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iM 4,1-14,4 2011 iMac Graphics Card Upgrade
- Thread starter MichaelDT
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I have a K2000m. I am not sure if your is glued on. Mine is. If it is glued on, you need a hair blower, and a thin chop stick. The best way is lay the hair blower flat on a table. hold the card vertically with bracket facing the hairblower (you might want to wear an oven mitt - heat from hair blower can get hot). set the hair blower to highest heat setting, aim at one of the rivet/hole. Blow on the card for about 30 seconds, gently push the hole from the other side of the card with chop stick. repeat for the other 3 holes. Took me about 3 minutes total from turning the blower on to getting the bracket off.
Yes, just set model to iMac12,2 using the TUI Version - but you are better suited on Discord with this particular problems.
hi, how can I download the iMac OpenCore Loader.dmg? I want to fix mac fix brightness control to k1100m
thanks!
thanks!
Check the first post, there is an OpenCore section, and search and read, but you may consider using OCLP which is the evolved, latest, and greatest version of OpenCore giving you everything you need - including the ability to upgrade your (unknown) iMac.
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Today i desoldered the 64kb Eeprom from my M5950 and Programmed a pm25lv020 with the Efi Bios and soldered it in. But it gives me a Blackscreen i only get a Apple Start up sound... No Logo nothing.
I've got such a card and it used to work in my late 2009 iMac.
Which VBIOS did you flash?
The one from this Thread from Nick.The Dell one. I try to reflash it later. Idk what im doing wrong
The plan was to upgrade My Imac 27 inch 2011 to a k3100m but nou my imac does not reconize any video card.
I dont now wat has happend
dus somewone now what happend.
I dont now wat has happend
dus somewone now what happend.
Hi all
It is my second time replacing a failing GPU in an iMac. Both of them were 2009 iMacs. I also have a 2011 iMac with it's original GPU, a 2GB 6970M that is still working fine but I know, it will fail eventually.
This time I replaced the 4850 with an AMD M6100 2GB from Dell. I would like to share my experience replacing it if I can help the community.
The first thing I did obviously is opening up the 27" iMac 11,1 and replaced the faulty card. I have the 2-pipes heatsink and the card almost fitted perfectly but I had to grind a small part of the heatsink. I use a file to grind about 3-4 mm off a corner of the heatsink then applied K5-pro and MX-4 thermal paste...
Next I tried the Linux grml usb boot method that worked fine when i installed a k610m in another 2009 iMac but for unknown reasons i was never able to get an IP address? The ethernet port was up on my router but the host was unreachable. So i could not flash the gpu that way.
The iMac was chiming and was still booting into a Mojave install i did previously while the old 4850 card was installed (i baked it and it came back to life) and before replacing the gpu i made sure to enable Screen Sharing and all the VNC options etc... So when booting with the new gpu i could connect remotely to the iMac and i saw that the card was detected but no kext loaded.
I installed a package that automatically installs Bootcamp with a barebones Win7 install to be able to flash the card, i did all that connected remotely with VNC on another Mac, the iMac was not showing up in the Finder to be able to use Screen Sharing for whatever reason? I hooked up a second monitor and Windows showed up only on the external monitor. But that Win7 install only included NVflash, i downloaded the latest version of amdvbflash for Windows even tough it is not recommended to flash a gpu in Windows (that is what i read). But the drivers that amdvbflash has to install to be able to do it's thing just never wanted to work. I tried disabling Driver Signature but nope, nothing worked. So at that point i was a little clueless for about half an hour.
Half an hour later: I downloaded the latest distro of Ubuntu and made a bootable USB stick with the help of BalenaEtcher. That booted up just fine and i could see something on my external monitor.
Note: whenever i tried booting from an external device (usb stick or hdd) i had to unplug the internal ssd because the iMac always booted from that ssd first and holding ALT at boot did not seem to work. I thought it would still work even though the screen was black but i never been able to boot that way.
I could not do anything with the Ubuntu desktop however, i think it used my external display as an extended display by default maybe? Right-clicking did nothing, no taskbar, only a nice wallpaper. I pressed i think ctrl-alt+F1 to make a terminal window appear and logged into the default ubuntu user: ubuntu. No password. Then i inserted another usb stick that contained amdvbflash and the ROM2 file found in the link in the first page. I had to mount the usb stick manually though. Yes i could have copied the files on the ubuntu install beforehand but i did not.
So mounting the usb stick i had to do a little google search, i don't know these things by heart.
sudo mkdir /media/external
sudo fdisk -l (to list all drives and try to determine which one is the right usb stick, mine was sdc2 or sdc3)
sudo mount -t vfat /dev/sdc2 /media/external
That worked then i was able to access amdvbflash, did a backup of my vbios and flashed the ROM2 file and rebooted the iMac. Black screen still but at least the flashing part was done.
Next i downloaded OCLP and ho my god did that OpenCore thing evolved since i last fiddled with that on a 5,1 MacPro. So easy to use, no more plist editing and following 256 pages on Dortania, at least for what i had to do. So i prepared a Monterey USB install, just followed the easy steps on the OCLP page and when it was done i inserted that USB stick in the 2009 iMac with M6100 gpu and that bootpicker screen appeared before my eyes! What a sight...
I had to remove my ssd and plug it with an usb adaptor so that i could boot off the OCLP enabled USB stick. It took a while to install on the external ssd though usb 2.0 but eventually it arrived to the desktop and the card is detected as AMD Radeon HD 8xxx 2 GB. Temps seem to be accurate i guess: 50 for the card and 43 for the heatsink.
Last step: downloaded OCLP again on the new Monterey install, dis the same thing as before and installed OC but on the ssd this time. Applied the patches that were detected for my particular model, only the Airport card needed patching. It is working but is a little finicky.
So it is looking now, another successful replacement.
Thanks to all the community and the ones who maintain this thread, this is incredible work.
It is my second time replacing a failing GPU in an iMac. Both of them were 2009 iMacs. I also have a 2011 iMac with it's original GPU, a 2GB 6970M that is still working fine but I know, it will fail eventually.
This time I replaced the 4850 with an AMD M6100 2GB from Dell. I would like to share my experience replacing it if I can help the community.
The first thing I did obviously is opening up the 27" iMac 11,1 and replaced the faulty card. I have the 2-pipes heatsink and the card almost fitted perfectly but I had to grind a small part of the heatsink. I use a file to grind about 3-4 mm off a corner of the heatsink then applied K5-pro and MX-4 thermal paste...
Next I tried the Linux grml usb boot method that worked fine when i installed a k610m in another 2009 iMac but for unknown reasons i was never able to get an IP address? The ethernet port was up on my router but the host was unreachable. So i could not flash the gpu that way.
The iMac was chiming and was still booting into a Mojave install i did previously while the old 4850 card was installed (i baked it and it came back to life) and before replacing the gpu i made sure to enable Screen Sharing and all the VNC options etc... So when booting with the new gpu i could connect remotely to the iMac and i saw that the card was detected but no kext loaded.
I installed a package that automatically installs Bootcamp with a barebones Win7 install to be able to flash the card, i did all that connected remotely with VNC on another Mac, the iMac was not showing up in the Finder to be able to use Screen Sharing for whatever reason? I hooked up a second monitor and Windows showed up only on the external monitor. But that Win7 install only included NVflash, i downloaded the latest version of amdvbflash for Windows even tough it is not recommended to flash a gpu in Windows (that is what i read). But the drivers that amdvbflash has to install to be able to do it's thing just never wanted to work. I tried disabling Driver Signature but nope, nothing worked. So at that point i was a little clueless for about half an hour.
Half an hour later: I downloaded the latest distro of Ubuntu and made a bootable USB stick with the help of BalenaEtcher. That booted up just fine and i could see something on my external monitor.
Note: whenever i tried booting from an external device (usb stick or hdd) i had to unplug the internal ssd because the iMac always booted from that ssd first and holding ALT at boot did not seem to work. I thought it would still work even though the screen was black but i never been able to boot that way.
I could not do anything with the Ubuntu desktop however, i think it used my external display as an extended display by default maybe? Right-clicking did nothing, no taskbar, only a nice wallpaper. I pressed i think ctrl-alt+F1 to make a terminal window appear and logged into the default ubuntu user: ubuntu. No password. Then i inserted another usb stick that contained amdvbflash and the ROM2 file found in the link in the first page. I had to mount the usb stick manually though. Yes i could have copied the files on the ubuntu install beforehand but i did not.
So mounting the usb stick i had to do a little google search, i don't know these things by heart.
sudo mkdir /media/external
sudo fdisk -l (to list all drives and try to determine which one is the right usb stick, mine was sdc2 or sdc3)
sudo mount -t vfat /dev/sdc2 /media/external
That worked then i was able to access amdvbflash, did a backup of my vbios and flashed the ROM2 file and rebooted the iMac. Black screen still but at least the flashing part was done.
Next i downloaded OCLP and ho my god did that OpenCore thing evolved since i last fiddled with that on a 5,1 MacPro. So easy to use, no more plist editing and following 256 pages on Dortania, at least for what i had to do. So i prepared a Monterey USB install, just followed the easy steps on the OCLP page and when it was done i inserted that USB stick in the 2009 iMac with M6100 gpu and that bootpicker screen appeared before my eyes! What a sight...
I had to remove my ssd and plug it with an usb adaptor so that i could boot off the OCLP enabled USB stick. It took a while to install on the external ssd though usb 2.0 but eventually it arrived to the desktop and the card is detected as AMD Radeon HD 8xxx 2 GB. Temps seem to be accurate i guess: 50 for the card and 43 for the heatsink.
Last step: downloaded OCLP again on the new Monterey install, dis the same thing as before and installed OC but on the ssd this time. Applied the patches that were detected for my particular model, only the Airport card needed patching. It is working but is a little finicky.
So it is looking now, another successful replacement.
Thanks to all the community and the ones who maintain this thread, this is incredible work.
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I know that this is an older post, but how has your experience been with the 770M? IDK if you still use it, but I was gonna get either a 765M or 770M but I wanted to know how it worked for you. I know people seemed to get a 765M to work in this iMac, but I was curious about the 770M.
Hi All.
I've followed this thread for a number of years now with great interest and respect, recently when, what I thought was my gpu died (screen flickered, went off - stuck in constant boot loop- it had been getting way too hot for a long time..), I thought it was fate - and I'd swap it out.
machine; 27 mid 2010 i7 imac, ssd, upgraded wifi/bt ..360, wx4150 (believe micron ram). High Sierra. all updates.
I bought and flashed a wx4150 (installing 3 pipe sink at the same time) using the linux usb method with a GOP rom. I reset the PRAM 4 times (to be sure) with a wired keyboard. (I haven't disabled SIP as it was unexpected), and now I can't get to the bootscreen and the internal and external screens are black. More on that.
I thought perhaps I had damaged the display connector or there was an issue with the power to screen or with the LCD (backlight) as documented here and in ifixit etc..
I am able to screenshare into the mac from my macbook, The card is detected and runs a respectable score on unigine, fps 43 (I used good pads carefully cut, copper-mod cut to the right size. artic mx-5). Further it detects and changes the resolution to the LG tv connected to it, but doesn't send any output to it(tried various resolutions). Also as long as the tv is connected it has the full internal display resolution settings in display options.
Even after benchmarking the gpu and heatsink temps are never more than 3c out from each other and reasonable.
The card and rom seems to be ok? if there is an issue with the lcd would the external still work? they both appear to be detected in settings, is this fixable by opencore somehow?
I'm wondering what the next steps are. Is this related to not disabling SIP. I can't seem to make it to recovery (as can't see bootscreen either on screens or via sharing- first comes up at login).
I have looked through page 1 and the opencore docs, but am slightly at a loss. I apologise if this has been documented before or a solution offered. I hope its obvious and i just missed it or being slow.
If I were to disconnect the internal ssd, boot opencore and installer on a usb. then connect internal drive via usb and install say monterey, would that be worth a go? asking slightly hesitantly as it feels somewhat blind. Does opencore potentially fix the black screen?
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
I've followed this thread for a number of years now with great interest and respect, recently when, what I thought was my gpu died (screen flickered, went off - stuck in constant boot loop- it had been getting way too hot for a long time..), I thought it was fate - and I'd swap it out.
machine; 27 mid 2010 i7 imac, ssd, upgraded wifi/bt ..360, wx4150 (believe micron ram). High Sierra. all updates.
I bought and flashed a wx4150 (installing 3 pipe sink at the same time) using the linux usb method with a GOP rom. I reset the PRAM 4 times (to be sure) with a wired keyboard. (I haven't disabled SIP as it was unexpected), and now I can't get to the bootscreen and the internal and external screens are black. More on that.
I thought perhaps I had damaged the display connector or there was an issue with the power to screen or with the LCD (backlight) as documented here and in ifixit etc..
I am able to screenshare into the mac from my macbook, The card is detected and runs a respectable score on unigine, fps 43 (I used good pads carefully cut, copper-mod cut to the right size. artic mx-5). Further it detects and changes the resolution to the LG tv connected to it, but doesn't send any output to it(tried various resolutions). Also as long as the tv is connected it has the full internal display resolution settings in display options.
Even after benchmarking the gpu and heatsink temps are never more than 3c out from each other and reasonable.
The card and rom seems to be ok? if there is an issue with the lcd would the external still work? they both appear to be detected in settings, is this fixable by opencore somehow?
I'm wondering what the next steps are. Is this related to not disabling SIP. I can't seem to make it to recovery (as can't see bootscreen either on screens or via sharing- first comes up at login).
I have looked through page 1 and the opencore docs, but am slightly at a loss. I apologise if this has been documented before or a solution offered. I hope its obvious and i just missed it
or being slow.If I were to disconnect the internal ssd, boot opencore and installer on a usb. then connect internal drive via usb and install say monterey, would that be worth a go? asking slightly hesitantly as it feels somewhat blind. Does opencore potentially fix the black screen?
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
My 770M card has been in storage for a while, it was great while it worked. There should be an OpenCore Backlight ROM for the card now, there wasn't when i used the card so it was swapped for the k4100m. But if you can find the 770m sure it's slightly better than the 765m
As this issue was mentioned with one or two lines in post #1, this question keep repeating, as people skip it easily.
1. Your hardware is fine, and the vBIOS was correctly flashed.
2. The issue is within High Sierra. No software solution has been found yet. (OCLP could not fix this issue for High Sierra)
3. Hardware solution for High Sierra: Use an external monitor like a TV, or a dummy VGA plug + mDP to VGA adaptor. (I use my iMac 2010 with a TV, the TV need to be powered on when you cold start the iMac, after that it can be turned-off, and you can sleep-wake the imac instead of turning it off.)
4. Big Sur doesn't have this issue. Perhaps Monterey doesn't, either. (I haven't tried Monterey on my iMac yet)
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No, both cards need the big 75W capable 3 pipe heat sink. Cannot explain how this error got into the first post...
Try to read at least the first 3 words of the first post and you would have your answer
It´s really annoying that people don´t care t o read the basics. Isn´t it?
About adding M5100/W5170M to an iMac
Problem:
After installing a M5100/W5170M (or more generic a HD7xxx series GPU) to an iMac it will not boot into normal macOS unless you have prepared OpenCore in advance with some special settings. This is a catch22 - some users start with a dead GPU and cannot do this installation in advance, after installation they cannot boot normally. Although recovery and safe mode boot both works with these cards.
Note: OCLP 0.3.1 and later will be able to auto detect the new AMD GPU and create a working OpenCore configuration.
There are two ways to Rome, 1. using a recovery CD created in advance or 2. booting into safe mode. In any case build now or later the recovery CD - it is a life saver when accidentally deleting your OpenCore.
Solution 1: (using OCLP 0.3.2 to build a OC recovery CD)
OCLP 0.3.2 will be released soon. Get the TUI version and run it following these steps:
1. run OCLP TUI
2. select 5. Patcher Settings
3. select 9. Advanced Settings, for developers only
4. select 3. Set Generic Bootstrap
5. select 2. EFI/BOOT/BOOTx64.efi
6. select Q. Quit
7. select 1. Set Metal GPU Status
8. select 4. AMD Legacy GCN
9. select Q. Quit
10. select Q. Quit
11. select 1. Build OpenCore
12. save files from temporary storage or select 2. Install OpenCore to USB/internal drive
The output of the screen ends with a line like this
Code:Your OpenCore EFI for iMac12,2 has been built at: /private/var/folders/9_/11q0cx1j2b3d7yr9ybjt9x3r0000gn/T/_MEI70EWjX/Build-Folder/OpenCore-Build
You may now write the new OpenCore to disk/usb drive or just follow the printed path containing the files on local disk and copy them over to your local folder using a terminal app:
Code:% cd /private/var/folders/9_/11q0cx1j2b3d7yr9ybjt9x3r0000gn/T/_MEI70EWjX/Build-Folder/OpenCore-Build % mkdir ~/Desktop/OCD % cp -r EFI ~/Desktop/OCD % mkdir ~/Desktop/OCD/EFI/BOOT % cp System/Library/CoreServices/boot.efi ~/Desktop/OCD/EFI/BOOT/BOOTx64.efi % open ~/Desktop/OCD/EFI
Now your should have a Finder window showing this and you may continue to create your OC rescue CD using the data generated in the former step.
View attachment 1925440
Solution 2: (using safe mode)
Install the GPU and boot into recovery (pressing CMD+R on boot) and disable SIP and enable safe mode booting with the famous
commands in the terminal app and reboot directly and automatically into safe mode (theCode:nvram boot-args=“-x“ csrutil disable“-x“does the safe mode trick).
Safe mode disables the graphics acceleration and make the desktop feel sluggish, but you can do the basic administration.
Unfortunately in safe mode Apple decided to limit the access to some kernel extensions, in particular Apple blocks the msdosfs.kext from loading in safe mode which we need to mount the EFI partition to write a new updated OpenCore version through OCLP. So we have to hack around this, now.
I found here a recipe to overcome it here:
OS X only boots when in safe mode
Hello guys, We have a HP Pavilion AB040ND notebook where we want to install Mac OS X El Capitan onto. Fortunately we got it to install without getting a black screen and we still can. After the installation and we try to boot into El Capitan using the Clover bootloader and using the -x (safe...
Short version:
As described before you need to disable SIP and boot into safe mode (press left shift key on boot or add -x to boot-args).
Open a terminal app and enter these commands (tried this in High Sierra safe mode):
Code:sudo mkdir /tmp/kexts sudo cp -RX /System/Library/Extensions/msdosfs.kext /tmp/kexts sudo /usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "Add :OSBundleRequired string" /tmp/kexts/msdosfs.kext/Contents/Info.plist sudo /usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "Set :OSBundleRequired \"Safe Boot\"" /tmp/kexts/msdosfs.kext/Contents/Info.plist sudo kextutil /tmp/kexts/msdosfs.kext
Now you can use download OCLP 0.3.1 or later to write a new OpenCore in safe mode following the OCLP docs. It will auto detect the new AMD HD7xxx series GPU and add the settings needed to boot it successfully into High Sierra (hint: disable SecureBootModel within the OCLP settings for use of High Sierra!) and will allow installation and use of unsupported macOS versions including Monterey!
You may use the opportunity and download the new macOS installer of choice and prepare an USB installer to be ready on the next reboot.
Hope this helps!
Edit:
Just did a dry run in an iMac11,1 with an W6170M (flashed with GOP vBIOS) and an W5170M (flashed with GOP vBIOS) using High Sierra native (no OpenCore installed at all). It did the job.
Code:Installs-iMac:~ install$ sudo diskutil mount disk0s1 Password: Volume on disk0s1 failed to mount If the volume is damaged, try the "readOnly" option Installs-iMac:~ install$ sudo mkdir /tmp/kexts Installs-iMac:~ install$ sudo cp -RX /System/Library/Extensions/msdosfs.kext /tmp/kexts Installs-iMac:~ install$ sudo /usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "Add :OSBundleRequired string" /tmp/kexts/msdosfs.kext/Contents/Info.plist Installs-iMac:~ install$ sudo /usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "Set :OSBundleRequired \"Safe Boot\"" /tmp/kexts/msdosfs.kext/Contents/Info.plist Installs-iMac:~ install$ sudo kextutil /tmp/kexts/msdosfs.kext Notice: system is in safe boot mode; kernel may refuse loads. Kext with invalid signatured (-67030) allowed: <OSKext 0x7f9640d09c80 [0x7fffa42e7c30]> { URL = "file:///private/tmp/kexts/msdosfs.kext/", ID = "com.apple.filesystems.msdosfs" } Code Signing Failure: code signature is invalid Installs-iMac:~ install$ sudo diskutil mount disk0s1 Volume EFI on disk0s1 mounted Installs-iMac:~ install$ open /Volumes/EFI/EFI/
Following method 1, created the OC folder. Swapped the card red M5100 (Dell) and absolutely no display after I press the power button. The fans are blasting for whatever reason. Tried to go to recovery mode as well but no display whatsoever.
Does this mean the card is DOA?
Trying on iMac Mid 2011 (A1312) model.