Edit DSDT table, nvidia GPU (MXM) DELL XPS one A2010

Hi everyone!

first of all, iam sorry not to write in German but its much easier to do this in english.

i spent lots of time by trying to solve an issue with a new GPU inside XPS A2010 (9600m GT 512DDR3) and i guess iam almost at the end The A2010 has an MXM II slot with an ATI HD2400 card inside and therefore its theoretical changeable but while plugging another GPU inside you got a black screen and so on... Anyway, i was chating with one guy who did some modding in the past and figure out that no MXM structure is inside the BIOS. Well, this means that the vBIOS of the ATI card was customized for the machine and no other vBIOS would work. He injected the MXM structure inside the BIOS and it was light . The screen went online with the BIOS with MXM structure but the fans (sys) are running full speed and if i install drivers for the card the screen goes black or distorted. Its not a driver issue, i tried at least 20x different drivers through 3x OS (XP, 7 and 10) but i noticed that the display is missing from the device manager after installing drivers or better, while the ATI card is plugged in, everything is working but when i plug the nVidia card the display is missing or wrongly detected with no EDID. Therefore the machine more likely refuse the new card due to missing mxm structure inside the DSDT table.

Well sounds easy, its not I tried to figure this out but i have no idea what to inject, what to change and so on inside the DSDT table. Hence, anyone has some experience with DSDT edit? - bellow link to the DSDT table.

Any suggestions, reference or help?

xpsone.3d-sphere.com/Files/M-020006, with MXM structure 26.zip (AMI CORE8)
xpsone.3d-sphere.com/Files/dsdt-ATI-24.zip

Tomas

Thank you al6042

At this moment i have installed an MS OS (Win 10) on the machine but yes, i would like to try the macOS on it afterwards. I believe that if it would be solved under Win, it could also work for the macOS. I was searching across the internet for some clue but couldnt find any answer on my problem. I already got through the DSDT table several times and found two entries referring to a GPU, device VGA and device GFX0. Iam not sure which is the on board card (yes, it has also a onboard card) and which the ATI card (default one). Anyway, no entry about any MXM structure an i believe this is the main problem. While MXM has to be dynamically detected because its changeable, i dont need to add an entry for the specific card but the entry for the MXM.... well sounds easy. I found some ACER laptop with MXM (i guess) inside the DSDT... iam sure its not working like copy - paste but it could be used... or not.. No experience in this field

I think in Win you can force the load custom DSDT through registry... this could be a nice debug method but first i need to know and figure out what to change...

Tomas

Hi,

thats very useful to know about the GFX0 and therefore i can ignore this entry. I made a screenshot of the XPS DSDT with the part defining the ATI (original card), i think anyway, and also a part from one ACER DSDT where i guess is the MXM entry, see attached. I still cant figure out what the code means, i cant find any good documentation to that, but i think that replacing the VGA device/entry while keeping the LCDD could be a good way to go. Well, anyone?

here some info about the MXM slot: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_PCI_Express_Module

Thank you for the link,,, i think its a good way how to test the custom DSDT afterwards.

Tomas

Hi al6042,

just to be sure, you edited my DSDT table, right? because this looks like something which could actually work! Thank you a lot! I will try it tomorrow and report back (i have the machine at work :)). thank you again!

Tomas

Hi al6042,

tried to override the DSDT but got an BSOD at the end i also loaded the same DSDT to check if its working but loading the customized one cause BSOD...hmmm.. i guess that injecting inside the ROM will not do any difference, maybe brick the machine again any idea?

hi,

i made a bootable USB with Clover (legacy boot mode) but i cant boot to windows with it. After booting with Clover i see two HDD with Windows but both of them are returning "disk read error" after trying clicking on them. Maybe iam missing something. I made the USB under OS x, format for MAC OSx and choose legacy boot mode (i guess, because the AMI Core 8 BIOS is very old)... hmmm,,, do i miss something?

With some luck i installed the OSx there ,, enclosed the IORegistry report...http://xpsone.3d-sphere.com/Files/Tomalf iMac.zip

i have some issues right now with that, for example that without nv_disable=1 the screen is black, the network was working right now no, and so on but its there :)....

some questions at the beginning:

• if my network card is not listed in multibeast, should i install something which is near my HW? Intel(R) 82566DC-2
• if the screen is black by default, and inside clover the nvidia injection is checked, should i uncheck this?

Tomas

Hi,

attached the screenshot and i also updated the information.

Hi,

yes, its an old machine, but i love it the network is now running, the LAN to be specific, i have no opportunity to try the wifi right now.

I have used UniBeast 7.1.1 to install Sierra 10.12.5 and MultiBeast - Sierra 9.1.0 to install the bootloader (Clover v2.4 rev 4063) and also the kext for the network (i realized that it was inside Multibeast after your post.

Iam aware about the injection, at least i read about that :), at this moment iam starting the OSx with nv_disable=1. Inside clover there is nvidia injection checked but the HEX are just 0, so i guess its not doing anything. Iam very new in this, but starting to like it a lot

Hi Al6042,

was thinking a lot about the GPU problem and refusing the new MXM card and i got an idea :). The AIO i have (A2010) had a bigger brother, XPS One 24, which had a slightly different HW (newer a bit i guess) and was able to take the 9600m GT from stock. I was looking at the bios in the past but today i also looked on the DSDT in the 24 version. My knowledge about the description table is very limited but i have compared the A2010 (dsdt-ATI-24.zip) and 24 (dsdt-A2410.zip) DSDT between each other and they are pretty similar :). My personal guess is that if its really in the DSDT (i really hope so), the adaptation of the 24version DSDT or copying some parts could solve the issue... The problem is i have no idea what to leave or what to copy Do you have time to look on the DSDT tables if there is something which could help me?

xpsone.3d-sphere.com/Files/dsdt-A2410.zip
xpsone.3d-sphere.com/Files/dsdt-ATI-24.zip

Thank you Al6042, appreciate it!

Hi, made it it was a bit more difficult but at the end simple like hell. I add the mxm structure according to mxm specification and also pushed the EDID information into the DSDT, made it smaller, inject into BIOS, working

Thank you for your help, T