I'm on 10.12. I want to go to 10.14. When I try to run the installer, it says I need to go to 10.13 first. I managed to find it, but when I download it from the app store it says I need to update my firmware. This is on a 2009 Mac Pro that's been updated, so it should have the 2010 firmware. So I do the dance of shutting down, then holding down the power button until it flashes. It flashes, then there's a tone. A minute later it boots. But then I go to run the 10.13 installer again, and it again says I need to update the firmware. I've done this a couple times now. No dice.

Any ideas how I get this thing to update?

---

Help MacInTouch: Buy from Amazon? use this link [amazon.com]
Mac News & Info: [macintouch.com] [macnn.com] [tuaw.com]
Mac Benchmarks: [barefeats.com]
Used Mac Stuff [FS/T]: LowEndMac Swap List
Mac Software Updates: [macupdate.com]
Fonts: [dafont.com] [fontspace.com]
Online Computer Store With Mac Support: [macsales.com]



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/21/2019 12:10AM by M A V I C.

I'd say stay at 10.12. I've been dealing with some issues since I updated (I don't say "upgrade" anymore) and have gotten help but some members here think it's 10.14 that is the issue...

---

Something different...

Disclaimer: This post is checked for correct spelling, punctuation, and grammar. Any attempts at humor are solely the responsibility of the author and bear no claim that any and all readers will approve or appreciate said attempt at humor.
My name is DP, and I approve this message.

"Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime."- Lavrentiy Beria

Do you have a Metal-capable video card installed in your MP?

To go to 10.13, you need to update the Mac Pro's firmware to deal with the new APFS file system.

The firmware update doesn't install properly from some boot drives -- notably 3rd party SSD drives. In my experiments, I was also unable to install it from USB/FireWire devices.

The solution that I came up with (for the supported 2010/2012) was to install a 3.5-inch hard drive and put Sierra on it. Then make this drive the Mac's boot drive and run the HS installer. The firmware update works reliably whenever I do this.

...Now, here's the giant caveat: If you've flashed your 2009 to think it's a 2010 then I don't know what the standard HS installer's firmware update will do to your hack.

...And as for Mojave, things get complicated there. I think you need to hit some other forums to explore the dosdude hacks and see other people's experiences with it. Even on a (supported) 2012, you'd need to upgrade with a Metal compatible graphics card.

---

I have a GTX 660. Is that metal compatible?

I do have a SSD boot drive, using one of the OWC PCI cards.

---

Help MacInTouch: Buy from Amazon? use this link [amazon.com]
Mac News & Info: [macintouch.com] [macnn.com] [tuaw.com]
Mac Benchmarks: [barefeats.com]
Used Mac Stuff [FS/T]: LowEndMac Swap List
Mac Software Updates: [macupdate.com]
Fonts: [dafont.com] [fontspace.com]
Online Computer Store With Mac Support: [macsales.com]

I did as Sarcany, pulled the SSD's & cards, installed a 3.5 on SATA-2 bus with
Sierra and proceeded from there. Once firmware is done, the SSDs & cards went back in.
GPU is AMD Radeon HD 7850 2GB flashed.

Here's what TonyMacx86 has on GPUs.

---

39°36'17"N 75°44'43"W

DuckDuckGo
The search engine that doesn't track you.

DemComm Records 2021 Greatest Hits
includes:
Taxman by Joe & Nancy's Rich Ice Cream Band
The Humpty Dance by The Harris-Brown Hookup
Lets Spend The Night Together by The Fang-Swalwell Gang
Díaz-Canel Is A Friend of Ours by The AOC Squad
My Old Kentucky Retirement Home by MitchMcC & The Soggy Boxer Boys
Burning Down The House by Merrick & The Goons
Back In the USSR by Bernie's Red Square Trio

Quote
M A V I C
I have a GTX 660. Is that metal compatible?

I don't think so.

Apple's list of supported cards:
[support.apple.com]

---

I think you're asking for trouble. Given the potential issues, I would stay where I'm at.

---

“No persons are more frequently wrong, than those who will not admit they are wrong.” -- François de La Rochefoucauld

"Those who cannot accept the past are condemned to revise it." -- Geo. Mathias

The German word for contraceptive is “Schwangerschaftsverhütungsmittel”. By the time you finished saying that, it’s too late

Quote
Sarcany

Quote
M A V I C
I have a GTX 660. Is that metal compatible?

I don't think so.

Apple's list of supported cards:
[support.apple.com]

I would say it may be supported. The 660 is from the same series as the supported GTX 680, and a driver that supports one of that series usually supports the others in the series. Your main issue may be which video ports on the card work, differences from the nVidia reference configuration are the main source of problems when using a non-Mac version card with macOS.

a caveat re: "Apple's list of supported cards". Those are Mac versions of those
particular cards. Notice my HD 7850 is not on "Apple's" list?
Yet, it works & System Information reports:

  Chipset Model: AMD Radeon HD 7850
  Type:	GPU
  Bus:	PCIe
  Slot:	Slot-1
  PCIe Lane Width:	x16
  VRAM (Total):	2048 MB
  Vendor:	ATI (0x1002)
  Device ID:	0x6819
  Revision ID:	0x0000
  ROM Revision:	113-E2080C-101
  EFI Driver Version:	01.00.624
  Metal:	Supported

---

39°36'17"N 75°44'43"W

DuckDuckGo
The search engine that doesn't track you.

DemComm Records 2021 Greatest Hits
includes:
Taxman by Joe & Nancy's Rich Ice Cream Band
The Humpty Dance by The Harris-Brown Hookup
Lets Spend The Night Together by The Fang-Swalwell Gang
Díaz-Canel Is A Friend of Ours by The AOC Squad
My Old Kentucky Retirement Home by MitchMcC & The Soggy Boxer Boys
Burning Down The House by Merrick & The Goons
Back In the USSR by Bernie's Red Square Trio

Argh. I already have six drives in this machine. Four in the original bays. One in the optical bay. The sixth on a PCI card. I can't even find another drive around here, except for some old 2.5" platter drives.

None of the others are bootable into Mac OS.

For the apps I use anymore, Mojave is the last OS they'll run on. So I want to get it to there and leave it.

---

Help MacInTouch: Buy from Amazon? use this link [amazon.com]
Mac News & Info: [macintouch.com] [macnn.com] [tuaw.com]
Mac Benchmarks: [barefeats.com]
Used Mac Stuff [FS/T]: LowEndMac Swap List
Mac Software Updates: [macupdate.com]
Fonts: [dafont.com] [fontspace.com]
Online Computer Store With Mac Support: [macsales.com]

are any of the bay HDs bootable? If so, boot from one of them, and try updating from it. If that doesn’t work, then trying roofing all other drives, and try again. If that doesn’t work, get a cheap video card that’s know to be Metal compatible.

You’re trying to do some very sophisticated upgrades on a 10 year old machine. It’s not reasonable to expect it to be easy. If you’re lucky it will be, but you can’t count on it.

Google fu says that video card is almost never metal compatible-maybe a few were made differently.

If you’re going to run Mojave, you need a metal compatible video card. You can buy a 560 used for cheap- it much horsepower, but adequate for everyday stuff

Only one of the other drives is bootable, and that's to Windows.

I do video editing with this, and I don't want a weaker card. Wish I could tell if the issue was the video card or the SSD. A 650 uses the same drivers, so it seems like the card should work.

---

Help MacInTouch: Buy from Amazon? use this link [amazon.com]
Mac News & Info: [macintouch.com] [macnn.com] [tuaw.com]
Mac Benchmarks: [barefeats.com]
Used Mac Stuff [FS/T]: LowEndMac Swap List
Mac Software Updates: [macupdate.com]
Fonts: [dafont.com] [fontspace.com]
Online Computer Store With Mac Support: [macsales.com]

Quote
M A V I C
Wish I could tell if the issue was the video card or the SSD...

Huh?

You talking about your problem with the 10.13 firmware update?

Thought we'd covered that.

...If this is a production machine and not a hobby machine then you shouldn't be messing with stuff that can easily brick it.

Do you have good backups? Do you have another Mac to fall back on if your Mojave upgrade fails?

---

This is a FIRMWARE upgrade, the drivers are pretty much irrelevant.

If you want to upgrade, you need to have a compatible video time. You probably need to boot from a MacOS hard drive in the bay. You may be able to do it from the PCIE card, but I doubt it.

Well, if you want to upgrade pay the price and go ahead and do it otherwise, don’t upgrade. Unfortunately there is no cheap way to do this.

Deleted



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/22/2019 02:46PM by anonymouse1.

Quote
Sarcany

Quote
M A V I C
Wish I could tell if the issue was the video card or the SSD...

Huh?

You talking about your problem with the 10.13 firmware update?

Thought we'd covered that.

That it could be either the GPU or drive, but unless I missed it, no clear answer as to which.

Quote

...If this is a production machine and not a hobby machine then you shouldn't be messing with stuff that can easily brick it.

Do you have good backups? Do you have another Mac to fall back on if your Mojave upgrade fails?

Hobby. Yes, I have backups.

Quote
anonymouse1
This is a FIRMWARE upgrade, the drivers are pretty much irrelevant.

If you want to upgrade, you need to have a compatible video time. You probably need to boot from a MacOS hard drive in the bay. You may be able to do it from the PCIE card, but I doubt it.

Well, if you want to upgrade pay the price and go ahead and do it otherwise, don’t upgrade. Unfortunately there is no cheap way to do this.

Well, some are saying that I need a metal compatible GPU. The reason the drivers are relevant, is that if they're the same on certain versions, then it likely means the video card is supported, even if it's not on the list.

I've since done some digging and found my card should work for the upgrade. That said, the Nvidia web drivers don't seem to be available yet for Mojave (Apple says they're waiting on Nvidia. Nvidia says they're waiting on Apple.) So even if I was able to upgrade, I wouldn't get full hardware acceleration.

---

Help MacInTouch: Buy from Amazon? use this link [amazon.com]
Mac News & Info: [macintouch.com] [macnn.com] [tuaw.com]
Mac Benchmarks: [barefeats.com]
Used Mac Stuff [FS/T]: LowEndMac Swap List
Mac Software Updates: [macupdate.com]
Fonts: [dafont.com] [fontspace.com]
Online Computer Store With Mac Support: [macsales.com]

And now I read it may run without the web drivers. Hmmm.

---

Help MacInTouch: Buy from Amazon? use this link [amazon.com]
Mac News & Info: [macintouch.com] [macnn.com] [tuaw.com]
Mac Benchmarks: [barefeats.com]
Used Mac Stuff [FS/T]: LowEndMac Swap List
Mac Software Updates: [macupdate.com]
Fonts: [dafont.com] [fontspace.com]
Online Computer Store With Mac Support: [macsales.com]

I thought I had a spare SSD around here (original Intel 80GB). Turns out it was still in one of my 2.5" to 3.5" bay adapters, next to one that was in service (Windows.) Unplugged that, plugged in the old one, reformatted... I'm going to start by installing Sierra and go from there.

Thanks all.

---

Help MacInTouch: Buy from Amazon? use this link [amazon.com]
Mac News & Info: [macintouch.com] [macnn.com] [tuaw.com]
Mac Benchmarks: [barefeats.com]
Used Mac Stuff [FS/T]: LowEndMac Swap List
Mac Software Updates: [macupdate.com]
Fonts: [dafont.com] [fontspace.com]
Online Computer Store With Mac Support: [macsales.com]

You may be able to do it from the PCIE card, but I doubt it.
Nope, pull any PCIe cards; they'll interfere with the firmware updater.
Boot* from a HDD/SSD installed on the native SATA-II bus.
*Before that first boot, do a PRAM reset.

I'm on 10.12.

• Run: System Information.app
• Select: Graphics/Displays

Do you see Metal: Supported?
If so, you should be able to install Mojave. If not, your GTX 660 is some odd
variant of the original nVidia product.

fwiw, the GTX 660's GPU is a newer version of the one in the GTX 680.
I have a GT 640 (not 'X') that showed as "Metal Supported" when I was testing it in
my 2009 MP.

---

39°36'17"N 75°44'43"W

DuckDuckGo
The search engine that doesn't track you.

DemComm Records 2021 Greatest Hits
includes:
Taxman by Joe & Nancy's Rich Ice Cream Band
The Humpty Dance by The Harris-Brown Hookup
Lets Spend The Night Together by The Fang-Swalwell Gang
Díaz-Canel Is A Friend of Ours by The AOC Squad
My Old Kentucky Retirement Home by MitchMcC & The Soggy Boxer Boys
Burning Down The House by Merrick & The Goons
Back In the USSR by Bernie's Red Square Trio

Thanks for the Metal Supported tip. Right now HS is installing. Got the firmware done after putting the original video card in - GT120 or something like that. Not Metal for sure. But perhaps that was a coincidence because I had to remove the PCI card to get that card in.

One other reason I want to upgrade is I'm having problems playing back high speed video from a GoPro. The latest FCP and other video app updates require a newer OS.

---

Help MacInTouch: Buy from Amazon? use this link [amazon.com]
Mac News & Info: [macintouch.com] [macnn.com] [tuaw.com]
Mac Benchmarks: [barefeats.com]
Used Mac Stuff [FS/T]: LowEndMac Swap List
Mac Software Updates: [macupdate.com]
Fonts: [dafont.com] [fontspace.com]
Online Computer Store With Mac Support: [macsales.com]

HS installed. Going to Mojave.

"Metal: Supported, feature set macOS GPUFamily1 v3"

---

Help MacInTouch: Buy from Amazon? use this link [amazon.com]
Mac News & Info: [macintouch.com] [macnn.com] [tuaw.com]
Mac Benchmarks: [barefeats.com]
Used Mac Stuff [FS/T]: LowEndMac Swap List
Mac Software Updates: [macupdate.com]
Fonts: [dafont.com] [fontspace.com]
Online Computer Store With Mac Support: [macsales.com]