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

[xanderon]

da ***? how can this **** happen?

 

[Ausdauersportler]

I have the same problem on a friend's computer. Nothing works, from what I was reading here : https://www.ifixit.com/Answers/View/249847/Unresponsive+white+screen+on+startup
the firmware boot loader has been corrupted. The only solutions are to reprogram the chip or take it in to Apple...

I do not know if you really face this problem, but everybody reading here may use @dosdude1's ROMTool (archive password is ROM) to save this iMac boot rom firmware to disk and better to an external storage device. In any case of trouble you can easily re flash the internal BIOS using a clip programmer.
Whenever I touch another patient (iMac) the first thing is upgrading the boot rom to the latest version Apple provided and then I save this up to date firmware using this tool.

 

[highvoltage12v]

I do not know if you really face this problem, but everybody reading here may use @dosdude1's ROMTool (archive password is ROM) to save this iMac boot rom firmware to disk and better to an external storage device. In any case of trouble you can easily re flash the internal BIOS using a clip programmer.
Whenever I touch another patient (iMac) the first thing is upgrading the boot rom to the latest version Apple provided and then I save this up to date firmware using this tool.

I often backup my ROM's even before software updates after the incident with my 2012 Mac Mini loosing it's serial number Mac Address ETC I don't trust Apple anymore. @xanderon are you sure the iMac isn't more responsive than it actually is. It could be a bad screen cable making the screen all white. To test this start the iMac with no screen connected with a monitor using pure a Displayport input. You will have video output to the monitor. If the external screen stays pure white externally than you know what to troubleshoot next.

 

[xanderon]

I tried to hook up my LG with an original Thunderbolt Display cable: not output, I will investigate further today or the upcoming days, thanks guys.

 

[rc3105]

That was an error in the early betas... What was done to fix this was go to to system profiler and set your startup drive to Open Core Disk.

Well I'm stumped. The drive & sd work fine in another machine. OpenCore just doesn't like this 2009 11,1.

Is there any way to load the K1100m brightness control fix without OpenCore?

 

[Ausdauersportler]

Well I'm stumped. The drive & sd work fine in another machine. OpenCore just doesn't like this 2009 11,1.

Is there any way to load the K1100m brightness control fix without OpenCore?

No, you have to get it done...it have it working on my late 2009, iMac11,1, i7 right now.

You have to have the iMac firmware up to date...which is version 63.0.0.0.0 for this particular system.

 

[ZenSurfeur]

Hi
I hope someone could help me.
I finally get a usb flasher.
under windows 7
> drivers ok, red light power on
> CH341A programmer (v1.18) device state:connected

what's next? thx
The position is good?

 

[herrdude]

I do not know if you really face this problem, but everybody reading here may use @dosdude1's ROMTool (archive password is ROM) to save this iMac boot rom firmware to disk and better to an external storage device. In any case of trouble you can easily re flash the internal BIOS using a clip programmer.
Whenever I touch another patient (iMac) the first thing is upgrading the boot rom to the latest version Apple provided and then I save this up to date firmware using this tool.

I am guessing this cannot be reprogrammed with any ROM?

 

[highvoltage12v]

I am guessing this cannot be reprogrammed with any ROM?

2010/11 Machines have their ME Region stored in the firmware and are paired to the board. There are people here that could be repair damaged EFI ROM's you can see @tsialex has written a guide for the Mac Pro 5,1 on how to recreate a functioning ROM. But again these Macs use ME Region. @xanderon are you capable of locating your EFI ROM chip on your logic board? Depending on the model/year it's close to the WiFi card or under the black ribbon cable for audio output.

 

[Ausdauersportler]

I am guessing this cannot be reprogrammed with any ROM?

No, it will have some of your hardware data included like #serial, secured by checksums. This is needed to identify your system when checking into iCloud and other services.

Attached two pictures showing the system bios chip in the center, 2011 and 2009/2010 iMac 27, each.

 

[tsialex]

2010/11 Machines have their ME Region stored in the firmware and are paired to the board. There are people here that could be repair damaged EFI ROM's you can see @tsialex has written a guide for the Mac Pro 5,1 on how to recreate a functioning ROM. But again these Macs use ME Region. @xanderon are you capable of locating your EFI ROM chip on your logic board? Depending on the model/year it's close to the WiFi card or under the black ribbon cable for audio output.

iMacs that have encapsulated firmware are more complex to repair a BootROM, it's the exactly the same process as with your MM6,1.

Mac Pros are easier to repair a corrupted BootROM for two different and related motives:

1. Apple makes available the real, and working, firmware image (generic one for firmware upgrades, without any hardwareIDs/NVRAM/blank data on MLB sector), like later iMacs (IM16,1 ->) and not the encapsulated one like iMacs up to IM15,1 use,
2. Apple choose to not enable Intel ME with Mac Pros.

 

[nikey22]

View attachment 912035

2 problems:

1. Position of DIP clip is incorrect, the Red wire should face the lever.
2. The greenboard should be in the BIOS SPI 25 holes not the EEPROM 24 I2C.
[automerge]1588612847[/automerge]

da ***? how can this **** happen?

if you can boot a Catalina USB drive, why are we thinking this is a logic board EEPROM corruption issue?

 

[ZenSurfeur]

2 problems:

1. Position of DIP clip is incorrect, the Red wire should face the lever.
2. The greenboard should be in the BIOS SPI 25 holes not the EEPROM 24 I2C.
[automerge]1588612847[/automerge]

if you can boot a Catalina USB drive, why are we thinking this is a logic board EEPROM corruption issue?

thx
modifs

when I read there is only FF
when I load the k2100M.rom file then program > error "write operations timeout failed"
the second led goes green/yellow

 

[internetzel]

Recently I had the same testing a WX7100 in one late 2009, the core clock of the GPU was locked to 300MHz in MacOS. On the OpenCore image within the AMD_ROMS folder there is a little script with keeps track of both the clocks and the temperature during any test.

Tried that script and the memory clock (of my WX4130) sometimes seems to get stuck at 300 MHz. In that case a sleep and wake cycle doesn't fix it but a power cycle does (at least this one time I observed it). A simple sleep and wake cycle doesn't cause it.

 

[xanderon]

[automerge]1588612847[/automerge]

if you can boot a Catalina USB drive, why are we thinking this is a logic board EEPROM corruption issue?

good point. after removing the internal screen and connecting my external monitor I finally can report something different. see screenshot. its a green cube on a 21:9 LG screen. never seen something like this. my two K2000m are HP EliteBook 8570 GPUs from the same bay seller.

i will mount the 4670 and try to boot the installed 10.13.x to get rule some other suggestions out. I will also check the bios version

 

[Ausdauersportler]

Tried that script and the memory clock (of my WX4130) sometimes seems to get stuck at 300 MHz. In that case a sleep and wake cycle doesn't fix it but a power cycle does (at least this one time I observed it). A simple sleep and wake cycle doesn't cause it.

We have two users with a 4170 and one with a 7100 observing sleep cycle induced performance loss in a 2011 iMac. Before sleep the core frequency gets up, thereafter it is limited to 267/300 MHz depending on the card type (using Catalina and GOP vBIOS).

 

[StephN999]

Bonjour,

All my thanks to everyone for the help and tutorials.
My System now starts under macOS Catalina,
I only use the EFI folder to my SSD with some modifications on the config.plist like Windows 10 on the OpenCore Boot menu.

I changed my graphics card on my iMac 21 "5 from 2011 with a Quadro K2100M Flashed by Linux Live USB cd xanderon with Nick [D] vB's Rom for this card.

I changed my microprocessor with a Xeon E3-1270,
suddenly the DSDT.aml for 2011 iMacs ONLY! UEFI Windows eGPU & HD Audio driver code 12 fix, no longer worked (loop reboot) so I remade it specially for I imagine all the Xeon E3.
I put it in attachment.

Question: as I changed the microprocessor, I guess I no longer need the AppleIntelHD3000Graphics files, since there is no IGPU, but I don't know if I should keep / patch other Kexts?

Thanks again and have a nice day / evening.

Stéphane.

 

[xanderon]

alright, the iMac is alive with the broken 4670, the system is bootet with secure boot (shift) and even the external screen is working. the boot rom version is up2date: 215.0.0.0.0 iMac10,1 smock version 1.53f13

right now I apply one software update, reboot to disable SIP and I will dump the refi rom with Romtool.

 

[internetzel]

Here the temperatures after many cycles looping through the Valley benchmark at Extreme HD setting, having installed the WX4130. Notice the power draw of less than 40 Watt ("Grafikkarte" means "graphics card").
Edit: Brightness was at lowest level, which is what I use most of the time.

The outside temperature of the case wasn't even near hot. It gets even lower with an ODD fan speed of 1700 rpm.
An MXM-B heat sink is currently installed to the GPU using a too thick copper shim, so the VRAM is not even passively cooled. Absolutely no stability issues at all.
The perfect card I'd say - if there weren't some small issues...

 

[highvoltage12v]

Bonjour,

All my thanks to everyone for the help and tutorials.
My System now starts under macOS Catalina,
I only use the EFI folder to my SSD with some modifications on the config.plist like Windows 10 on the OpenCore Boot menu.

I changed my graphics card on my iMac 21 "5 from 2011 with a Quadro K2100M Flashed by Linux Live USB cd xanderon with Nick [D] vB's Rom for this card.

I changed my microprocessor with a Xeon E3-1270,
suddenly the DSDT.aml for 2011 iMacs ONLY! UEFI Windows eGPU & HD Audio driver code 12 fix, no longer worked (loop reboot) so I remade it specially for I imagine all the Xeon E3.
I put it in attachment.

Question: as I changed the microprocessor, I guess I no longer need the AppleIntelHD3000Graphics files, since there is no IGPU, but I don't know if I should keep / patch other Kexts?

Thanks again and have a nice day / evening.

Stéphane.

Hey let me know if your system can sleep and wake properly without an iGPU, I was always curious about that.

 

[xanderon]

dumping efi rom is not possible on 10.13. because directHW.kext is not there or not accessible. after csrutil disable of course

whatever, so, are my k2000m "broken"? do I need to get a external programmer and reflash again?

 

[nikey22]

For High Sierra, disable SIP; Open a terminal and save the bootrom with the built-in tool.
cd usr/libexec/firmwarecheckers/eficheck/eficheck ./eficheck --save -b <EFI bin output file>
If your K2000M efi is damage, you will not even get a chime. It will look like a logic board EEPROM failure.
Are you getting debug LED 3 on?
Regardless, as things are already apart, go ahead and reflash the K2000M rom.

 

[xanderon]

the damn led is sooo fckin hard to read on this 2009 iMac. can't really say.
do you think that the logic board eeprom is faulty even when the system is booting with the 4670 in it?

your command is not working because:
"ReadBinaryFromKErnel: no matching services found. Either this system is not supported by eficheck, or you need to re-load the kext. save: couldn't get EFI contents from kext"

 

[highvoltage12v]

dumping efi rom is not possible on 10.13. because directHW.kext is not there or not accessible. after csrutil disable of course

whatever, so, are my k2000m "broken"? do I need to get a external programmer and reflash again?

Move RomTool to the Applications folder. Some apps don't run right from the Downloads folder. If your iMac boots fine with the broken 4670 it's more than likely NOT a board problem.

 

[Lottosmp]

So I spent all of Saturday trying to get a K2100M flashed with the Linux method, I ran into multiple problems.

1. Grml kernels crashed and I had to add "nomodeset" to the grub linux options.
2. The disk didn't seem to boot, but only with the K2100m, fine with original ATI card.
3. Ethernet port/cables not working, so I had to set up wifi.
4... turns out the card was broken anyway.

The linux boot disk always worked on other computers and even on my imac 11,1 with the original graphics card but the iMac never seemed to connect to the router with the new card and display off.

So here's a way to check if your linux disk is booting and finishes the whole boot without display, if you have an additional keyboard with CAPS/NUM/SCROLL-LOCK LEDs lying around => It will flash all the LEDs on for 5 seconds when it's done booting, so you have a visual indicator. Unfortunately I couldn't figure out how to just beep in linux on Macs. So you need a second keyboard with LEDs that linux can read/set, you can test via setleds -L on any linux box.

You need a simple bash script on the bootable USB disc in a folder called "scripts", just in the root USB-stick folder and edit the grub boot options:

#!/bin/bash
# USB-flash disk file: <USB stick root folder>/scripts/grml.sh
setleds -L +num +caps +scroll
sleep 5
setleds -L

Modify the /boot/grub/grml64full_*_default.cfg config, append startup=/run/live/medium/scripts/grml.sh to the line starting with linux ...., e.g. something like this:

menuentry "grml64-full_sid - release build3038 (default)" {
    set gfxpayload=keep
    echo 'Loading kernel...'
    linux   /boot/grml64full_sid/vmlinuz apm=power-off boot=live live-media-path=/live/grml64-full_sid/  "${loopback}" "${kernelopts}" nomce net.ifnames=0 bootid=d5945892-5cb4-46c6-b964-2445694a101b ssh=xxx nomodeset startup=/run/live/medium/scripts/grml.sh
    echo 'Loading initrd...'
    initrd  /boot/grml64full_sid/initrd.img
}

(I tried a couple versions of grml, so the zip may contain diffferent kernel and/or distro, don't remember)

For me, it turned out that 1.) I also had to add nomodeset to my boot options or the kernel crashed, and 2.) did some more hacks to get wifi working and connect that way (same method as above pretty much, just add wpa-supplicant/dhclient setup to the same grml.sh), 3.) the graphics card is probably broken :/ (no logic board LED which I didn't check earlier).

I'm waiting for a gtx765m, maybe I'll have more luck with that.