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[Guide] Getting Nvidia cards to work on Thinkpad P71

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@qiuboujun Can you invite me to the discord channel please? I have a Thinkpad P51 and want to figure out a way to make Nvidia work. If it's possible to extract complete VBIOS from Lenovo BIOS (of the P51) maybe it's possible to create a sort of lookup for MacOS to read VBIOS from a specific location instead of on the BIOS on the shared EEPROM.
 
@qiuboujun Can you invite me to the discord channel please? I have a Thinkpad P51 and want to figure out a way to make Nvidia work. If it's possible to extract complete VBIOS from Lenovo BIOS (of the P51) maybe it's possible to create a sort of lookup for MacOS to read VBIOS from a specific location instead of on the BIOS on the shared EEPROM.

I'd love to get in on this conversation if possible. I have a P72 and I'd love to be able to do a similar thing.
 
I'd love to get in on this conversation if possible. I have a P72 and I'd love to be able to do a similar thing.
Unfortunately you can only do this with P70 and P71. Looking at their service manuals, it looks like these are the only ones with an MXM video card (ie: removable/replaceable). I have a working P71 running nvidia Quadro P4000.
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Note that I've tried the exact same procedure on a P50 and it didn't work, since the video card si soldered to the motherboard.
 
Unfortunately you can only do this with P70 and P71. Looking at their service manuals, it looks like these are the only ones with an MXM video card (ie: removable/replaceable). I have a working P71 running nvidia Quadro P4000.
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Note that I've tried the exact same procedure on a P50 and it didn't work, since the video card si soldered to the motherboard.

Yes, I know... found out way too late. Am looking to purchase a P71, but that's besides the point...

However, I'm still open to discussing the possibility of getting my P72 working, if it is at all possible.
 
Yes, I know... found out way too late. Am looking to purchase a P71, but that's besides the point...

However, I'm still open to discussing the possibility of getting my P72 working, if it is at all possible.
Looking at the service manual of P72, it looks like it's video chip is soldered to the main board, so the VRAM is embedded in the main BIOS chip, the same as the P50/51 series. Maybe wait a little bit until the P53/73 line comes out and check their architecture.
 
@Mimir Of course this method works only on the P71, however I wanted to discuss and research an alternative way for the P50/51/72. If the required information exists in some form we just need to supply it to MacOS simulating a separated EEPROM.
 
@Zenkey the VBIOS can be extracted from the Windows registry files, however I didn't find any way getting MacOS to load that info. I've tried supplying it as VBIOS into CLOVER but the drivers weren't loading still.
 
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