<< Solved >> AMD WX4170 dGPU on ZBook G5 17 Laptop

[EdwardGeo]

Crane / Pegatron / Falcon roms don't initialize properly in Bios and Discrete mode bricks the laptop.

Did you disable secure boot and secure pci in Zbook bios?

But have small differences in G4 Zbook. So this two GPU are same chip, same gen and different only in few modules!!! That is why this modules making 4170 as 4170:

 

[theroadw]

Did you disable secure boot

Yes

and secure pci in Zbook bios?

No such option

 

[EdwardGeo]

Yes

No such option

So then problem in header of vbios. I have successfully boot even with 460, 550... vbioses, patching header to meet wx4150 (not offsets)

 

[theroadw]

So then problem in header of vbios. I have successfully boot even with 460, 550... vbioses, patching header to meet wx4150 (not offsets)

Which part of header? I'm tempted to use Falcon's header (MBP15.1) with your Hybrid Aomorhid/Crane rom to see if my Catalina problem could also be in the header...

So triple hybrid... Falcon (Mac compatible) Header, Aomorhid Firmware, Crane Modules (proven to work with 4150)

 

[EdwardGeo]

Which part of header? I'm tempted to use Falcon's header (MBP15.1) with your Hybrid Aomorhid/Crane rom to see if my Catalina problem could also be in the header...

So triple hybrid... Falcon (Mac compatible) Header, Aomorhid Firmware, Crane Modules (proven to work with 4150)

You’re going to brick your smc and cmos controller. Don’t make such hybrid. It’s extremely hard to recover laptop from this, also it will fully destroy windows!!!!

 

[theroadw]

You’re going to brick your smc and cmos controller. Don’t make such hybrid. It’s extremely hard to recover laptop from this, also it will fully destroy windows!!!!

Ok thanks for the warning, I guess my last option for rom modding is Falcon firmware and Crane modules, to see if it gets past the memory size issue.

 

[EdwardGeo]

I believe they are Baffin_M and Baffin_XT - (definitely not Polaris!)

Some Logic...

Vaughn / Affleck and Aomorhid roms initialize the 4170 properly for Bios and Discrete mode.
All of them work in all OS's but also all of them stall Catalina boot.

Crane / Pegatron / Falcon roms don't initialize properly in Bios and Discrete mode bricks the laptop.
All of them work in Catalina / Mojave but have problems in Windows / Linux.

Hybrid Roms don't make a difference in this logic.

So I suspect the problem is not in the Rom's contents but in the Bios initialization. If the card is properly recognized/initialized by the Bios, then Catalina Boot Stalls.
So Catalina drivers can't re-initialize the card, but if the card is not initialized by the bios (Crane/Pegatron/Falcon) then Catalina drivers initialize the card and everything works.

This may be due to a combo of whitelist in my G5 Bios and some module.

In your case the Horrible G5 Bios is not an issue and the hybrid rom works?

-Edit

So in theory if we change the device-id of the hybrid rom that has Aomorhid Firmware but Crane modules to something that the bios won't initialize (not in whitelist), then if Catalina boots, we would know if this combo theory is right.

Send me your boot args. If kextdebug won’t work, something is wrong in bootargs. If my build won’t work on Catalina, we need to know where it fails this time.

-v
-KextDevMode=1
debug=0x100
KextLog=0xFFFF


– kextlog=VALUE (kernel extension loading debug mask) OpenCore could have another debug mask

 

[EdwardGeo]

If VgaFirmware is identical, then it can’t contain any security verification. The modules also not include any securities, the only security is PCI CRC in pcir config, so this crc is what secure boot is used!

 

[EdwardGeo]

The new idea of building vbios:

- use crane vbios, modify PCIE config to make it 67E0???, then modify ssid, etc to meet it Hp content.

- Leave VgaFirmware as is (100% it will work for 41xx.)

- Use crane 4150 modules as main

- Replace this modules to make it 4170:
Cmd_ASIC_Init.rom
Cmd_ClockSource.rom
Cmd_SetVoltage.rom
Cmd_SpeedFanControl.rom
Cmd_Unknown.rom
Data_ASIC_ProfilingInfo l ASIC_VDDCI_Info.rom
Data_FirmwareInfo.rom
Data_Object_Info.rom
Data_PowerPlayInfo.rom
Data_VoltageObjectInfo.rom
Data_VRAM_Info.rom
Data_Object_Info.bin

But the key is to patch commands with additional features, like every working rom have


Edit1.
Added all diff modules of Crane, Aomorhid, Vortex.
They will help to understand how to patch Crane module to meet Aomorhid results
Also adding disassembly of this modules and Atom Header



Edit2.
We cant just replace modules, we should patch it, but it will bring to extensive rebuild of vbios as Dell can be different. Pegatron is better for that, but I am fear to meet something in VGA Firmware that is lock it as desktop. We can replace Pegatron modules by Crane, but it can be strange)))

This why @theroadw, you’re not allowed to use discrete mode with Pegatron and Crane. Because modules are designed for different mxm pcb components design



Or we need more help for redesign modules.

 

[theroadw]

We cant just replace modules, we should patch it, but it will bring to extensive rebuild of vbios

I'm probably wrong, but this is why I believe Catalina boot may be a fluke and not necessarily something missing in the correct rom.
By changing the modules it changes some unknown items like that GPIO, and this change could contribute to the gpu not properly initializing or setting the right flags until the os drivers kick in and perform a different reset than that of the bios.
So in the end the roms that boot catalina do so because they're half broken and not because the correct roms are wrong in any way.
Basically the problem is and has always been in the Catalina+ driver and the solution is patching the kext in software and not in the gpu rom.

There is a big difference in how Mojave and Catalina X4000 kext initialize/reset the gpu, and I believe the answer may lie there.