iM 4,1-14,4 2011 iMac Graphics Card Upgrade

[duvelhedz]

indeed this is awsome

I would say try every MacOS version starting with Snow Leopard..

Machine shipped with 10.6.6 ori

to keep it simple, nothing atm.
but modders like Nick [D]vB could have some great benefeith of this official Apple rom.
Since they can perhaps use it to fix bugs and or ad new features for new vbios roms for these imac's..

I think the main lesson that will be learnt from this ROM is how the Nvidia card hooks into the system to give bootscreen and brightness. It will make roms that are cooked up using this as a foundation act as genuine Apple cards. I would think that this card is the only Nvidia card in existence that was designed by Apple to run on a 2011 machine. I will be testing video output to 2 external screens once Guinness time is over

 

[FlorisVN]

Machine shipped with 10.6.6 ori


I think the main lesson that will be learnt from this ROM is how the Nvidia card hooks into the system to give bootscreen and brightness. It will make roms that are cooked up using this as a foundation act as genuine Apple cards. I would think that this card is the only Nvidia card in existence that was designed by Apple to run on a 2011 machine. I will be testing video output to 2 external screens once Guinness time is over

Yrs, this is very soecial hw indeed.
If I may ask how on earth did you got this iMac.. ?

thats great, perhaps you can also test target display mode.. ?
Im very curious..

Thx for testing !!

 

[MidLifeApple]

Machine shipped with 10.6.6 ori


I think the main lesson that will be learnt from this ROM is how the Nvidia card hooks into the system to give bootscreen and brightness. It will make roms that are cooked up using this as a foundation act as genuine Apple cards. I would think that this card is the only Nvidia card in existence that was designed by Apple to run on a 2011 machine. I will be testing video output to 2 external screens once Guinness time is over

So there is a ROM out there that I could use and it is almost fully legit like a NVIDIA Driver with Boot screen and brightness.

PS, HD 1080 monitor working perfectly with 765m, and brightness slider is also good enough for me. My iMac has gained a whole new life, I think my next mod will be an I7.

 

[duvelhedz]

Yrs, this is very soecial hw indeed.
If I may ask how on earth did you got this iMac.. ?

thats great, perhaps you can also test target display mode.. ?
Im very curious..

Thx for testing !!

The iMac came in a joblot of Macs down in west Limerick. I don’t have a thunderbolt cable at the moment to test it with. I would think, if everything else is working, let’s assume that it does

 

[FlorisVN]

The iMac came in a joblot of Macs down in west Limerick. I don’t have a thunderbolt cable at the moment to test it with. I would think, if everything else is working, let’s assume that it does

Ok I see, thx for this info I was just very curious..
I understand about the thunderbolt cable..

It will proberly also work, it can be tested someday..

This Apple rom could perhaps be the "holy grail" for creating/fixing new roms for these iMac's..

Maybe even Rominiator will get back on track, to finish his 780m rom.
Who knows...

 

[duvelhedz]

Ok I see, thx for this info I was just very curious..
I understand about the thunderbolt cable..

It will proberly also work, it can be tested someday..

This Apple rom could perhaps be the "holy grail" for creating/fixing new roms for these iMac's..

Maybe even Rominiator will get back on track, to finish his 780m rom.
Who knows...

Rominator works for MacVidCards now. There isn’t a snowballs chance in Hell that he will release anything he makes. We are on our own on this.

 

[duvelhedz]

Guinness time over and back home. Fresh install of El Cap 10.11 on the iMac. Full acceleration as I expected. Not a peep out of either of the displayports on the back. Running stock non modified bootrom.

To recap:
iMac 27" Mid 2011
Stock BootROM
Boot screen with no delay.
Native brightness control.
Apple Dev Nvidia 540m.

Will restore a 10.6.8 image to an SSD and test this as this is what Apple were probably using when this card was under consideration.

Attached is a complete ioreg under El Capitan

UPDATE: No external monitor support under Snow Leopard (10.6.8)

I am thinking there may have been support in early revisions of the bootrom. As these iMacs never shipped with Nvidia cards, Apple may have broken external video support.

 

[duvelhedz]

Doe anyone have an ancient bootrom for one of these machines to check if ext display will work as I can't find one old enough. Would I get away with using the 21.5" Proto bootrom on the 27" if I clean the ME region first and just end up with some loud fans due to SMC / bootrom mismatch?

I have a 27" photo board that came in the same lot as the 21" but won't have access to it to dump the bootrom from it for another week.

 

[Nick [D]vB]

A vbios + bootrom dump from it could be very useful. I’d guess it will have a UGA type EFI probably around version 35xx. We already have a Fermi era EFI from the Quadro 4000 but that obviously had no iMac specific code. Apple had a nasty habit of using non-standard device IDs, but on Fermi they could still be controlled with soft-straps so it’s possible the vBIOS could be made to work on other cards, but they'd have to use web-drivers.

Thanks for posting the dumps!

Looks like I wasn't too far off, EFI GOP version 3593 dated Jan 28 2011, and of course they're using a mutant device ID - GT 435M! There are strings referencing UGA & EG2, which might explain why my bootrom mod brakes the boot-screen? This EFI obviously won't work on Kepler cards, but it has some stuff relating to the screen / backlight that I've not seen before, so maybe we can do some surgery on the Kepler EFI to integrate that.

dumping this original Apple EFi nvidia GT540m rom into a pc version of the card, could perhaps be the best option atm for 21,5" imac users out there.. ? i'm pretty sure there is a high chance it will work.. ?

Sadly just flashing the Apple vBIOS will probably brick a normal GT 540M, at minimum you'd need to find a card with the same memory configuration and then patch all the IDs etc. But it will be incredibly helpful to have an example of a working card to create patched roms for other cards.

Guinness time over and back home. Fresh install of El Cap 10.11 on the iMac. Full acceleration as I expected. Not a peep out of either of the displayports on the back. Running stock non modified bootrom.

I am thinking there may have been support in early revisions of the bootrom. As these iMacs never shipped with Nvidia cards, Apple may have broken external video support.

I hope you enjoyed that pint, you earned it! Would be grand if you could do a full dump of everything using DarwinDumper, but just IOreg & ACPI tables will do me. I'd also be interested to know if you get Windows boot-screens? They should work but I expect you will see a message about "No valid MXM Structure found".

Does anyone have an ancient bootrom for one of these machines to check if ext display will work as I can't find one old enough. Would I get away with using the 21.5" Proto bootrom on the 27" if I clean the ME region first and just end up with some loud fans due to SMC / bootrom mismatch?

I have a 27" photo board that came in the same lot as the 21" but won't have access to it to dump the bootrom from it for another week.

There is probably no harm in trying to cross-flash it, if you can restore the 27" using a clip. I've had a quick look at the DCB table and there are a few quirks that might explain why the external displays aren't working, but it could also be driver related, are they native DP screens or are you using adapters? A dump from that prototype 27" would be great!

 

[duvelhedz]

Thanks for posting the dumps!

Looks like I wasn't too far off, EFI GOP version 3593 dated Jan 28 2011, and of course they're using a mutant device ID - GT 435M! There are strings referencing UGA & EG2, which might explain why my bootrom mod brakes the boot-screen? This EFI obviously won't work on Kepler cards, but there's lots of stuff relating to the screen/backlight that I've not seen before, we might be able to do some surgery on the Kepler EFI to integrate it.

Sadly just flashing the vBIOS will probably brick a normal GT 540M, at minimum you'd need to find a card with the same memory configuration and then patch all the IDs etc. But it will be incredibly helpful to have an example of a working card to create patched roms for other cards.

Hope you enjoyed that pint, you earned it! Would be grand if you could do a full dump of everything using DarwinDumper, but just IOreg & ACPI tables will do. I'd also be interested to know if you get Windows boot-screens? I expect you will see a message about "No valid MXM Structure found".

There's probably no harm in trying to cross-flash it, if you can restore the 27" using a clip. I've had a quick look at the DCB table and there are a few quirks that might explain why the external displays aren't working, but it could also be driver related, are they native DP screens or are you using adapters? A dump from that prototype 27" would be great!

Just cross flashed the 27" with the Proto bootrom. Still no video to external. Machine boots up fine and still gives boot screen.

shall I do the darwindumper on the proto bootrom or the 27" orig?

 

[Nick [D]vB]

Both would be great, but a dump from the actual prototype would be best.

 

[duvelhedz]

@Nick [D]vB Check your inbox

 

[Nick [D]vB]

Thanks! Maybe send a copy to Coolbits to, he was doing good work on the brightness problem. From my testing I had always suspected the brightness control issue had more to do with the vBIOS DCB table than the bootrom firmware, the fact brightness control works with this card on the stock 27" seems to confirm that. Having dumps from the prototype (with a working screen) would be great, but I think this should be enough to get brightness control working, my only problem now is finding the time to do it - I'll do my best!

 

[jmilan0302]

Sadly just flashing the vBIOS will probably brick a normal GT 540M, at minimum you'd need to find a card with the same memory configuration and then patch all the IDs etc. But it will be incredibly helpful to have an example of a working card to create patched roms for other cards.

I looked on ebay at GT540M cards. They all had 2GB of DDR3, the one from the iMac seems to have 512MB of GDDR5.

 

[Nick [D]vB]

Yes, the odds of finding an existing PC card that works with the Apple 540M rom are vanishingly small.
We had the same problem replacing GT120 / 130 cards, it's almost as if Apple do it on purpose...

 

[jmilan0302]

Yes, the odds of finding an existing PC card that works with the Apple 540M rom are vanishingly small.
We had the same problem replacing GT120 / 130 cards, it's almost as if Apple do it on purpose...

I can't even find a picture of a GT 540M MXM that has GDDR5... So VBIOS modding is needed if someone wants to flash any GT 540M card.

 

[Nick [D]vB]

Luckily the Fermi ID straps were discovered years ago by guys hacking GeForce into Quadro. Kepler and newer now require resistor mods. The main problem is adapting the DCB / connector tables, that seems to be the key...

 

[Nick [D]vB]

Just cross flashed the 27" with the Proto bootrom. Still no video to external.

Does brightness control / external screens work in windows? (legacy MBR boot mode) I might be able to mod the Apple vBios to fix external screens, but I have a nasty feeling that will probably break the brightness control...

 

[jmilan0302]

Luckily the Fermi ID straps were discovered years ago by guys hacking GeForce into Quadro. Kepler and newer now require resistor mods. The main problem is adapting the DCB / connector tables, that seems to be the key...

Does brightness control / external screens work in windows? (legacy MBR boot mode) I might be able to mod the Apple vBios to fix external screens, but I have a nasty feeling that will probably break the brightness control...

Who's gonna run 2 external monitors off an iMac anyway? As long as one works it's fine (I'm sure most people wouldn't mind having no external monitors at all, I know I wouldn't) we should all focus on brightness control for now. It's a lot more important... Unless the DCB tables or whatever are also important for brightness control, in which case forget I said anything.

 

[Roman78]

Good Morning... One quick question...

I planned to buy a 2009 or 2010 21,5" model for experimenting. I own two 27" 2011 Models, but for changing the GPU i have to remove the Logicboard and that sucks. On the 2009 and 2010 model the GPU can be easily removed. So just for experimenting a 21,5" will do. But what about the big MXM cards like the GTX? What do i have to remove to get a bix MXM 3B card into place.

And the bigger question. The 2009 has a Core2Duo (3.06 and 3.33), the 2010 has has the i3/5 (3.06, 3.2 and 3.6). Do cards like the GTX765M and K1100M will work on the 2009 Core2Duo models? Or do i have to look for a 2010 model?

 

[atomizasser]

Hey!
Another successful upgrade! My mid-2010 iMac now has CatalinaOs + GTX765m (with @Nick [D]vB ) vBios and modded Bootrom + Wifi Upgrade Great! Thanks all fantastic people how help to bring new life to our old imac!!

However I have to comment on some problems I had:

• I could easily flash KeplerV2 vBios to GTX765 with Clip and flashrom with @Nick [D]vB drivers+flashrom on Windows 7.
• I couldn't flash bootrom to my imac in the same way. Flashrom could read imac bootrom and i could mod with UEFItool, but it couldn't write the modded version into bootrom. After first read procedure i got an erase problem constantly with flashrom. It was impossible!. After this problem I tried windows-GUI version in windows 10 computer, with update drivers and I got writing problems again and again. After writting process, the verification failed always. The only solution was, first off all, erase bootrom chip and then write modded bootrom with windows-GUI version. With flashrom, after erase chip it couldn't write anything (not chip detection). THis procedure was the only solution to write new bootrom. It was a moment of extreme panic, because the imac was not started for 1 hour!.

Thanks agian to @FlorisVN and @Nick [D]vB and of course, to all the people of this thread who, with their comments, have helped this successful task.

 

[Underbeat88]

Hey!
Another successful upgrade! My mid-2010 iMac now has CatalinaOs + GTX765m (with @Nick [D]vB ) vBios and modded Bootrom + Wifi Upgrade Great! Thanks all fantastic people how help to bring new life to our old imac!!

However I have to comment on some problems I had:

• I could easily flash KeplerV2 vBios to GTX765 with Clip and flashrom with @Nick [D]vB drivers+flashrom on Windows 7.
• I couldn't flash bootrom to my imac in the same way. Flashrom could read imac bootrom and i could mod with UEFItool, but it couldn't write the modded version into bootrom. After first read procedure i got an erase problem constantly with flashrom. It was impossible!. After this problem I tried windows-GUI version in windows 10 computer, with update drivers and I got writing problems again and again. After writting process, the verification failed always. The only solution was, first off all, erase bootrom chip and then write modded bootrom with windows-GUI version. With flashrom, after erase chip it couldn't write anything (not chip detection). THis procedure was the only solution to write new bootrom. It was a moment of extreme panic, because the imac was not started for 1 hour!.

Thanks agian to @FlorisVN and @Nick [D]vB and of course, to all the people of this thread who, with their comments, have helped this successful task.

I'm waiting for a video card with Aliexpress. I also want to upgrade the bootrom, but I don’t know what problems I may have and what to prepare for. The card will be from Dell Alienware, I don’t know if it needs to be updated with vbios? I do not have a PC on Windows, but I have a 2011 mac mini. I feel this will be a great test for me.

 

[liquidtwitch]

@Underbeat88 checkout the link in my signature. Dell/Alienware should be fine as long as it's a 765/770/780

 

[Roman78]

Oh by the way.. i finished my first part of the DIY in German: https://www.die-oswalds.de/blog/201...ac-und-das-leidige-thema-mit-der-grafikkarte/

 

[FlorisVN]

Good Morning... One quick question...

I planned to buy a 2009 or 2010 21,5" model for experimenting. I own two 27" 2011 Models, but for changing the GPU i have to remove the Logicboard and that sucks. On the 2009 and 2010 model the GPU can be easily removed. So just for experimenting a 21,5" will do. But what about the big MXM cards like the GTX? What do i have to remove to get a bix MXM 3B card into place.

And the bigger question. The 2009 has a Core2Duo (3.06 and 3.33), the 2010 has has the i3/5 (3.06, 3.2 and 3.6). Do cards like the GTX765M and K1100M will work on the 2009 Core2Duo models? Or do i have to look for a 2010 model?

I dont think core 2 duo iMac's will work with these cards, only core i series iMac's.
Correct me if I'm wrong of course..

I think this question and answers have been posted before in this thread..
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I'm waiting for a video card with Aliexpress. I also want to upgrade the bootrom, but I don’t know what problems I may have and what to prepare for. The card will be from Dell Alienware, I don’t know if it needs to be updated with vbios? I do not have a PC on Windows, but I have a 2011 mac mini. I feel this will be a great test for me.

please note you also need a flasher like a CH341A with eeprom clipper in order to do the bootrom patch.
I would suggest you also buy one, if you haven't already got one..

you can use your macmini just fine for the bootrom patch using the CH341A.
you need both the vbios and bootrom patch from Nick [D]vB, if you want an EFI bootscreen and full performance !