GOP Boot Screens part II(Clover)

[DearthnVader]

I looked at the loaded drivers through shell. Disconnect and connect does not load the GOP. When I replaced the refind1 with the bootx64 it booted to shell and I saw:

105 00013D00 B - -  1  1 AMD GOP X64 Release Driver Rev.1.61

That, in theory, should have connected the output to the RX580, but I never got an output in the shell.

I can't get the shell to output to the GOP display on my 3,1 either.

Can you post your results from the drivers command within the rEFInd shell?

Also, if invoking the shell is the only way you are able to get the GOP driver to load, you can invoke rEFInd from the shell, it's just an EFI executable app.

REFIND.efi

or /the/path/to/REFIND.efi i.e.:

fs0:\EFI\refind\REFIND.efi

 

[startergo]

According to this thread this update gives a GOP boot screen to:
NVIDIA TITAN Series:
TITAN X (Maxwell), TITAN X (Pascal), TITAN XP

GeForce 10 Series:
GeForce GT 1030, GeForce GTX 1050, GTX 1050Ti, GTX 1060, GTX 1070, GTX 1070Ti, GTX 1080, GTX 1080Ti

GeForce 900 Series:
GeForce GTX 950, GTX 950Ti, GTX 960, GTX 970, GTX 980, GTX 980Ti

GeForce 700 Series:
GeForce GTX 745, GTX 750, GTX 750Ti

Quadro Series:
Quadro Maxwell and Pascal products may be impacted. For support and additional details, contact OEM/Channel partner. If further assistance is required, visit //support.nvidia.com

I wonder will this update give a boot screen at least with a boot loader like refind?

 

[Forbidden Era]

According to this thread this update gives a GOP boot screen to:
NVIDIA TITAN Series:
TITAN X (Maxwell), TITAN X (Pascal), TITAN XP

GeForce 10 Series:
GeForce GT 1030, GeForce GTX 1050, GTX 1050Ti, GTX 1060, GTX 1070, GTX 1070Ti, GTX 1080, GTX 1080Ti

GeForce 900 Series:
GeForce GTX 950, GTX 950Ti, GTX 960, GTX 970, GTX 980, GTX 980Ti

GeForce 700 Series:
GeForce GTX 745, GTX 750, GTX 750Ti

Quadro Series:
Quadro Maxwell and Pascal products may be impacted. For support and additional details, contact OEM/Channel partner. If further assistance is required, visit //support.nvidia.com

I wonder will this update give a boot screen at least with a boot loader like refind?

Don't tease me. I have a 960 now and my pro has been down almost 2 months because of some video driver issue, again, and fixing it is a PITA because of no support..I am about ready to ship my card to mvc and pay like 250 bux (incl shipping, after conversion to canuckbux)..

Any other option would be greatly welcomed. *runs off to link*
[doublepost=1552013503][/doublepost]K..I read thread..so I may try update and then try a gop-capable bootloader, seems right?

Would have to find a spare drive and install win10 on it on my old pc..

 

[startergo]

Don't tease me. I have a 960 now and my pro has been down almost 2 months because of some video driver issue, again, and fixing it is a PITA because of no support..I am about ready to ship my card to mvc and pay like 250 bux (incl shipping, after conversion to canuckbux)..

Any other option would be greatly welcomed. *runs off to link*
[doublepost=1552013503][/doublepost]K..I read thread..so I may try update and then try a gop-capable bootloader, seems right?

Would have to find a spare drive and install win10 on it on my old pc..

Yes test it. There shouldn't be any issues as it comes from Nvidia. You can install refind, place one of the GOP drivers within it, which @DearthnVader linked in this post and share the result.

 

[Macschrauber]

• MP3,1 has a 32Kbit PRAM SPI flash and a 16MBit FWB flash for the BootROM.
• MP5,1 has a 32Mbit SPI Flash for the whole BootROM, NVRAM volume inside it.
• MP6,1 has a 64Mbit SPI Flash for the whole BootROM, NVRAM volume inside it.

So it is ok to use clover on a Mac Pro 3.1 ?

And clover could brick the Mac Pro 4.1 / 5.1 Firmware (Nvram part) ?

 

[tsialex]

So it is ok to use clover on a Mac Pro 3.1 ?

And clover could brick the Mac Pro 4.1 / 5.1 Firmware (Nvram part) ?

Some time ago @startergo installed Clover with his Mac Pro 5,1 and MATT card. The BootROM dump he sent me make me cringe. NVRAM was overwritten all over with binary files.

I can't say if it's safe or not, but for sure I'd never use Clover with my Mac Pros. Since MP3,1 bricks are so much complex to repair, be warned.

 

[cdf]

There is a new alternative to Clover that may be of interest. It provides a special option with this description: "macOS bootloader requires GOP (Graphics Output Protocol) to be present on console handle. This option will install it if missing." See https://github.com/acidanthera/OpenCorePkg.

 

[startergo]

There is a new alternative to Clover that may be of interest. It provides a special option with this description: "macOS bootloader requires GOP (Graphics Output Protocol) to be present on console handle. This option will install it if missing." See https://github.com/acidanthera/OpenCorePkg.

Interesting
Download-Fritz and The HermitCrabs Lab are one of the creators of the QUO motherboard's bios. Long time ago they said they will no longer update the original bios, but will create a new one based on OpenCore. I thought that would never happen but there it is...

 

[cdf]

@startergo, have you had the chance to do any testing with OpenCore (I remember reading that you have a MATT card for your ROM...)?

 

[startergo]

@startergo, have you had the chance to do any testing with OpenCore (I remember reading that you have a MATT card for your ROM...)?

Not yet. I will try to test it after August 2nd

 

[octoviaa]

Not yet. I will try to test it after August 2nd

@startergo any luck with OpenCore?

 

[cdf]

I have tested Open Core on the 5,1. It seems quite promising, especially for Catalina. Unfortunately, so far, I have not been able to get a boot screen...

 

[h9826790]

I have tested Open Core on the 5,1. It seems quite promising, especially for Catalina. Unfortunately, so far, I have not been able to get a boot screen...

A bit off topic. I haven’t try Open Core yet.

I expect it also allow us to set SMBIOS, right?

That may be a good way for us to get full HWAccel on cMP (including HEVC Hardware encoding, which also allow us to use Side car, Airplay Display, etc).

 

[cdf]

I expect it also allow us to set SMBIOS, right?

That's right. By setting the SMBIOS with the proper model and board id and firmware version and by rerouting the boot variables, I have successfully installed 10.15. I plan on documenting the process.

 

[h9826790]

That's right. By setting the SMBIOS with the proper model and board id and firmware version and by rerouting the boot variables, I have successfully installed 10.15. I plan on documenting the process.

Million thanks in advance. I am definitely looking forward for that.

 

[startergo]

@startergo any luck with OpenCore?

For some reason I can't boot with opencore, I did not get the USB recognized as an EFI boot device. I tried several times. I must be doing something wrong.

 

[startergo]

@Nick [D]vB So I have inserted 4DDEAFA4-F480-4B9D-889B-1E3AE6605BD6.ffs from the MP6,1 rom in the cmP5,1 ROM

Nvidia tosses cMP a bone, bootscreens

Nvidia tosses cMP a bone, bootscreens

forum.netkas.org

, but did not see any difference in the boot screen detection. Then I tried the CoreEG2.efi from iMac19,1 and iMacPro1,1 replacing the efi in 4DDEAFA4-F480-4B9D-889B-1E3AE6605BD6.ffs but every time it produced a brick (no boot chime).

 

[tsialex]

@Nick [D]vB So I have inserted 4DDEAFA4-F480-4B9D-889B-1E3AE6605BD6.ffs from the MP6,1 rom in the cmP5,1 ROM

Nvidia tosses cMP a bone, bootscreens

Nvidia tosses cMP a bone, bootscreens

forum.netkas.org

, but did not see any difference in the boot screen detection. Then I tried the CoreEG2.efi from iMac19,1 and iMacPro1,1 replacing the efi in 4DDEAFA4-F480-4B9D-889B-1E3AE6605BD6.ffs but every time it produced a brick (no boot chime).

You can't use EFI modules from Macs later than 2014/2015 timeframe, different compiler and EFI source, with different optimisations and instructions that require SandyBridge/Haswell (AVX for example).

Don't you remember that the NVMe EFI modules from iMac18,3 bricked my Mac and later I found that it's optimisations are not compatible with Westmere?

I tried to do what you are doing and got the same results back in the day, the solution will be to rewrite the MP5,1 EFI modules for modern GPUs.

 

[Nick [D]vB]

Hey guys, sorry I missed this, I've been away. Startergo remember my incoherent reply in the other thread, I think the latest CoreEG2 you could use is probably from the iMac 17,1. For the reasons tsialex says anything newer will just brick the MP5,1, as you found out. The MP6,1 CoreEG2 version might be a better match (working debug LEDS etc) and remember you also need to inject the "EDID Parser" DXE or display detection for the boot-screen won't work.

Ludacrisvp recently used the MP6,1 CoreEG2 to enable boot-screen on his 2009 xserve with a WX4150 MXM card and the ROM I made for the 2010 / 11 iMacs. Not sure if he cross-flashed it to MP first, but there's no reason to think this would not work on a real MP5,1. I guess you could use an MXM card in an adapter but the ones with display outputs are crazy expensive.

Sadly just injecting CoreEG2 won't help you load standard UEFI GOPs and as I mentioned before, Apple's GOPs have the frame-buffer configuration "hard-coded" so to get boot-screens on standard desktop cards the GOP would need completely disassembling and patching to match the display outputs defined in the legacy vBIOS of each desktop card, this is not trivial.

But, this does give me an idea for an interesting experiment with those MP7,1 MPX modules... Now the Navi modules are out I've seen lots of 580 MPX modules on eBay, some at reasonable prices, I wonder if we could get them working in the MP5,1? If you can live with the 2 HDMI outputs the PCIE part looks pretty standard? If it fits mechanically it should be pretty easy to make a card-edge power adapter, some modded SATA power connectors should do the trick.

I found an ACPI dump from the MP7,1 and the VFCT table contained a partial copy of the 580 MPX vBIOS, interestingly it is an EllesmereM variant and has a lot in common with MXM cards like the mobile WX7100. Sadly it was incomplete so I couldn't fully decompress the EFI section but I could tell from the structure it is CoreEG2-like (not standard UEFI GOP) whether it can still talk to the older CoreEG2 DXE modules is unknown, but it's probably worth a try?

Even if it doesn't work with the older CoreEG2 you might still be able to use the standard AMD UEFI GOP driver to get boot-screen with OpenCore and have it, or a helper kext, inject the missing properties taken from the original Apple GOP. Anyway, it's just an idea, but might be a fun project for someone with too much time on their hands during lock-down!

 

[joevt]

But, this does give me an idea for an interesting experiment with those MP7,1 MPX modules... Now the Navi modules are out I've seen lots of 580 MPX modules on eBay, some at reasonable prices, I wonder if we could get them working in the MP5,1? If you can live with the 2 HDMI outputs the PCIE part looks pretty standard? If it fits mechanically it should be pretty easy to make a card-edge power adapter, some modded SATA power connectors should do the trick.

The 580 MPX card can be detected but doesn't produce output from the HDMI ports.

Preliminary MPX (580X) Success!

I acquired a 580X MPX module off eBay to see if I could get it to work as an eGPU. Just plugging it in to the Razer Core X Chroma yielded nothing. Thi...

egpu.io

 

[Nick [D]vB]

That was fast, nice work! From the screenshot it looks like the GOP has not loaded, not sure which MBP was tested but it's CoreEG2 might just be too old, the GOP might be missing, or this could just be an eGPU issue? It seems unlikely but there is a chance the GOP is actually loaded from the main MP7,1 boot-rom (as with most modern macs) in which case we'd need a dump of that to extract it from if we wanted to enable boot-screen etc.

Even without the original GOP they could try injecting the correct frame-buffer personality and other properties through OpenCore, which could also be used to test loading the generic AMD UEFI GOP as a UEFI driver, (or decompressed CoreEG2 / EDID Parser EFIs). We really need a full vBIOS dump from the MPX module, ATIFlash from windows should work, but if all else fails just use a test-clip on the EEPROM.

 

[dwdrummer959]

I wrote that post over at egpu.io. I’ll try ATIFlash soon.

 

[Nick [D]vB]

Great, a vBIOS dump would be very useful and will confirm if the GOP is present. I'm guessing these MPX modules can't use the generic Radeon frame-buffer, or maybe those internal DP->HDMI converters need to be initialized by the GOP or some other firmware component like CoreEG2/EDIDparser? Even if the GOP is missing from the vBIOS ROM I found a DarwinDump from the MP7,1 so we can pull the properties from IOreg, just forcing the correct "Forrahue" frame-buffer might be enough?

There is a pre-built OpenCore image we use for the iMacs that you can run off a USB stick for testing. I'd suggest testing with Catalina, not sure if the Forrahue frame-buffer is supported in the Mojave kexts? Also interested if you get any output in windows when you dump the vBIOS (ideally boot in MBR mode with the display attached). If you have access to a MP5,1 that would help eliminate any eGPU weirdness, but a 6,1 would also be good to test the older CoreEG2 version.

 

[dwdrummer959]

I'm testing on a newer MBP now (2018) and HDMI output still isn't working but the gMux version is 5.0.0 now. I don't have bootcamp setup and probably won't be able to install that for a while. Let me know if there are commands/apps I can run under OS X to get more information.

 

[startergo]

I'm testing on a newer MBP now (2018) and HDMI output still isn't working but the gMux version is 5.0.0 now. I don't have bootcamp setup and probably won't be able to install that for a while. Let me know if there are commands/apps I can run under OS X to get more information.

You can do darwin dump in private mode:

blackosx / DarwinDumper / Downloads — Bitbucket

bitbucket.org