Q: Firmware update and SATA II hard drive

Hi all!
I am quite a computer noob and in terms of formatting drives and stuff, I am really quite lost. After reading the post about a possible do-it yourself rollback to 1.6, I was left a bit confused. Was wondering if there is anyone nice enough to perhaps dumb it down or a tutorial?

Sorry to bother you all.

Thanks

It's pretty much 'dumbed down' in the macrumors thread. Try it and post back if you have problems.
http://forums.macrumors.com/showpost.php?p=8414998&postcount=305

bilals wrote:
As you have the stock 7200rpm Seagate, have you also tried this:

http://support.apple.com/downloads/HardDrive_Firmware_Update_20

It's to stop the constant beach-balling problem that's caused by the drive's built-in motion sensor and the MBPs built-in sensor clashing with each other (your drive model number ends in G for G-Force protection).

I have applied drive firmware 2.0, although, I was under the impression it addressed the click/beep problem ([see this thread|http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2049659]). I did not have those symptoms but uprev'd the HDD firmware anyway. You can see I am a masochist with a lot of time on my hands.

Ponzi wrote:

fishbert wrote:

But this isn't the initial run of the hardware. The late 2008 15" MacBook Pro unibodies had the exact same chipset (down to the core revision number) and they handled SATA II just fine. In fact, NVIDIA has never released a GeForce 9400M chipset that didn't feature a 3.0Gb/s SATA II hard drive interface.

This is not a hardware problem... at least, not with the chips. It could possibly be a signal integrity issue with the routing of the logic board or in the SATA cable... that's pure speculation, but if it were the case, that should rightly fall upon Apple as a hardware recall.

I'm talking about a manufacturing defect in chip production, not design.

The issue seems to be a bit too widespread to be attributed to a production lot issue.

And with how tightly specific it is to the most recent MacBook Pros, I would be very surprised if the culprit is hardware that's shared between the mid-2009 and late-2008 models. That would be extremely uncanny timing for problematic chip production to line up so neatly with a different company's product lifecycle.

I mean, NVIDIA just cranks out the chipset part... they don't do anything special based on whether one customer (Apple) buys one to put in laptop A over laptop B.

my theory is that, at first, they had made some changes for power consumption, the main "consumer wow factor" was the extedned battery life right? well lets be honest. ~20% more battery cant equate to 40% longer battery usage lenght without cutting out somewhere, im not saying the new batteries are not efficient, im just saying that since the chipset is identical with the one used in the 2008 unibody macbook pros, i just think that maybe it has something to do with power consumption, maybe the reaons the chipset was limited in the first place was for better efficiency (battery wise)

thats my 0.02$ consipiracy theory or whatever you feel like labeling it.

now i have a question, im in the midst of having both my main logic board and haddrive replaced.

lets theoretically imagine the logicboard comes PRE-LOADED with 1.7.... will the roll back utility still work? or since its a virgon 1.7 chipset it would have nothign to fall back to or not be conmpatible in anyway?

Just curios, weighing out if i even want to have my logic board swapped if i cant fall back to 1.6 if its the firmware again.

Thank you, chances are this was answered somewhere down the line. and ill be honest, im hoping some one can save em the time of searching 70+ pages. thank you.

Peter Di Arcangelo wrote:
my theory is that, at first, they had made some changes for power consumption, the main "consumer wow factor" was the extedned battery life right? well lets be honest. ~20% more battery cant equate to 40% longer battery usage lenght without cutting out somewhere, im not saying the new batteries are not efficient, im just saying that since the chipset is identical with the one used in the 2008 unibody macbook pros, i just think that maybe it has something to do with power consumption, maybe the reaons the chipset was limited in the first place was for better efficiency (battery wise)

thats my 0.02$ consipiracy theory or whatever you feel like labeling it.

I think it's safe to say that there was a conscious decision to limit the SATA interface on the 13" and 15" MacBook Pros to half speed. Why? Who knows. Whatever the reason, responding to the resulting public backlash by releasing a broken 3.0 Gb/s implementation does absolutely nothing but cause problems for paying customers.

Peter Di Arcangelo wrote:
now i have a question, im in the midst of having both my main logic board and haddrive replaced.

lets theoretically imagine the logicboard comes PRE-LOADED with 1.7.... will the roll back utility still work? or since its a virgon 1.7 chipset it would have nothign to fall back to or not be conmpatible in anyway?

It's not like there's a version 1.6 hiding in the back corner of the logic board's EFI ROM, waiting to be released by a rollback tool. EFI version 1.7 firmware is EFI version 1.7 firmware... it all looks the same.

So does anybody suggest waiting to buy a MBP right now until the problem is solved or just go ahead and buy it. does anybody know if this problem is still happening with the new mbps that are being sold?

PLEASE HELP.

ok maybe i that clear, lets say i do take in the new logic board with 1.7 pre-installed, will i be able to use the downgrade tool? im thinking yes, all i need is some reaffirming answers. wasnt

I would go ahead and buy one!

I have had zero problems at all with my new "stock" MacBook Pro.

I have the "low-end" version with the stock Hard Disc. I upgraded all the software & installed the EFI 1.7 but have not experienced any of the symptoms listed on this thread.

I don't know if some production batches only exhibit these problems but my baby is well behaved.

Yes Peter. Firmware is firmware as long as it is the same which it will be. Apple always changes the part number when they make a change. The 1.7 will downgrade fine.

My new 15" MBP has 1.7 from the factory and it rolled back to 1.6 just fine. It allows my new SSD to work, yea!

My new 15" MBP worked perfectly with the stock 250GB 5400 RPM hard drive. It only had problems when I installed an SSD. It still worked perfectly if I put the stock drive back in. I doubt you will have any problem unless you change your hard drive, and not necessarily then.

Its great that so many can now have a working MacBook Pro again but I find it amazing that this "downgrade-update" has to come through the backdoor....

With 78 pages of posts you think someone somewhere ("they") would either release an official 1.6EFI Downgrade or pull the 1.7 update and release vers 1.8.. It surely cant be rocket science.

But then again maybe "they" are all busy rewriting code for +Slow Leopard+ & all its multifaceted bugs.

Obviously there are priorities, look up "iPhone" "App store"

Lol

Or this one: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2044754&tstart=0&start=0

My iPod touch has never been able to view Youtube Videos (well if you are prepared to wait 15 minutes for a clip to download then maybe). Firmware 1, 2 and 3 and still waiting...

Guess it was a lot easier when they had only one or two computer products