Coffee Lake graphics problem in Monterey

[Josefjanne]

Hola. In 2019 my 2012 i7 Mac Mini with 16GB RAM started to get dated and constantly overheating. When trying to find a better Mac it seemed difficult at that time so it ended up with a H-tosh (with Mojave) built by a local guy who seemed good at it. As an old mac user this thing was all new to me and after trying for a long time to understand how it technically worked I gave up; the guy who sold the machine helped me with basic stuff in the beginning, never very kindly and after too many questions from me he said f** you/learn to fly by yourself! And here we are now / I did not learn to fly. The machine I bought from him has been good ever since the beginning and somehow I managed to make a few OS updates in Mojave (he said all hardware was like 100% apple compatible/a “Coffee Lake” system) and finally, don’t remember where I found the files/information, maybe here or at the Tony place, I made an USB stick to install Catalina from scratch and it worked well but after a while – now - the same thing has happened: things have gotten dated again (the OS) as newer applications (the hardware still seems to run good) are not compatible with Catalina so I ended up here by luck of recommendations and downloaded an EFI for the desktop Coffee Lake and made a Monterey USB stick and the install (installation declares “Recovery” btw in the beginning) and the install works well all the way except for what it seems one thing: the graphic (RADEON PCI GPU) resolution is only 1280x720 and very blurry/noisy all from the start of the installation (should be able of 2560x1440) until the final OS start. When checking “System Report” it declares “Graphics Radeon RX 570” but when looking at the display this doesn’t seem to be “active” and the “display settings” can’t be changed to any more than this noisy/blurry 1280x720. I have tried both the Clover and the Open Core EFI models & both behaves the same (with the low resolution). Anyone have an idea for this to be possible to fix for a guy who can’t fly/are not a programmer/not able to deal with too much technical details or do I need to get a Mac even if this machine still seems to be good enough/stupid to trash it for example for the climate/environment. Thanks.

 

Motherboard: ASUS Prime Z370-A II

RAM: 4 x 16GB Corsair Vengeance LPX 3200 Mhz

CPU: Intel i7 8700K

GPU: AMD Radeon RX 570 Strix PCI

Wifi: AC1900 Wireless Dual Band PCI Express Adapter Archer T9E

Thunderbolt: Asus ThunderboltEX 3

[MaLd0n]

save one ioreg

https://olarila.com/files/Utils/IORegistryExplorer.app.zip

[Josefjanne]

Thanks for your quick reply, MaLd0n. Somehow I managed to edit the EFI, don't know the exact details what I did but the install works well with correct graphics now – simply superb of you to offer these EFI's! Now it's just a few other things to be fixed here which I don't know now how to: The Aquantia AQC107 Ethernet controller doesn't work and the Bluetooth is indicated as NULL.

[MaLd0n]

T9E has no bluetooth i think

Aquantia use quirk for that on kernel tab

[Josefjanne]

Thanks again for your quick reply and suggestions MaLd0n. Well, sorry if I didn't explain how my Bluetooth worked before (in Catalina) but it's ASUS USB stick (USB-BT400) which disappears both in Monterey and Ventura (but is still available in BigSur but is working badly = connects/disconnects constantly so I might have to check for a new USB stick or so, not a major problem not having Bluetooth right now.

And yes, it's a quirk available for the Aquantia PCI card in the Kernel tab, which I tried to enable yesterday. The result is the Aquantia card shows up in the system list and connection works in BigSur! It also shows up in the system list in both Monterey and Ventura, but it's no connection available to the network cable (currently dead here).

 

[MaLd0n]

enable vt-d and uncheck disableiomapper

[Josefjanne]

Thanks again, MaLd0n… I guess vt-d and disableiomapper was for the Aquantia which now seems to works in Monterey and Ventura (but not anymore in Catalina, never mind) and maybe I fixed the BT with adding BlueToolFixup.kext (version 2.6.4) to the kext folder?...

[MaLd0n]

27 minutes ago, Josefjanne said:

BlueToolFixup.kext (version 2.6.4) to the kext folder?

Yes. This kext solve these problems.

[Josefjanne]

Thanks, you know a lot and that's good... Btw, if I change back the boot-loader to the original old Clover also Catalina can activate the Aquantia PCI card. Don't know why it disappeared with Opencore in this case but it seems possible to have 2 different boot loaders I guess in the same computer to get it working. Right now (with 4 internal SSD's) it's possible to boot into Catalina, BigSur, Monterey and Ventura on this machine – all thanks to your EFI release for coffee lake which I modified a bit without knowing why the graphics went wrong in the beginning and now is working. Wish I could understand how it works, maybe in the future…

Edited February 14, 2023 by Josefjanne

[Josefjanne]

Now I know what caused – and also causes the graphical issue – with sonama beta, it's : "agdpmod=pikera". I have no idea what this is but when deleting "agdpmod=pikera" from boot args in config.plist the graphics works. Can anyone explain this?

 

Edited June 17, 2023 by Josefjanne

[MaLd0n]

RX570?

Dont need pikera.

[Josefjanne]

Ok, thanks again, MaLd0n