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Alienware m15 R3 2020 | macOS Catalina Keyboard Troubles

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Apr 19, 2021
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Motherboard
Alienware m15 R3-OC0.6.8
CPU
i7-10750H | HM470
Graphics
UHD 630 | GTX 1660 Ti (Disabled) | 1920 x 1080 @144hz
I'm looking for any advice to get Catalina to detect the keyboard on an Alienware m15 R3 from 2020. After booting to macOS, the keyboard is completely unresponsive. This is the standard keyboard with 4 zone LED. Touchpad seems to work great with the Voodoo kexts.

I'm including a screenshot of "dmesg | grep input" in Ubuntu to identify the keyboard and pin down the kext I should use. I also have a screenshot of drivers and kexts currently in use. I can provide my config.plist too.

I'm using OpenCore 0.6.8. CFG Lock is disabled. Latest version of Catalina.

Thanks in advance!
 
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I'm looking for any advice to get Catalina to detect the keyboard on an Alienware m15 R3 from 2020. After booting to macOS, the keyboard is completely unresponsive. This is the standard keyboard with 4 zone LED. Touchpad seems to work great with the Voodoo kexts.

I'm including a screenshot of "dmesg | grep input" in Ubuntu to identify the keyboard and pin down the kext I should use. I also have a screenshot of drivers and kexts currently in use. I can provide my config.plist too.

I'm using OpenCore 0.6.8. CFG Lock is disabled. Latest version of Catalina.

Thanks in advance!
please read the faq for proper hardware profile setup:
 
Hi Feartech, hopefully this is a bit better! Thanks.
 
Hi Feartech, hopefully this is a bit better! Thanks.
remove the signature and just use the profile as mentioned please

Motherboard should be the make and model of your laptop

and if you only have Nvidia video card, then it's not going to work
 
Thanks for being patient with me. I'm fully installed with Catalina 10.15.7. Most everything seems to work well, except for the built in keyboard and I think WiFi. An external USB keyboard does work.

I have the flag -wenoegpu set in the config.plist to disable my nVidia card. Running solely on UHD 630.
 
Thanks for being patient with me. I'm fully installed with Catalina 10.15.7. Most everything seems to work well, except for the built in keyboard and I think WiFi. An external USB keyboard does work.

I have the flag -wenoegpu set in the config.plist to disable my nVidia card. Running solely on UHD 630.
re read the faq regarding "problem reporting"
 
@Feartech, sorry for the delayed response. I hope you are still willing to help out!

I tried to run IORegistryExplorer in Catalina and received an error. I went to the AppStore to download XCode, and found that I needed Big Sur. I've upgraded to Big Sur through about my mac > system update, and IORegistryExplorer now runs in Big Sur without installing XCode! I thought it was a dependency, so I am still confused.

I've attached a zip of the ioreg, the terminal command output, and the EFI OC folder.

Please let me know if you need anything else at all on my part. Thank you for your time!
 
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I believe these are the relevant parts of the ioreg output regarding the built-in laptop keyboard. The output is confusing because my understanding is PS2 and HID were separate devices. I did have to boot with a USB keyboard to enter my password and login, but these screenshots were pulled after I disconnected the USB keyboard (leaving only the built-in and non working).

It does look like as.acidanthera.voodoo.driver.PS2Keyboard is loaded in macOS with HIDKeyboardKeysDefined set to true and HIDKeyMapping data. Maybe my mapping is incorrect since the built-in keyboard seems to detect the FN + F12 combination, but I'm pretty much going in blind.
 
I believe these are the relevant parts of the ioreg output regarding the built-in laptop keyboard. The output is confusing because my understanding is PS2 and HID were separate devices. I did have to boot with a USB keyboard to enter my password and login, but these screenshots were pulled after I disconnected the USB keyboard (leaving only the built-in and non working).

It does look like as.acidanthera.voodoo.driver.PS2Keyboard is loaded in macOS with HIDKeyboardKeysDefined set to true and HIDKeyMapping data. Maybe my mapping is incorrect since the built-in keyboard seems to detect the FN + F12 combination, but I'm pretty much going in blind.
if you do not have I2C trackpad, then remove the VoodooI2C kexts and the config.plist entries
 
Thanks for the reply @Feartech! Is it possible the touchpad and keyboard could use both HID and PS2? The reason I ask is the Windows device manager tree shows both PS2 and HID for both touchpad and keyboard with only built-in devices attached.

Also with VooDoo PS2 or HID kext removed and config snapshot, the touchpad will work, but it's super choppy in macOS, as though it's dependent on both drivers.
 

Attachments

  • HID_Mouse.png
    HID_Mouse.png
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  • PS2_Mouse.png
    PS2_Mouse.png
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  • Win_Device_Manager.png
    Win_Device_Manager.png
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