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

[Ausdauersportler]

Thanks for clearing that up, I'll try a new installer what do you use instead of thumb drives?

I have all installers on an external SSD and use a patched @dosdude1 patcher to install directly to the (connected) machine all the time without any external USD thumb drives or SD cards.

This is a work around which may not address your unknown real issue...

Cross posting on several thread is normally against the forum rules - do not tell I asked to do so

 

[Ausdauersportler]

Short update on Big Sur Beta 9 (20A5384c) on iMacs with Metal GPU:

@internetzel tried to gather some information to solve the problem with the current 2009/2010 iMacs. Unfortunately the Big Sur kernel panics while booting the CPU type used in such systems. This will be a long and winding way to success, if ever achievable...

@jakeluke offered an new method to patch the Apple installer in an way to be used directly on the iMac 2011 using AMD cards. I managed just a complete and successful direct installation using this method and the latest Beta 9.

@Barry K. Nathan published a new version 0.3.2 of his micro patcher - this can be used with all 2011 models using an Nvidia card offering EFI boot screen (literally all from the post #1 with one exception, only). I could also manage a complete installation.

Notes:

1. A new WIFI card BCM92360CD/BCM943602CDP does help a lot.
2. Catalina Loader users get currently Lilu and Whatevergreen installed within the system and should disable these on the Catalina Loader - but the Big Sur system boots unlike Catalina.

 

[pintjua]

Pintjue, did High Sierra / Bootcamp internal display work prior to vflash?

I think there are so sublte differences in hardware -- I get no internal display with Windows 10 (780M) EFI boot, but others are w/780M are successful. High Sierra and Catalina work flawlessly for me (full brightness control, sleep working etc)

Prior to flash, High Sierra and Bootcamp were working properly, albeit at full brightness level.

 

[pintjua]

Does your ALT/Option Apple Boot picked menu show up? Installing the patched AppleGraphicsControl.kext on page 1 should fix this.

No, the Startup Manager screen doesn't show up on the internal display. The internal screen is completely black, the backlight is off. The Startup Manager screen does show up on the external display.

 

[Ausdauersportler]

No, the Startup Manager screen doesn't show up on the internal display. The internal screen is completely black, the backlight is off. The Startup Manager screen does show up on the external display.

It has not mentioned to try the patched AGC for your black screen issue or to read the first post and search there for black screen?

 

[highvoltage12v]

No, the Startup Manager screen doesn't show up on the internal display. The internal screen is completely black, the backlight is off. The Startup Manager screen does show up on the external display.

This issue is more than likely the iMac cannot see the internal Display do it it being plugged in correctly. Or by chance your MXM card cannot detect the internal Display.

 

[pintjua]

It has not mentioned to try the patched AGC for your black screen issue or to read the first post and search there for black screen?

I'll look into it. Thank you.

 

[pintjua]

This issue is more than likely the iMac cannot see the internal Display do it it being plugged in correctly. Or by chance your MXM card cannot detect the internal Display.

That's my initial thought. But the internal display works on Linux, although no Startup Manager screen, too. That's confusing.

 

[cheaptech]

I bought a parts only 21” supposedly a 2011 But removing the logic board I see three heat sinks. One is flat copper plate and is not the CPU or the GPU heat sinks (which I’m replacing). Can someone tell me what year this thing is?

the flat one is located below the GPU

I can find pictures of 2009’s with the flat copper plate but not one also with the gpu heat sink.

Maybe off topic but i tried to buy 2011!

any help is appreciated.

 

[hijglander]

I bought a parts only 21” supposedly a 2011 But removing the logic board I see three heat sinks. One is flat copper plate and is not the CPU or the GPU heat sinks (which I’m replacing). Can someone tell me what year this thing is?

the flat one is located below the GPU

I can find pictures of 2009’s with the flat copper plate but not one also with the gpu heat sink.

Maybe off topic but i tried to buy 2011!

any help is appreciated.

Maybe if you post a picture of the MB someone can identify it.

Or if you have a good look at the MainBoard your self you might be able to find it. I'm pretty sure that somewhere on the MB there should be an identification bit containing the actual part number of the machine.

 

[boy80]

I bought a parts only 21” supposedly a 2011 But removing the logic board I see three heat sinks. One is flat copper plate and is not the CPU or the GPU heat sinks (which I’m replacing). Can someone tell me what year this thing is?

the flat one is located below the GPU

I can find pictures of 2009’s with the flat copper plate but not one also with the gpu heat sink.

Maybe off topic but i tried to buy 2011!

any help is appreciated.

Sound like u bought a 2009 model WITH a mxm gpu. Unfortunately these models are cored2duo so u can use any of the gpus listed here. I know cuz I have on of these. The 21.5" 2009 models are all core2duo

 

[internetzel]

OR inject the iMac bootrom and the CoreEG2 & EDID Parser into the GOP vBIOS ?

Would the BIOS chip be able to hold the 1Mb data now or needed to be changed to a larger size chip ?

Nick had unsuccessfully tried to get CoreEG2 and EDIDParser into the AMD VBIOS - he mentioned that on a different thread here.
But since he doesn't seem to be available any longer I tried as well.
In theory it's easy to add DXE drivers to a VBIOS so they are loaded by the EFI firmware - in fact it does work with the NVIDIA cards (that's what Nick stated on that other thread).
As the simple method of adding CoreEG2 and EDIDParser didn't work out I tried to have those loaded by a container driver which loads both of them. While that method does work for loading the AMD GOP driver it doesn't seem to work for the EG2 driver (it has to load CoreEG2, EDIDParser and the Apple Polaris 11 EG2 driver in that case).
The whole VBIOS fits in 256 kB when using compression for the DXE drivers. In fact it would be difficult to use more than 256 kB because there's some GPU firmware (supposedly power management) located at the 256 kB boundary.
The problem I face is that I don't know how to achieve any debug output from the loading process of the container driver.

 

[Pascal Baillargeau]

Sorry for not explaining myself really well, my configuration right now is a 21.5 mid 2011, WX4150 card, already flashed, did openCore USB and installed Catalina, I have my LCD cable broken and while waiting for replacement to arrive in doing everything through external display, after flashed, installed and ran catalina with full graphics acceleration, card recognized as 4GB Radeon RX 460, everything went well until here ...

Started installing kexts AppleMCCSControl and AppleGVA.framework to get the sleep and after that I got black screen, on boot, even removed internal drive just leaving the openCore flash and everything still black (as I mentioned I'm only using external display, internal disconnected )

fixed the black screen with highvoltage12v method and after that I got openCore back but now stuck on boot logo, I think I'll reinstall everything and start from scratch

You should keep original AppleGVA.framework with AMD cards. Otherwise you'll lose hardware H264 and HEVC dec/enc.

 

[KennyW]

Nick had unsuccessfully tried to get CoreEG2 and EDIDParser into the AMD VBIOS - he mentioned that on a different thread here.
But since he doesn't seem to be available any longer I tried as well.
In theory it's easy to add DXE drivers to a VBIOS so they are loaded by the EFI firmware - in fact it does work with the NVIDIA cards (that's what Nick stated on that other thread).
As the simple method of adding CoreEG2 and EDIDParser didn't work out I tried to have those loaded by a container driver which loads both of them. While that method does work for loading the AMD GOP driver it doesn't seem to work for the EG2 driver (it has to load CoreEG2, EDIDParser and the Apple Polaris 11 EG2 driver in that case).
The whole VBIOS fits in 512 kB when using compression for the DXE drivers. In fact it would be difficult to use more than 512 kB because there's some GPU firmware (supposedly power management) located at the 512 kB boundary.
The problem I face it that I don't know how to achieve any debug output from the loading process of the container driver.

Thanks for your attempt.
I am pretty ignorant on all these things and learn as I go, and thus unfortunately can't help much, apart from reporting my results.
But I am grateful to all the works that have been done and shared here.

It seems the GOP BIOS by you (internetzel) is more favoured as the default in 1st posting than the EG2 BIOS by Nick [D]vB for the WX4150 or the AMD series,

Upon re-read and re-read of Nick's post, one seems to need to inject CoreEG2 & EDID Parser into the extracted iMac bootrom and reflash the iMac again with the patched bootrom before one can get the boot screen ??

Also, I want to know whether the EG2 BIOS needs the Catalina Loader or not?

I applause on the success by Ausdauersportler in installing and running BigSur in his metal compatible AMD iMac 2011 via OpenCore. Perhaps with further fine-tuning, the convoluted installation will be streamlined. I am eagerly waiting for the improvement in the Micro-Patcher to bypass both Mojave and Catalina for BigSur but sad to hear that it is still not successful in iMac2009/2010 yet. I don't miss much running High Sierra on my iMac 2010 till now ... but I like this challenging project to upgrade my iMac for a last time, if possible, before getting a new Mac.

 

[Pascal Baillargeau]

I bought a parts only 21” supposedly a 2011 But removing the logic board I see three heat sinks. One is flat copper plate and is not the CPU or the GPU heat sinks (which I’m replacing). Can someone tell me what year this thing is?

the flat one is located below the GPU

I can find pictures of 2009’s with the flat copper plate but not one also with the gpu heat sink.

Maybe off topic but i tried to buy 2011!

any help is appreciated.

Look for EMC number on iMac case.

 

[Ausdauersportler]

Thanks for your attempt.
I am pretty ignorant on all these things and learn as I go, and thus unfortunately can't help much, apart from reporting my results.
But I am grateful to all the works that have been done and shared here.

It seems the GOP BIOS by you (internetzel) is more favoured than the EG2 BIOS by Nick [D]vB for the WX4150 or the AMD series.
Apart from the loss in brightness control, are they comparable in other aspects like support of Target Disk Mode and Target Display Mode? However, both of them are not important to me.

But I want to know whether the EG2 BIOS needs the Catalina Loader or not. If it doesn't, it would be more convenient in usage. And the only advantage of using Catalina Loader seems to restore brightness control for the EG2 BIOS. Am I correct?

Besides, I thought it might be easier to jump directly to BigSur instead of installing Catalina now as it is close to GM ??
I applause on the success by Ausdauersportler in installing and running BigSur in his metal compatible AMD iMac via OpenCore. But the process just seems quite convoluted. Perhaps with further fine-tuning, the installation will be streamlined. I am eagerly waiting for the improvement in the Micro-Patcher to bypass both Mojave and Catalina for BigSur. I don't miss much running High Sierra on my iMac 2010 till now ... but I like this challenging project to upgrade my iMac for a last time.

Hi!

1. EG does not need OpenCore to get brightness and boot screen (and it is documented in this way)
2. EG will benefit from OpenCore spoofing the iMacPro1,1 ID to get full hardware acceleration (4k HEVC and H.264). This discovery/development has been made after the EG versions have been posted.
3. iMac 2009/2010 will unlikely ever run Big Sur (if you read my posts, you would have seen this) due to kernel panic. No support of this particular CPU type. Same applies to all these 2009-2010 machines.
4. The Catalina Loader with the GOP BIOS does bring back a boot selection, but not the brightness control which is natively available (according to all posts and docs published here).

Please ask your questions without making false assumptions! Your statements are persistent to this thread and other users will likely find your post, but not my answer. And then we have the next loop to convince a user who believes in something non existing.

@highvoltage already described his setting and the features he has you are likely to get.

In any case it would by helpful to edit your latest post and just keep the bare questions, not the wrong assumptions. We are in the middle of our way from supported Macs to the Hackintosh scene after modding an original Apple machine so heavily. You cannot expect to get a streamlined full fledged and magically by some users of this thread supported Big Sur installer.

 

[internetzel]

It seems the GOP BIOS by you (internetzel) is more favoured than the EG2 BIOS by Nick [D]vB for the WX4150 or the AMD series.
Apart from the loss in brightness control, are they comparable in other aspects like support of Target Disk Mode and Target Display Mode? However, both of them are not important to me.
Upon re-read and re-read of Nick's post, one needs to inject CoreEG2 & EDID Parser into the extracted iMac bootrom and reflash the iMac again with the patched bootrom before one can get the boot screen ??

@highvoltage12v uses the EG2 BIOS and can tell you everything about it - just search through his posts here and you'll find answers to your EG2 related questions

 

[KennyW]

@highvoltage12v uses the EG2 BIOS and can tell you everything about it - just search through his posts here and you'll find answers to your EG2 related questions

Thanks. Will dig through them.

 

[KennyW]

Hi!

1. EG does not need OpenCore to get brightness and boot screen (and it is documented in this way)
2. EG will benefit from OpenCore spoofing the iMacPro1,1 ID to get full hardware acceleration (4k HEVC and H.264). This discovery/development has been made after the EG versions have been posted.
3. iMac 2009/2010 will unlikely ever run Big Sur (if you read my posts, you would have seen this) due to kernel panic. No support of this particular CPU type. Same applies to all these 2009-2010 machines.
4. The Catalina Loader with the GOP BIOS does bring back a boot selection, but not the brightness control which is natively available (according to all posts and docs published here).

Please ask your questions without making false assumptions! Your statements are persistent to this thread and other users will likely find your post, but not my answer. And then we have the next loop to convince a user who believes in something non existing.

@highvoltage already described his setting and the features he has you are likely to get.

In any case it would by helpful to edit your latest post and just keep the bare questions, not the wrong assumptions. We are in the middle of our way from supported Macs to the Hackintosh scene after modding an original Apple machine so heavily. You cannot expect to get a streamlined full fledged and magically by some users of this thread supported Big Sur installer.

Yes, sir. Will do. Need to go through the hundreds of messages.

But I may be misled by the 1st post in saying that "Using the GOP BIOS (links within the table above) you will get native brightness and a boot selection only with OpenCore. Using the EG BIOS version you will get a native Apple boot picker with an iMac firmware modification, but no brightness control. Both solutions have their advantages." for the AMD BIOS.

 

[Ausdauersportler]

Yes, sir. Will do. Need to go through the hundreds of messages.

But I may be misled by the 1st post in saying that "Using the GOP BIOS (links within the table above) you will get native brightness and a boot selection only with OpenCore. Using the EG BIOS version you will get a native Apple boot picker with an iMac firmware modification, but no brightness control. Both solutions have their advantages." for the AMD BIOS.

I have seen this conflict, too. Just waiting for a feedback directly from @highvoltage12v and I will fix the first post...problem is right now nobody is using the EG versions and I added the link to the first post myself some days ago to make sure that this option can be recovered, again. But I never managed to use it myself.

 

[Arturus]

Hello. I can't install Windows 8.1, although everything went fine before. I do it through the built-in program (BootCamp), creates a partition, reboots and the installation itself does not start, just a white screen and nothing happens. (Waited 35 minutes and nothing). Who can advise how to deal with this?

 

[cheaptech]

Thanks again!
One last thing... this should theoretically be compatible?
Original K1100M Video Graphicscard N15P-Q1-A2 for HP Elitebook ZBOOK15 Dell M4600 M4700 M4800

Memory: 2GB
Chipset:N15P-Q1-A2
Compatibility: Dell M4600 M4700 M4800

Is ther some reason it sholdnot work? Nothing on the first page excludes it. My K1100m is working great and it was branded HP. You will have to flash the ROM.

 

[highvoltage12v]

I have seen this conflict, too. Just waiting for a feedback directly from @highvoltage12v and I will fix the first post...problem is right now nobody is using the EG versions and I added the link to the first post myself some days ago to make sure that this option can be recovered, again. But I never managed to use it myself.

Personally I Do NOT use the iMacPro 1,1 board ID to boot with my EG2 cards. Hardware acceleration works just fine. The PolarisBoost Kext you referenced a few times helps.

The EG2 Cards have Perfect Native Brightness control. No patches needed on 27 or 21.5" models.

I use an 2nd external monitor all the time with my iMac's. The way these ROMs are set up is if there is ANY external monitor plugged in the Boot picker will show up *IF* the ALT/Option key is pressed on boot. Otherwise you will have the Bootscreen on the internal LCD with NO Backlight, Backlight will fully return once the OS is loaded. Having a 2nd monitor is a perfect solution.

 

[KennyW]

Personally I Do NOT use the iMacPro 1,1 board ID to boot with my EG2 cards. Hardware acceleration works just fine. The PolarisBoost Kext you referenced a few times helps.

The EG2 Cards have Perfect Native Brightness control. No patches needed on 27 or 21.5" models.

I use an 2nd external monitor all the time with my iMac's. The way these ROMs are set up is if there is ANY external monitor plugged in the Boot picker will show up *IF* the ALT/Option key is pressed on boot. Otherwise you will have the Bootscreen on the internal LCD with NO Backlight, Backlight will fully return once the OS is loaded. Having a 2nd monitor is a perfect solution.

Thanks or your info.

The 1st page listed the GOP BIOS (not the EG BIOS) in the table for the AMDs requiring OpenCore Catalina Loader to show the Boot Screen. Is that still true ?

For the EG2 BIOS, you mentioned that you DON'T patch your iMac bootrom for the EG2 cards as described by Nick, and the AMD card works well with native boot screen with NO backlight but native brightness control AFTER booting into Catalina. Does that mean you can still see the boot picker to choose which volume to boot but just no backlighting ? And there is no need to use the Catalina Loader for the EG2 BIOS ?

Please forgive my ignorance despite reading the fragmented info spreading among the messages.

 

[highvoltage12v]

Thanks or your info.

The 1st page listed the GOP BIOS (not the EG BIOS) in the table for the AMDs requiring OpenCore Catalina Loader to show the Boot Screen. Is that still true ?

For the EG2 BIOS, you mentioned that you DON'T patch your iMac bootrom for the EG2 cards as described by Nick, and the AMD card works well with native boot screen with NO backlight but native brightness control AFTER booting into Catalina. Does that mean you can still see the boot picker to choose which volume to boot but just no backlighting ? And there is no need to use the Catalina Loader for the EG2 BIOS ?

Please forgive my ignorance despite reading the fragmented info spreading among the messages.

GOP ROM's don't have the EFI Bootrom patch. The EG2 ROMs DO have the BootROM patch. The modules are taken from the 2017 iMac if it matters to you, an old guide was posted by someone here with a Homer Simpson profile image, sorry I can't remember the username. Right if modifying the BootROM and using an EG2 ROM you have complete access again to the AppleBootPicker, no OpenCore needed. It's a safe bet at this point that the 2009-2011 iMac's won't be seeing any more Firmware updates. High Sierra is done receiving security/Firmware updates.