Mac Pro, tons of upgrades, NO video on boot
This may be outdated, but I’ll give it a try.
Mac Pro 5,1. Upgraded to 6-core 3.33 processor a few years back, with Radeon 560 video card, USB3, 48GB RAM, 500GB SSD boot drive. The machine screams; it is WAY faster than my 2017 iMac 3.5. Everything functioned normally for a long time under 10.14.6. I moved offices and powered the Mac Pro down. It sat for about three months.
Now upon boot there is NO video output; the screen is black from either the DVI or HDMI output of the card. The monitor is known good.
The machine POSTs and chimes normally, but then it stops and never displays any image on screen at all.
I have followed the Mac Technician manual to the letter more than once beginning in the “No Video” section on page 53: http://tim.id.au/laptops/apple/macpro/ma...
Those steps include replacement with a known good (alternate) video card, NVRAM and SRAM resets, etc. I have reinitialized the SSD with a new copy of 10.14 and tried booting from a regular 3.5” drive. I have even replaced the backplane board.
I went back to page 33 in the manual, disassembled the machine, and tried to start from scratch. Everything works as predicted, with one exception:
On page 36, the manual says: “Shortly after boot start, verify that a red-colored LED is illuminated within the optical audio-out jack at the rear of the Mac Pro. If so, software drivers have been loaded.”
In fact, that LED does not illuminate on either backplane board, and the manual does not offer any guidance in this case. (“If the red is not illuminated, then do … what?) I’m dubious that this is a critical piece of this puzzle, but it’s the only thing I can find that’s not loading as predicted.
Anybody have any ideas here? I’m not a technician but I’m a logical guy and I’m more than willing to take things apart if it might help (obviously). If nobody has any ideas, I’ll just try to sell it for parts, but I’d like to get it running if at all possible.
Thanks!
Questa è una buona domanda?
1 Commento
Hey, I just wanted to circle back here to say thanks. I felt like an EMT with a set of coronary paddles. None of the suggestions worked the first time around, or even the second or third. But I’m nothing if not stubborn, and after swapping various components, and after many attempts, installing 10.13 on the system SSD, and then updating the firmware (again), finally brought it back to life.
So thanks a lot for taking the time to suggest that; I’m not certain I would have gone that route, since it had worked for a long time on 10.14. I really appreciate all the time you took. It might not have been much, but the best kind of favor is the one that costs little, but has tremendous value. This was one of those. Thanks again.
da bravermanp