amiller770

Wearing Nitrile or regular surgical gloves helps prevent finger prints if you accidentally touch the glass.

Just acquired a 2009 Mac Pro for free. When I tried to run the Firmware tool as instructed above, I get an error message (after a few seconds), saying “This program requires Internet access. Please connect your Mac Pro to the Internet and try again”, I HAVE internet access (even switched off WiFi and used an Ethernet cable the 3rd & 4th tries). It then quits when I click OK to that error message. Any ideas?

Longer screw was on the Left for me.

The guide was correct in my case that this is the Optical Drive sensor. The board has “ODD Temp” written on it. Original HD has it’s own built in temperature sensor without a separate cable to the Motherboard, which is why OWC sells a special “In-line Thermal Sensor” SATA cable with a Temp. sensor that attaches to any new hard drive itself.

I had some regular sized (old ifixit) guitar picks and that worked well too.

NO NEED to slide the board out if there is already a 7mm thick SSD installed, as it comes out easily. Also don’t need to unplug the DVD SATA connector if not sliding the board out (Rt most SATA), or unplug the DVD heat thermal sensor, since you’re not moving the board. The less you unplug, the less chances of breaking a connector. However, with original or any 9mm HD, lifting it over the memory bracket would be very difficult IMO, w/o moving the board out ~5mm.

2nd time I did this step (due to breaking the HD heat sensor board the 1st time - see all the comments below!) I didn’t disconnect the airport antenna, since it was so difficult for me to re-plug back in (took ~5 minutes of trying); very hard to line up properly. Instead, I carefully flipped the cover over and to the side, pushing down on the connector to keep it from unplugging. (Since I already had put in a 7mm SSD the 1st time around, the antenna wire also wasn’t in the way when pulling it out.) I recommend trying this due to 3 comments above who broke theirs.

I can’t believe Apple put the PRAM battery there! Prior iMac models had them very easily accessible just behind the LCD screen. I just did a SSD install for someone and was going to replace the battery while I was at it. Not going to take a chance of breaking something in the process.

I skipped the step (6c) of prying the audio out ribbon cable connector board off the hard drive bracket (& disconnecting it), since it doesn't come off real easily, and I didn't want to damage it. It only requires a little more care when removing the HD from it's bracket if you skip step 6c.

When reinserting the ribbon cable, the cable goes UNDER the black "thin piece" connector, not between it and the white part of the connector. I struggled for 10 minutes to get the ribbon between them, but it wouldn't go in far enough for a confident connection. I then realized it goes under the black part.