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

[quartzite]

Hey all, sorry to "spam" this excellent thread. Can someone tell me which cards support Target Display Mode at this point?

I tried digging through the past 100 pages and saw confirmation on the K2100M and K1100M (I think)? I was looking to buy a GTX 780M but didn't see anyone clearly saying they had it working.

 

[Jumme_Cph]

@Jumme_Cph Yes, it is normal to not always see the boot screen. Once Open Core is released there will always be some kind of boot screen to choose your OS.

Im not sure I understand.

By “Open Core”, do you mean patched Catalina?
The computer was booting normally with High Sierra and patched vbios..

EDIT aah, you mean future-wise.

 

[snam11]

opencore is the evolution of hackintosh bootloaders, so using this bootloader it "could" be possible to add the bright control and who knows, maybe also target mode

 

[daniel.page]

will this GPU work

Thanks in advance!

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[passatgt]

Not sure if this is common knowledge or not, and slightly off-topic, but if you have an iMac with a broken motherboard for example, but a working screen and power supply, you can still use it as an external display with this adapter:

 

[tgaillar]

After months of planing I've finally installed a GTX 780M in my iMac 2010 21.5", upgraded the i3 550 CPU to a i7 860s and installed a SSD; everything is running just fine in Catalina, I had to install and tweak Macs Fan Control because the fans were working at 100% all times (maybe because I didn't install a SSD temperature sensor? 🤔).

I had to snap the disk mount tab at the right stand hinge in order for the GPU to fit, also cut a little bit of the ODD plastic wall and removed the GPU plastic wall.

I want to thank this community for the support, specially @dosdude1 for his awesome OS X patcher, @Nick [D]vB for the amazing work with the VBIOS's, @xanderon for its live grml USB and @highvoltage12v for its research. I've been reading this thread since i've bought this iMac two years ago and cannot believe this is finally happening!

I will be sharing my experiences with y'all in the future!

So you've been upgrading a 21.5" 2010 iMac with both out-of-max-thermal/power-spec CPU & GPU, still expecting stability in the long run????

 

[bosscharles]

Not sure if this is common knowledge or not, and slightly off-topic, but if you have an iMac with a broken motherboard for example, but a working screen and power supply, you can still use it as an external display with this adapter:

View attachment 898403
View attachment 898404

Interesting, got a link/tutorial?

 

[nekton1]

Sorry to drag the thread back 10 years.

The Background
I have a tricked-out 2009 27* iMac (Core i7, 16 GB RAM and SSD) that Iike a lot but that has developed a fault in the MXM3 HD4850 card. It boots but has black squares at random in the Desktop. Apple diagnosed it as a GPU hardware fault. The iMac boots OK in Safe mode but without acceleration of course.

The Attempted Solution(s)
I removed the MXM3 HD4850 card, desoldered the eeprom, put it in a programmer and saved the efi.rom off it.
I bought an Alienware MXM3 HD4870 1 GB VRAM card and installed it without mods (a little Dremeling was needed on the heatsink but not a lot). Of course, it had no boot screen and failed to display anything after the RAM post. The eeprom on this PC card is a SMT 25P series of 512-kbit size, so it is too small to flash with the 4850.efi room. Fortunately, I have some spare new SMT 25P series eeproms of 1 Mbit, so I used a ch341a programmer to flash the 4850.efi rom to a new 1 Mbit eeprom without problem (the flash verified OK) and replaced the 512 kbit PC eeprom on the Alienware card with the newly flashed 1 Mbit eeprom. (I do have a backup of the Alienware PC rom.)
The result was the same; a boot RAM post but a permanent black screen, although the keyboard seems to be active (it bongs).
So obviously, the efi rom for the 4850 with 512 Mbit of VRAM is no good for the 4870 with 1 GB of VRAM and I need to make some changes to the firmware code. I have compared the code for the 4850 efi.rom and the Alienware PC rom side-by-side in hex in Xcode. The 4850.efi is much larger at 130 kB while the Alienware 4870 code is smaller at 64 kB, explaining the difference in the eeprom size.
The rest of the Hex is double Dutch to me (I am a hardware engineer—so why did I imagine different hardware might work with same code—duh).
I suppose I need to compare the efi.rom for a Mac 4870 PCie card with 1 GB of VRAM against the MXM 4850 efi rom with 512 MB and against the Alienware PC 4870 rom with 1 GB to try to make a "mashup" a 4870.efi MXM rom.
However, I have no idea where to start or what to read before making a start. Can anyone point me in the right direction?
Back in the day Netkas, Rominator, fouel, et al., had tools to help this but the threads are 10 years long.

 

[snam11]

Sorry to drag the thread back 10 years.

The Background
I have a tricked-out 2009 27* iMac (Core i7, 16 GB RAM and SSD) that Iike a lot but that has developed a fault in the MXM3 HD4850 card. It boots but has black squares at random in the Desktop. Apple diagnosed it as a GPU hardware fault. The iMac boots OK in Safe mode but without acceleration of course.

The Attempted Solution(s)
I removed the MXM3 HD4850 card, desoldered the eeprom, put it in a programmer and saved the efi.rom off it.
I bought an Alienware MXM3 HD4870 1 GB VRAM card and installed it without mods (a little Dremeling was needed on the heatsink but not a lot). Of course, it had no boot screen and failed to display anything after the RAM post. The eeprom on this PC card is a SMT 25P series of 512-kbit size, so it is too small to flash with the 4850.efi room. Fortunately, I have some spare new SMT 25P series eeproms of 1 Mbit, so I used a ch341a programmer to flash the 4850.efi rom to a new 1 Mbit eeprom without problem (the flash verified OK) and replaced the 512 kbit PC eeprom on the Alienware card with the newly flashed 1 Mbit eeprom. (I do have a backup of the Alienware PC rom.)
The result was the same; a boot RAM post but a permanent black screen, although the keyboard seems to be active (it bongs).
So obviously, the efi rom for the 4850 with 512 Mbit of VRAM is no good for the 4870 with 1 GB of VRAM and I need to make some changes to the firmware code. I have compared the code for the 4850 efi.rom and the Alienware PC rom side-by-side in hex in Xcode. The 4850.efi is much larger at 130 kB while the Alienware 4870 code is smaller at 64 kB, explaining the difference in the eeprom size.
The rest of the Hex is double Dutch to me (I am a hardware engineer—so why did I imagine different hardware might work with same code—duh).
I suppose I need to compare the efi.rom for a Mac 4870 PCie card with 1 GB of VRAM against the MXM 4850 efi rom with 521 MB and against the Alienware PC 4870 rom with 1 GB to try to make a "mashup" a 4870.efi MXM rom.
However, I have no idea where to start or what to read before making a start. Can anyone point me in the right direction?
Back in the day Netkas, Rominator, fouel, et al., had tools to help this but the threads are 10 years long.

why reflash on a new chip with the bios and not put the original one on the alienware? different pinout?

 

[passatgt]

Interesting, got a link/tutorial?

No, just found this in a local listing. Looks like this is for the 2010 27" iMac. Here is a link for the adapter. Looks like you don't even need the power supply, because it is using an external 19V adapter. Would be nice if it could work with the internal power supply though, so one could keep the power button and original power cable.

 

[NOTNlCE]

Hey all, sorry to "spam" this excellent thread. Can someone tell me which cards support Target Display Mode at this point?

I tried digging through the past 100 pages and saw confirmation on the K2100M and K1100M (I think)? I was looking to buy a GTX 780M but didn't see anyone clearly saying they had it working.

With OpenCore, Target Display Mode works on the K2100M and K1100M, but this solution is not yet released due to some major upgrades to OpenCore in the past few weeks.

 

[quartzite]

With OpenCore, Target Display Mode works on the K2100M and K1100M, but this solution is not yet released due to some major upgrades to OpenCore in the past few weeks.

Thanks for the reply! Ah ok, good to know. Are those the only two cards with Target Display Mode? I'll continue to read along here and learn more on OpenCore

 

[highvoltage12v]

opencore is the evolution of hackintosh bootloaders, so using this bootloader it "could" be possible to add the bright control and who knows, maybe also target mode

Target Disk Mode already works. Target Display Mode will work (only perfectly in 10.13) when Open Core defines the internal display as "built-in". Just wanted to clarify that for anyone needing to use Target Disk Mode.

 

[nekton1]

why reflash on a new chip with the bios and not put the original one on the alienware? different pinout?

Alienware eeprom is 512 kbit and too small to take the 4850 efi.rom, which requres a 1 Mbit eeprom.

 

[nekton1]

What are the chances that pipomolo42's old script would work to build a MXM 4870 efi.rom using the Alienware PC rom and a reference 4870.rom?

dd if=4870.ROM of=efi.part bs=1 skip=63488 count=49152
blocknum=`printf %d "'\`dd if=pc4870.rom bs=1 skip=2 count=1 2>/dev/null\`"`
size=$(($blocknum * 512))
dd if=efi.part of=pc4870.rom bs=$size seek=1 conv=notrunc
python fixrom.py pc4870.rom pc4870.rom

 

[nekton1]

No, it does not work.

 

[yuica]

I have updated my iMac 27" 2011, with a GTX 860 and running Catalina 10.15.1 (Catalina patcher from dosdude) on it.
So far so good.

I want to know if this GTX860m has all the following issues.
I am particularly concerned about whether the brightness can be adjusted normally

The loss of EFI boot screen*
The loss of Backlight control**
You can only connect one external monitor to 27" iMacs
The loss of Target Disk Mode**
The loss of Target Display Mode**
The loss of running the built-in Apple hardware or ASD test
The loss of temperature sensors on the new GPU

 

[NOTNlCE]

I want to know if this GTX860m has all the following issues.
I am particularly concerned about whether the brightness can be adjusted normally

The loss of EFI boot screen*
The loss of Backlight control**
You can only connect one external monitor to 27" iMacs
The loss of Target Disk Mode**
The loss of Target Display Mode**
The loss of running the built-in Apple hardware or ASD test
The loss of temperature sensors on the new GPU

No - with a GTX 860M the LCD backlight cannot be adjusted without an added mod like the RPi mod or a DyingLight module. See lower on the page for that info.

 

[jovonov]

@jovonov, the clip will fit. Are you using a SOIC-8? 5 hours to get the clip to fit? Change the clip, sometimes, the feet on the clip slip upwards and can't contact the legs of the ROM chip, I've gone through a few of them that way. The Pomona brand clips work the best.

I am using the SOIC-8 SOP8 Test clip, and yes, the clip would physically fit pretty easy, but there was still no communication going on at all with the k2100m so maybe my description of "not fitting" was incorrect. Do you have any tip or something to get contact between the clip and the chip?
Thanks a lot for your time.

 

[jmilan0302]

After months of planing I've finally installed a GTX 780M in my iMac 2010 21.5", upgraded the i3 550 CPU to a i7 860s and installed a SSD; everything is running just fine in Catalina, I had to install and tweak Macs Fan Control because the fans were working at 100% all times (maybe because I didn't install a SSD temperature sensor? 🤔).

I had to snap the disk mount tab at the right stand hinge in order for the GPU to fit, also cut a little bit of the ODD plastic wall and removed the GPU plastic wall.

I want to thank this community for the support, specially @dosdude1 for his awesome OS X patcher, @Nick [D]vB for the amazing work with the VBIOS's, @xanderon for its live grml USB and @highvoltage12v for its research. I've been reading this thread since i've bought this iMac two years ago and cannot believe this is finally happening!

I will be sharing my experiences with y'all in the future!

Do you know if any of the non S quad core chips work in the 21.5" 2010 iMac? I have one, was hoping to put an i5 760 in it but heard someone tried and it didn't work. I wonder if the i7 870 works?

 

[Jforte]

I Saw some videos regarding an iMac with 765, 770 and 780m, but none with wx7100... I would like to see assembly, modding and performance...

 

[TeyTey92]

I have an iMac 2011, previously I had a GTX860m in it, which just booted (no bootscreen of course) my UEFI Windows installation (I only have windows). I now bought a WX7100 (which will arrive in a couple of days) will this also work like the the GTX860m?
Is it possible to also get the boot screen working so I can also reinstall Windows? As I understand would need the ROM mod from Nick + Opencore (I not fully understand what this is). Is there some guideline how to get the ROM + OpenCore up and running?

Thanks,
Steffen

 

[Ausdauersportler]

I wonder if the i7 870 works?

Xeon L3426 - Switch over to an 27“ model. There you have the power to drive an i7 and your 780M.

I am using the SOIC-8 SOP8 Test clip, and yes, the clip would physically fit pretty easy, but there was still no communication going on at all with the k2100m so maybe my description of "not fitting" was incorrect. Do you have any tip or something to get contact between the clip and the chip?
Thanks a lot for your time.

When I use the CH341A from MacOS directly (Catalina) I get a message like:

Quadro_Beta1.2 % flashrom --programmer ch341a_spi -r TMP.rom  
flashrom v1.1 on Darwin 19.2.0 (x86_64)
flashrom is free software, get the source code at https://flashrom.org
Calibrating delay loop... OK.
Found Macronix flash chip "MX25L2005(C)/MX25L2006E" (256 kB, SPI) on ch341a_spi.
Reading flash... done.
Quadro_Beta1.2 %

What are you getting there? To help you we need more detailed information than just "it does not work".

As I wrote before the most easy way is to use the Linux method. Check the Linux image on your MB or still running iMac in advance. Connect the iMac directly with a LAN cable to your router, have root or admin access to this router. After firing up the iMac booting from the SD card I just log into your router (from the Macbook), read the page with all current connections and I find the IP. If you have different networks provided by your router make sure, that your MacBook and the iMac are connected to the same subnet. You can connect your MB with a cable, too.

Now it is the ssh root@IP with password flash and everything goes it's way. You can even read the original BIOS first and copy it back to your MacBook using scp instead of ssh from a second terminal window.

Please give the Linux SD card / USB memory stick another chance. Disconnect the internal drive, put in the USB/SD device and start it.
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I have an iMac 2011, previously I had a GTX860m in it, which just booted (no bootscreen of course) my UEFI Windows installation (I only have windows). I now bought a WX7100 (which will arrive in a couple of days) will this also work like the the GTX860m?
Is it possible to also get the boot screen working so I can also reinstall Windows? As I understand would need the ROM mod from Nick + Opencore (I not fully understand what this is). Is there some guideline how to get the ROM + OpenCore up and running?

Thanks,
Steffen

Read page one of this thread and wait until the OpenCore based solution will be published. Search OpenCore and read the docs, get prepared

 

[highvoltage12v]

Do you know if any of the non S quad core chips work in the 21.5" 2010 iMac? I have one, was hoping to put an i5 760 in it but heard someone tried and it didn't work. I wonder if the i7 870 works?

Only 2010 21.5" non S Cpu the Intel Xeon L3426 works which is a 45w TDP. They can be found pretty cheap and have a 307CB in cinebench r15. I tried a Xeon x3440 before the L3426 it's a no post/fans spin fast.

 

[nekton1]

Are there no graphics ROM gurus here who can advise on building an MXM HD4870.efi 1 GB VRAM rom for a PC ATI board from a Mac MXM 4850.efi (512 MB) rom?