trx40 [Discussion] - TRX40 Bare Metal - Vanilla Patches

[iosengineer]

Wow, thank you all so much!!! I'm going to dive in today and the next couple (as needed) to see if I can get a working system. If so, my W480 is going to be relegated to gaming :).

 

@meina222 I just tried the F4H BIOS, and do have it POST-ing now, although it did require removing all PCIe cards.

• Started with error 92 (can't even enter the BIOS); "PCI Bus initialization is started."
• This changed to error 62; "Installation of the PCH runtime services." after I removed a second GPU...
• Got it booting to BIOS by removing all cards and adding in a PCIe x1 / GT 710 for basic video.

 

Is there a tradeoff with the F4H BIOS where some configurations won't work, perhaps explaining why the fix didn't make it into mainline? I'll try re-adding devices and see what I can get working.

 

——— A couple specific questions ———

 

I've been searching this thread a lot now, and thank you all for the patience (menia222 — your warnings were clear on F4H, my bad for saving the files and forgetting once I got to try the config!)

• I'm still able to boot off my original Dortania-guide-from-scratch config, on both F4i and now F4H. However, I can't get @menia222's superior config booting...
  • I've added my own PlatformInfo section, and had to add -v to run into early boot failure on [EB|`B:WFDW] Err(0xE), 0 @ LocHB 71B4903C-14EC-42C4-BDC6-CE1449930E49. I see this is encountered by other folks, but nothing TRX40-related...
  • The error persists after disabling most of the custom SSDTs (except for the ones mentioned in the Dortania guide), as well as the RX 5700XT workaround.
  • Any advice on the config sections that could affect early boot, and actually be different between two F4H Designare's? (Mine is Rev 1.0)
    • Is there any reason I'd need to change RebuildAppleMemoryMap and SetupVirtualMap, which are mentioned in other instances of this error?
• @jncasey once you're at your machine, I would indeed greatly value a copy of your config!
  • I now have BIOS settings saved to USB for both F4H and F4i, so I can go back to F4i easily to try your config.
• SMBIOS types:
  • I'm curious about the differing opinions in this thread between iMacPro1,1 and MacPro7,1.
  • @meina222 you seem to be one of the main proponents for 7,1; have you seen any benefits to expansion cards or other behaviors?
  • I'm testing with 7,1 for Catalina to get your config to work, but will have to use iMacPro1,1 for Mojave.

 

———

 

One interesting note about the Titan Ridge Thunderbolt card on the TRX40 Designare — I have found it is possible to get the extra lanes out of the slot you use for the AIC, using an M.2 carrier board and M.2 -> PCIe or M.2 -> SFF-8643 / U.2 risers. This works in BOTH the x8 slots (running x4x4) and also the x16 slots (x4x4x4x4), but it is required that the AIC be in the first x4 position. By contrast, none of the other M.2 slots on the board can be used with the AIC (through the riser), so the BIOS must be checking each slot's first x4 lanes for the card. The MaxCloudOn riser also works, although not thrilled with the quality of the contacts (they don't look gold plated).

 

Notably the Titan Ridge trick requires straight bifurcation; I've tried multiple brands of PCIe switches, and however the BIOS discovers the card is not able to detect it when attached to a switch (not shocking, I admit, but still useful to know).

Edited November 3, 2020 by iosengineer

[Jaidy]

20 hours ago, meina222 said:

OC 0.6.3 released.

I have leeched on @Ploddles so much that I feel shy asking for any more EFIs. I tried updating, but it gives me some error message at startup. Will you please share your config.plist file for 0.6.3?

[Ploddles]

11 minutes ago, Jaidy said:

I have leeched on @Ploddles so much that I feel shy asking for any more EFIs. I tried updating, but it gives me some error message at startup. Will you please share your config.plist file for 0.6.3?

 

That is tomorrows project. This evening I have been getting the Adobe suite working and testing, plus various Topaz progs - Denoise, Sharpen, Mask & Gigapixel.

 

Photoshop seems to work OK except Liquify, but as I don't use liquify that is a non issue but it would be nice to have everything working. AE (Beta) is still hanging on Tracking. Denoise is now working so installing the other Topaz progs to get them going - new NVMe so everything is being installed afresh so takes a while.

 

I'll let you know when I have a 0.6.3 ready to go.

[meina222]

@iosengineer,

 

I have not tested f4h with 2 GPUs. It runs fine with a 5700XT in Slot 1, AIC 4x4x4x4 in Slot 2 and TB in Slot 4. In addition I run a MacOS native x1 wifi/BT card in x1 Slot and 3 additional NVMes in 3 of the 4 onboard M2 slots. So board is pretty loaded, but I don't know what would happen if I add a 2nd GPU in my empty x8 Slot 2. I suspect at the very least the x16 Slot 1 GPU will drop at x8, and at worst cause resource boot issues.

 

Unless you run a similar config to mine where you try to fit TB in Slot 4 + AIC in Slot 3 (or 1) without risers, probably not worth running f4h. It doesn't offer any advantages in performance and it has unique MMIO addresses compared to "official" BIOS-es.

 

All that said - you really need to start with MMIO regardless of BIOS. I would go back to official BIOS if you have no need of f4h, and do the MMIO enable exercise using the link provided by @fabiosun.

 

Also, could you please share your config plist and ACPI folder?

[iosengineer]

@meina222 — Yes, I can share my working config and the slightly-tweaked version of yours (it's nearly identical besides removing the RX 5700XT and disabling SSDTs). ACPI folder is identical to yours, but again most of the SSDTs are disabled in an attempt to get past the early boot failure (this seemed like a long shot since I believe they are used a bit later in the boot process, after the EC-related console messages). Apologies I didn't share this sooner, I'll try to be more on top of things!

 

As for BIOS versions, I also greatly prefer the Titan Ridge to be in Slot 4 (other cards are starved for cooling, and indeed the wiring becomes very challenging). D4 rears its head all the time in PCIe configurations I would like to run, so in a way I'm excited about the F4H BIOS. That said, I can reconfigure things enough with risers to get it to work with either one, so I'll go with whichever BIOS allows me to collaborate best here — that may be F4i in the future, but for now the improvements you've made to the config seem valuable to benefit from.

 

As for MMIO, I'll investigate; it's clearly crucial to TRX40 operation (I haven't learned about it previously, as my Intel hacks have never needed manual MMIO whitelisting). If this is heavily dependent on PCIe configuration (as I'd imagine it is), that's probably the difference. What I don't understand is why my basic Dortania config works without a whitelist!

config-sanitized-meina222.plist.zip config-sanitized-iosengineer-booting-dortania-basic.plist.zip ACPI.zip

Edited November 3, 2020 by iosengineer

[meina222]

@Jaidy,

 

For me OC 0.6.2 -> 0.6.3 was as simple as using OC Builder and then replacing the kexts, driver and OC files from the file structure output by OC Builder. I did not touch my config.plist. What kind of error do you get? Could you share your config.plist?

 

Thanks.

Edited November 3, 2020 by meina222

[iosengineer]

5 hours ago, fabiosun said:

useful link where you can find also MMIO guide (revisited by @iGPU)

Thank you so much @fabiosun for the reference, and also for the correspondence a few weeks back on pve-edge-kernel! (I'm appleguy on GitHub, from this issue)

 

Regarding SIP & NVRAM, the main issue I have with my currently-booting / basic Dortania configs (no MMIO whitelist or custom SSDTs yet) is that booting into Recovery and using csrutil disable causes the machine to hang. csr-active-config in config.plist doesn't seem to have any effect on my machine (I've tried the clear NVRAM option / also reset CMOS and reconfigured BIOS manually).

 

If there's an incremental change I can make to my basic config (linked just above here) to successfully disable SIP for Mojave and Catalina, that would very likely be enough for me to commit to switching over from my W480 to the TRX40 as my primary Hackintosh — and investing in a perfect configuration.

 

I'll try to start the process of tuning an ideal configuration in parallel, but having an SIP disabled state for my simple config (or getting one of the other TRX40 Designare configs to boot) would be very encouraging, as the learning curve on TRX40 is understandably much steeper than any of the Intel configs I've done!

Edited November 4, 2020 by iosengineer

[Ploddles]

5 minutes ago, meina222 said:

@Jaidy,

 

For me OC 0.6.2 -> 0.6.3 was as simple as using OC Builder and then replacing the kexts, driver and OC files from the file structure output by OC Builder. I did not touch my config.plist. What kind of error do you get? Could you share your config.plist?

 

Thanks.

 

There is an additional bit to add to the config file but I believe it should be set to false, so there is very little to do to the config. Although it should work without the addition, I go along the track of 'if it should be in there, put it in there' as it makes future trouble shooting easier and the devs put it in there for a reason. I'll do mine by hand tomorrow and see how I get on.

 

Kernel | ExtendBTFeatureFlags | False

[meina222]

1 hour ago, iosengineer said:

@meina222 — Yes, I can share my working config and the slightly-tweaked version of yours (it's nearly identical besides removing the RX 5700XT and disabling SSDTs). ACPI folder is identical to yours, but again most of the SSDTs are disabled in an attempt to get past the early boot failure (this seemed like a long shot since I believe they are used a bit later in the boot process, after the EC-related console messages). Apologies I didn't share this sooner, I'll try to be more on top of things!

 

As for BIOS versions, I also greatly prefer the Titan Ridge to be in Slot 4 (other cards are starved for cooling, and indeed the wiring becomes very challenging). D4 rears its head all the time in PCIe configurations I would like to run, so in a way I'm excited about the F4H BIOS. That said, I can reconfigure things enough with risers to get it to work with either one, so I'll go with whichever BIOS allows me to collaborate best here — that may be F4i in the future, but for now the improvements you've made to the config seem valuable to benefit from.

 

As for MMIO, I'll investigate; it's clearly crucial to TRX40 operation (I haven't learned about it previously, as my Intel hacks have never needed manual MMIO whitelisting). If this is heavily dependent on PCIe configuration (as I'd imagine it is), that's probably the difference. What I don't understand is why my basic Dortania config works without a whitelist!

config-sanitized-meina222.plist.zip 5.78 kB · 0 downloads config-sanitized-iosengineer-booting-dortania-basic.plist.zip 6.21 kB · 0 downloads ACPI.zip 24.97 kB · 0 downloads

 

You might be able to boot without the whitelist (in fact many of us did), but NVRAM won't work. All you need to do is collect the MMIO's using 1 debug run of OC, and then try the same pattern in say my (or anyone else's) config, where you enable some of the virtual addresses but not others - the pattern will likely be the same.

 

if you load up your board, and say enable above 4G or CSM on, then MMIO may change.

 

I'' review the plists and comment if I see anything within the next hour.

 

p.s.

 

It's funny you try to use fabian's edge kernel - I ran thru the same exercise and managed to build 5.8 before he did, but ultimately didn't find 5.8 to offer much other than recognizing my TB card with the MacOS compatible firmware. In fact performance in 5.8 was a bit lower in benchmarks.

Edited November 4, 2020 by meina222

[meina222]

Forgot to mention - I am not aware of anyone having above 4G enabled and having success with the Gigabyte TRX40 boards on this forum. Not sure about other brands. Could be wrong, but I have it off.

[Rocket88]

26 minutes ago, meina222 said:

Forgot to mention - I am not aware of anyone having above 4G enabled and having success with the Gigabyte TRX40 boards on this forum. Not sure about other brands. Could be wrong, but I have it off.

Asrock Creator, Vega 64, LG38U99W: I have not been able to get this to work either with DisplayPort. For some reason with my configuration, DisplayPort will only work with CSM enabled and with my BIOS, CSM must be disabled for "Above 4G" to be enabled. I am extremely disappointed with this bios feature. The reason I am sticking with DisplayPort is my monitor will give me 75Hz frame rate. With HDMI, the frame rate goes down to 30Hz. 

[meina222]

@iosengineer,

 

Not sure which version of config plist you had of mine, but it may be pretty old. I see major differences.

 

Could you try this reduced one (after you verify your MMIO list and replace the addresses and fill in your serials). No need to use MacPro7,1 - I do it just because I went thru USB mapping using that, but iMacPro1,1 is easier to work with.

 

Attached are also the SSDT's in the config plist. One of them adds NVRAM, but you need to make sure you have the right MMIO. Also this config.plist works w OC 0.6.2 and OC 0.6.3.

 

config.plist.zip

ACPI.zip

Edited November 4, 2020 by meina222

[Ploddles]

5 hours ago, meina222 said:

Forgot to mention - I am not aware of anyone having above 4G enabled and having success with the Gigabyte TRX40 boards on this forum. Not sure about other brands. Could be wrong, but I have it off.

I currently have Above 4G enabled and working on my Gigabyte Xtreme. It was only after the last BIOS update that this worked. I don’t have a need (only 1 GPUs) for it but I tested it out of interest and it worked fine so I just left it at that. 

[meina222]

@Ploddles, you may also want to share your EFI with @iosengineer - between the 2, I am sure he can come up with something that works based on his hardware. But even between same motherboards it's clear that BIOS versions, BIOS settings, and PCI slot configuration will make configs incompatible - you have to build it yourself based on your needs.

[fabiosun]

I Know..you are not clovers'r lovers 🙂

but I like always more ways to do things 🙂

 

take a look 🙂

 

 

 

 

 

[iosengineer]

Fascinating — thank you so much @meina222 for your time sharing these details. The Above 4G discussion is interesting, as:

• I've had it on (both in general, and recommended by Dortania guide)
• I just tried disabling it, and it actually causes fail-to-boot on my crappy barebones MMIO-less config (it boots again after enabling Above 4G!)
• I haven't tried Above 4G disabled with your config, but may wait until I have an hour or two and validate MMIO (out of respect for all of your time).
  • Not sure how I got an old copy! I'm 90% sure I'd downloaded it from your post just a couple days ago, but I could have made an error.

While I've expressed some degree of hastiness, the last thing I want is to be another...ahem, "Clover-type" user...who doesn't care about the details. I'd been away from Hackintosh since 2006 (I had a rockin' build, lol). It was specifically OpenCore, and its rigorous first-principles-based philosophy, which I discovered almost exactly a year ago and  motivated each of the C246 / W480 / TRX40 (mostly Proxmox) builds.

 

So I apologize for any hesitancy to dive into MMIO, but especially now that I understand that it's expected for NVRAM to be broken without that memory mapping—that gives me enough confidence that I'm relatively close and it's worth the time.

 

That said it might take me a couple days, just due to a couple life / work things going on, but I'll report back ASAP. Additionally, I'll be actively following all the posts here for the forseeable future, and deeply appreciate every one of you for your thoughtful engagement with the community!

 

Meanwhile, one project today has been "fabricating" custom copper heatsinks for my 2x 380GB Optane 905p's, which are being used as the special vdev (in mirror) for both my 4x 970 Evo Plus "working" ZFs pool, and 16x SAS3 HDD main ZFS pool. I need to make a big cut to the large one tomorrow. The controllers are not at the same z-height, and I'd like to take my router bit to it for a monoblock fit, but found the small 20mm x 20mm ones can keep the controllers plenty cool with modest airflow. Over 9W in an M.2 form factor isn't the best idea!

[fabiosun]

10 hours ago, Ploddles said:

 

That is tomorrows project. This evening I have been getting the Adobe suite working and testing, plus various Topaz progs - Denoise, Sharpen, Mask & Gigapixel.

 

Photoshop seems to work OK except Liquify, but as I don't use liquify that is a non issue but it would be nice to have everything working. AE (Beta) is still hanging on Tracking. Denoise is now working so installing the other Topaz progs to get them going - new NVMe so everything is being installed afresh so takes a while.

 

I'll let you know when I have a 0.6.3 ready to go.

 I think you are referring about latest 2021 Adobe suite?

because previous photoshop 21.2.4 works well with liquify

Also After Effects 17.1.4 works well with tracking (I think you know this because you are the first one here to complete Puget benchmark test on trx40 platform 🙂 )

 

@iosengineer

with a correct MMIO whitelist applied you can add many functionality to your system (reboot, sleep and wake, shutdown, not sure about Nvram..but not tested from a bit this)

It is important if you want to understand better MMIO to read the thread I have posted and also to post your debug log to see

 

trx40 system needs DevirtualizeMMIO quirk on to boot..and this is not good.
Using MMIO whitelist we give back to OS X the use of some areas/locations of memory that devirtualizeMMIO quirk inhibits to use  to OS X and when OS X tries to use it could hang.

 

 

 

[fabiosun]

@iosengineer

Our TRX40 does not need of latest Kernel patch you use (Fix pat)

also you can not use some quirks in booter section, I repeat Dortania guide is a good guide, but it is not accurate for TRX40 users

You can find better indication in this thread...

I know it is a huge thread...but reading all we learn better 🙂

 

[fabiosun]

about Nvram and Clover Bootloader...

 

It seems that with it I have a working Nvram..no script or SSDT used!

Could it be real?

And if so..why not in OpenCore?

 

to try your Nvram:

 

 

Edited November 4, 2020 by fabiosun
Added Nvram test link

[meina222]

@iosengineer - I just diffed the file with my name in it with my booting config.plist. Double check with your copies - I could have overlooked something.  Also. it's worthwhile noting I boot Big Sur (so my CPU patches are reduced to that effect). It may or may not work with Catalina with these patches - another thing to keep in mind, hence why cross checking w another config is best. And if above 4G works for you, keep it, but this means my MMIO addresses won't be good even with same BIOS, so you will need to re-derive them.

Edited November 4, 2020 by meina222

[meina222]

4 hours ago, iosengineer said:

Fascinating — thank you so much @meina222 for your time sharing these details. The Above 4G discussion is interesting, as:

• I've had it on (both in general, and recommended by Dortania guide)
• I just tried disabling it, and it actually causes fail-to-boot on my crappy barebones MMIO-less config (it boots again after enabling Above 4G!)
• I haven't tried Above 4G disabled with your config, but may wait until I have an hour or two and validate MMIO (out of respect for all of your time).
  • Not sure how I got an old copy! I'm 90% sure I'd downloaded it from your post just a couple days ago, but I could have made an error.

While I've expressed some degree of hastiness, the last thing I want is to be another...ahem, "Clover-type" user...who doesn't care about the details. I'd been away from Hackintosh since 2006 (I had a rockin' build, lol). It was specifically OpenCore, and its rigorous first-principles-based philosophy, which I discovered almost exactly a year ago and  motivated each of the C246 / W480 / TRX40 (mostly Proxmox) builds.

 

So I apologize for any hesitancy to dive into MMIO, but especially now that I understand that it's expected for NVRAM to be broken without that memory mapping—that gives me enough confidence that I'm relatively close and it's worth the time.

 

That said it might take me a couple days, just due to a couple life / work things going on, but I'll report back ASAP. Additionally, I'll be actively following all the posts here for the forseeable future, and deeply appreciate every one of you for your thoughtful engagement with the community!

 

Meanwhile, one project today has been "fabricating" custom copper heatsinks for my 2x 380GB Optane 905p's, which are being used as the special vdev (in mirror) for both my 4x 970 Evo Plus "working" ZFs pool, and 16x SAS3 HDD main ZFS pool. I need to make a big cut to the large one tomorrow. The controllers are not at the same z-height, and I'd like to take my router bit to it for a monoblock fit, but found the small 20mm x 20mm ones can keep the controllers plenty cool with modest airflow. Over 9W in an M.2 form factor isn't the best idea!

 Wow. I didn't bother to remove the shroud but I made sure I have well ventilated case and 3 fans blowing this. I run my Proxmox VM ZFS pool on 4 ssd's there - and I have never seen temps spike too much. Having the NVMe's run a bit warm is actually fine, but you really want to make sure they don't overheat - perhaps you have big write loads in mind?

[Ploddles]

@jncasey @iosengineer

@Jaidy

The following link is to my working OC 0.6.3 EFI

 

It uses the builtin Intel Bluetooth and Wifi modules, fully working including Handoff etc.

 

NVRAM is working as are all the USB ports.

 

The config as is is built for Big Sur. If you wish to boot Catalina then it works for that as well except for Wifi. To use Wifi in Catalina you just need to change Misc | Security | SecureBootModel --> Default

i.e. Big Sur = Disabled, Catalina = Default.

 

It uses Verbose mode (I like to see things are moving along nicely) but you can remove the -v from boot-args to get rid of that if you want. You will also need to add the pikera boot-arg if you are using an RX5700 GPU (but you already knew that 🙂)

 

Let me know if it is working for you.

 

LINKY to EFI

Edited November 4, 2020 by Ploddles

[Ploddles]

@fabiosun, yes my previous comment about PS, AE etc are for the latest versions, PS 2021 (v22) etc.

 

Liquify and Neural Filters don't work in PS but as I don't use those that isn't an issue for me. If I hear of a fix for those I'll let you know on here. I'll also test AE tracking on new Betas as they are released.

[fabiosun]

@Ploddles

 

Could you try and see if your system starts well also without RebuildMemoryMap?

It should start also without others two quirks but I am curious about RebuildAppleMemoryMap because I see it on many trx40 config..but it is not mandatory..I think :9

Thank you

[Ploddles]

30 minutes ago, fabiosun said:

@Ploddles

 

Could you try and see if your system starts well also without RebuildMemoryMap?

It should start also without others two quirks but I am curious about RebuildAppleMemoryMap because I see it on many trx40 config..but it is not mandatory..I think :9

Thank you

Yes, it boots fine with all 3 disabled. 
 

I accidentally hit the sleep item in the Apple menu and it turned off the monitors but locked the system up and I had to do a hard reset to boot up again. 
 

Sleep has never worked properly for me anyway but I always shut down my desktop machines so it is not an issue atm.