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

[Pascal Baillargeau]

I would like to find the root cause. Patching from Big Sur needs the admin permissions anyway and asks for the password at the beginning - possibly this is a recovery problem? Which environment did you use to patch?

I needed too to run this script with a sudo for it to work on MacOS (Catalina), but it's not a big deal. It works well, thanks my friend.

 

[RockettSJ]

Hi All,

I apologize if someone has asked this. I successfully installed Big Sur onto my 2011 iMac with a K2100M (flashed). I grabbed the latest OpenCore files and copied them into my previously working Catalina Loader USB. I then renamed the NVDIA plist as per the instructions from this post: https://forums.macrumors.com/thread....1596614/page-347?post=28769981#post-28769981

Everything looks good and I can boot from the "Catalina Loader" if I hold alt down when booting the iMac, but I can't select it as a Startup Disk in System Preferences. Confirmed it has the bootable flag in disk utility, so I am not sure what is going on.

Any ideas? Thanks!

 

[herrdude]

Hi All,

I apologize if someone has asked this. I successfully installed Big Sur onto my 2011 iMac with a K2100M (flashed). I grabbed the latest OpenCore files and copied them into my previously working Catalina Loader USB. I then renamed the NVDIA plist as per the instructions from this post: https://forums.macrumors.com/thread....1596614/page-347?post=28769981#post-28769981

Everything looks good and I can boot from the "Catalina Loader" if I hold alt down when booting the iMac, but I can't select it as a Startup Disk in System Preferences. Confirmed it has the bootable flag in disk utility, so I am not sure what is going on.

Any ideas? Thanks!

View attachment 1675346

Do CTRL + Enter when you boot.

 

[Ausdauersportler]

Hi All,

I apologize if someone has asked this. I successfully installed Big Sur onto my 2011 iMac with a K2100M (flashed). I grabbed the latest OpenCore files and copied them into my previously working Catalina Loader USB. I then renamed the NVDIA plist as per the instructions from this post: https://forums.macrumors.com/thread....1596614/page-347?post=28769981#post-28769981

Everything looks good and I can boot from the "Catalina Loader" if I hold alt down when booting the iMac, but I can't select it as a Startup Disk in System Preferences. Confirmed it has the bootable flag in disk utility, so I am not sure what is going on.

Any ideas? Thanks!

Yes, when messing around with two such SD card only the first will get the mount point /Volumes/Catalina Loader and only this will be selectable within as a startup disk.

 

[RockettSJ]

Just to add it seems I can't boot in general unless I hold the option key. It chimes and then the screen stays black. Likely related.

 

[Ausdauersportler]

Just to add it seems I can't boot in general unless I hold the option key. It chimes and then the screen stays black. Likely related.

Read the first post, please.

 

[Lady Titan]

Ausdauersportler​

Hello dear friend! and I also think about installing big sur to be in the trend) but I have doubts, does it make sense? will this affect the speed of the final cut ? if not ) why? what are the advantages? thanks!!!

 

[theo-tasi]

Hi All,

I apologize if someone has asked this. I successfully installed Big Sur onto my 2011 iMac with a K2100M (flashed). I grabbed the latest OpenCore files and copied them into my previously working Catalina Loader USB. I then renamed the NVDIA plist as per the instructions from this post: https://forums.macrumors.com/thread....1596614/page-347?post=28769981#post-28769981

Everything looks good and I can boot from the "Catalina Loader" if I hold alt down when booting the iMac, but I can't select it as a Startup Disk in System Preferences. Confirmed it has the bootable flag in disk utility, so I am not sure what is going on.

Any ideas? Thanks!

View attachment 1675346

Have you tried to boot without C.L. inserted?

 

[RockettSJ]

Thanks everyone. I think there was something wonky leftover from my last install. Dumped rEFInd into the EFI partition and set Catalina Loader as the default boot option, disabled the wait time and now everything is working.

 

[Ausdauersportler]

Catalina Loader and Open Core News​

Last night I had to change the post with the older and more recent version of the Catalina Loader, again. Google flagged the attachments as potential dangerous and the only way around is to encrypt the contents.

For this reason I published an empty shell of the Catalina Loader disk image encrypted and two archives containing the EFI folders of version 0.6.0 (unchanged) and 0.6.3 upgraded with the latest PolarisBoost and all extensions and patches needed to install and run Big Sur on iMac 11,x (Late 2009 and Mid 2010) models.

To get this working you have to download both the DMG and the fitting EFI folder and copy the EFI folder directly onto the newly created SD/USB.

Updates will be less painful in future, just download a new EFI folder, rename the old one or move it to a new folder you created and copy the new EFI folder onto the CL.

I have also reduced the number of available config files back to the lowest number really needed. Who wants special treatment will have to learn to install recent versions of the OpenCore Configurator and do the wanted changes on his own.

 

[iPlasm]

Catalina Loader and Open Core News​

Last night I had to change the post with the older and more recent version of the Catalina Loader, again. Google flagged the attachments as potential dangerous and the only way around is to encrypt the contents.

For this reason I published an empty shell of the Catalina Loader disk image encrypted and two archives containing the EFI folders of version 0.6.0 (unchanged) and 0.6.3 upgraded with the latest PolarisBoost and all extensions and patches needed to install and run Big Sur on iMac 11,x (Late 2009 and Mid 2010) models.

To get this working you have to download both the DMG and the fitting EFI folder and copy the EFI folder directly onto the newly created SD/USB.

Updates will be less painful in future, just download a new EFI folder, rename the old one or move it to a new folder you created and copy the new EFI folder onto the CL.

I have also reduced the number of available config files back to the lowest number really needed. Who wants special treatment will have to learn to install recent versions of the OpenCore Configurator and do the wanted changes on his own.

I don't like your move if because you mean using Google Chrome has flagged to download the attachments? let us simply skip downloading using Google Chrome then, we have Apple Safari, Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox and etc....... Google is virus and not us.
It's not fair you're trying hard work and Google flags your files as dangerous virus files!

 

[Ausdauersportler]

I don't like your move if because you mean using Google Chrome has flagged to download the attachments? let us simply skip downloading using Google Chrome then, we have Apple Safari, Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox and etc....... Google is virus and not us.
It's not fair you're trying hard work and Google flags your files as dangerous virus files!

If google.com flags an upload to the macrumors.com page the entire page will be blocked from the entire Google search engine. The uploads have been deleted by a moderator. There was no real option for me.

@dosdude1 has the same problem with his own website and this own software, for that reason he encrypted his files, too. So no search machine can do easy machine analysis of files on the site and block pages...

This is not about the Google chrome browser.

 

[gnommak]

Have issues with sleep fix.
I have iMac 27 2011 with K610M, Catalina 10.15.7. After installing six HD3000 kexts to fix sleep and rebooting iMac, it's crashing on about 60% loading screen and reseting and trying to boot again. This repeats until I start in safe mode and remove all kexts from /S/L/E
What did I doing wrong or have any one same issues as me?

 

[Punteillos]

so guys, I have a little gift for you to give back after such an incredible thread
hope you like it, the headaches to get it running were immens for me as a newb.

I couldn't stand it to use fckin windows to flash the cards and so I prepared this ~350mb drive

I created a Linux Live USB (based on grml.org) Thumb Drive with nvflash_linux and Nicks Bioses preloaded. and its booting by itself so you can work blind with a new unpatched nvidia card plugged in. Also, its starting a ssh daemon and using DHCP to get an IP so you can remote login

Steps

Download
14 days left to download, uploaded here: https://www.mediafire.com/file/cztz4xqj2sru9gj/2011_imac_usb.zip/file

mirror by NOTNICE, thnx: https://cloud.notnlce.com/index.php/s/xkJP34GD6a9WziE/download


Prepare USB Drive or SD Card
so, you take a small usb thumb drive, partition it with disk utility on a Mac: GPT + FAT32
and just unzip the files structure onto the drive, no dd or etcher or something. just copy paste it. folder structure see attached screenshot. (you can remove the .roms I downloaded and download itself if you want to be sure about the correct file size. I did not verify them at all. use/flash at your own risk please)

Test & Try
test your thumb drive with a more or less working GPU/ external Screen or just have faith in me

Swap Hardware
swap your GPU to NVIDIA and (!) disconnect every SSD/HDD, makes it easier to boot blindly from one USB or SD Card, connect the ETH Cable (!)

Find IP
let the iMac boot, everything is black, the boot loader is waiting 20s before booting, so give the whole process 1min time, then head over to your Router Page and find the right IP that the iMac got through DHCP

SSH to the iMac
now fire up your terminal on a Win/Mac/Linux Machine of your choice and ssh to your iMac with
ssh root@YOURIP
Password: flash
Confirm the ssh id with yes and you should be in your iMac

Working Directory
cd /lib/live/mount/medium/flash

read the RADME in there… I will enjoy my brand new k2000m in my 27" 2011 iMac with Catalina 10.15.3
… and because this is so easy, I rebuild it to a K1100M and flashed that also

(someone could write some fancy scripts but I thought its saver that everyone is doing it command by command and don't stop thinking and trusting some scripts)

Hi, thanks for your job, i need to flash a nvidia k610m 1Gb for a 2011 imac, im reading for the last 2 days and i think i can use this usb method with the K610M_EG2.rom for this gpu, right?

Command must be like: "nvflash_linux -6 Quadro_Beta1.2/K610M_EG2.rom"

Im gonna use one like this:

Thanks for the support.

 

[rumian]

Hello, I have a problem with the iMac 27 2011 so far it worked very well with the GTX765M by Nick [D] vB who made the flash but from yesterday I have to use "alt" to get the bootscreen and the lcd image. otherwise the screen is black. Only an additional monitor works. after rebooting and using "alt" the system boots but the monitor is detected as external. I reinstalled Catalina, changed the new disk and flash of the video card to Kepler Beta 3, nothing changed. Strange because so far everything worked for many months. Can someone help me please

 

[Ausdauersportler]

Hello, I have a problem with the iMac 27 2011 so far it worked very well with the GTX765M by Nick [D] vB who made the flash but from yesterday I have to use "alt" to get the bootscreen and the lcd image. otherwise the screen is black. Only an additional monitor works. after rebooting and using "alt" the system boots but the monitor is detected as external. I reinstalled Catalina, changed the new disk and flash of the video card to Kepler Beta 3, nothing changed. Strange because so far everything worked for many months. Can someone help me please

Please read the first post.

 

[rumian]

Please read the first post.

I read, the first post when the topic was 70 pages, then I fixed the imac 2009 and 2011 with kepler cards it was a long time ago. I also read yesterday when imac 2011 stopped detecting lcd and nothing has changed
I am puzzled by the fact that so far everything has been working properly, and I have not made any changes to hardware or software. I have Catalina 10.15.7 installed

 

[Ausdauersportler]

I read, the first post when the topic was 70 pages, then I fixed the imac 2009 and 2011 with kepler cards. it was a long time ago. However, yesterday imac 2011 stopped detecting the lcd and nothing has changed.

Sorry, I am somewhat tired of answering....

This is possibly the most prominent problem - called black screen issue. And if you really read the first post you cannot ignore the proposed solution.

 

[rumian]

Sorry, I am somewhat tired of answering....

This is possibly the most prominent problem - called black screen issue. And if you really read the first post you cannot ignore the proposed solution.

I understand you, but I didn't write here until I read the tips in Some Common macOS problems and solutions
But there is no mention of LCD detection from the end of 2011 with my motherboard symbol. , I used the kext trick but it has no effect. The screen is still not detected. Except it worked for a few months, it stopped yesterday. I even changed the card to the same model with changed Nick [D] vB bios. it doesn't do anything

 

[Ausdauersportler]

I understand you, but I didn't write here until I read the tips in Some Common macOS problems and solutions
But there is no mention of LCD detection from the end of 2011 with my motherboard symbol. , I used the kext trick but it has no effect. The screen is still not detected. Except it worked for a few months, it stopped yesterday. I even changed the card to the same model with changed Nick [D] vB bios. it doesn't do anything

This is the black screen issue (solved by a patched AGC extension) or your have broken hardware. Changing the graphics card does not solve the black screen issue, it is an issue known even from Sierra. The black screen issue occurs with all iMacs having NVIDIA cards, it is a software problem.

Talking about bad hardware:

1. You may face all kind of hardware problems after assembling your iMac again. There is an incomplete list of common (hardware) problems including the links to the original Apple iMac Technician Guides to trouble shoot such problems. Please understand that we cannot remotely repair or identify broken hardware. And there is no proof possible that hardware is broken. Do not ask for one. You may likely buy a dead used card. Check it before! This is not the "repair my iMac help desk thread".

This can be broken coil or resistor on the logic board, but the fact that you get the LCD working by using the alt/option on boot tells me the hardware should be ok.

Check your memory, pull everything out except one module and do a PRAM reset.

 

[gagerman]

Catalina Loader and Open Core News​

Last night I had to change the post with the older and more recent version of the Catalina Loader, again. Google flagged the attachments as potential dangerous and the only way around is to encrypt the contents.

For this reason I published an empty shell of the Catalina Loader disk image encrypted and two archives containing the EFI folders of version 0.6.0 (unchanged) and 0.6.3 upgraded with the latest PolarisBoost and all extensions and patches needed to install and run Big Sur on iMac 11,x (Late 2009 and Mid 2010) models.

To get this working you have to download both the DMG and the fitting EFI folder and copy the EFI folder directly onto the newly created SD/USB.

Updates will be less painful in future, just download a new EFI folder, rename the old one or move it to a new folder you created and copy the new EFI folder onto the CL.

I have also reduced the number of available config files back to the lowest number really needed. Who wants special treatment will have to learn to install recent versions of the OpenCore Configurator and do the wanted changes on his own.

The download on Catalina Loader and Open Core is not working, working now Thanks.

 

[xbox3605]

** NVIDIA Quadro K3000M Mac Edition ROM **
Genuine Native Boot Screen & Brightness Control


View attachment 1666544
​

Preamble:
These cards are designed with a PCI legacy 2.3 architecture (2002). This is reflected in their roms which has led to some trouble developing a compatible rom for the iMac. My rom has a modest clock table boost as well. These workstation Quadro cards really boost well.

Pre-installation Requirements:
- iMac (27-inch, Mid 2011) , model: A1312 (EMC 2429) Mac-942B59F58194171B (Test machine)
- BootROM: 87.0.0.0.0. Please use High Sierra to update your BootROM to latest version.
- Nvidia Quadro K3000M, GPU Variant: N14E-Q1-A2 Dell or HP
- Heatsink 3-pipe with appropriate clearance mods for the inductors

Known working GPUs:
-Dell K3100M vbios: 80.04.5A.00.01
-HP K3100M vbios: 80.04.33.00.2E

Post-installation Requirements:
Brightness Control Stepping Mod:
-Turn computer on, hold down Command(⌘)-R
-Choose Utilities > Terminal
-Enter:csrutil disable
-Reboot
-Download and open 'Kext Utility v2.6.6'
-Navigate to S/L/E (System/Library/Extensions)
-Copy "AppleBacklight.kext" to Desktop
-Edit: AppleBacklight.kext/Contents/Info.plist
-Scroll down to: IOKitPersonalities > AppleIntelPanelA > ApplePanels
-There you find several Apple LCD profiles.
-For the iMac 2011 27" machine locate:

<key>F10Ta007</key>
<data>
ABEABgALABQAHAAnADMAPwBOAFwAZwBzAIEAkQClAL8A2wD/
</data>

-Change the <data> section to:
ABEAAgA3AF8AigCzAOsBJAFnAakB1AIJAlQCogL4A00DlgRpBGk=
-Drag your modded kext into Kext Utility, allow it correct permissions
-Applebacklight.kext.bak folder will be created
-Reboot

The above data pattern will allow for a wider span of steppings for the brightness control and utilizes more of the capacity of the HD3000. If you have a different machine, your panel ID can be found by going to System Preferences > Displays > Color > Open Profile > mmod

Caveats post-install:
-16bit resolution glitch of UGA_DRAW_PROTOCOL - temporary solution: activate a sleep cycle
- 4096MB instead of 2048MB reported by memvendorID {00 10 00 00}: looking into it.
- WSON based bios chip. Clip rescue is not possible



Insanely Great!

View attachment 1665339 View attachment 1665498View attachment 1665499​

Hi, i dont know if im doing somthing wrong but when I try to flash It dosent work,
Checking for matches between display adapter(s) and image(s)...
Adapter: Quadro 3000M (10DE,0E3A,103C,1630) H:--:NRM S:00,B:01,D:00,F:00

EEPROM ID (C2,2012) : MX MX25L2005 2.7-3.6V 2048Kx1S, page
WARNING: None of the firmware image compatible PCI Device ID's
match the PCI Device ID of the adapter.
Adapter PCI Device ID: 0E3A
Firmware image PCI Device ID: 11BE
WARNING: Firmware image PCI Subsystem ID (1028.15CD)
does not match adapter PCI Subsystem ID (103C.1630).
WARNING: None of the firmware image compatible Board ID's
match the Board ID of the adapter.
Adapter Board ID: CD1C
Firmware image Board ID: E108
NOTE: Exception caught.
Nothing changed!

ERROR: GPU mismatch

HP QUADRO 3000M 2048 MB BIOS vbios: 70.04.42.00.05

any solution or this video card it doesn't work?
Many thanks!

 

[Ausdauersportler]

The download on Catalina Loader and Open Core is not working

Could you please more precise? What did you really do? Did you read the post and instructions?

I just did the download, put the DMG using the disk utilities onto an SD card (it asked for the encryption password NICK), made a second download getting the 0.6.3 EFI folder and copied the EFI folder onto the newly created SD card, rename the config.NVIDIA.BS.plist to config.plist and booted into Big Sur 11.0.1.

So everything is working as expected.

 

[Ausdauersportler]

Hi, i dont know if im doing somthing wrong but when I try to flash It dosent work,
Checking for matches between display adapter(s) and image(s)...
Adapter: Quadro 3000M (10DE,0E3A,103C,1630) H:--:NRM S:00,B:01,D:00,F:00

HP QUADRO 3000M 2048 MB BIOS vbios: 70.04.42.00.05

any solution or this video card it doesn't work?
Many thanks!

You have an incompatible HP QUADRO 3000M, you need a compatible Kepler K3000M - you see the difference?

 

[MACGENUISDUDE]

XANDERON
I put a NVIDIA K3110M in a 2011 27" iMAC
3.4 GHz i7
There are no HDs or SSDs in it & it has 32 GB of RAM
I downloaded the USB Flash Stick from you
It is formated FAT 32
I have it next to my Main 2011 27" iMAC &
both are connected to my Netgear Nighthawk Router
I plug in the Flash Stick to the Nvidia iMAC & turn it on
Black screen as exspected
Them go to terminal on my main iMAC
When I do the SSH
ssh root@192.168.0.1
I get nothing futher & it times out
Curtis Gross in his video shows a follow up
termial command where you add Password > FLASH
I am not getting that
I have 4 of these cards that I wanted to flash
BUT I am getting nowhere
The other iMac does bong when powered up
But stays black screen
It appears the SSH is not connecting
Any input would be WONDERFUL
Peace MR MIKE