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from ifixed


with my WX7100 the 3 LED is not on, but i have the LCD working.
correct me if im wrong, but i don't think that the imac will show the 3dr led with aftermarket GPU's
(i be wrong, pleas correct me. but in case of the WX7100 its not)
Depends on the card, in the case of K1100m, it will come on after flashing the Vbios.
 
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Turn off the iMac. Start it again. When you hear the chime, hold the Alt/Option key until you see the boot selector. The 4th LED is for the LCD, that is correct.
I tried it with the Alt/Option key nothing, nada the screen is pitch black. I tried reflashing the GPU and it says the the BIOS already has the k1100.rom image.

Another thing I'm not sure whether it is related. When I tried changing the battery on Login board the small plastic thing covering the bottom top part of the battery broke. So put in some tape to hold it down to the board. Will that might be the problem
 
I tried it with the Alt/Option key nothing, nada the screen is pitch black. I tried reflashing the GPU and it says the the BIOS already has the k1100.rom image.

Another thing I'm not sure whether it is related. When I tried changing the battery on Login board the small plastic thing covering the bottom top part of the battery broke. So put in some tape to hold it down to the board. Will that might be the problem
Are the contacts still touching the battery? There are two.
 
Are the contacts still touching the battery? There are two.
Yes they are. I've put multiples tapes to keep the battery seated. It's very slightly elevated but I'm sure the battery is touching the contacts. If they are not, it might be the reason for the black screen?
 
Catalina Update

Apple silently updated Catalina according to the this message, only minutes after I upgraded both my working platforms to the former 10.15.6 release..

You can download the full installer using the latest @dosdude1 patcher and savely install it. Checked it out on my WX4170 2011 system. Runs fine and fast after installing the well known @highvoltage12v sleep package. Of course I did not check the entire application world ....

The internal release code is 19G2021.

EDIT:
On the 2011 you might use the "install to this computer" option instead of making an USB installer. On the 2009/2010 this does not work since you cannot opt out the automatic installation of patches using this way. You will end up with a legacy video patch installed - nobody need this :)

Hi Ausdauersportler,

Thanks for sharing this information.

May I have two questions?
1. Each time Apple issues a macOS update or security update, we have to use dosedue1's patcher to do the installation not by using macOS's automatic update procedure. Is that right?
2. When doing the above update, with OpenCore loader is better or not?

Thanks in advance if you can comment on my questions.
 
i orderd a WX7100. 00D the same as badbiscuit.
and i can happy report that i have a working imac with the WX7100 inside.
... but when i saw opencore boot screen i was full of joy.
And when Mac os booted up. I was even more happy
Congratulations! I can relate to the feeling of joy, when an iMac boots for the first time with a new card inside. :)
Glad it worked out. I see you got card #19, so looks like that seller has sold a few since mine (#10).
 
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When I tried changing the battery on Login board the small plastic thing covering the bottom top part of the battery broke. So put in some tape to hold it down to the board. Will that might be the problem
I don't believe the PRAM battery is your issue, for as long as the iMac remains connected to main power, that will maintain settings and not the battery. There should only be a need/draw on the battery, when the machine is unplugged. That said, I'd recommend using some epoxy to mend the broken bit of plastic, for surely tape will not hold a good connection against the contacts.

Black screen could be the card was not flashed properly, heatsink is contacting something it shouldn't, or a cable was not plugged in properly during re-assembly.
 
Hello guys,

I have an iMac 2011, 27 inches, i7 processor

I just got my video card K610M. I installed it. When I try to turn on my machine I hear chime sound but nothing on my screen. It's black. I see that I have to flash my video card but I have no idea how.

I know, there are many posts about this but nothing that I need. I want to run High Sierra on my machine.
I own another Windows Laptop and I am not able to format my USB drive with GPT+FAT32 as user @xanderon suggested. I tried even with Rufus but I don't see this option. I am able to format my USB flash drive only with FAT32.
I disconnected my SSD drive, plugged the USB in, and nothing. My iMac doesn't see it. Still black screen.

Please, guys, give me some ideas cuz I'm dying here.
 
With my imac 21inch 2011 I get all 4 lights with the k2100m and the k610m and the k1000m may be nvidia cards are different I have not Ben able to try any amd cards yet but I will be doing some test very soon with some amd cards
 
Hello guys,

I have an iMac 2011, 27 inches, i7 processor

I just got my video card K610M. I installed it. When I try to turn on my machine I hear chime sound but nothing on my screen. It's black. I see that I have to flash my video card but I have no idea how.

I know, there are many posts about this but nothing that I need. I want to run High Sierra on my machine.
I own another Windows Laptop and I am not able to format my USB drive with GPT+FAT32 as user @xanderon suggested. I tried even with Rufus but I don't see this option. I am able to format my USB flash drive only with FAT32.
I disconnected my SSD drive, plugged the USB in, and nothing. My iMac doesn't see it. Still black screen.

Please, guys, give me some ideas cuz I'm dying here.
Do you have a flash drive with a flashing LED light on it? Can you see if the iMac is at least interacting with the flash drive? Also plug an external monitor in over mDP to the thunderbolt port closest to the FireWire 800 port. There is a small-medium chance you might see the external LCD turn on while booted into Linux.
 
Sorry I did search a lot for the answer couldn't find it. That was the reason for the question again. I managed put thermal pads around the heat sink and the card sits flat now. But as you had mentioned there is a gap between the gpu and the copper heat sink. I need to find a copper sheet now to fill in the gap.
Thanks again.

I have photos of my card setup with the pads and copper shim in the link if my sig. Also, I was going to use the original X bracket from the 6970M, but I think it touches more than just 1 resistor. There seems to be smaller resistors that are along where the X bracket would lay on; not sure if that is a good thing. So I went ahead and used the k1100m x bracket it came with.
 
I am currently attempting a WX4170 in a 2011 21.5 iMac I just did a test fit and everything fits. I am not that surprised since a MXM B card has been installed before. I looked up the TDP of the WX4170 and it is the same as the WX4150 at 50W. I will attempt a full install later today.
 
I am currently attempting a WX4170 in a 2011 21.5 iMac I just did a test fit and everything fits. I am not that surprised since a MXM B card has been installed before. I looked up the TDP of the WX4170 and it is the same as the WX4150 at 50W. I will attempt a full install later today.
Let us know how it goes, the WX4170 has always been a curious card to me. It's also been unobtainium for me as well.
 
I don't believe the PRAM battery is your issue, for as long as the iMac remains connected to main power, that will maintain settings and not the battery. There should only be a need/draw on the battery, when the machine is unplugged. That said, I'd recommend using some epoxy to mend the broken bit of plastic, for surely tape will not hold a good connection against the contacts.

Black screen could be the card was not flashed properly, heatsink is contacting something it shouldn't, or a cable was not plugged in properly during re-assembly.
Thanks for the feedback. I double checked battery and put in fresh tape to hold the battery down also I noticed that the lcd screen on top keeps it in place. As you had mentioned I tried flashing the K1100 card again and nvflash utility recognized the card and it did shows the present rom version and the version it flashed both were the same. What I meant it is the flashing occurred without fail.
I thought about the heat sink too, because there was narrow gap between the GPU and the heatsink. So as suggested in these forum I put in a extra copper plate between the GPU and the heat sink and and when I removed the heat sink the contact was good with the copper plate. So I'm not sure.
I replaced the K1100 with the original faulty AMD 6970GPU it booted fine (obviously with the vertical green lines) multiple bake of the GPU didn't fix the problem.
I'm going to put this K1100 into my another Imac 21.5 which has a K1100 ( I replaced it last month absolutely no issues) just to check whether the K1100 I'm using is working or not.
 
I have photos of my card setup with the pads and copper shim in the link if my sig. Also, I was going to use the original X bracket from the 6970M, but I think it touches more than just 1 resistor. There seems to be smaller resistors that are along where the X bracket would lay on; not sure if that is a good thing. So I went ahead and used the k1100m x bracket it came with.
I did small cut on the x bracket where the resistor was touching it. There are couple of things I missed maybe the placement of the thermal pads like you and I didn't apply the thermal grease between the heat sink and copper plate I had added. Maybe I'll try them tomorrow and see whether it will work.
Thanks again for the reply. Your instructions page is really good I've book marked it for future reference.
 
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** NVIDIA Quadro K4100M Mac Edition ROM **
Genuine Native Boot Screen & Brightness Control


View attachment 942198


In the words of Steve Jobs, “this is insanely great!

After much testing and research, I've put together a ROM for the NVIDIA Quadro K4100M which will allow:
  • Genuine native brightness control
  • Genuine ‘gray’ early-boot screen
  • Genuine macOS bootloader compliance
Features (testing in progress):
  • Target Display Mode: testing
  • Target Disk Mode: functional via both TB ports
  • External Monitor: 1 DP/Thunderbolt port functional only
  • iGPU: H.264 with usual highvoltage12v HD3000/Framework Kexts mods
  • dGPU temp sensor: testing
  • Internet Recovery: present
  • Apple Hardware Test: n/a
This ROM does not require a 3rd party bootloader like OpenCore.
This is an alternative ROM and mainly for the audience that just want a “drop-in” answer to upgrading their video card on the iMac 2011.

I appreciate the ongoing ROM testing done by @Ausdauersportler, @highvoltage12v. With their efforts we can expand its utility across multiple macOS versions and peripherals. The brightness range may need to be adjusted with a modified ApplebacklightFixup.kext.

This rom does not require the use of an external EDID parser or a separate graphics core-console stack module, but I’ve left them in there for now. It uses a built in EDID_override_Protocol and GOP_protocol. The rom is based on a TianoCore EDK2 build which houses its own generic video driver. During bootup, the efiROM is responsible for video rendering before the control is seamlessly transferred off to a different handle, the macOS video drivers.

warning: as stated previously these cards are based on a WSON flash package and therefore are much more difficult to recover from a bad flash. Please take precautions and verify flashing.


******
UPDATE
******
09 08 2020: working on BigSur!
21 07 2020: working on Mojave 10.14.6, security update 2020-004 (18G6020)
20 07 2020: working on High Sierra 10.13.6, security update 2020-004
20 07 2020: working on Catalina 10.15.4
20 07 2020: working on Catalina 10.15.6 + kext mods

will there be a K4000m? I ask because I can get one cheap fro
** NVIDIA Quadro K4100M Mac Edition ROM **
Genuine Native Boot Screen & Brightness Control


View attachment 942198


In the words of Steve Jobs, “this is insanely great!

After much testing and research, I've put together a ROM for the NVIDIA Quadro K4100M which will allow:
  • Genuine native brightness control
  • Genuine ‘gray’ early-boot screen
  • Genuine macOS bootloader compliance
Features (testing in progress):
  • Target Display Mode: testing
  • Target Disk Mode: functional via both TB ports
  • External Monitor: 1 DP/Thunderbolt port functional only
  • iGPU: H.264 with usual highvoltage12v HD3000/Framework Kexts mods
  • dGPU temp sensor: testing
  • Internet Recovery: present
  • Apple Hardware Test: n/a
This ROM does not require a 3rd party bootloader like OpenCore.
This is an alternative ROM and mainly for the audience that just want a “drop-in” answer to upgrading their video card on the iMac 2011.

I appreciate the ongoing ROM testing done by @Ausdauersportler, @highvoltage12v. With their efforts we can expand its utility across multiple macOS versions and peripherals. The brightness range may need to be adjusted with a modified ApplebacklightFixup.kext.

This rom does not require the use of an external EDID parser or a separate graphics core-console stack module, but I’ve left them in there for now. It uses a built in EDID_override_Protocol and GOP_protocol. The rom is based on a TianoCore EDK2 build which houses its own generic video driver. During bootup, the efiROM is responsible for video rendering before the control is seamlessly transferred off to a different handle, the macOS video drivers.

warning: as stated previously these cards are based on a WSON flash package and therefore are much more difficult to recover from a bad flash. Please take precautions and verify flashing.


******
UPDATE
******
09 08 2020: working on BigSur!
21 07 2020: working on Mojave 10.14.6, security update 2020-004 (18G6020)
20 07 2020: working on High Sierra 10.13.6, security update 2020-004
20 07 2020: working on Catalina 10.15.4
20 07 2020: working on Catalina 10.15.6 + kext mods

Will there be a ROM for the K4000m? I ask because I can get one from a local shop for $40. I would be glad to wait at that price.
Installing it in 2011 27” that has bad gpu (yellow bars) that I got for $100.

I previously took my 21” 2011 to 32g, ssd, and osxwif/ibt. want to experiment on the 27" to see if I can make the 4000 work then I will transfer the goodies from the 21 to the 27.

Thanks for all of the awesome work. You guys have cost me some sleepless nights.
 
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will there be a K4000m? I ask because I can get one cheap fro


Will there be a K4000m? I ask because I can get one from a local shop for $40. I would be glad to wait at that price.
Installing it in 2011 27” that has bad gpu (yellow bars) that I got for $100.

previously took a 21” 2011 to 32g ssd and osxwifibt. want to experiment on the 27. If I can make the 4000 work then I will transfer the goodies from the 21 to the 27.

thanks for all of the awesome work. You guys have cost me some sleepless nights.

I searched, belatedlyfor which I apologize, for previous posts re. The K4000m. I see a recommendation to just try it and post the results.

I will do just that. This is a Dell gpu, should that help? Assuming I can get to Catalina, is there much I can do after installing it?
 
from ifixed


with my WX7100 the 3 LED is not on, but i have the LCD working.
correct me if im wrong, but i don't think that the imac will show the 3dr led with aftermarket GPU's
(i be wrong, pleas correct me. but in case of the WX7100 its not)
  1. The AMD Polaris cards with GOP BIOS will not show the 3rd LED, but have native brightness control
  2. The Nvidia GPUs with @nikey22 or @Nick [D]vB will shown 3rd LED
  3. The AMD cards with EG BIOS and iMac with a boot rom mod will show the 3rd LED, have a native boot picker, but no brightness control. boot picker is shown on external monitor, only. Internal LCD will be usable after MacOS startup
The 4th LED will come up, if the internal LCD is recognized and (hopefully) working. If it is not working with 4 LEDs then check the cables, inverter board or backlight.

Please, before spreading new rumors, read the docs and posts. All your messages will be shown on the thread causing only a lot of confusion for new and old readers.
 
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Hello guys,

I have an iMac 2011, 27 inches, i7 processor

I just got my video card K610M. I installed it. When I try to turn on my machine I hear chime sound but nothing on my screen. It's black. I see that I have to flash my video card but I have no idea how.

I know, there are many posts about this but nothing that I need. I want to run High Sierra on my machine.
I own another Windows Laptop and I am not able to format my USB drive with GPT+FAT32 as user @xanderon suggested. I tried even with Rufus but I don't see this option. I am able to format my USB flash drive only with FAT32.
I disconnected my SSD drive, plugged the USB in, and nothing. My iMac doesn't see it. Still black screen.

Please, guys, give me some ideas cuz I'm dying here.
Copied from the famous first post:

Q: Flash VBIOS? How do I do that?
A: BIOS can be flashed in one of two ways: Either directly with a CH341a clip programmer or with the "NVFLASH" software in Windows or Linux. THIS POST helps describe the flashing process. Others have found THIS POST useful. User @xanderoncreated a pre-made USB that can flash Nvidia cards in the iMac with Linux over SSH. Many have found this the easiest method. There is an add-on to flash AMD cards using this method, too. Additionally, user @jowaju created a simple Installer package that can be run on macOS Sierra (10.12) and higher that creates a 15GB Windows 7 Bootcamp partition with all the needed tools.

If you cannot use one of this versions, you are out of options. You should have planned for the flash task in advance.

Try to use the Linux installer and copy the K610M BIOS to the flash folder on the Linux USB stick before booting the iMac. Try to find local help with Linux and MacOS know how.
 
Congratulations! I can relate to the feeling of joy, when an iMac boots for the first time with a new card inside. :)
Glad it worked out. I see you got card #19, so looks like that seller has sold a few since mine (#10).
Yes. I really don't know what or how. But this seller seem to know what card fits the imac. And was confident enough to say that his cards work all the time.

And yes it looks like he definitely is right.
Maybe it's a placebo, but I think the screen also looks more crisp.. I don't know for sure.

Now I'm install Catalina.
  1. The AMD Polaris cards with GOP BIOS will not show the 3rd LED, but have native brightness control
  2. The Nvidia GPUs with @nikey22 or @Nick [D]vB will shown 3rd LED
  3. The AMD cards with EG BIOS and iMac with a boot rom mod will show the 3rd LED, have a native boot picker, but no brightness control. boot picker is shown on external monitor, only. Internal LCD will be usable after MacOS startup
The 4th LED will come up, if the internal LCD is recognized and working.

Please, before spreading new rumors, read the docs and posts. All your messages will be shown on the thread causing only a lot of confusion for new and old readers.
Please let me say something in particular about that.
I don't spread nothing. I just copied and pasted info form I fixed.

And I say.. please correct me if I'm wrong. You did but stop saying that I spread rumors I'm done with every time you kick me.
I want to enjoy the forum ... Please
 
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Yes. I really don't know what or how. But this seller seem to know what card fits the imac. And was confident enough to say that his cards work all the time.

And yes it looks like he definitely is right.
Maybe it's a placebo, but I think the screen also looks more crisp.. I don't know for sure.

Now I'm install Catalina.

Please let me say something in particular about that.
I don't spread nothing. I just copied and pasted info form I fixed.

And I say.. please correct me if I'm wrong. You did but stop saying that I spread rumors I'm done with every time you kick me.
I want to enjoy the forum ... Please
Try at least to confirm "facts" you found somewhere on the net before writing them down, again. This thread is full of information about exactly this topic posted by the authors of the BIOS version you use about exactly this 3rd LED problem with replaced cards. Why do you believe there is another source more reliable than this?

New readers read only the last three or four pages of posts. We spent so much time to collect the useful information that it really hurts when a regular user is posting incorrect information here, again! As long as you do this others will have spent their own time and correct you. And if it feels like a kick into your back, you know what to do to avoid this. First do some research, than post.
 
ROM pending testing

means currently no download available. The Beta Test was not completely successful.

Come back later and check the post you found already.

Oh, I skipped that line. Sorry my mistake.

I got this card from a laptop that I still have, but apparently I have to be patient. 😮
 
I have a spare K2200M from HP laptop lying around the office. Can I flash this with a Dell VBIOS of the same model? I also think it has an EMPTY VBIOS. Is it possible? I read somewhere that HP does include the VBIOS in the main logic board BIOS...
Did you ever try out that K2200m. I bought one by mistake and now I don't know how to flash it. Help please.
 
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