Mac Pro EFI Firmware Update 1.2

I just installed it as well (along with all of the iLife and iWork updates). Can't say I notice much of a difference, but at least everything is working.

- Leon

Would not run from a mirrored Softraid startup volume, but did fine from an internal clone on a single drive.

Installed ok from external drive.

Fans noisier on startup.

Does NOT fix 2GB ram limit in XP, nice one apple.

Andy

After installation i lost one of my internal sata drives from the finder, 1TB Hitachi. Disk utility could not find it. After two restarts it came back. Then .mac-crawl iDisk was locked out, after reselction in finder's prefs all is fine.

Did notice the drive bay temps lower by 3-5 degC - co-incidence or faster fans ? This is good, because previously i was hitting 55degC with a 25 degC ambient and 2-3 apps running at full steam. No fan control software installed.

Settled down and working well (apart from x1900 video card).

After I ran the firmware update, my iTunes will not open at all. I've restarted multiple times, the computer wont even shut down sometimes. Because I use iTunes a lot (especially as an iphone user) I really need this fixed. I tried updating/reinstalling iTunes, and the installer crashes when it asks where to install it. Is anyone else experiencing this or does anyone know how this can be fixed, short of an erase and install of my OS completely?

I have a client that installed the update and since can't burn with Toast. Just FYI for the thread. Will post back what turns up.

Something worth trying to "force" the Mac Pro to rescan and recognize the hardware and device tree: reset the SMC button for 5 seconds... can't hurt and might help.

Ever since I updated to the EFI 1.2 (and all the other app changes that were available last night) my 8-core won't stay asleep - wakes up by itself within 20 seconds. It also periodically gives a 10-20 second beep when I'm running a graphics intensive game, and now is crashing periodically while running Safari. I've also had app stability problems with the new iMovie and can't get it to look at some newly imported DV video without the app dying.

I've checked the permissions and verified the file system is OK in Disk Utility. I haven't reset the power manager (or equiv) yet because these don't seem to be power/fan related problems.

Any suggestions?

Turns out that my issues with iTunes, shutdown, and software update had something to do with an iPod shuffle that was plugged in to the mac pro. No clue why or how that could cause the problems but I removed it and everything seems to work properly now.

(hi to all discussion members first)

Installed and no problems so far.

I think this update fixes fan speed issues on bootcamp. Many gamers use higher fan ratings on os x but when you opened xp/vista without booting os x first, they were on defaults and this caused problems. Also when you put mac pro on sleep mode on windows, the smc settings were resetting. They probably released this update for that.

Hi AndrewCapon;

You said; "Does NOT fix 2GB ram limit in XP, nice one apple."

Exactly why do you think Apple should fix XP? I think that should be sent to Microsoft instead of Apple.

Allan

The utility could not shut my system down, but I quit the app, did a manual shutdown and everything seems fine.

be sure to print out the instructions and read them.

I may be wrong but I'm pretty sure the fan in my GPU (1900XT) is running louder after this update. It's not horrendous and if it extends the life of it by keeping it cooler then I guess that's a good thing.

David

Hi Allen,

The problem with the MacPro only accessing 2GB of ram in XP is nothing to do with Microsoft I am afraid the blame lies at Apples door.

XP is a 32 bit operating system so can access 4GB of addressable memory. This addressable memory will be ram and also any memory mapped hardware devices like video cards.

The MacPro EFI very lazily uses 2GB of this address space to map to hardware devices such as the video card, this leads to only having 2GB of ram accessible. If done properly by Apple the MacPro running XP should be able to see just under 3.5GB if you have a 512MB video card.

Maybe one day they will fix it.

Cheers

Andy