A bit of a fiasco for me because I wiped the drive before updating the firmware, since I didn’t realize it was going to be an issue. Both recovery methods wouldn’t work ( original OS or latest OS ). So I needed to get an old OS on the drive somehow.
Short answer
I booted the wiped laptop in target mode and Carbon Copy Clone an old OS onto the wiped drive. After that I had control of the machine again, which allowed me to run the firmware app.
Long Answer:
All other machines in the house are macOS 11 so I couldn’t clone any of those because the firmware app won’t run under macOS11.
'''LAPTOP 1 ( with accidentally wiped OWC drive)'''
* power off
* power up in Target mode ( boot while holding t key)
'''LAPTOP 2'''
* install vm fusion
* create a macOS 10.10 virtual machine
'''10.10 virtual machine'''
* mount external drive
* Carbon Copy Clone virtual drive to external drive (because virtual machine does not recognize Target Drives).
* unmount external drive[br]
'''LAPTOP 2'''
* mount external drive
* mount Target drive (laptop1 — connect the two laptops via firewire) and check with disk utility that drive is External Journaled
* Carbon Copy Clone : external drive to target drive
*
'''LAPTOP 1 ( OWC drive)'''
* power off, to get out of target mode
* reboot
* update OWC firmware