I recently bought this particular machine but upon checking it over, was bemused when I found that the Serial Number on the About This Mac screen was literally "System Serial#" (without quotes).
Under the Hardware Overview, its listed as "Not Available"
Curious, I opened the case and noticed that the EFI chip had obviously been changed over, due to the soldering not exactly being up to factory standards.
I did a read of the firmware and edited it ($SVS etc), flashed the EFI with it, but same result.
For curiosity sake, I've attached the firmware dump. If anyone can get it to show anything other than "System Serial#", that'd be great. If not, if anyone has a dump of their EMC 2881 firmware, I'd be keen to reflash my system with it.
Thanks,
David
Attachments:
Last edit: 8 years 5 months ago by perthdave. Reason: Removed link
Please remove the link to the file and upload it as a zip here. Also please give me your current serial number via PM and I will edit the file to suit your needs.
I have been looking into your file today and have found no region pertaining to the serial number which is strange. I have run into a couple instances of this, but it has not been often. I did a comparison of the similar model bin that I have in the repository and grabbed the compression header to the end of the file and threw it into a new file appended with bz2 to look at the overrides and was surprised that I couldn't find this header in your bin file. I feel like your file has been modified by someone who knows more about this than I do. I have grabbed a couple random bin's from my desktop to be sure this is normally the bz2 compression header and the results still point to yes. I could still be overlooking something here though.
If you search for BZh11AY in a bin file you will normally see the Fsys......overrides section preceded by FF's. This is where I commonly find the serial number by searching directly below it for "hwc" in a text editor. When I cannot find the serial number for some reason or another I will look for the compression header as explained above and manually search. Long story short... The compressed file containing your system overrides and your serial number cannot be found.
This is a great file for us to research though I recommend that you force a firmware upgrade on this mac and then dump it again and place it here for review.
Thanks for taking a look and analysing the binary. I'm glad it may be of some benefit in the future.
I'd like to try to force a firmware upgrade but unsure how to do that. I've downloaded what I think is the correct firmware from the Apple website but upon opening the .pkg, it says it doesn't need to upgrade.
Alternatively, if I flash my EFI with the EMC 2881 binary in your repository, what will be the result?
Could I also grab the $SVS hex area which includes the serial number from the EMC 2881 binary and graft it into the binary I dumped from my machine?
I tried to "graft" the module, but it didn't match up as I had hoped. I think using the firmware from the repository will go one of two ways: It will work or it will not. If changing or adding a serial number is a necessity then I suggest you force the firmware upgrade on your existing Mac. After it has installed you can dump the firmware again and compare it against the dump you sent me. Additionally you can grab the firmware from the repos and flash it to the EFI chip and then IF it boots up you can force a firmware upgrade again, test functionality, and if all is well you can send me the dump of the forced upgraded firmware for me to modify for you to flash back.
Almost forgot! You can find the info on forcing an upgrade
HERE
. If you can please post a short "tutorial" with your trials and tribulations with this matter I would be greatful.
Same problem here. I have that exact model, the chip has been resoldered, I can see one pin is almost out, and the stickers at left and right are a bit melted. 100% sure this chip has been re soldered, and also messed up with the serial number, as the system does not show it. also i7 2.5Ghz mid 2014 A1398 MBP Retina 15"
Any updates? how do you force firmware update? any one has this exact same dumb? in the repository there is only the 2.8Ghz file, this one shows up empty...
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I recommend that you force a firmware upgrade on this mac and then dump it again and place it here for review. 
