pcie g5 - i wish they never made this machine tbh; just made things complicated
Not that bad. I rather wish they would make some follow-up of that.
The machines which make the life really complicated are the first generation Intel-based Macs, including the two first generations of Mac Pro.
That really sux because (officially) you are limited to 32-bit OS and 32-bit EFI. For some degree there is a remedy for the OS limitation (make a Hackintosh out of your Macintosh - and it's not even against EULA), but not for 32-bit EFI.
By far the most evil Macs are the ones with the T2 chip. Besides of obvious architecture problems the T2 chip has own NVMe controller which shouldn't be called "NVMe" as it has very little to do with the NVMe spec.
Imagine what happens when Apple abandons these machines (and these machines are running their own micro-OS inside of the T2, nothing is documented!).
Than you want to install Linux or FreeBSD on the T2 Macs.
Is there any open source driver for the T2 NVMe?
I think, the only feasible way is to reverse-engineer their T2 drivers.
But the legal questions will arise.
IMO the best would be if the government policy would prevent such closed deals.
After all, any OS is much like airport, train station / train tracks, Cable, Interstate / Autobahn: it's for people to access the infrastructure.
There should be clear guidelines what a manufacturer of infrastructure should be allowed and what should not.
IMO, the "T2" chip crosses that line.
Same with major busses like AHCI (versus ATA / first-gen SATA), the entire USB stack, the entire Thunderbolt stack not only being closed source - but guarded by an army of Cerberi.
Do you know that NOTHING, really NOTHING prevents a Thunderbolt-3 based PCIe card work in a G5 with PCIe slots?
These "magical" "head wires" are just a huge pile of bovine excrement.
Just read this:
https://www.pro-tools-expert.com/production-expert-1/2019/3/15/mac-pro-51-cheese-grater-with-thunderbolt-the-impossible-is-now-possibleWhy a THB-3 card "does not work" (and not even showing up) in any Mac Pro?
To my understanding just because the card needs an EFI driver to enable some power coming in.
The alternate solution is to boot Windows first via Bootcamp, Windows has the run-time THB-3 driver, that enables the power.
Re-start the Mac in macOS mode - and you have the THB-3 ports on that 2009 Mac Pro.
Such thing (because THB-3 is obviously a part of the OS infrastructure) should be illegal and even criminal.
Of course, a third party "slave" device (THB-3 drive or monitor) can have a choice, support a certain machine / configuration or not.
But the machine itself should not do the same in reverse!
In other words: you drive down an Autobahn. You come across the border with Austria. It's your choice to drive into Austria or not.
But as long as you pay the (reasonable) money for using the road, Austria won't refuse to let you in.
Or: you want to travel from Warsaw to Verona. You have a host of choices by rail - but no matter how Italian Railway did try hard (and they did!) to prevent third-party rail access: you still can travel. Because at one point such restriction would bump into legislation and into the law. But of course you are not obligated to travel to Verona. You may want to travel to Prague, it's entirely your choice (and not the choice of Italian Rail or Czech Rail companies!)
