Tales on upgrading a Mac Pro 4,1 for Mojave - CHEAPLY

CamFire

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(Rant in disguise) :)

Don't want the latest Mac Pro - unless I get it free or I win Lotto.

Don't want to consider a Mac Pro (2013) due to its lack of upgradeability internally. Don't start me :) on upgrades with external Thunderbolt devices, etc. - too messy on the desktop. Still, it is my guilty pleasure to have one just for home online use but in office I keep swapping SATA drives - Fusion drives, M2 SATA adaptors, etc. - so no good for this Darth-Vader MacPro.

So, I'd started looking online on "refreshing" a Mac Pro 4,1 (2009) which I use in a four-monitor setup in office; yes, plenty of screen-deskspace is needed to examine logic circuit structures. Originally equipped with a ATI HD5770 to drive 3 displays, I added a GT120 for the fourth. Now Apple decided both cannot be used at all for macOS Mojave - what a w****r shame. Talk about being victims in such typical industry squabbles - OpenGL, DirectX, Metal, blah-dee-blah.

And no, I am NOT approaching the situation with just loads of cash. Skint it might look like - but hey, there's a challenge. This is intoxicating...

Scrutinising the famous "bay" for such Metal-supported graphics cards, I avoided the ones aimed at gaming or are capable of loads of compute power (FPS, FLOPs, etc.) but cannot help swearing at the prices flashed-compatible ones fetched.

Then, spotted the humble NVIDIA GeForce GT630 2GB (with Dual DP DVI) (with the Kepler architecture, not Fermi, my puny online research uncovered) claimed to be flashed to support the boot screen. Very simple card, no pesky power cables to connect, not enough compute horse-power for intensive graphics - but hey! suits me just fine.

But, I won't be filling others' pockets just for the boot screen - so managed to get two such GT630 for about twenty quid. For both, in case you're asking.

Here starts the nervous journey - as bricking the Mac Pro is NOT an option. Took out all the "old" cards and plugged two GT630's in. Starting with just one monitor, the MacPro booted off in High Sierra and upon logging in (I use multiple user accounts and hence a login screen), the Mac Pro *crashed* after giving some hint of the desktop on the display. Right - stay calm, stay focused. Damn, what next?
 
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OK, High Sierra crashed but it actually booted up to the point when the desktop is generated. So, must be the graphics drivers. SAFE BOOT (holding the SHIFT key while booting) fixed this - phew! God bless the chaps who put this Safe Boot feature in... Sure, the display flashed every now and then - since, now the CPU takes over the hard work in updating the screen contents - but I managed to get to the point where the icon for "Install macOS Mojave" can be double-clicked.

Then a message says something to the effect that the installation cannot proceed. WHAT?! I had researched this - and now the message is reminding me of unsupported graphics cards (all of them inside the cMP), etc. My colleague stood up, peered over his monitor at the commotion I made. Jaysus...

The GT630 is supported - for sure. So, I must be in a unusual situation for the install software to get confused... Right two GT630 cards installed, unusual enough?

Let's dig out the second GT630. After what seemed like numerous power cycling of the MacPro, which I am sure is NOT good for the "health" of the machine, I replaced the cover and powered up. Sure enough, with just a single GT630 card to drive only one monitor, "Install macOS Mojave" continued. And continued. Progress!

Then halted with a big message. Problem? Butterflies started flying in my tummy. No, no - the message says what to do next; power off the MacPro, and power up again but holding the button on for longer until the famous firmware update starts with a BEEP (not BOING!). And then release. Breathe...
 
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The display started showing an Apple logo and a progress bar - getting there, yes! Then - the standard Apple registration process. Clicked this, that, account settings, password, etc, clicked for "Dark Mode" and WOOHOO! I have a Mojave desktop. Results...

Thinking about it, someone at Apple must have left out the situation for multiple graphics card in a Mojave installation procedure. Software - crap!

Looks good, this Dark Mode. Emphasises content while making menus, widgets, etc. less glaring. I liked it - if not for just being a change. But, faster. FASTER... Images load faster. Safari no longer does the display "dancing" as contents on a webpage continues to load. Nice - at least saves me from wrongly clicking links - especially adverts (damn!).

So, the Metal graphics thingamabob is what Apple is using to fight against DirectX and OpenGL. Fairly laborious process getting there...plus making some precious hardware redundant - but hey! my ten-year-old workstation is back with Apple's flagship OS (at least in my opinion).

But we're not done. I have three more monitors to hook up to with the second GT630 card staring at me... The push is not done - more nerves to wreck.

(To be continued...)
 
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One moment, the GT630 has three video ports - two DP and a DVI. Well, cannot be easier then (famous last words). Power off, hooked up the monitors with the relevant cables and booted with a BOING...!

Now, the booting appears to be much longer - something wrong? Mojave protesting against too many monitors? Then two monitors showed the familiar Mojave sand-dune image with the login screen on one. The third one, via the middle DP port, stayed black. Hmm, some loose wiring? Doubled checked the monitor power - it's good. Tugged the cable, nothing moved.

Let's reboot. BOING...! Same, damn! Same monitor stayed black. Now, if three monitors is a show-stopper, then no need to say that having the fourth is a non-starter. Right - time to open up the MacPro and slot in the second GT630...What a difference it made without having to worry about the 6-pin mini-PCIe-to-PCIe cables.

This time, with just using the left DP port and the DVI port connected to both GT630 cards, the cMP restarted...again with that dreaded wait for the Mojave login screen. Ah, then a LIGHTBULB situation - we're missing the BOOT SCREEN - and psychologically, without that and the progress bar to show the booting process, I seemed to think the MacPro took longer to boot. Right - this is all too familiar in the part of a film where radio silence prevailed on the dark side of the moon. Hmm, dark side? Mojave Dark Mode? Dark side of the force (a la MacPro 2013) punishing us? I started face-palming myself - in slow motion in case my colleagues hear me.

My desk lit up brightly - and I looked up at all four monitors showing the Mojave sand-dune image! WOOHOOO!!
 
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Let's recap on the GT630 cards' hook up. Three ports each, total of four in use. I could get six monitors - damn, my colleagues will be jealous. Or laugh at me for having a security video wall.

Should I try out the DP port in the middle and go through the power cycling again? Years back, a uni mate of mine remarked that like power cycling of a computer (with power surges at those moments the switch is flicked), the most dangerous moments for a aeroplane includes take-off and landing. What a crash both will make if something untoward happens!!

Wait a second - there's more to do apart from all this experimenting with a ten-going-eleven-year-old Mac Pro, and like vintage cars, one would not try too many ideas. Take care of them - with more efficient 2.5inch storage devices, slower rates for the RAMs (eg., using 1066 against 1333 or 1600 if the logic board supports it).

Right, let's stay with this setup for a few months first - experience the impact of the slower GT630 (versus the HD5770) - although I suspect I won't notice this in the mountain of design debugging I have in the current project.

Let's move on to restore my work environment - files and all. This is the magic of Migration Assistant. Fired it up, point it to my Fusion drive (connected but not booted from) and begin populating my M2-SATA SSD (inside two adaptors - M2-to-2.5inch, and then to 3.5inch bracket). As I watched the progress in the file copying, etc., I began to wonder if having the boot screen is required at all. Yea, yea - Mac heads will say that is a must.

So, perhaps I will indeed use a "dark side machine aka Windoze" to flash my own GT630 card with extra EFI bits to show a Mac boot screen. No clue how to do this now or even what's needed. But, I now know the process - and pain - to enabling a Mac Pro 2009 or 2010 to support Mojave.
 
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There were Fermi versions of the GT630 which likely only supported two monitors at once. The Fermi versions has 96 shaders/cores rather than 192/384 on the Kepler, they also has a seperate shader clock value that was double the speed.
 
Do these Fermi ones, with VGA, HDMI and DVI ports, then only support two monitors? In a related question to a seller on the "bay", I was told that an "active adaptor" is required as with any Mac supporting more than two screens. This contradicts my HD5770 usage since I I use all three video ports with NO adaptor.
 
Moving on...

All the Mac's I use are configured with Fast User Switching - that is, all multiple user accounts can be active but (obviously) only one use the connected display. Via Screen Sharing from another Mac, one can still access an active account with a virtual screen on the local display. On Mojave, I noticed that during the account switching, the display changes to the desktop background for the user account being switched to when the password is required to be entered. A nice touch to enforce correct user account switching.

But, I recall from as early as Leopard, the user switching is animated instead of a "flick". That is, the current screen contents moved horizontally, akin to a face on a cube being rotated, to an adjacent face. Maybe I am asking too much...Small, little details.

One thing I have not mentioned is the two of my displays are rotated to maximise screen height due to these monitors being 1920x1080. During installation, the GT630 did not rotate them properly, nor was there an option to do so. After installation was completed in full, the rotation settings re-appeared in Preferences>Display. Imagine what a mess it'll be if for some reason, non-Apple-EFI firmware in the GT630 prevented this - a show-stopper.

But, so far, so good! Migration Assistant completed with all my files transferred from my High Sierra volume correctly. Time Machine, though, started from fresh with all 175GB of it all but this does not bother me as the TM volume is another SATA drive. Ah, the wonders and advantage of having FOUR drives in this cMP.
 
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At the moment, I have TWO GT630 cards installed and driving a total of four monitors. The DP port located in the middle of each graphics card outputs are NOT used - and from another message on the "bay", the claim was that all THREE ports from each card can be active simultaneously. This is for a pricey, EFI-flashed GT630 - and therefore, assuming the difference is just the boot screen, then my setup should be able to drive SIX monitors in total. Hmm....

I know spec-wise, DP ports are hot-pluggable but I think I rather shut down the cMP before connecting more monitors.

Work-wise, Linux servers are used and on my MacPro, I use XQuartz (X11) to open terminals on the former. I mentioned earlier that overall, visually Mojave appears to be faster in many aspects. Today, I managed to notice that X11 graphics rendered on the MacPro (via XQuartz) are zipper in performance. A bonus at last for my efforts and angst in this upgrading process.
 
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Today, the two 1920x1080 monitors (rotated) are replaced with Dell UltraHD monitors. Rotated as well. As I proceed to re-organise the Display>Arrangement and click on the Rotate option, the resolution defaulted to (much to my dismay) a setting of 1080x1920. As I proceeded to clicked on Resolution>Scaled to attempt to get higher resolutions - UltraHD is more than 1920x1080!! - I was presented with only 1080x1920 as the maximum available setting. This is going to be embarrassing as I requested the change to the newer monitors and in the sea of Windows users, all enjoying all manners of screen resolution support and ready to pounce on the lone cMP user, the fear of being mocked becomes real...

The "google's your dad, google's your dad..." chanting became louder and louder. Clicked on various websites - macworld, osxdaily, apple.stackexchange.com, etc. - none mentioned about screen resolution settings for rotated displays. Looks like I'm buggered - and secretly started to blame my under-powered GT630 and/or the related drivers.

Ah, perhaps the 60Hz/30Hz setting might help. As I laboriously clicked and flicked through all combinations to no success, it began to dawn upon me that perhaps I needed a better graphics card. Sh*t. All that high hopes on a macOS-native support for a economical graphics card with three video ports come crashing.

Then, a *eureka* moment. Recalling MacOS is fond of altering a mouse-click behaviour, for example, a Control-LeftClick brings up a pop-up contextual menu, or Option-Clicking an icon on the System menu icon to drag it "out", or Option-Clicking the Airport icon to show much more details on the wireless connection, I held the Command key and clicked on the Resolution>Scaled icon in the Display settings. Nothing extra. Let's try another...

With Option-Click - VOILA! - many more video resolutions appeared. All distinctively marked as "Lower Resolution" but I do get higher ones than 1080x1920 (remember - display is rotated). Results!!!

My smile widened to a grin...My skint dual GT630 graphics update is demonstrably going somewhere.
 
Why in the world do 4K monitors exist?

No, they're nice and useful - except when it is the only display connected to my ten-yer-old, beefed-up cMP running Mojave with non-EFI graphics cards. So, a nicely EFI-flashed card will need to support 4K displays and I found myself piqued to discover that booting up with a 4K display *only* results in a black screen all the time. :-( .

Hence, the label "Metal, 4K supported".

When I plugged all my displays back in, everything returned to normal. Looks like the effect of having non-4K monitors, ie. the Apple LED Cinema displays, is going to be something I need to remember....

Wonder if a "dummy" monitor - something I used in the past to fool the OS to boot properly on a headless MacMini without a physical monitor attached - will help when plugged into the unused video ports.
 
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Have a Macbook Pro (late 2008) brought from here, it had El Captain on, ( I needed it for outlook but that will not work on anything less than High Sierra, which I found out later ), no update available from APP store.
So I decided that I am going to update it myself (I knew it could be done on this mac which is 5.1, I watched some YT videos online and messing around moved upto High Sierra then updated again to Mojave. I have the ram to do it and the iOS install is much easier than Windows.

Installed it on a SSD, (might as well if I am moving to a new iOS) installed Mojave, then back up from Time Machine from the NAS.

Installed Outlook and kaboom, it worked.

Took a couple of hours but well happy with the result. 11 year old mac running new OS, From what I can tell everything is working and it's been a month, no drop off in performance, 5.0 GHZ wifi stable.
The patch install is vital....

Did my mates also who has the Macbook Pro 2011!

Enjoy!
 
I love reading about projects like this and its amazing the decent performance you can get by putting an SSD and more RAM in to Macs going back 10 years or so. Seen a few cool old MacBooks which have been upgraded and make great daily machines for most tasks.

All I need is to find a nice black MacBook on eBay...
 
A "glossary" of some sort should help individuals here if planning to do the same and encounter Mojave' features:

* Dark Mode - set of colours to make the display emit less blue light by NOT being so bright everywhere; purportedly reported to save power too

* Metal - Apple's graphics API (application programming interface) for graphics card hardware

* 4K - 4096x2160 resolution for displays; basically doubled along the horizontal and vertical for HD (1920x1080)

* Kepler - GPU (graphics processing unit) in the Nvidia GT630 card; name of the architecture for this family of designs (just like Intel Pentium, Core, Xeon, etc.) now natively supported by Metal

* Rotated Display - displays can be rotated to maximise desktop height; a 1920x1080 display rotated gives 1080x1920 and Mojave's SystemPreferences need to told as such (otherwise, a mouse horizontally moved results in the cursor being vertically displaced on the desktop); Option-Click reveals more resolution settings to deal with some default 4K settings

* Safe Boot - a means to disable OS drivers, especially on graphics/display accerelation, when booting; one will see the screen flicker as the display updates since the CPU is doing the hardworking

* Migration Assistant - MacOS/macOS application to port over users' files, settings, etc. when a new OS is prepared from scratch (called clean installation); supports sources such as another disk, TimeMachine, etc. The alternative is "cloning" with applications such SuperDuper!

* Fast User Switching - MacOS/macOS is based on Unix, the powerhouse OS used in Linux (arguably - don't start me on variants, etc.); Unix is a multi-user, multi-processor, multi-tasking OS and hence on MacOS/macOS, a machine can support more than one "live" user accounts, each running more than one process or application. To switch from one user to another (almost instantly), Fast User Switching is provided SystemMenu account name item once enabled in SystemPreferences>Users&Groups.

Question: why do switching if one account is needed?
Answer: when one has three accounts for a single user :) ; one for administrative settings of the OS, one for day-to-day usage, and the third for no-nonsense, restricted browsing such as online banking and not risking visiting dodgy websites.

* Screen Sharing - a means of viewing another remote Mac's display from a local Mac; Linux guys call this VNC (thereabouts). One can snoop on a kid's Mac if this feature is enabled.

* Headless MacMini - running a MacMini without a display/monitor. Usually, the OS will detect for the presence of a physical monitor being attached, and the absence of the latter will result in certain OS functions being disabled. Usage scenarios include that as a server of some sort, running iTunes to stream out movies, music, etc. Usually used in conjunction with Screen Sharing.

* Boot Screen - on all versions of MacOS/macOS, the Mac is capable of providing a display of all bootable volumes (remember, there can be two or more volumes on a single drive) for the user to select and boot from. This makes OS switching relatively painless - simply by restarting the Mac and holding down the OPTION key until the Boot Screen presents itself.

(More to come...)
 
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