[GUIDE] Atari VCS (2020) Console

[Middleman]

Some exciting news to share! I've been notified that the VCS should be getting a major update to its AMD GPU soon, which allows for better 4K output and acceleration. Apparently Atari's engineers had been pushing AMD for months to get their 4K BIOS ready.

 

[Middleman]

Just gotten word that Atari had released a new BIOS for the VCS last week which broke the BIOS entry for some users. They apparently beefed up the BIOS security settings and removed the supervisor password entry altogether so 'Piano18482' no longer works.

 

[Robbish]

Congratulation middleman, this is really nice. Really Nice ! and it must be the first AMD build with internal graphics that I've seen work (I take it the graphics chip was separate from the CPU itself ?). Nice work man

 

[Middleman]

Congratulation middleman, this is really nice. Really Nice ! and it must be the first AMD build with internal graphics that I've seen work (I take it the graphics chip was separate from the CPU itself ?). Nice work man

Thanks and you’re welcome! And to answer your question actually yes the VCS has its own GPU (it is a Ryzen APU unit) so yes it was booting natively from the AMD chipset. The only thing we didn’t get was proper 4K hardware acceleration but I believe we will be getting that from Atari & AMD some point in the near future. But thanks!

 

[Middleman]

Okay so it looks like someone's discovered the new BIOS password and we can log in the BIOS setup menu again (if you ever updated it to the latest version). It's Atar!C3l3br8te$50Ye4r$

 

[Middleman]

So I have updated the VCS to the latest V.21 of the BIOS. As I had disabled the Supervisor password before it didn’t require me to enter the new one so entry was quite easy. Will be testing the latest 11.3 Big Sur update to see how it fairs.

 

[Middleman]

OK, so an update on what's happened so far.

I successfully upgraded the BIOS from V.18 to V.21. While pressing Esc key at power on allowed me into the BIOS menu, it would not let me boot my Big Sur macOS external SSD. So I had to use the new password Atar!C3l3br8te$50Ye4r$ and log into the Administer Secure Boot section and basically turn off Secure Boot. That allowed my external drive to run macOS. But before that I also had to re-implement the changes made to the BIOS settings as I'd mentioned in my guide in the first post:

Boot Configuration > Fast Recovery > Off
Peripheral Configuration > Trust Platform Module > Disabled
ACPI Table/Features Control > HPET Support > Disabled
CPU Related Setting > SVM Support > Enabled, SVM Lock > Disabled, SMM Code Lock > Disabled
Above 4GB MMIO > Enabled
H2OUve Configuration > Disabled
Boot > USB Boot > Enabled, EFI Device First > Enabled
Boot Type > Dual Boot Type
AMD PBS > Discrete GPU's Audio > Keep HW Default Setting

After that, the drive booted perfectly.


So I'm currently in the midst of upgrading to 11.3. Will update on progress when its ready.

 

[Middleman]

As I mentioned in the other post the Atari VCS has now been updated to latest Big Sur 11.3 and is running perfectly.
Process took about half an hour to complete including reboots and downloading via ethernet. To update you will need to do the following:

1) Update Opencore to 0.6.8 Release.
2) Update main kexts (Lilu, Whatevergreen, AppleALC etc).
3) Update AMD Kernel to latest version - use Propertree to make changes. Open two windows and copy & paste the Ryzen 17h_19h patches.plist data over to your config.plist under Kernel/Patches.

 

[Middleman]

Working on my VCS at the moment. Am wondering now that Big Sur has support for Picasso graphics if I should totally remove the Device Properties list for it so that the native Apple driver can take over.

 

[Middleman]

Following the recent firmware update and upgrade to Big Sur 11.3.1 I've just done a test on the VCS.
Performance seems to have improved on both macOS and Windows. I still don't yet have graphics acceleration nor HDMI audio output on macOS (because it is an AMD GPU - but I believe we will get there at some point). I highly suspect it is to do with XCPM enabling of the PCI device tree (which are largely disabled at the moment).