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

[Umarx]

Just checked and the windows is lagacy bios. 2011 imacs dont support uefi right? Or is this supported because of opencore?

I also put a copperplate between the wx4130 and heatsink. When my windows was working the temps were low.

That is what I find wierd. I dont think my card is broken because I was able to succesfully boot and use windows 7 with the wx4130 after flashing it. But I now cant even get back to that anymore.

I think the best thing to do it install windows 7 in uefi mode and make it bootable with opencore with the old gpu. Then install the new gpu and try reflashing the card.

Is there also a EG bios version of the wx4130?

Also what opencore version did you use with high sierra?

Thanks

Sieuwe

Good to find another newbie in the same boat of installing wx4130 in 2011 imac. Hope it works for you!!
following...

 

[OnawaAfrica]

Just checked and the windows is lagacy bios. 2011 imacs dont support uefi right? Or is this supported because of opencore?

I also put a copperplate between the wx4130 and heatsink. When my windows was working the temps were low.

That is what I find wierd. I dont think my card is broken because I was able to succesfully boot and use windows 7 with the wx4130 after flashing it. But I now cant even get back to that anymore.

I think the best thing to do it install windows 7 in uefi mode and make it bootable with opencore with the old gpu. Then install the new gpu and try reflashing the card.

Is there also a EG bios version of the wx4130?

Also what opencore version did you use with high sierra?

Thanks

Sieuwe

windows 7 doesn't like booting into EFI mode on atleast my Macs (MBP6,2, iMac12,1). However I installed Windows 10 in EFI Mode even without OC but the Sound Wouldn't work. This is fixed by OC which is linked here in the Posts. OC includes a APCI Patch for 21.5" and 27" to make Sound Work in Windows 10.

 

[rivangom]

Good day all.

Anyone can help me with the download of this file <iMac OpenCore Loader.dmg> as this shows been infected with a virus when try to download.

I want to start the preparations for upgrading my iMac 21,5" Mid 2011 with a K2100m GPU.

Thanks!

 

[Umarx]

Hi All,

I did a verbose boot and caught it where the screen goes blank, attached.

If I boot from Catalina dosdude installer USB, it boots and brings to the APFS warning screen, attached.

So what can be wrong with internal SSD...

Shall I try to reinstall High Sierra with Dosdude Patcher to the internal SSD having apple HS updated?

 

[davidg5678]

Shall I try to reinstall High Sierra with Dosdude Patcher to the internal SSD having apple HS updated?

I would recommend only using High Sierra for now, at least until you can get the computer to boot all of the way to the end. In my experience, working with the operating systems beyond High Sierra (before the computer is stable), just makes things more difficult because it introduces additional ways that things can go wrong.

Even though your iMac isn't loading macOS properly, the photos you have posted above show that the GPU and backlight still physically work to some extent. If CatalinaLoader makes anything appear onscreen, this is a good start for sure! I would imagine that the issue with your computer is software-related.

You could verify that there isn't a hardware/heat problem by letting the iMac sit on the OpenCore boot picker for a very long time. Presumably, if the GPU is overheating, the iMac wouldn't last more than a few minutes... Perhaps it would also work to try booting into the Xanderon USB drive and letting the computer sit at a blank command prompt for a few hours. Theoretically, even if the back of the iMac doesn't get hot, the GPU could still be overheating, but the heat just isn't getting transferred out of the GPU and into the heatsink properly. I saw in one of your previous posts that you used MX4 on the CPU and GPU. Did you use any K5 Pro on the GPU's VRAM? I think that the GPU die should have MX4 on it, but the GPU's VRAM should have K5 Pro. The two pastes have different characteristics and K5 Pro is better for VRAM.

Are you certain that the iMac's ROM is the most recent version? Were you able to verify this in the System Profiler back when things were working correctly? It sounds like you did everything necessary to ensure this was updated, but just in case...

When you made your OpenCore/Catalina Loader flash drive, did you follow the steps about renaming the config.plist file? You should probably use the config_AMD_BigSur.plist in your OpenCore OC folder. I believe this is the proper config.plist to use with the AMD cards, regardless of whether or not you are running Big Sur or High Sierra.

Here is something else I think you could try for troubleshooting (it helped a lot with my WX4150):

• Following the process below should ensure that the iMac is booting OpenCore properly every time, and not trying to access the incorrect hard disks first. As the (native) boot screen doesn't exist, the only real way to be certain which drives are connected is by physically disconnecting everything.

1. Remove all of the internal hard drives from the iMac.
2. Reset both the SMC and PRAM several times.
3. Start the iMac with only your CatalinaLoader USB drive and the High Sierra installer USB drive connected.
4. Boot into the High Sierra installer drive using OpenCore --this should work without any problems (in theory)
5. Externally attach the SSD that you wish to install High Sierra onto. (You should do this while the computer has already booted into the OS installer.) Because you are working with a USB drive now, hot-swapping won't be an issue for macOS.) You can use an inexpensive USB to SATA adapter for this, or just stick the SSD into the chassis of an old external hard drive. USB is slow (the installation could take hours, so be really patient), but it can be more reliable than SATA sometimes.
6. Install High Sierra on the USB SSD.
7. Unplug the High Sierra installer and use OpenCore to boot into the USB SSD. If this works, you can reinstall the SSD internally.

Hopefully, some of this information is useful, and you can get your iMac working again! Let me know if you have any questions.

 

[Ghiro700]

Thank you for your reply. I 'll start again. I bought the CH341A clip programmer and I will check again all the steps following first post guide.
Thank you I will post my update.

Hello, after more than a month I got back to work to finally update the video card. Thanks to CH341A I was able to program the bios but ... I have not yet succeeded.
I share with you my experience, I bought an AMD WX4170 at the price of 99 euros from China, after several difficulties in flashing the bios, buying a CH314 programmer i succeeded. I also bought a copper plate to facilitate contacts with the gpu and heatsink, mounting the video card the computer started up but no image and no third LED. Today I reassembled the iMac with its original gpu. If anyone wants to try testing the card, I'll mail it. If anyone wants to buy it, I can sell it 60/70 euro? Let me know. I attach some photos.

I just have a doubt once the video card is installed, should I see anything on the screen? I have to boot the iMac with a USB? I also tried connecting an external monitor but I didn't get any results.

Thanks to all of you for your suggestions, this seems difficult and sometimes very frustrating to a newbie.

 

[passatgt]

Ok, so here is my experience getting wx4130 to work with Big Sur in a 2011 iMac 27":

1. Assuming you have a working original GPU, format your SSD and install a fresh copy of High Sierra. This will update your bootrom version too in case it was an older one.
2. Plug in an ethernet cable and check the IP address if the iMac in Settings / Network.
3. Disassemble the iMac and put in the AMD card. A few tips:
   1. I used an external display, so you don't need to reassemble the whole iMac, you don't need to put the display in and actually you can only need a couple of wires connected. See attached image.
   2. Remove the plastic wall between the power supply and lcd board, it makes it easy to remove / install the logic board.
   3. You can actually swap the GPU if its not screwed in into the logic board while the logic board is in place(but not screwed in). You need to lift the logic board slightly forward, but you can remove/insert the gpu with the heatsink attached.
   4. You don't need a GPU fan, since the display is not connected, the heatsink barely got warm during this whole process
4. Turn on the iMac and listen for the startup ding. If its not there, try PRAM reset, remove logic board battery etc.. If still nothing, thats not a good sign, i think that means the GPU is not compatible with your iMac at all.
5. Next, see if you can get booted up into High Sierra. If you can, you are good, you don't need to flash the ROM on the GPU.
6. If you hear the ding but high sierra does not show up on the external screen(make sure you are plugged in into the display port closer to the firewire port), you need to flash the GPU with a new ROM. Follow these instructions to do so: #13,624 - Remember the IP address from step 2? You can use that to SSH into the iMac, at least it was working for me this way.
7. Theres 2 roms available from this post, a 2gb and a 4gb version. If you are not sure which card you have, i guess you could try both. In my case, it was a 2gb card.
8. After the flash is done, restart and you should be able to boot up into High Sierra just fine and you should have display output on your external display.
9. Now, the Big Sur / Opencore business. You need a 16gb flash drive or SD card to start.
10. Download Open Core Legacy Patcher(OCLP) based on the instructions here: #13,340 - in short, you need to download a Big Sur installer, use installmedia to create a big sur installer drive on your SD card or USB drive and apply the OCLP to this drive based on the instructions mentioned in the post above. So when you use the OCLP, go into Patcher Settings and disable both Secure Boot and SIP.
11. Turn off your iMac and disconnect your SSD's data cable(this is the smaller one). Turn on the iMac and when the boot menu shows up, immediately plug the sata cable back in. (I'm not sure if this is necessary, but i had some trouble booting into the Big Sur installer, i always got back into High Sierra.) So now you will be booted up automatically into the Big Sur installer and just install Big Sur onto your SSD. I didn't formatted the SSD first, i just upgraded my High Sierra install.
12. In my case, the iMac restarted 3 times. But i didn't had to touch anything, just let it do its thing. After the third restart, you should be booted up into Big Sur, you don't need to select anything at the boot menu, its all automatic.
13. Congratulations, you should have Big Sur installed and you can put your iMac back together.
14. Optional step, you can install OCLP on your internal drive, so you don't need an sd card or usb drive plugged in. I opted not to do this at the moment.

---

Notes: at the time of writing this post, the newest OCLP version is 0.0.18, which does not work on High Sierra. So you need a Catalina or a Big Sur machine to create the USB drive. The bug was fixed, so once released, version 0.0.19 should work in High Sierra. Also, ethernet will not work at the moment, but this should be fixed in a future OCLP version too, based on this.

 

[passatgt]

Hello, after more than a month I got back to work to finally update the video card. Thanks to CH341A I was able to program the bios but ... I have not yet succeeded.
I share with you my experience, I bought an AMD WX4170 at the price of 99 euros from China, after several difficulties in flashing the bios, buying a CH314 programmer i succeeded. I also bought a copper plate to facilitate contacts with the gpu and heatsink, mounting the video card the computer started up but no image and no third LED. Today I reassembled the iMac with its original gpu. If anyone wants to try testing the card, I'll mail it. If anyone wants to buy it, I can sell it 60/70 euro? Let me know. I attach some photos.

I just have a doubt once the video card is installed, should I see anything on the screen? I have to boot the iMac with a USB? I also tried connecting an external monitor but I didn't get any results.

Thanks to all of you for your suggestions, this seems difficult and sometimes very frustrating to a newbie.

That copper plate is way too big, you just need a small one that covers the GPU die. Its possible you are shorting some other component this way.

 

[sieuwe01]

Ok, so here is my experience getting wx4130 to work with Big Sur in a 2011 iMac 27":

1. Assuming you have a working original GPU, format your SSD and install a fresh copy of High Sierra. This will update your bootrom version too in case it was an older one.
2. Plug in an ethernet cable and check the IP address if the iMac in Settings / Network.
3. Disassemble the iMac and put in the AMD card. A few tips:
   1. I used an external display, so you don't need to reassemble the whole iMac, you don't need to put the display in and actually you can only need a couple of wires connected. See attached image.
   2. Remove the plastic wall between the power supply and lcd board, it makes it easy to remove / install the logic board.
   3. You can actually swap the GPU if its not screwed in into the logic board while the logic board is in place(but not screwed in). You need to lift the logic board slightly forward, but you can remove/insert the gpu with the heatsink attached.
   4. You don't need a GPU fan, since the display is not connected, the heatsink barely got warm during this whole process
4. Turn on the iMac and listen for the startup ding. If its not there, try PRAM reset, remove logic board battery etc.. If still nothing, thats not a good sign, i think that means the GPU is not compatible with your iMac at all.
5. Next, see if you can get booted up into High Sierra. If you can, you are good, you don't need to flash the ROM on the GPU.
6. If you hear the ding but high sierra does not show up on the external screen(make sure you are plugged in into the display port closer to the firewire port), you need to flash the GPU with a new ROM. Follow these instructions to do so: #13,624 - Remember the IP address from step 2? You can use that to SSH into the iMac, at least it was working for me this way.
7. Theres 2 roms available from this post, a 2gb and a 4gb version. If you are not sure which card you have, i guess you could try both. In my case, it was a 2gb card.
8. After the flash is done, restart and you should be able to boot up into High Sierra just fine and you should have display output on your external display.
9. Now, the Big Sur / Opencore business. You need a 16gb flash drive or SD card to start.
10. Download Open Core Legacy Patcher(OCLP) based on the instructions here: #13,340 - in short, you need to download a Big Sur installer, use installmedia to create a big sur installer drive on your SD card or USB drive and apply the OCLP to this drive based on the instructions mentioned in the post above. So when you use the OCLP, go into Patcher Settings and disable both Secure Boot and SIP.
11. Turn off your iMac and disconnect your SSD's data cable(this is the smaller one). Turn on the iMac and when the boot menu shows up, immediately plug the sata cable back in. (I'm not sure if this is necessary, but i had some trouble booting into the Big Sur installer, i always got back into High Sierra.) So now you will be booted up automatically into the Big Sur installer and just install Big Sur onto your SSD. I didn't formatted the SSD first, i just upgraded my High Sierra install.
12. In my case, the iMac restarted 3 times. But i didn't had to touch anything, just let it do its thing. After the third restart, you should be booted up into Big Sur, you don't need to select anything at the boot menu, its all automatic.
13. Congratulations, you should have Big Sur installed and you can put your iMac back together.
14. Optional step, you can install OCLP on your internal drive, so you don't need an sd card or usb drive plugged in. I opted not to do this at the moment.

---

Notes: at the time of writing this post, the newest OCLP version is 0.0.18, which does not work on High Sierra. So you need a Catalina or a Big Sur machine to create the USB drive. The bug was fixed, so once released, version 0.0.19 should work in High Sierra. Also, ethernet will not work at the moment, but this should be fixed in a future OCLP version too, based on this.

Thanks for this. So I have follow these exact steps and somehow I am not having succes. Using the Linux flash method I did however get a lot further then I did before.

what I have done was using open core to boot high Sierra with latest boot rom. Then installed the new gpu and flashed it using windows 7. This did not work and only got black screens and ssh acces.

Now with the Linux method I got much further. I removed windows 7 and then booted from the Linux usb. Using ssh i flashed the card successfully. I used the rx560 2gb ROM. However after this process I still can’t get into Mac OS.

I have two drives and both have different results.

the first drive is a fresh Mac OS high Sierra install which I was booting using open core. After a pram reset I was able to boot this disk after flashing and got an image on my internal and external display. It showed that the message that the iMac was shut down because of a problem and if I want to reopen my windows. But when I press any of the options it freezes. After 30seconds or so the Mac shuts down and restarts automatically. This is the same with the open core loader usb plugged in or not plugged in.

the second ssd is my original high Sierra install I used before this upgrade process. Nothing was done with open core. This one boots and shows the backlight coming on. But then after a minute shuts down and reboots again. But one time I got and apple loading screen with the bar stuck at almost the center position. After that the Mac shut down again and rebooted.

Both cases the iMac does not load into Mac OS and gets stuck. Both are however fully bootable on my macbook.

Can I flash my original bootrom into the iMac. (I have a backup of it) to start fresh.

I find it weird that the internal display is always doing the same as the external and the external is never working like it is suppose to. I really want to first get to the state where the external display is working and the internal display is not. Then I can figure out on my own how to use open core.

I will now reinstall my old card and reinstall high sierra. (I have gotten quite fast in this at the moment 🙂. 10 minutes or less. Then I will install the new card again and see if it wants to boot normally.Is there something else I should also do while I have a display again?

thanks

sieuwe

 

[globetribe]

Thanks for this. So I have follow these exact steps and somehow I am not having succes. Using the Linux flash method I did however get a lot further then I did before.

what I have done was using open core to boot high Sierra with latest boot rom. Then installed the new gpu and flashed it using windows 7. This did not work and only got black screens and ssh acces.

Now with the Linux method I got much further. I removed windows 7 and then booted from the Linux usb. Using ssh i flashed the card successfully. I used the rx560 2gb ROM. However after this process I still can’t get into Mac OS.

I have two drives and both have different results.

the first drive is a fresh Mac OS high Sierra install which I was booting using open core. After a pram reset I was able to boot this disk after flashing and got an image on my internal and external display. It showed that the message that the iMac was shut down because of a problem and if I want to reopen my windows. But when I press any of the options it freezes. After 30seconds or so the Mac shuts down and restarts automatically. This is the same with the open core loader usb plugged in or not plugged in.

the second ssd is my original high Sierra install I used before this upgrade process. Nothing was done with open core. This one boots and shows the backlight coming on. But then after a minute shuts down and reboots again. But one time I got and apple loading screen with the bar stuck at almost the center position. After that the Mac shut down again and rebooted.

Both cases the iMac does not load into Mac OS and gets stuck. Both are however fully bootable on my macbook.

Can I flash my original bootrom into the iMac. (I have a backup of it) to start fresh.

I find it weird that the internal display is always doing the same as the external and the external is never working like it is suppose to. I really want to first get to the state where the external display is working and the internal display is not. Then I can figure out on my own how to use open core.

I will now reinstall my old card and reinstall high sierra. (I have gotten quite fast in this at the moment 🙂. 10 minutes or less. Then I will install the new card again and see if it wants to boot normally.Is there something else I should also do while I have a display again?

thanks

sieuwe

I would strongly encourage you to restart the full procedure with only one drive connected with latest version of high Sierra

edit : is it copper plate on vram ? Best way to burn the card

 

[Ausdauersportler]

Good day all.

Anyone can help me with the download of this file <iMac OpenCore Loader.dmg> as this shows been infected with a virus when try to download.

I want to start the preparations for upgrading my iMac 21,5" Mid 2011 with a K2100m GPU.

Thanks!

Check the first wiki post on the first page for the recent download links (OpenCore section)

 

[internetzel]

Thanks for this. So I have follow these exact steps and somehow I am not having succes. Using the Linux flash method I did however get a lot further then I did before.

what I have done was using open core to boot high Sierra with latest boot rom. Then installed the new gpu and flashed it using windows 7. This did not work and only got black screens and ssh acces.

Now with the Linux method I got much further. I removed windows 7 and then booted from the Linux usb. Using ssh i flashed the card successfully. I used the rx560 2gb ROM. However after this process I still can’t get into Mac OS.

I have two drives and both have different results.

the first drive is a fresh Mac OS high Sierra install which I was booting using open core. After a pram reset I was able to boot this disk after flashing and got an image on my internal and external display. It showed that the message that the iMac was shut down because of a problem and if I want to reopen my windows. But when I press any of the options it freezes. After 30seconds or so the Mac shuts down and restarts automatically. This is the same with the open core loader usb plugged in or not plugged in.

the second ssd is my original high Sierra install I used before this upgrade process. Nothing was done with open core. This one boots and shows the backlight coming on. But then after a minute shuts down and reboots again. But one time I got and apple loading screen with the bar stuck at almost the center position. After that the Mac shut down again and rebooted.

Both cases the iMac does not load into Mac OS and gets stuck. Both are however fully bootable on my macbook.

Can I flash my original bootrom into the iMac. (I have a backup of it) to start fresh.

I find it weird that the internal display is always doing the same as the external and the external is never working like it is suppose to. I really want to first get to the state where the external display is working and the internal display is not. Then I can figure out on my own how to use open core.

I will now reinstall my old card and reinstall high sierra. (I have gotten quite fast in this at the moment 🙂. 10 minutes or less. Then I will install the new card again and see if it wants to boot normally.Is there something else I should also do while I have a display again?

thanks

siege

The VRAM does not get hot easily - I used my card for testing purposes, even a short period of benchmarking, without any K5 pro or other cooling means installed on the RAM chips.
Only way that might work out is if you install much thinner copper plates to the VRAM and a thick one onto the GPU die.

 

[MrZupp]

Hi guys, I tried flashing my K3100M today, seems like my iMac won't go into the boot selector anymore, don't know why, but at least I have my ( not flashed ) K3000M that boots into MacOS and I backed up my files, tried flashing this one too but I can't seem to find the issue that's causing the system to not recognise the keyboard on boot, but I managed to reset the PRAM. I removed my HD and SSD and left only the LAN cable and the USB with the tool to flash the card, but the iMac won't boot into it.

 

[The_Croupier]

Hi guys, I tried flashing my K3100M today, seems like my iMac won't go into the boot selector anymore, don't know why, but at least I have my ( not flashed ) K3000M that boots into MacOS and I backed up my files, tried flashing this one too but I can't seem to find the issue that's causing the system to not recognise the keyboard on boot, but I managed to reset the PRAM. I removed my HD and SSD and left only the LAN cable and the USB with the tool to flash the card, but the iMac won't boot into it.

How did you check that its not booting your usb?

 

[MrZupp]

How did you check that its not booting your usb?

Watching my "Wired connections" on my router, it shows up as iMac with the IP ( but I can't ssh into it because it times out ) , but the keyboard does not light up sometimes and I cannot even do a PRAM reset when it starts, but until now, I couldn't boot it into the USB

 

[The_Croupier]

Are you doing this with your screen removed so you can see if at the timeout the iMac is shutting down or just freezing, fans still spinning, leds etc?

 

[MrZupp]

Are you doing this with your screen removed so you can see if at the timeout the iMac is shutting down or just freezing, fans still spinning, leds etc?

I did this with the screen on, it boot-chimes and then the first 2 leds out of 4 stay lit and the fans spin normally until I turn the iMac off

 

[The_Croupier]

Try your linux usb in another computer to verify it loads ok, sounds like a networking issue to me re the timeout

 

[Linburn]

2011 27" iMac. i7-2600, 20 GB RAM, SSD.

Hey guys, long-time reader here. Finally received my k2000m and installed it. I flashed using Linux USB ssh stick method with the @Nick [D]vB K2000m vBIOS and the GPU is recognized by the board (3 LEDs light up and boot sound plays). However, I am faced with the black screen when I replaced and booted the SSD with a fresh High Sierra install. Neither an external monitor or the internal monitor produce any screen or backlight.

I've read up on the black screen phenomenon and I assume the only way to get past this is to replace the original GPU and load the Catalina installer and OpenCore on a USD and boot from there to inject the .kext fixes? I'm not sure where to go from here since native OS (High Sierra) should be supported after vBIOS update. I replaced the original just to make sure and sure enough, the screen works. Any help would be appreciated!

 

[rmd79]

Hi guys, I tried flashing my K3100M today, seems like my iMac won't go into the boot selector anymore, don't know why, but at least I have my ( not flashed ) K3000M that boots into MacOS and I backed up my files, tried flashing this one too but I can't seem to find the issue that's causing the system to not recognise the keyboard on boot, but I managed to reset the PRAM. I removed my HD and SSD and left only the LAN cable and the USB with the tool to flash the card, but the iMac won't boot into it.

Regarding the K3000M, I had problems with the USB ports and bluetooth not working when I flashed the stephle ROM to the card, which previously had nikey22's last release of the ROM on it. The native boot picker would work fine, but then when booted into Win10, the keyboard and mouse wouldn't work (both USB and bluetooth). They came back to life after I flashed nikey22's last release back onto my K3000M. This card is in a Mid-2010 model. I don't know if this also happens in MacOS, since at the moment I'm using that iMac mostly as a Windows box. You might want to try nikey22's last release of the ROM and see if your USB issues go away as well. I can PM you a copy if you want it.

 

[BadBiscuit]

Regarding the K3000M, I had problems with the USB ports and bluetooth not working when I flashed the stephle ROM to the card, which previously had nikey22's last release of the ROM on it. The native boot picker would work fine, but then when booted into Win10, the keyboard and mouse wouldn't work (both USB and bluetooth). They came back to life after I flashed nikey22's last release back onto my K3000M. This card is in a Mid-2010 model. I don't know if this also happens in MacOS, since at the moment I'm using that iMac mostly as a Windows box. You might want to try nikey22's last release of the ROM and see if your USB issues go away as well. I can PM you a copy if you want it.

My 2009 iMac has a K3000M with stephle ROM. WiFi/BT card upgraded, yet that works fine, as do all USB ports. Did you try resetting the PRAM to clear this behaviour? I'm skeptical that the ROM selection would impact those components. The main issue with the nikey22 ROM was the known bug recognizing x2 non-existent VRAM leading to crashes.

I'm not doubting what you are reporting, just wondering if there is another explanation for why it started working.

 

[rmd79]

My 2009 iMac has a K3000M with stephle ROM. WiFi/BT card upgraded, yet that works fine, as do all USB ports. Did you try resetting the PRAM to clear this behaviour? I'm skeptical that the ROM selection would impact those components. The main issue with the nikey22 ROM was the known bug recognizing x2 non-existent VRAM leading to crashes.

I'm not doubting what you are reporting, just wondering if there is another explanation for why it started working.

Yes, I tried multiple PRAM resets. I know it doesn't make any sense - I thought that I had a duff motherboard in the iMac. I used the stephle ROM for a while (maybe a couple of weeks all up) and on occasion had no kb/mouse in Windows after boot. Prior to that I'd been using nikey22's ROM without that issue. I have now gone back to nikey22's ROM since for whatever reason, the USB issue goes away.

I know about the incorrect VRAM size detection issue. For what I'm using that PC for, it doesn't matter - 3D printing and EEPROM programming don't really need much VRAM and it's pretty much a non-issue.

 

[xNuGGax]

Hi all, after upgrading my 27 inch mac 2011 with GPU K4100M i found out that i have a problem like: "BIOS published here does not work properly in any case, you may get white screen on boot or later under load." someone can tell what can be solution in this case? Thank you in advance!

 

[MrZupp]

Try your linux usb in another computer to verify it loads ok, sounds like a networking issue to me re the timeout

I did, and it works on my MBP 17" Late-2011, my hackintosh, a white MB 2010, but it just won't boot in my iMac

Regarding the K3000M, I had problems with the USB ports and bluetooth not working when I flashed the stephle ROM to the card, which previously had nikey22's last release of the ROM on it. The native boot picker would work fine, but then when booted into Win10, the keyboard and mouse wouldn't work (both USB and bluetooth). They came back to life after I flashed nikey22's last release back onto my K3000M. This card is in a Mid-2010 model. I don't know if this also happens in MacOS, since at the moment I'm using that iMac mostly as a Windows box. You might want to try nikey22's last release of the ROM and see if your USB issues go away as well. I can PM you a copy if you want it.

I would appreciate that, however, how can I try the rom when the iMac won't even boot into the USB? I managed to boot the High Sierra Installer from MacOS by changing the startup disk, but I can't do this with the USB, I'm using @xanderon 's pre-made USB. Also, after installing the old AMD card and booted into the USB ( before putting the K3000M ) it didn't show up in the devices list on my router. After installing HS it did show up with the AMD card, but I've had no luck with the K3000M, even with HS installed...

I'm also thinking about using rEFInd, but it won't show me the picker, and I don't know what entries I have.

 

[The_Croupier]

Thank you so much for sharing your previous experience with me, you are absolutely correct. I just tried the card in a 2010 and it works!!!!

Will test it in my sons 2009 on the weekend, ultimately the card is for him so he could play RUST on his iMac 🙄

Well this is interesting....
So we installed the GTX880M in my sons 2009 27" and same result, black screen but working fine on external display.

Last ditch effort before i would reluctantly surrender my beloved 2010 to him, I decided to try and install the AppleGraphicsControl.kext 10.13.6 from @highvoltage12v posted here.

After it installed we rebooted and nothing, black as the ace of spades.

We were all a bit bummed but I was cooking burritos tonight so we decided to leave it be before tearing it down again. It stayed connected via HDMI to the TV but we switched to HDMI 1 to watch Netflix, the screen remained black.

About 1hr later im washing the dishes and I hear a big almighty scream "DAAAAAD, GET IN HERE" i rush to the lounge room expecting a giant man eating spider or something but no.... There's the 2009 iMac with inbuilt display working albeit at 1080p resolution. I replied get the f$&#k outa here!

Wait wait wait lets not get to excited, I unplugged the hdmi, the resolution reset to default inbuilt display ✓
I said lets try a restart, the Mac boot chimed and bingo the screen lit up✓
I said lets try a full shutdown/restart, the Mac chimed and screen lit again✓

We danced around a bit high 5'ing like crazy people.

So what triggered it? I can only surmise it was the Mac waking from sleep that triggered the lcd to activate as my son clearly remembers the lights on his keyboard were off when he switched back to HDMI 2 to use the machine.

I doubt this would have worked by doing a sleep cycle without the kext but did not try and don't intend to investigate this issue further.

The God's of Steve Jobs were with us today 🙏