Mac Mini crashing on sleep

Noonn,

I'm sorry to hear about the trouble you are having with your 2018 Mac mini.

However, this topic here is for a very specific firmware issue caused by an Apple Security Update back in March.

Did your problem begin with SecUpd 2020-002?

If not, your's sounds like a different kind of problem that requires its own thread and answers.

Cheers and good luck.

I did put a reasonably large external 120V fan blowing on the front of the mini after Jansen's post and on very limited testing, I did not experience crashes upon sleep/wakeup/reboot. Using PowerGadget, it was running about 5 degrees C cooler under minimal load. Might seem looney, so I'm not suggesting it fixes the issue... Would be interested if some one would test and report. I didn't use a USB fan or ramp up the internal Mini fan because I didn't want to add to the mix.

Thanks for sharing this glimpse of hope. I have held off testing Big Sur beta on my main Mac mini 2018 because AFAIR in the past some beta releases have caused trouble afterwards when the later firmware versions didn't match as expected (AFAIR there might be more info in MacInTouch Mojave forums).

Installing Big Sur Beta causes another serious issues.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/does-macos-big-sur-update-your-macs-firmware.2249353/

https://mrmacintosh.com/how-to-restore-bridgeos-on-a-t2-mac-how-to-put-a-mac-into-dfu-mode/

When Apple Configurator 2 attempted to downgrade on the 3rd step it failed leaving the Mac in a Unusable state. Apple does not allow downgrading BridgeOS.

R.Simon,

Did you try to go back to Mojave after upgrading to Catalina and the T2 firmware?

I think I asked this somewhere before.

Basically: Clone internal Mojave drive to an external drive (I do this normally for back-up) -> Upgrade internal drive and T2 firmware to Catalina -> Clone/Copy the just cloned Mojave drive back to the internal drive (now with updated T2).

Does this work? I don't think in 30 years of Mac use that I have ever downgraded after a major upgrade. I have often run two different macOS's on different drives on the same Mac (like when Power PC apps were no longer supported). I'm not sure if there would be an issue or not.

FYI-I'm with you, a couple of my semi-critical applications are 32 bit only. I'd be happy to pay for an alternative solution but none exists (yet).

One day after upgrading Catalina 10.15.6 on another volume and using Mojave 10.14.6 for regular work, no crashes so far, after about 5 sleep-wake ups! So I do hope the firmware updates in there have fixed it. Will report back when I do have the crash again, or in a few days after more testing.

@Rick Jansen1

Sounds good! Please come back to this thread and post your further experiences with this setup.

@mavots

No, I haven’t tried to go back to Mojave and most likely will not, as I knew that I will have to trash this one application at some point and will be forced to subscribe the other one some day.

Just had wished to be able to do it when I decide to do it instead of being forced to do so by Apple’s poor quality management.

Your own situation seems a lot more severe, as you would loose some applications that aren’t replaceable.

Probably you can later on benefit from Rick Jansen1’s experiences, when he finds that the Catalina T2 firmware does work with Mojave.

(At least that’s what I would wish for you both!)

Tks a lot, pls keep us inform...

It seems to be THE solution finally...

This can help us to finally fix this horrible problem.

I will try your solution soon...

and keep you informed.

Shame on Apple...

FWIW, I tried the same method of installing Catalina on an external drive to update firmware. I ended up with firmware (MacMini 8,1) 1037.147.4.0.0 and iBridge 17.16.16610.0.0,0 ... but forgot to see what I started with! So maybe it just didn't update firmware?

I updated my existing bug report as Rick Jansen1 suggested.

Thanks, Charles. Maybe I'll try with a different monitor and/or without the TB3 drive connected. Though they sell this thing as having expandable storage and displays via TB3, it seems to me that the Thunderbolt stuff does not work reliably enough to be considered out of beta. Maybe I was just spoiled by my 2011 Mac Pro... where everything was inside and everything “just worked” even if it was hooked up to the many external ports.

So far no Apple response to my bugre... eh, feedback.

As I'm a developer I requested code level assistance for this issue, even though it's technically not a development issue.

(Had a few more crashes since last time)

Wits end with this. I'm having the same kernel panics as everyone else. I thought it was the ram so I RMAed it. nope. One month of back and forth with apple and still nothing. This is my first bad Mac experience over a long course so its due but I didnt think it would be this bad. UGH.

No it is not, as I'm running Memtest86 on the new ram at the moment. However, it was set to full security on the previous ram and gave me constant and intermittent crashes before. I will try that out once the memtest has passed. Ironically, I had no problems for the first 3-4 days with the new ram and then the problems started all over again.Thanks for the tip.

We can't really separate hardware and software issues. Firmware controls voltage and it does the other hardware management, so if firmware fails, it can permanently damage hardware, such as over voltage, overheat etc.

Sparkle? I'll look. I have Office 365 for the moment, and NeoOffice as well, and LibreOffice is dandy too, so that's OK. I did move on to Catalina - figured I'd use Dreamweaver on a laptop for the moment - will try SParkle.