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Updating a Mac (Pro)s CPU Microcode

Darn... sucks it didn’t work initially. Should’ve figured it wasn’t going to be that easy. Seems as though its not the microcode that was the limiting factor in getting Harpertown to work.

I am really intrigued what “hardware” modifications are necessary (or even possible) to get things working in a 1,1 (or 2,1). What is this Intel V8 board? A production variant of a 1,1 board? Is there a part number one should look for?

If you weren’t so far away (like across an ocean), I’d send you my 3,1 for testing purposes. Would be neat to see if it’s just microcode that’s keeping E0 steppings from working in a 3,1.

BTW, I did manage to win an X5687 on ebay... just waiting for it to ship. Hopefully it’ll make it to me by the weekend so I can throw it in my 4,1 right away.
 
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tpivette89 said:
Darn... sucks it didn’t work initially. Should’ve figured it wasn’t going to be that easy. Seems as though its not the microcode that was the limiting factor in getting Harpertown to work.

I am really intrigued what “hardware” modifications are necessary (or even possible) to get things working in a 1,1 (or 2,1). What is this Intel V8 board? A production variant of a 1,1 board? Is there a part number one should look for?

.
Click to expand...

This board is intel platform with 5000 chipset. They were made for 53xx Xeons. But Supermicro, sell motherboards with 5000 chipset, that have support for 54xx Xeons. And that support was after bios update. So there is possibility to run 54xx on 5000 chipset.
 
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I take my hat off to you Sir. The ramifications are nothing short of stunning !

What benefits can you see for 4,1 cMP's flashed to 5,1 ?

I will also be very eagerly following any work you do on enabling native NVME booting.
That alone is compelling. I hereby volunteer to assist in testing using my Samsung 960 M.2
which I just now decided to buy after reading this thread.

I can imagine the joyful howl you let out when you found that your hunch was indeed correct.

LightBulbFun said :

"I am very excited about this :) it could enable quite a few cool things :D"

Are you kidding ? What you have achieved is profound. Kudos to you.
Very few threads evoke this much interest & excitement - at least for me.
 
Last edited:
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tpivette89 said:
Darn... sucks it didn’t work initially. Should’ve figured it wasn’t going to be that easy. Seems as though its not the microcode that was the limiting factor in getting Harpertown to work.

I am really intrigued what “hardware” modifications are necessary (or even possible) to get things working in a 1,1 (or 2,1). What is this Intel V8 board? A production variant of a 1,1 board? Is there a part number one should look for?

If you weren’t so far away (like across an ocean), I’d send you my 3,1 for testing purposes. Would be neat to see if it’s just microcode that’s keeping E0 steppings from working in a 3,1.

BTW, I did manage to win an X5687 on ebay... just waiting for it to ship. Hopefully it’ll make it to me by the weekend so I can throw it in my 4,1 right away.
Click to expand...

im not afraid of doing some hardware modifications :) I have quite bit of experience soldering stuff including some BGA CPU Upgrades on some vintage PowerPC Macs like https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...iy-ibook-g3-clamshell-g4-cpu-upgrade.2105654/

the intel V8 board is also known as the S5000XVN. it looks like intel revised the board at some point to support Harpertown CPUs but the older ones do not support harpertowns it looks like. but I do recall reading an article where some people managed to hardware hack in Harpertown support on the older revision of that board, sadly I cant find this article anymore.

quick edit: just for anyone who experiments with swapping CPUs around in a Mac Pro 1,1/2,1

the Socket marked CPU B is actually the main socket you need a CPU in Socket B to boot socket A can be empty... (real helpful there apple...)


MIKX said:
I take my hat off to you Sir. The ramifications are nothing short of stunning !

What benefits can you see for 4,1 cMP's flashed to 5,1 ?

I will also be very eagerly following any work you do on enabling native NVME booting.
That alone is compelling. I hereby volunteer to assist in testing using my Samsung 960 M.2
which I just now decided to buy after reading this thread.

I can imagine the joyful howl you let out when you found that your hunch was indeed correct.

LightBulbFun said :

"I am very excited about this :) it could enable quite a few cool things :D"

Are you kidding ? What you have achieved is profound. Kudos to you.
Very few threads evoke this much interest & excitement - at least for me.
Click to expand...

thanks for the kind words :)

as for the Mac Pro 4,1/5,1 I have figured out how the microcode is laid out and I have got the Spectre/meltdown patched Micrcode ready I just dont have the balls to try and flash it to my Mac Pro 5,1 just yet as thats my main machine and if I bricked my 5,1 I would be a bit Fooked :D ...

and as for the NVMe stuff as i said in my previous post I think the best way to go about that would be to make some sort of PCIe to M.2 adapter card that has a small EEPROM with an NVMe Option ROM flashed to it that the Mac Pro Loads like the Option ROM on a GPU, this way we would not have to modify the Mac Pro EFI in any way, reducing the chance of something getting bricked. :)

but in theory one could extract the NVMe driver from a newer Apple EFI and insert it into a Mac Pros EFI if they wanted too...
 
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LightBulbFun said:
from a Shady BootROM dealer somewhere in New Jersey IIRC :D





Thanks :) a kind forum member here (@Gamer9430 ) helped me to get a pair of (C0 stepping) L5410s, so those should arrive pretty soon and then ill be able to have a go at getting Harpertown working in my Mac Pro 1,1/2,1 :D

keep us posting on the X5687 stuff I am eager to see how that turns out :)

I also had a look at a couple other BootROMs and noticed some interesting stuff like the iMac7,1 has no Penryn Microcode in it, it might explain why it reports weird CPU speeds to OS X when you install a Penryn CPU into said iMac. I wonder if adding Penryn Microcode would solve that issue (and the issue of the X9000 being stuck at the lowest multiplier when install in an iMac7,1) sadly I dont own an iMac7,1 to test this on (I would also like to try and flash an iMac7,1 with iMac8,1 firmware as they both share the same chipsets and have a very similar board layout)

I also confirmed the Mac Pro 3,1 lacks E0 Microcode so hopefully adding E0 stepping microcode to its Firmware would enable E0 stepping CPUs to work in the Mac Pro 3,1 :) (again one i cant personally test as of typing this due to a Lack of hardware, my Macintosh collection is mostly made up of PowerPC macs :D )
Click to expand...

Then...Can you have the E0 stepping work on Macpro 3,1?
 
sorry, but what is the purpose of this re-write to the micro code ? My english isn't too good to understand what this is.. though I translated it into my language.. Does this improve performance or allows one to use different hardware ?
 
LightBulbFun said:
thanks for the kind words :)

as for the Mac Pro 4,1/5,1 I have figured out how the microcode is laid out and I have got the Spectre/meltdown patched Micrcode ready I just dont have the balls to try and flash it to my Mac Pro 5,1 just yet as thats my main machine and if I bricked my 5,1 I would be a bit Fooked :D ...
Click to expand...

Any news or progress on the Harpertown cMP1,1 & 2,1 microcode?
Have a couple of those machines here and would really like to help/test/contribute (not afraid of doing motherboard mods if needed)...

For the missing board mod infos: Could it be something like this... https://www.delidded.com/lga-771-to-775-adapter/
(also see flex pcb adapter picture there)
 
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Larsvonhier said:
Any news or progress on the Harpertown cMP1,1 & 2,1 microcode?
Have a couple of those machines here and would really like to help/test/contribute (not afraid of doing motherboard mods if needed)...

For the missing board mod infos: Could it be something like this... https://www.delidded.com/lga-771-to-775-adapter/
(also see flex pcb adapter picture there)
Click to expand...

sadly no progress to report on that front,

Thanks for the offer, but im not afraid of doing Motherboard mods on my own machines and im no stranger to doing mods :) I have even replaced CPUs which are BGA soldered down :D https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...iy-ibook-g3-clamshell-g4-cpu-upgrade.2105654/

the problem is I dont know exactly what mods I need to do, I cant find that article on what mods where done to the intel V8 motherboard to get HarperTowns working in it, anywhere online anymore sadly... that would give us a big lead on where to start in regards to what mods I need to do to the MP1,1/2,1. (if I remember correctly it was in an anandtech/arstechnica article)
 
LightBulbFun said:
sadly no progress to report on that front,

Thanks for the offer, but im not afraid of doing Motherboard mods on my own machines and im no stranger to doing mods :) I have even replaced CPUs which are BGA soldered down :D https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...iy-ibook-g3-clamshell-g4-cpu-upgrade.2105654/

the problem is I dont know exactly what mods I need to do, I cant find that article on what mods where done to the intel V8 motherboard to get HarperTowns working in it, anywhere online anymore sadly... that would give us a big lead on where to start in regards to what mods I need to do to the MP1,1/2,1. (if I remember correctly it was in an anandtech/arstechnica article)
Click to expand...

Try looking for old versions of those sites on the way back machine at archive.org.

I’ve gone there to get old versions of drivers and support documents that a website has stopped publishing.
 
Pressure said:
Isn't the microcode just located in /usr/share/ucupdate/microcode.dat ?
Click to expand...

thats just for OS X/that Boot session, if you went and booted Linux then you would not have those microcode patches anymore for example.

plus with some patches, the microcode has to be in the firmware to work properly, (LGA771 Penryn CPUs in LGA775 Motherboards is a good example of this)
 
LightBulbFun said:
thats just for OS X/that Boot session, if you went and booted Linux then you would not have those microcode patches anymore for example.

plus with some patches, the microcode has to be in the firmware to work properly, (LGA771 Penryn CPUs in LGA775 Motherboards is a good example of this)
Click to expand...

Well, other unix based operating systems applies the microcode pretty much the same way during boot.
 
h9826790 said:
May be this is why Apple allow the BootROM's microcode version fall back to 0
Click to expand...

considering Apple updated the microcode in BootROM of every Mac with 10.13.5 (apart from C2Ds they never got spectre patched microcode as intel pulled the plug on it) It would be very weird for Apple to not only exclude the Mac Pro from patches but also to remove the old microcode completely

also worth mentioning that the microcode file in OS X is out dated and is not spectre patched, a friend of mine actually made a tool to update it https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/xucode-userland-microcode-updater-for-macos.2114531/ (also worth mentioning that for whatever reason Apples own OS level microcode stuff seems to be a bit reluctant to kick in, if it had you would not see 0 for sysctl machdep.cpu etc)

and finally as I said, it would leave things at a Firmware level un-patched leaving other things possibly vulnerable/un-patched for example a bad EFI program could exploit the spectre vulnerabilities at a firmware level which is very bad...
 
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LightBulbFun said:
considering Apple updated the microcode in BootROM of every Mac with 10.13.5 (apart from C2Ds they never got spectre patched microcode as intel pulled the plug on it) It would be very weird for Apple to not only exclude the Mac Pro from patches but also to remove the old microcode completely

also worth mentioning that the microcode file in OS X is out dated and is not spectre patched, a friend of mine actually made a tool to update it https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/xucode-userland-microcode-updater-for-macos.2114531/ (also worth mentioning that for whatever reason Apples own OS level microcode stuff seems to be a bit reluctant to kick in, if it had you would not see 0 for sysctl machdep.cpu etc)

and finally as I said, it would leave things at a Firmware level un-patched leaving other things possibly vulnerable/un-patched for example a bad EFI program could exploit the spectre vulnerabilities at a firmware level which is very bad...
Click to expand...

Hey so I am looking into adding the iMac 7,1 Penryn microcode, I have dumped my efi using dosdude1's firmware dumper tool, I also have his Apple Microcode Tool which will allow me to remove or add Microcode to a firmware file but this is sadly as far as I go..... am willing to help add Penyrn microcode :) just need your help LightBulbFan
 
what do you need help with exactly?

also which Penryn CPU exactly, do you plan on installing? does it work/Post with the stock Firmware?

and finally keep in mind adding microcode for a CPU that does not have pre-existing microcode might result in the Mac No longer POSTing with that CPU even if it did POST before hand. so be prepared to have to install the Stock CPU to recover the machine.
 
LightBulbFun said:
what do you need help with exactly?

also which Penryn CPU exactly, do you plan on installing? does it work/Post with the stock Firmware?

and finally keep in mind adding microcode for a CPU that does not have pre-existing microcode might result in the Mac No longer POSTing with that CPU even if it did POST before hand. so be prepared to have to install the Stock CPU to recover the machine.
Click to expand...

T9300 it posts works but you know the dreaded 400Mhz Crap

Mac:~ beyre83$ sysctl -a | grep machdep.cpu
machdep.cpu.max_basic: 10
machdep.cpu.max_ext: 2147483656
machdep.cpu.vendor: GenuineIntel
machdep.cpu.brand_string: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU T9300 @ 2.50GHz
machdep.cpu.family: 6
machdep.cpu.model: 23
machdep.cpu.extmodel: 1
machdep.cpu.extfamily: 0
machdep.cpu.stepping: 6
machdep.cpu.feature_bits: 2502203921923071
machdep.cpu.extfeature_bits: 4832888832
machdep.cpu.signature: 67190
machdep.cpu.brand: 0
machdep.cpu.features: FPU VME DE PSE TSC MSR PAE MCE CX8 APIC SEP MTRR PGE MCA CMOV PAT PSE36 CLFSH DS ACPI MMX FXSR SSE SSE2 SS HTT TM PBE SSE3 DTES64 MON DSCPL VMX EST TM2 SSSE3 CX16 TPR PDCM SSE4.1
machdep.cpu.extfeatures: SYSCALL XD EM64T LAHF
machdep.cpu.logical_per_package: 2
machdep.cpu.cores_per_package: 2
machdep.cpu.microcode_version: 1551
machdep.cpu.processor_flag: 7
machdep.cpu.mwait.linesize_min: 64
machdep.cpu.mwait.linesize_max: 64
machdep.cpu.mwait.extensions: 3
machdep.cpu.mwait.sub_Cstates: 51520032
machdep.cpu.thermal.sensor: 1
machdep.cpu.thermal.dynamic_acceleration: 0
machdep.cpu.thermal.invariant_APIC_timer: 0
machdep.cpu.thermal.thresholds: 2
machdep.cpu.thermal.ACNT_MCNT: 1
machdep.cpu.thermal.core_power_limits: 0
machdep.cpu.thermal.fine_grain_clock_mod: 0
machdep.cpu.thermal.package_thermal_intr: 0
machdep.cpu.thermal.hardware_feedback: 0
machdep.cpu.thermal.energy_policy: 0
machdep.cpu.arch_perf.version: 2
machdep.cpu.arch_perf.number: 2
machdep.cpu.arch_perf.width: 40
machdep.cpu.arch_perf.events_number: 7
machdep.cpu.arch_perf.events: 0
machdep.cpu.arch_perf.fixed_number: 3
machdep.cpu.arch_perf.fixed_width: 40
machdep.cpu.cache.linesize: 64
machdep.cpu.cache.L2_associativity: 24
machdep.cpu.cache.size: 6144
machdep.cpu.tlb.inst.small: 128
machdep.cpu.tlb.inst.large: 8
machdep.cpu.tlb.data.small: 16
machdep.cpu.tlb.data.small_level1: 256
machdep.cpu.tlb.data.large: 16
machdep.cpu.tlb.data.large_level1: 32
machdep.cpu.address_bits.physical: 36
machdep.cpu.address_bits.virtual: 48
machdep.cpu.core_count: 2
machdep.cpu.thread_count: 2
machdep.cpu.tsc_ccc.numerator: 0
machdep.cpu.tsc_ccc.denominator: 0

I am prepared for all eventualities even replacing the logic board if needs be :)
 
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in @dosdude1 microcode tool Open your ROM, it should look like this

upload_2018-6-22_22-12-58.png


then go to add microcode, and add the microcode I attached here. (after unzipping it of course)

after doing so it should look like this

upload_2018-6-22_22-13-31.png


then you can do file save as, then put the iMac into Programmers mode/Firmware update mode and flash the modified ROM to the machine.

then reboot and cross all the fingers and toes :)

Remember ALWAYS have a back up of your Machines STOCK BootROM.
 

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LightBulbFun said:
in @dosdude1 microcode tool Open your ROM, it should look like this

View attachment 767364

then go to add microcode, and add the microcode I attached here. (after unzipping it of course)

after doing so it should look like this

View attachment 767365

then you can do file save as, then put the iMac into Programmers mode/Firmware update mode and flash the modified ROM to the machine.

then reboot and cross all the fingers and toes :)

Remember ALWAYS have a back up of your Machines STOCK BootROM.
Click to expand...

so I added the microcode, saved as put into firmware update mode, flashed the rom
rebooted.... and it still detects it as 400mhz Core2Duo.... I've not done a PRAM/SMC Reset though
 
beyre83 said:
so I added the microcode, saved as put into firmware update mode, flashed the rom
rebooted.... and it still detects it as 400mhz Core2Duo.... I've not done a PRAM/SMC Reset though
Click to expand...

if you now dump your System ROM and open it up in the microcode tool, can you see the new Penryn Microcode still?

alternatively can you Boot an older OS (something 10.7.5 or older)

and run the same sysctl command? the older OSs cant/dont load Microcode after booting so running the sysctl command and looking at the microcode value will tell us the BootROMs one.

I noticed in some cases Colins Flasher Tool will still report a success even if it failed to Flash the BootROM.
 
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