MP 1,1-5,1 (SOLVED!) cMP (mid-2010) troubleshooting - chime ok, no boot screen

[motochan]

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

• 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.

What gives? Any other things I can try?

 

[tsialex]

First, you need a wired keyboard for diagnostics, most Microsoft models work fine with Mac Pros. Install a wired keyboard and do the NVRAM reset process three times sequentially, only let go when you hear the fourth chime. Wireless keyboards can't clean up the NVRAM sequentially, you need a wired one.

Second, remove everything but the HD 5770, remove all hard disks and try to boot a createinstallmedia USB installer of High Sierra. If it boots the installer, you have a problem with your drives and not your Mac Pro backplane/CPU tray.

GPU_OK will lit only with AppleOEM GPUs installed, won't work with any other GPU, not even Mac Editions.

 

[zephonic]

You’ve done everything I would have done, but the incomplete P-RAM reset bothers me. Can you borrow a wired keyboard/mouse somewhere?

 

[tsialex]

You’ve done everything I would have done, but the incomplete P-RAM reset bothers me. Can you borrow a wired keyboard/mouse somewhere?

Just a little correction here, PRAM is for OpenFirmware Macs and some very early Intel Macs, like MacBook1,1 (2006).

All Intel Macs after 2008 have NVRAM.

 

[zephonic]

Just a little correction here, PRAM is for OpenFirmware Macs and some very early Intel Macs, like MacBook1,1 (2006).

All Intel Macs after 2008 have NVRAM.

I'm sure you're right. I assumed he meant Option-Command-P-R.

 

[motochan]

I cleared NVRAM via 4th chime (ugh Winblows wired keyboard) and got into recovery. I ran First Aid via Disk Utility on my boot drive and saw some errors (invalid internal flags; too many warnings generated, suppressing subsequent ones ?). I suspect my drive is dying. I’m going to repartition and see what I get. I’ll report back soon!

 

[tsialex]

I cleared NVRAM via 4th chime (ugh Winblows wired keyboard) and got into recovery. I ran First Aid via Disk Utility on my boot drive and saw some errors (invalid internal flags; too many warnings generated, suppressing subsequent ones ?). I suspect my drive is dying. I’m going to repartition and see what I get. I’ll report back soon!

Forget the dying drive for now, install another and test your Mac Pro, after you get it working you install DriveDX and the suspect drive to see what SMART says.

 

[motochan]

I ran into the “can’t create preboot partition” bug and fixed that (reveal all devices, manually erase disk). I’m now back online! Thanks guys!

I’m off to put in my Highpoint SSD7101a-1 with 4x 1TB SSD NVME M2 and then upgrade to Catalina to prepare for the next GPU leap.