
3) Broadcom Wifi + BT upgrade; system info showed the right info and Wifi + BT seems to work fine, though I couldn't figure out AirDrop (BT signal weak?)
4) Swapped the 5770 for RX580 and upgraded to Mojave
5) Took out the 2 1GB sticks to see how the system performs; felt sluggish and saw the RAM saturate in Activity Monitor; chalked it off to slow disk swaps given that I'm still on SATA drives
6) Received my RAM sticks, swapped them in for slots 1,2,3 and 5,6,7; booted alright and went into Mac OS recognising 96GB. Strangely, there was some sluggishness and 2 apps (Photos, another one I forgot, browser?) were unresponsive. After a while, system completely jammed.
7) Hard-powered off and powered on, chime ok but black screen
NB1: I don't have a wired keyboard or mouse on hand, only the 1st gen Apple Magic Keyboard and Wireless Mouse
NB2: Video is going out on the DVI interface to a 30" Apple Cinema HD.
Troubleshooting Actions Taken
- I've tried putting back the old 2 x 4GB ram sticks; same outcome, chime and black screen
- While trying various combinations of RAM sticks, I saw one occurrence of DIMM error light for slot 5; removed (only used slot 1/2) and reseated RAM (slot 1/2/3 and slot 5/6/7) and it went away.
- I've tried the DIAG button on the backplane after the chime, and get this set of LED lights; CPU temps seem ok, PSU PWROK green, 5V STBY amber, SYS PG green, EFI DONE green, and strangely my GPU OK light is unlit.
- I think it's a funky GFX card, and pull it out to test it in my friend's Windows box; it boots into Win 10 fine, and shows up ok.
- I go back home, put back my 5770 and get the Apple Grey boot screen but progress bar never moves from 0% (is this normal for non-Metal card post-Mojave upgrade?)
- I've tried SMC reset, PRAM reset (never seems to complete, no wired keyboard, didn't get 2nd boot sound), hard press power button flashing white LED light, loud sustained beep and Apple Chime, black screen again (dead end).
- I've tried leaving the machine alone for a while to see if the grey screen eventually comes up, but after a night, no changes.
