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Thunderbolt Mac Pro Early 2009 with Gigabyte GC-Titan Ridge Card

This is my story to add Thunderbolt support to my Mac Pro Early 2009 (5,1) with a Gigabyte GC-Titan Ridge Card. Before we begin a quick disclaimer below.

Difficulty Level: Medium

Disclaimer: Try this at your own risk. I do not guaranty that this will work for you but I hope it does. This is purely for educational purposes and I am not responsible for any void in warranty. This is not a end all be all guide for getting the GC-Titan Ridge thunderbolt card working for every use case. These steps have worked for me but there might be additional steps that might be required for getting other thunderbolt devices to work. Please follow the links mentioned in the the Useful Links section below for more update to date information about the community postings on this topic.

About my Mac Pro 5,1

My mac pro has the following configurations:

My purchase and upgrade story can be found here (Github View).

Prerequisites

My Upgrade Journey

Gigabyte GC-Titan Ridge Card package contents

Here is a information about the package contents of Gigabyte GC-Titan Ridge Card Link.

image-gc-titan-ridge Source: Gigabyte Website Link

Disassemble GC-Titan Ridge

Once you unbox your titan ridge card it should look like this:

image-gc-titanridge

Unscrew the 4 philips head screws to expose the PCB:

image-gc-titan-ridge-disassembled:

The blue and the green chips that need to be flashed have a small dot with their respective colors.

Install flashrom using brew

brew install flashrom

terminal-install-frashrom

Assembling Programmer

Look at the directions on the numbers on the green small board while assembling your programmer.

image-assembling-programmer

Connect to the blue chip

Align the programmer as shown in the image below focus on one side of the clip first. Align one side and then the other side pushing down firmly.

image-connected-blue-chip

Verify flashrom can detect your CH341A 24 25 Series EEPROM Flash Bios USB Programmer

flashrom -p ch341a_spi

terminal-verify-flashrom-detection

Backup your Blue Chip Firmware

flashrom -p ch341a_spi -r OriginalFirmware-BlueChip.bin

terminal-backup-bluechip-firmware

Connect to green chip

Align the programmer as shown in the image below focus on one side of the clip first. Align one side and then the other side pushing down firmly.

image-connected-green-chip

Backup green chip firmware

flashrom -p ch341a_spi -r OriginalFirmware-GreenChip.bin

terminal-backup-greenchip-firmware

Connect to the blue chip and flashing TitanRidgeMacOSFirmware.bin custom firmware

Connect to blue chip again to be able to flash the firmware.

image-connected-blue-chip

flashrom -p ch341a_spi -w TitanRidgeMacOSFirmware.bin

terminal-flashing-new-firmware

Optional: Verify TitanRidgeMacOSFirmware.bin firmware is applied correctly

flashrom -p ch341a_spi -v TitanRidgeMacOSFirmware.bin

terminal-verify-flash

Alternate verify - Check against original blue chip firmware should fail:

flashrom -p ch341a_spi -v OriginalFirmware-BlueChip.bin

Connect pin 3 and pin 5 of jumper for Hot Swap capability

Update: March 14th, 2020

Lets now try connecting pin 3 and pin 5 of the THB_C Header Cable provided. Some folks have reported that without this their Mac freezes on boot. Have not noticed this issue on my end. Reference Link.

image-jumper-wire

When connected the jumper from pin 3 to pin 5 should look like this.

image-jumper-pin3-pin5

Connect this other end of the THB_C Header to the card into the J1 Header port of the card.

Alternate approaches suggested by community:

image-jumper-pin3-pin5-alternate-1 image-jumper-pin3-pin5-alternate-2

Connect the card into the system

I connected this card in Slot 4 of my PCIE on Mac Pro.

I also connected the display port outputs on my RX580 to the Mini Display input on the card (I did this as I want to use GC-Titan Rige card to power my Thunderbolt Displays).

image-gc-titanridge-macpro-slot4

Inner view:

image-gc-titanridge-macpro-slot4-inside

Find and mount EFI disk

Note: Do this steps listed below if you want to OpenCore your Mac.

diskutil list
sudo diskutil mount /dev/disk0s1

terminal-mount-efi

Copy Contents of MacPro5.1 OpenCore.zip file into the mounted EFI drive

I already had a EFI folder within the drive. I got an alert asking to merge or update the contents. I chose Merge. The Final folder looked like this:

finder-copy-to-efi

Bless EFI drive to enable OpenCore

Note: I used my original graphic card while I was trying to boot into the recovery drive.

To boot into recovery mode hold down the Command (⌘) + R key after turning on the Mac Pro.

image-keyboard-recovery

Follow the instructions on the official OpenCore documentation to OpenCore your Mac. This includes the following:

Open the terminal and run the following commands to make your EFI drive bootable (bless)

Boot to see the OpenCore boot screen

You should see the OpenCore boot screen on your next boot.

image-OpenCore-Boot-Screen

View System Report of your MacPro

system-report-thunderbolt

After the Apple Thunderbolt Displays are connected to the system they work in Daisy Chaining and the following is shown in the System report. I have also tried to Hot Swap the displays successfully.

system-report-thunderbolt-working

The card is also detected successfully as a PIC Hardware as a thunderbolt and USB 3.1 device.

system-report-pci-slot-4-thunderbolt-detected

USB 3.1

The USB 3.1 / USB-C port on the card worked successfully to connect to and transfer data to. The screenshot of the System Report with USB 3.1 and Disk Utility showing the attached Drive is as shown below:

disk-utlity-240gb-ssd system-report-usb-31

Thunderbolt devices tested

USB devices tested

BlackMagic Speed Test with a mSata SSD. This test was done while on of the USB-C port was connected to 2 Apple Thunderbolt displays.

blackmagic-speedtest-msata-ssd

OS tested

I have tested this is working on the following Operating Systems:

Note: I do not recommend or support installing unsupported macOS on your Mac Pro.

Known Issues

Issues that I have notices so far:

References to this Doumentation

Writeups

Videos