mac pro dead

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Level 6

9,180 points

mac pro dead

yup-it’s me, john b, the ‘smarty pants’ now with a big old paperweight which is mostly dead. It’s a mac pro 5,1- i tb hd in slot 1-; 24 gigs of ram. Used to be running mojave 10.14. Video card is a sapphire 7950 mac version. Monitor is an LG 43” 4k running on hdmi output. I Don’t feel too smart now... gonna need big help on this one. Have 2 wired keyboards which i know both work. Have a trackball which works. Runs off of a mini dongle plugged into one of the front usb sockets/ports. Here is what i have tried: resetting smc/ pmu- didn’t do much. Zapped pram once... 3 chimes... didn’t do much either. The keyboard doesn’t seem to work no matter which usb socket/port I plug it into. I press the caps lock key on the keyboard once or twice and a light comes on , on the keyboard, above the keys if that makes sense to anyone-that way i know it’s at least working basically... and i get a white screen, and the startup chime, and...., that’s it. No Apple logo, no progress bar, no startup/login screen, no mouse arrow- nothing but a white screen. Usually it loads, i see the apple logo, then login... but i ...got..... pretty much nothing... well, i do have my mom’s old macbook pro from 2008, which mostly works, apart from the battery which doesn’t- still usable roughly, but none too speedy. Anyways... survey says i’m hooped. So any help appreciated

thanks

john b

Mac Pro, macOS 10.14

Posted on Mar 3, 2019 5:15 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Grant Bennet-Alder

Level 10

140,801 points

Mar 14, 2019 5:35 PM in response to Johnb-one

That's really interesting, Jonhb-one.

If your Mac Pro has been completely dead the "approved method" to debug is to remove absolutely everything that is in a slot: all the drives, all the PCI-e cards, all the RAM (or maybe keep one if you are feeling lucky), and go for the Chime. Then build back up an Item at a time.

If you had taken that drastic path, you probably would have found the killer drive along the way.

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Answer 2

Johnb-one Author

Level 6

9,180 points

Mar 14, 2019 3:30 PM in response to Johnb-one

Yup---It was hard drive #2. It failed totally. dead as a doornail. I did replace the CMOS battery which was about $8. Didn't do any harm. I did check the video card to make sure that it was working, power cables connected, secured, and all the way in the correct PCI-X slot (there's only one, really, that the card is intended to go into) and that the switch on the side was in the correct position, and it was. So...ah...apparently when a hard drive fails totally and it's still in its drive sled/caddy, inside your Mac Pro, plugged in all the way, it will stop full bootup, hence my white screen of mystery, lack of Apple logo and progress bar, even though hard drive #1, the startup drive, was perfectly fine. It also seems to have cured my lack of a working USB keyboard, and an inability to do anything apart from the reset smc/pmu, which did nothing. So, that's it. Yanked the dead drive. plugged in keyboard and mouse, started 'er up, reset the pmu/smc, crossed fingers, did the pram zap dance. and...ta-daaah..it lives again, and it works fine now. How much cash did it cost me ? $52 for the evaluation, $8 for the battery, and having to haul it out to a friend's car, taking it in, then going to get it, and having to haul it back in again, carefully.

Having a working Mac Pro again, thinking and expecting the worst, but only having to pay $60, finding out what was wrong, and why it did what it did, thanks to the suggestions of other Mac users, and knowing you won't have to go through all of this for a super long time, and being greatful

Priceless

John B

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Answer 3

Johnb-one Author

Level 6

9,180 points

Mar 5, 2019 6:02 PM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

Thanks, Grant Bennet-Alder. Looking over the service manual for the mac pro... and not being able to get too far... eg startup chime, power led on front is lit up, and led’s by the optical cage being green, amber, green, green, and a white screen with the switch on the video card being in position 1( position 2 gives no video at all... eg black screen) leads me to believe it’s either the CMOS battery ( $ 10) or the video card which is about 6 years old or so... and they do fail... could be the hard drive(s) too... dunno for sure which one it is or if it’s all of ‘em. This I do know: it’s gonna require some cash to find out and patience.

Thanks for your reply

john b

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Answer 4

Mar 3, 2019 7:04 PM in response to Johnb-one

The chime is sounded in software when the Mac passes the Power-On Self test. Your mac is working.

If the drives are seeking, and it seems to be loading up the software, and it does not spontaneously power off in the next few minutes, your drive and the software on it are likely fine as well.

The graphics card. If it does not seem to be showing anything, that leads me to say you may have unplugged the cable (always look for the obvious stuff first) or that the card is not working, or maybe your display is not working.

From power-on to the login screen, Mac graphics runs in simple mode. The acceleration driver does not get switched on until the login screen or the desktop. So if you see stuff leading up to the login screen, then nothing works after that, its likely the graphics card (or clobbered drivers).

Safe Mode uses simple graphics mode throughout. Screen updates will be wonky and slow, but will ultimately be correct. Accelerated graphics mode is never used in Safe Mode, because the accelerated Driver has not been loaded.

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mac pro dead

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