MP 1,1-5,1 MP5,1: EFI Release vs BIOS Version vs BootBlock Version Reference Table:

[h9826790]

Which would make it the very first one produced, or perhaps the one used during the keynote for the Mac Pro reveal on March 3rd 2009!?

I am thinks about the time as well. 4,1 was introduced on March 2009. And week 9 is March 2009
[doublepost=1539601964][/doublepost]So, this is a valid but not real serial number. Isn’t it?

 

[tsialex]

I am thinks about the time as well. 4,1 was introduced on March 2009. And week 9 is March 2009

One MR user has a logic board BD even before this date, backplanes are manufactured earlier than the complete Mac Pro, sometimes 2 months earlier, usually a month.

If I remember correctly, it's @bookemdano MP41, but his MP is not from the first batch manufactured.

 

[h9826790]

One MR user has a logic board BD even before this date, backplanes are manufactured earlier than the complete Mac Pro, sometimes 2 months earlier, usually a month.

If I remember correctly, it's @bookemdano MP41, but his MP is not the first batch.

This make sense

 

[tsialex]

So, this is a valid but not real serial number. Isn’t it?

I created it based on early 2009 serials. I'll ask a friend who have GSX access if Apple sold this first one, I think not since they use this early ones to check manufacturing defects.

 

[h9826790]

I created it based on early 2009 serials. I'll ask a friend who have GSX access if Apple sold this first one, I think not since they use this early ones to check manufacturing defects.

Because I tried to put this serial in the Apple support page. And the result is not a valid serial number. That’s why I assume it’s not just a serial number but means something else.

And for few serial decode website, they can recgnoise its a single CPU 4,1. But obviously they just by “decode”, not really have the database like Apple to check if it’s a real serial number.

 

[tsialex]

Because I tried to put this serial in the Apple support page. And the result is not a valid serial number. That’s why I assume it’s not just a serial number but means something else.

And for few serial decode website, they can recgnoise its a single CPU 4,1.

I have one BootROM dump with production number 0SD and another later, but still early March. Base_17 came from these two BootROMs. Build date of the earliest backplane, that I have the BootROM dump, is 090208.

 

[vrds]

@tsialex,

What can go wrong if we leave NVRAM area blank? Is it neccesary to be filled to flash if I want it "fresh"?
It other words, does NVRAM area contain some critical data besides stored wifi passwords, windows certs, etc.?

 

[tsialex]

@tsialex,

What can go wrong if we leave NVRAM area blank? Is it neccesary to be filled to flash if I want it "fresh"?
It other words, does NVRAM area contain some critical data besides stored wifi passwords, windows certs, etc.?

If you clear it, you won't access iCloud/iMessage/FaceTime since a almost all hardwareIDs are into the 3rd and 4th streams of the NVRAM.

Read here #602
[doublepost=1546174482][/doublepost]The hardware descriptor blob, SSN, HWC, and SON are in the 3rd stream, Gaid is the 4th stream.

 

[vrds]

If you clear it, you won't access iCloud/iMessage/FaceTime since a almost all hardwareIDs are into the 3rd and 4th streams of the NVRAM.

Read here #602

As I understood from #602 we need LBSN_BD sector to get iCloud/iMessage/FaceTime work in GUID 1BA0062E-C779-4582-8566-336AE8F78F09. It's already done.
And here I mean FFF12B8D-7696-4C8B-A985-2747075B4F50 GUID. I just cannot see something critical info here… Preferred wifi networks, location services config, boot args, memory sticks part numbers and those doubled windows certs. And the boot order, of course. Does this GUID contain necessary HIDs too, and I just got blind?

UPD
Yeap, I'm just blind. Found HWC, SSN, etc. in FSYS part. Thanks.

 

[tsialex]

As I understood from #602 we need LBSN_BD sector to get iCloud/iMessage/FaceTime work in GUID 1BA0062E-C779-4582-8566-336AE8F78F09. It's already done.
And here I mean FFF12B8D-7696-4C8B-A985-2747075B4F50 GUID. I just cannot see something critical info here… Preferred wifi networks, location services config, boot args, memory sticks part numbers and those doubled windows certs. And the boot order, of course. Does this GUID contain necessary HIDs too, and I just got blind?

It's a lot more complicated that you are thinking. The hardware descriptor blob, SSN, HWC, and SON are in the 4rd store of the NVRAM volume, Gaid is the 5th store. A lot of things go wrong with a messed up NVRAM volume.

You can extract the NVRAM volume from the MP51.fd and inject the 4th/5th stores back into it's places, but this is just a quick and dirty solution.

 

[vrds]

It's a lot more complicated that you are thinking. The hardware descriptor blob, SSN, HWC, and SON are in the 3rd stream of the NVRAM volume, Gaid is the 4th stream. A lot of things go wrong with a messed up NVRAM volume.

You can extract the NVRAM volume from the MP51.fd and inject the 3rd/4th streams back into its places, but this is just a quick and dirty solution.

So basically there is no fast and clean solution to preserve necessary data and drop off windows double certs, preferred networks, etc. in the VSS part?

 

[tsialex]

So basically there is no fast and clean solution to preserve necessary data and drop off windows double certs, preferred networks, etc. in the VSS part?

Let's say you have a mid-2012 Mac Pro, one that have a perfect 4th and 5th stores of the NVRAM volume - you just insert them into the extracted NVRAM volume from the generic MP51.fd.

The problem is, no one have a perfect NVRAM anymore. All the interactions over the years caused problems into the NVRAM and some people have really corrupted ones. Most people have superseded hardware descriptors and sometime the upgrades messed with the order of things into the 4th store.

So, a lot of things have to be manually corrected into the 4th store (checksum redone) and the 5th store has to have the checksum checked.

 

[vrds]

Let's say you have a mid-2012 Mac Pro, one that have a perfect 3rd and 4th stream of the NVRAM volume - you just insert them into the extracted NVRAM volume from the generic MP51.fd.

The problem is, no one have a perfect NVRAM anymore. All the interactions over the years caused problems into the NVRAM and some people have really corrupted ones. Most people have superseded hardware descriptors and sometime the upgrades messed with the order of things into the 3rd stream.

So, a lot of things have to be manually corrected into the 3rd stream (checksum redone) and the 4th stream has to have the checksum checked.

It's really sad thing to hear. Btw, I can try to find my original OOB rom dump before I converted my MP4.1 to MP5.1, which must be perfect one, I guess. Will take significant time to find, but I'll try if it can be useful for you.
As for now I only can provide you 140's rom. I would appreciate it if you could take a look at it for a total corruption

 

[tsialex]

It's really sad thing to hear. Btw, I can try to find my original OOB rom dump before I converted my MP4.1 to MP5.1, which must be perfect one, I guess. Will take significant time to find, but I'll try if it can be useful for you.
As for now I only can provide you 140's rom. I would appreciate it if you could take a look at it for a total corruption

With 2009 Mac Pros, the unmolested ones, I find:

• superseded hardware descriptors, even the B08 ones have Base_20 hardware descriptor, most have Base_16 to Base_19,
• wrong order of hardware IDs.

Most 2009s are worse than that now, with:

• hardware IDs missing,
• checksum of the 3rd stream wrong,
• 3rd stream erased/corrupted.

Apple continuously improved the 3rd stream of the NVRAM, but only with new Mac Pros, the already sold never got the corrections made.

 

[vrds]

With 2009 Mac Pros, the unmolested ones, I find:

• superseded hardware descriptors, even the B08 ones have Base_20 hardware descriptor, most have Base_16 to Base_19,
• wrong order of hardware IDs.

Most 2009s are worse than that now, with:

• hardware IDs missing,
• checksum of the 3rd stream wrong,
• 3rd stream erased/corrupted.

Apple continuously improved the 3rd stream of the NVRAM, but only with new Mac Pros, the already sold never got the corrections made.

As I can see, HWC/SSC/SON/LSBN/BD of mine are all in place and correct. Checksum? All iServices work w/o any problems. So can I hope my rom not fully corrupted with doubled windows cert?
Maybe it's just possible to replace VSS stores with FFs in my current dump?.. How did you remove duplicated windows cert?

After all, is doubled windows cert really so harmful or it's unknown at the current moment?

 

[tsialex]

As I can see, HWC/SSC/SON/LSBN/BD of mine are all in place and correct. Checksum? All iServices work w/o any problems. So can I hope my rom not fully corrupted with doubled windows cert?
Maybe it's just possible to replace VSS stores with FFs in my current dump?.. How did you remove duplicated windows cert?

After all, is doubled windows cert really so harmful or it's unknown at the current moment?

If you know your way with a hex editor, do as I explained above, it's the only way that works. SecureBoot certificates are into the 1st and 2nd streams.

 

[vrds]

If you know your way with a hex editor, do as I explained above, it's the only way that works. SecureBoot certificates are into the 1st and 2nd streams.

So that's what I asked about from the beginning: is it safe to erase 1st and 2nd streams?

 

[tsialex]

So that's what I asked about from the beginning: is it safe to erase 1st and 2nd streams?

Like I said, you replace with the ones from the generic MP51.fd. That are the minimum 1st and 2nd streams, you can't just erase or fill with FFs.

 

[vrds]

Like I said, you replace with the ones from the generic MP51.fd.

Thank you for your time and patience.

 

[msymms]

Alexandre,
is there a primer on this stuff somewhere? I would love to learn how and why to do all this. I have both a 2009 4,1/5,1 and 2010 MP 5,1. I am trying to get my GPUs upgraded and want to keep these machines running for some time. At this point I have no desire to run Mojave. I do a lot of photo editing and will want to keep my GPUs up to date I currently have a Sapphire RX 580 Nitro+ and Vega 56, but can't get them to work. So I want to learn all I can about these machines so I can troubleshoot and help others along the way. Yes I would like to move to NVIDIA cards for the CUDA cores for Photoshop.

-mark

 

[tsialex]

Alexandre,
is there a primer on this stuff somewhere? I would love to learn how and why to do all this. I have both a 2009 4,1/5,1 and 2010 MP 5,1. I am trying to get my GPUs upgraded and want to keep these machines running for some time. At this point I have no desire to run Mojave. I do a lot of photo editing and will want to keep my GPUs up to date I currently have a Sapphire RX 580 Nitro+ and Vega 56, but can't get them to work. So I want to learn all I can about these machines so I can troubleshoot and help others along the way. Yes I would like to move to NVIDIA cards for the CUDA cores for Photoshop.

-mark

This is a tutorial to teach people who already have the intermediate files, to recreate the BootROMs with UEFITool and the generic MP51.fd. This is very specific utility and only useful if I already sent the file to you.

This won't make GPUs work or anything, it's not the intent.

 

[msymms]

Thanks for the reply. I understand that. This is more of a generic question on starting to learn this stuff. The GPU thing is troublesome to me and I want to figure it out. I dont know enough about the MP and the architecture of the GPUs to know where to begin to troubleshoot.

-mark

 

[bsbeamer]

Thanks for the reply. I understand that. This is more of a generic question on starting to learn this stuff. The GPU thing is troublesome to me and I want to figure it out. I dont know enough about the MP and the architecture of the GPUs to know where to begin to troubleshoot.

-mark

You're barking up the wrong tree in this thread for your issue. You'll have better luck in AMD Vega GPU thread:
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/amd-polaris-vega-gpu-macos-support.2083168/

 

[tsialex]

Thanks for the reply. I understand that. This is more of a generic question on starting to learn this stuff. The GPU thing is troublesome to me and I want to figure it out. I dont know enough about the MP and the architecture of the GPUs to know where to begin to troubleshoot.

-mark

Start with this thread, you will learn enough to get a RX 580/Vega working: AMD Polaris & Vega GPU macOS Support

 

[tsialex]

EFI Release vs BIOS Version vs BootBlock Version Reference Table:

EFI Release:	BIOS Version:	BootBlock Version:
MP41.0081.B04	MP41.88Z.0081.B04.0903051113	AAPLEFI1.88Z.0004.I00.0901121311
MP41.0081.B07	MP41.88Z.0081.B07.0910130729	AAPLEFI1.88Z.0004.I00.0910130728
MP41.0081.B08	MP41.88Z.0081.B08.1001221313	AAPLEFI1.88Z.0004.I00.1001221311
MP51.007F.B00	MP51.88Z.007F.B00.1008031144	AAPLEFI1.88Z.0005.I00.1006041028
MP51.007F.B03	MP51.88Z.007F.B03.1010071432	AAPLEFI1.88Z.0005.I00.1010071430
MP51.0083.B00	MP51.88Z.0083.B00.1707271620	AAPLEFI1.88Z.0005.I00.1707271617
MP51.0084.B00	MP51.88Z.0084.B00.1708080528	AAPLEFI1.88Z.0005.I00.1708080525
MP51.0085.B00	MP51.88Z.0085.B00.1802021746	AAPLEFI1.88Z.0005.I00.1802021742
MP51.0087.B00	MP51.88Z.0087.B00.1804181525	AAPLEFI1.88Z.0005.I00.1804181521
MP51.0089.B00	MP51.88Z.0089.B00.1806081708	AAPLEFI1.88Z.0005.I00.1806081704
138.0.0.0.0	MP51.88Z.F000.B00.1807300628	AAPLEFI1.88Z.0005.I00.1807300627
139.0.0.0.0	MP51.88Z.F000.B00.1808171030	AAPLEFI1.88Z.0005.I00.1808171029
140.0.0.0.0	MP51.88Z.F000.B00.1809191555	AAPLEFI1.88Z.0005.I00.1809191554
141.0.0.0.0	MP51.88Z.F000.B00.1812191621	AAPLEFI1.88Z.0005.I00.1812191620
142.0.0.0.0	MP51.88Z.F000.B00.1902142049	AAPLEFI1.88Z.0005.I00.1902142048
144.0.0.0.0	MP51.88Z.F000.B00.1904121248	AAPLEFI1.88Z.0005.I00.1904121247