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Alienware 13 R3 HDMI/DisplayPort Video Output - 2nd Monitor Possible?

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Joined
Apr 28, 2013
Messages
8
Motherboard
Dell XPS 13 9350
CPU
i7-6560u
Graphics
Intel Iris HD540
Mac
  1. MacBook Air
Classic Mac
  1. SE
Mobile Phone
  1. Android
PROBLEM:

External monitors are not working on DisplayPort or HDMI. I understand this may be impossible because the ports (HDMI / DP) may be directly connected to the GTX1060. I have a two adapters on order (TB3 to HDMI and TB3 to DisplayPort) to try the TB3/USB-C ports to see if they can support DisplayPort Alternate mode in Sierra.

SYSTEM:

Alienware 13 R3 i7-6700HQ HD530 Optimus GTX1060 with Sierra 12.2. Vanilla installation, all Clover injected kexts, no S/L/E kexts. Dual booting Windows 10 on second NVMe drive.

WORKING:

Intel HD530 1536MB (Metal OK, QHD 2550x1440)
Disabled Optimus Nvidia GTX1060 (DSDT patch)
NVMe (PikerAlpha Kext Patch)
Audio (AppleALC.kext / inject layout 13)
Ethernet (Killer e2400 / AtherosE2200Ethernet.kext)
WiFi / Bluetooth (swapped in M.2 DW1560 [BCM94352Z])
BT4LE / 5Ghz (FakePCIID)
Keyboard / Trackpad / Gestures / Scrolling (VoodooPS2)
CPU Power Management (Sierra 12.2 with i7-6700HQ / SMBIOS 13,3 seems natively supported)
USB3 (native all ports are OK, haven't tested thoroughly though)

NOT WORKING:

Brightness (broken in Windows too though, may be OEM firmware/ACPI issue with OLED, I see a lot of support requests for Lenovo/Dell laptops with OLED displays having similar problems, waiting on Alienware/Dell to see if they toss out a BIOS update or some type of direct firmware update)
HDMI/Displayport video out

POINTS OF INTEREST:
2x NVMe slots, both working (OEM Toshiba 256GB and Intel p600 512GB)
32GB RAM installed (2x16GB DDR4 2133mhz)
Stock M.2 NGFF WiFi (Killer 1435) was A+E Keyed M.2 card, but fortunately the motherboard slot is E-Keyed, which fit the DW1560 (E-keyed)

UNKNOWN / DON'T CARE:
TB3 (assumed not working)
Sleep (don't really care)
Touch (shows up as USB HID, but no response)
 
PROBLEM:

External monitors are not working on DisplayPort or HDMI. I understand this may be impossible because the ports (HDMI / DP) may be directly connected to the GTX1060. I have a two adapters on order (TB3 to HDMI and TB3 to DisplayPort) to try the TB3/USB-C ports to see if they can support DisplayPort Alternate mode in Sierra.

SYSTEM:

Alienware 13 R3 i7-6700HQ HD530 Optimus GTX1060 with Sierra 12.2. Vanilla installation, all Clover injected kexts, no S/L/E kexts. Dual booting Windows 10 on second NVMe drive.

WORKING:

Intel HD530 1536MB (Metal OK, QHD 2550x1440)
Disabled Optimus Nvidia GTX1060 (DSDT patch)
NVMe (PikerAlpha Kext Patch)
Audio (AppleALC.kext / inject layout 13)
Ethernet (Killer e2400 / AtherosE2200Ethernet.kext)
WiFi / Bluetooth (swapped in M.2 DW1560 [BCM94352Z])
BT4LE / 5Ghz (FakePCIID)
Keyboard / Trackpad / Gestures / Scrolling (VoodooPS2)
CPU Power Management (Sierra 12.2 with i7-6700HQ / SMBIOS 13,3 seems natively supported)
USB3 (native all ports are OK, haven't tested thoroughly though)

NOT WORKING:

Brightness (broken in Windows too though, may be OEM firmware/ACPI issue with OLED, I see a lot of support requests for Lenovo/Dell laptops with OLED displays having similar problems, waiting on Alienware/Dell to see if they toss out a BIOS update or some type of direct firmware update)
HDMI/Displayport video out

POINTS OF INTEREST:
2x NVMe slots, both working (OEM Toshiba 256GB and Intel p600 512GB)
32GB RAM installed (2x16GB DDR4 2133mhz)
Stock M.2 NGFF WiFi (Killer 1435) was A+E Keyed M.2 card, but fortunately the motherboard slot is E-Keyed, which fit the DW1560 (E-keyed)

UNKNOWN / DON'T CARE:
TB3 (assumed not working)
Sleep (don't really care)
Touch (shows up as USB HID, but no response)

For internal screen backlight control, try "Brightness Fix (ACPI 100)" and ACPIBacklight.kext. It is in the backlight guide linked from the FAQ.

http://www.tonymacx86.com/el-capita...faq-read-first-laptop-frequent-questions.html

It is likely your HDMI/DP port is directly connected to Nvidia (check in Windows). If so, not even remotely supported at this point.
 
Great news! I received the adapters I mentioned in the first post shortly after I opened the thread. The USB-C to DP one doesn't work at all - BUT - I'm getting display output through the HD530 on the rear TB3 port through the 3 in 1 adapter similar to the Apple spec one. It has one USB-C port, one USB3.0 Port, and one HDMI port (which I'm getting 1080p video through for a second monitor)

IMG_20161230_125041.jpg IMG_20161230_125105.jpg

I had to change from SMBIOS 17,1 to 14,2 for the monitors to get picked up, 13,3 is not working. 9,1 is working though and is closer to my hardware (skylake platform at least).
 
Thanks RehabMan.

For internal screen backlight control, try "Brightness Fix (ACPI 100)" and ACPIBacklight.kext. It is in the backlight guide linked from the FAQ.
I've done some tooling with the ACPI 100 fix. I will exhaust troubleshooting it on my own before I come back. I'm going to wait until I can get brightness working in Windows again, because since it's not working in Windows, maybe the hardware is defective.

It is likely your HDMI/DP port is directly connected to Nvidia (check in Windows). If so, not even remotely supported at this point.

The windows Nvidia Control Panel seems to suggest that is the layout - also in windows the Nvidia GPU activates Optimus when I connect a monitor to either the HDMI or DP ports no matter what I do with the settings. I will abandon this effort.
 
Wow, you got it to work! I have the exact same OLED. Is there anything I need to pay close attention to when installing Sierra? I have 32GB of RAM, was this giving you any grief at any stage?

Still waiting for my second drive, would it be OK to bother you with a few questions if I run into anything?
 
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I am really struggling to get the graphics to work without glitches, could really use some help. Been trying to read up on kext files, Clover Configurator etc. and it's just a bit overwhelming to be honest...
 
Also, where did you find SMBIOS 13,3? I can't find it in either Clover Configurator or Multibeast :(
 
I am really struggling to get the graphics to work without glitches, could really use some help. Been trying to read up on kext files, Clover Configurator etc. and it's just a bit overwhelming to be honest...

Your profile indicates you have only Nvidia 1060. Is that accurate? (eg. no Intel HD 530).
If accurate, impossible to make it work. There is no drivers for those Nvidia devices.
 
You guys sure are a helpful bunch *cough* wow... apologies for being such a Hackintosh n00b ;)

A fellow ****** poster found this article, no idea why it didn't show up in my Google results: http://beyondspec.org/2017/01/04/the-foreigner-macos-sierra-10-12-2-on-an-alienware-13-r3-2016/

Safe for en0 (which won't show up under Network settings after removing network devices, removing network file, installing Atheros kext and rebooting) everything is working great now. Hope this will help someone out there...
 
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Also, where did you find SMBIOS 13,3? I can't find it in either Clover Configurator or Multibeast :(

The new Clover Configurator has 13,2 and 13,3 for MacBookPro as an option now. I manually specified it from PikerAlpha's blog at the time I did the writeup.

A fellow ****** poster found this article, no idea why it didn't show up in my Google results: http://beyondspec.org/2017/01/04/the-foreigner-macos-sierra-10-12-2-on-an-alienware-13-r3-2016/

Safe for en0 (which won't show up under Network settings after removing network devices, removing network file, installing Atheros kext and rebooting) everything is working great now. Hope this will help someone out there...

haha that's actually my website - sorry to be out of touch, I was traveling. Glad it's working - I actually returned the AW13R3 because it wasn't quite as portable as I would have liked. Amazing how much they fit in that chassis but it's still very large compared to my Lenovo x230 it was to replace. There were a lot of things that I couldn't quite get working perfectly on the OSX side as well.

I'm on an XPS 13 now with the i7-6560u Intel Iris HD 540 now. No quad core or discrete graphics (even if windows only), max of 16GB RAM, and only one NVMe, but I'm having a much better time with external displays and reliability of the hack. Also the acceleration of the intel Iris HD 540 is much better than the 530 in MacOS AND Windows.

Technotron - beware if you try out one of the 13,x SMBIOSes - I experienced the SMBIOS truncation issue on my XPS 13 (search for SMBIOS truncation on the forum) and AFAIK there isn't a good fix for it - so I switched to the MacBook9,1 Skylake SMBIOS for the time being.

It's too bad because the 13,1 SMBIOS looks like a great match for the XPS 13 i7-6560u - perhaps a solution to the truncation issue will be found soon.
 
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