Put SSD into Late 2012 Mini, may have broke the internal GPU?

[ziggy29]

Hey all -- I've been using my Late 2012 Mini for years with an external SSD. Now that my main driver is a new M1 MacBook Air, I finally decided to use the iFixit guide to put an internal SSD into it. It all went well (so I thought), and the biggest problem was reversing "Step 5" to plug the fan back into the logic board. But when I reinstalled Monterey (using OCLP, it was working with the spinners previously), suddenly it was stuck on 1024x768. The "About" page says the graphics are using the CPU (3 MB total!). The graphics are horrible and stretched, and unbelievably slow; the resolution can not be changed. Thinking I lost the driver for the (now unsupported) HD4000, when I ran the patch in OCLP to include that, it starts booting up.... and about 1/3 of the way into the boot sequence, the display goes dark and stays that way. It's like it's trying to access the GPU, failing, and going dark.

I think something I did broke the integrated HD4000 GPU? So for anyone who knows much about the internals of the 2012 Mini, is this readily possible? Maybe I accidentally disconnected some connector or cable (didn't see any)? I still get 1600x900 out of my Mid 2011 Mini, so I think the problem isn't the display but the integrated GPU on the 2012.

Any ideas from anyone who knows these well, and may have seen this before?

 

[ziggy29]

Update -- didn't break the GPU. When I reinstalled Catalina, it works fine and the GPU is recognized. In the past I've upgraded this machine from Catalina to Monterey with OCLP and it worked fine, and the video was seen. Again, on the 2011 Mini, I have Monterey installed and it sees the internal integrated GPU. But for some reason, this one doesn't. I know the HD4000 was desupported starting with Big Sur.... but when I had Monterey installed on the old spinner as an upgrade to Catalina, the HD4000 was working. And I've seen patches for HD4000 in Big Sur and Monterey which inject a kext (I think) with lowered SIP, but they kill the boot process when I install them. So long story short is, I don't know. Need to find a way to get Monterey to see the GPU. I mean, Catalina is working fine and all, but it will lose support and updates soon.

 

[mjturner]

Have you installed the OCLP post-install patches (the Post Install Root Patch option)? It's required for the HD4000 acceleration to work correctly.

I have the same 2012 Mini and have no problems with the HD4000 being correctly recognised.

 

[ziggy29]

Update -- I think I messed up the order in which I did everything. It's working great now. Before, I must have messed something up along the way, but I did apply the post install patch through OCLP and that caused the screen to go blank part way through the boot sequence and hang until I rebooted into something else to try again. Repeated attempts were failing.

I went back to Catalina to make sure all was still working, blasted all the volumes and EFI partitions out of the water, started fresh, and was more careful and meticulous in following the steps exactly. It seems to be working now with my USB stick installing 12.2. The 12.3 update is now downloading. I think the key was going back and reinitializing *everything* in Disk Utility before trying again, since I suspect there may have been junk in the EFI partitions that were not correct. A new, fresh start seems to have helped.

Another good thing about this exercise is that it's running a few degrees cooler now that all the dust bunnies have been purged from it during the "surgery".

[Edit to add: Hmm. It started the 12.3 update and rebooted a couple times but seems to have backed it out to 12.2. Not sure what's going on here, but I'm at least closer and this is usable with graphics acceleration back.]

[Edit #2 -- worked this time. I think I made a mistake in selecting a boot disk part way through the process. I think picking "Macintosh HD" probably booted up a failsafe backout? Anyway, letting all the defaults boot worked, though I had to use OCLP again to get graphics acceleration back.]

 

[scottie2345]

Can I ask how does Monterey run on it? Sluggish at all?

 

[mjturner]

Can I ask how does Monterey run on it? Sluggish at all?

IMHO, not sluggish at all. Performance seems pretty much the same as with Catalina for me.

 

[StoneJack]

IMHO, not sluggish at all. Performance seems pretty much the same as with Catalina for me.

Yes, I used Catalina almost exclusively for a number of years (never liked Big Sur). Recently moved both desktops and notebook to Monterey and is pleasantly surprised. Generally works as well as Catalina and you get latest updates for apps, which is awesome (in Catalina, some apps require Monterey for updates). I will probably skip whatever Apple releases this fall, because Monterey is just fine for me as it is.