Intel Network adapters on OS X: Small Tree drivers

[TheWiggler]

I realize I won't be able to utilize the whole 100G, but for the price point it made sense to just go to 100 (skip 25, 40, etc) and be prepared for the future. This could easily last me 10 years or more.

I have three PCIe 3.0 x16 slots, so the 100G will go in one and the other two are populated by two, 4 port NVMe adapters (so 8 NVMe drives in total). All my Hackintoshes are PCIe 3.0 and have plenty of x16 slots. The new 7,1 Mac Pro is all PCIe 3.0 with 8 (EIGHT!) PCIe slots.

"does it become 8x if slot 2 is populated?"
---- No. I thought this through before adding the new 100G and NVMe pool as opposed to just upgrading the motherboard.

My TrueNAS is using two E5-2650 v2 processors (8+8= 16 core total) and it shreds everything I throw at it. It eats Plex for breakfast.

 

[jaspercat5]

It looks like this worked with my X550-AT2 card.
View attachment 508191
Thanks!

Interesting. So did you refresh the 550XT with a new subsystem ID 16b8:7212 the Sonnet driver to work?

 

[djlild7hina]

Interesting. So did you refresh the 550XT with a new subsystem ID 16b8:7212 the Sonnet driver to work?

Yup. I didn't stick with it very long though and reverted back to SmallTree

 

[jaspercat5]

Yup. I didn't stick with it very long though and reverted back to SmallTree

Ah that explains your current EFI on GitHub, was there looking for the sonnet kext!

 

[piggesthjy]

It looks like this worked with my X550-AT2 card.
View attachment 508191
Thanks!

I also tried this on my X540-AT2, and the nic has been recognized by the system successfully. However, it only works for the speed 1000baseT. If I changed the speed to 10Gbase-T, it will show cable unplugged. Are there any insights?

 

[Gradinko]

Update: Success with Intel 10GB NICs
Below are ethtool commands used in a USB boot of Ubuntu 16.04 that were successful in modifying the EEPROM of an stock Intel X520-DA1 to work with either the Small Tree Driver or Sonnet Drivers. These commands apply to any Intel X520-based card (other than Dell), but your mileage may vary.

I demonstrated success using the Small Tree and Sonnet Drivers in a Catalina with my Hackintosh with X520-DA1 in PCIe Slot.

I also demonstrated success using the Sonnet Drivers in Big Sur using my 2017 Macbook Pro (touch bar) with a Thunderbolt 3 PCIe enclosure, the OWC Mercury Helios 3S.

The commands below are for a single NIC, such as the X520-DA1. If you have the X520-DA2 or similar, you will need to run them on both the devices. Also, be sure to change the enp2s0 to the proper NIC(s) on your machine. I underlined that part below.

Flashing an Intel X520-DA1 (or X520-DA2) to Use Sonnet Drivers
sudo ethtool -E enp2s0 magic 0x10fb8086 offset 0x32a value 0x12
sudo ethtool -E enp2s0 magic 0x10fb8086 offset 0x32b value 0x72
sudo ethtool -E enp2s0 magic 0x10fb8086 offset 0x32c value 0xb8
sudo ethtool -E enp2s0 magic 0x10fb8086 offset 0x32d value 0x16

Flashing an Intel X520-DA1 (or X520-DA2) to Use Small Tree Drivers
sudo ethtool -E enp2s0 magic 0x10fb8086 offset 0x32a value 0x0a
sudo ethtool -E enp2s0 magic 0x10fb8086 offset 0x32b value 0x00

These two commands only needed if cross-flashing Sonnet to Small Tree:
sudo ethtool -E enp2s0 magic 0x10fb8086 offset 0x32c value 0x86
sudo ethtool -E enp2s0 magic 0x10fb8086 offset 0x32d value 0x80

I hope this helps someone else. I am going to try these on Fujitsu D2755-A11 cards which are Fujitsu versions of the X520-DA2 and will report back. Hopefully this helps someone else.

 

[sambear]

anyone has X540 ubsystem ID for Sonnet driver to work

 

[Lucius]

Hi all,

Has anyone succeed to install the X540-AT1 on Big Sur? I made the EEPROM change when I was running Mojave and it was working with SmallTreeIntel8259x. Since the Big Sur upgrade, I can't make it work. Do you think I should change the EEPROM again on Linux? And maybe try another driver?

Thanks.

 

[rsd099]

I have an Intel ET2 quad port adapter (82576) chipset), and I am using the small tree drivers for it. when I to to configure a link aggregation group, the only label I am seeing is "Ethernet". is there any way to get the interfaces names to list correctly? It makes it hard to determine if I am choosing the correct interfaces or not.

 

[teosoft]

I've recently bought this card, which works under Big Sur 11.6.3 perfectly with old, patched Mojave drivers v3.5.0 from SmallTree. It uses the same chipset as the genuine Intel X520-DA2.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01DCZCA3O/?tag=tonymacx86com-20

I'm wondering if someone out here managed to patch the latest SmallTree drivers v3.8.6 and/or patched the card firmware itself to be used with SmallTree drivers.

Note that the driver patch allows the SmallTree drivers to work with unmodified genuine Intel cards, and, as it turns out, with the card linked above.