Mac Pro 4,1/5,4 and Boot rom mods & Windows issues

[Rominator]

Courtesy of Dosdude and lightbulb fun and H982687 we now have easy way to give a little "new" back to these venerable machines.

I was able to add microcode to have latest from Intel.

I blew $40 and got a 5687, no love. Just sits there dumb and deaf. No response to anything but power button.

This was predicted but sure would have been nice if we'd gained a couple CPUs.

Adding NVME boot was also trivial with provided tools and guides. What you see in profiler doesn't really change, but all of a sudden you can boot into NVME drive with ease. And I was happy to see my first gen Samsung reach the 1500 MBs speeds. Beats the 200 or so I got with SATA SSD.

Now for the down side...I have so far confirmed that Windows is just BORKED by this. I have 2 identical 4,1/5,1s. Same CPU (X5690) and I can easily swap drives. My Windows 10 flashing environment SSD boots right to desktop in one, but now flashed 4,1 it crashes at first spinner. Over and over...Windows even told me it was hosed and I needed to repair via outside media.

I put it back in unflashed 4,1 and it got right to desktop. (after "installing new devices")

I decided to be even more scientific, I flashed the 4,1 back to stock boot rom, slid Windows drive in and it booted right up again.

Flashed it back with improvements, Windows a train wreck again.

Next I will try to do a fresh Windows install.

I recall seeing someone else say they had Windows problems, can't recall if they figured out.

But modding for these 2 things is easy now. The way I see it, next for 4,15,1 is to find out why the top CPUs are still unsupported using Intel's latest Microcode.

Got to be a "kosher CPUs" list somewhere else in that rom.

[LightBulbFun]

it seems currently at least existing windows installs dont like the new microcode patched BootROMs for some reason...

if you do a fresh install of windows from what I have read it will work then.

as for the X5687 im wondering if its a multiplier issue the same one that plagues the Blackbird SR2 board when running X5698s, I mentioned it in this thread here https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/mac-pro-x5687-had-to-try-it.2115849/#post-26006902

[h9826790]

In my case, with the 0085 BootROM, microcode version 30, and a W3690. My previously working Windows 10 (Legacy mode) cannot boot again (BSOD said due to unsupported processor).

And I can confirm that a fresh installation (in both legacy and EFI mode) can still work.

I have no time to test the 0087 BootROM yet, some process is running, may need few more days to finish.

[thebart123]

I bet - fresh WIndows install and be fine.

Apple is messing with firmware not without reason with almost any 10.13.x (to prep it for Mojave)  - 10.13 had 5 firmware updates.

Before macOS 10.13 - MacPro had no firmware updates FOR YEARS.

Now I wonder if they messed up something or HUGE improvements coming

[Rominator]

I noticed that Redmond folks have made progress.

BSOD is now GSOD

yep, green now