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You are here: MacNN Forums > Hardware - Troubleshooting and Discussion > Mac Desktops > Firmware Upgrades

Firmware Upgrades
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Waragainstsleep
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Jun 13, 2013, 07:57 PM
 
Its my understanding there is a hack that allows you to flash a 2008 Mac Pro with the 2009 Mac Pro firmware and since they have the same board, you can effectively turn your 2008 MP into a 2009 MP, assuming you bothered to go on and match the CPUs and RAM from the newer version too.

Does anyone know if this can be done with a 2008 Xserve to make it into a 2009 model? They're basically the same as the Mac Pros on the inside as I understand it. Same chipsets etc. The 2009 supports Mountain Lion but the 2008 stops at Lion. Its clearly capable of running ML though.
I have plenty of more important things to do, if only I could bring myself to do them....
     
Waragainstsleep  (op)
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Jun 14, 2013, 10:38 AM
 
OK, it might have been a 2009-2010 firmware hack. I'm pretty sure the 2008 model uses the same board as well though.
I have plenty of more important things to do, if only I could bring myself to do them....
     
P
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Jun 15, 2013, 12:50 PM
 
No, the 2008 model is Harpertown CPUs and FB-DIMMs. The 2009 is Nehalem and straight DDR3 DIMMs. Not the same socket, not the same board arch, not the same anything.
The new Mac Pro has up to 30 MB of cache inside the processor itself. That's more than the HD in my first Mac. Somehow I'm still running out of space.
     
Waragainstsleep  (op)
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Jun 16, 2013, 02:14 PM
 
Pity. I have this thing running a striped RAID on a pair of 80GB SAS drives and now booting from a 120GB SSD. Its a 8x2.8GHz machine and even with only 4GB RAM its pretty damn quick but its not good enough to run Mountain Lion according to Apple. Which is silly.
I have plenty of more important things to do, if only I could bring myself to do them....
     
P
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Jun 17, 2013, 03:46 AM
 
Silly as in no reason, no - there is a very good reason. Silly as in Apple should have made an effort to make it work, certainly. But that's neither here nor there.
The new Mac Pro has up to 30 MB of cache inside the processor itself. That's more than the HD in my first Mac. Somehow I'm still running out of space.
     
   
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