A4500 MXM - Need help getting this working!

[Reciever]

Was there an attempt made on Linux? 

[ssj92]

  

4 hours ago, Komputers-Best said:

Have you ever tried to run it on other similar laptops except R2 and A18..?

Alienware M18xR2

Alienware 17 R1

Alienware 18 R1

 

My friend has my old Clevo P870DM, I will see if we can test it in there

 

 

1 hour ago, aldarxt said:

What systems does this card work on? And not meaning civilian Dell with BGA cards.

Did you compare the vBios from the manufacturer (adlink) to the downloadable vBios they provide? As to the Dell and HP vBios. Just   a difference from the military/medical versus civilian setups. And the difference of rtx 3000 vBios.

 

It's an embedded card made to work on those super small embedded computers these companies sell. They all worked (up until RTX 3000) in our laptops. 

 

The only difference is, RTX 3000 has eDP support and all older cards. 

A4500 is the first to remove eDP support. 

 

So this may be why. 

 

 

56 minutes ago, Reciever said:

Was there an attempt made on Linux? 

Not yet. Still have this to try and also have this to try: https://egpu.io/forums/pc-setup/fix-dsdt-override-to-correct-error-12/#step1 

 

I put RTX 3000 back for now, but as ideas come back I'll try more. Also contacted Aetina to see if I can send it back for a refund or swap it with a RTX 5000 since my heatsink is already made at this point. 

[aldarxt]

Right according to this

eDP, LVDS, VGA, USB-C display output are not supported)

EMB-G663-A0-Brochure.pdf

[ssj92]

Does anyone know how to edit pci device id in bios? Would be worth a shot to see if I can change pci id in bios so that it doesn't need inf mod and see if that works 

[simon h]

I have just read from top to bottom and was hoping to read at the bottom of the thread you had it working....
 

Is it a dead end for sure now ?

[ssj92]

18 hours ago, simon h said:

I have just read from top to bottom and was hoping to read at the bottom of the thread you had it working....
 

Is it a dead end for sure now ?

Yep, unfortunately. I have returned it and will be going bga as I have no other choice for now. If someone else figures it out or some other mxm variant comes along things may change but for now, RTX 5000 is the best that works in laptops. 

[simon h]

Dont be discouraged. It was a  good effort.

[panda_zzz]

Sorry for necroposting and bad English)
Is it still possible to buy this card? I would like to do some experiments with my m17x r4
Judging by the behavior of A4500 with native vbios, the problem is that the submodule of this bios is waiting for confirmation from the system bios to enable the "4gb above" option and does not allow the card itself to start normally. That's why the author's laptop complained about the absence of the card in SG mode. You can try either to manually disable the blocking module in the bios of the video card, or ask the manufacturer (judging by the screenshots they met and at least responded). Unfortunately I don't see any possibility to modify system bios of Alienware m17x r4, r5 m18x r2, m18 r1 laptops - there are no necessary modules in our bios from Insyde.

 

[ssj92]

15 hours ago, panda_zzz said:

Sorry for necroposting and bad English)
Is it still possible to buy this card? I would like to do some experiments with my m17x r4
Judging by the behavior of A4500 with native vbios, the problem is that the submodule of this bios is waiting for confirmation from the system bios to enable the "4gb above" option and does not allow the card itself to start normally. That's why the author's laptop complained about the absence of the card in SG mode. You can try either to manually disable the blocking module in the bios of the video card, or ask the manufacturer (judging by the screenshots they met and at least responded). Unfortunately I don't see any possibility to modify system bios of Alienware m17x r4, r5 m18x r2, m18 r1 laptops - there are no necessary modules in our bios from Insyde.

 

You can buy from Aetina but it's very expensive. 

 

It's possible to enable resizable bar in bios using this module. But I am not good at BIOS editing. It's same way NVMe support was added. 

 

https://github.com/xCuri0/ReBarUEFI/wiki/Enabling-hidden-4G-decoding

 

https://github.com/xCuri0/ReBarUEFI

 

The module might have been enough to make it work but I didn't know how to add to bios. Maybe if I still had the card it would be possible. 

 

We need someone to modify AW 18 R1, AW 17 R1, M18xR2, M17xR4 bios to inject that uefi module. Then it might work with stock vBIOS.

[panda_zzz]

5 hours ago, ssj92 said:

You can buy from Aetina but it's very expensive. 

 

It's possible to enable resizable bar in bios using this module. But I am not good at BIOS editing. It's same way NVMe support was added. 

 

https://github.com/xCuri0/ReBarUEFI/wiki/Enabling-hidden-4G-decoding

 

https://github.com/xCuri0/ReBarUEFI

 

The module might have been enough to make it work but I didn't know how to add to bios. Maybe if I still had the card it would be possible. 

 

We need someone to modify AW 18 R1, AW 17 R1, M18xR2, M17xR4 bios to inject that uefi module. Then it might work with stock vBIOS.

Can I ask you the price you bought it for back then? I understand it's just not sold on Ebay and can only be bought directly in the US. It's just that I'm in Europe and need to look for intermediaries).

About the bios. According to my assumption for correct start of Vbios card there should be a response from system bios about 4g addressing support. Presence of ReBar module is secondary and is necessary for acceleration of work, but is not a prerequisite. Therefore 4G decoding is a problem in our case, because it is not provided in the bios itself (there are no such hidden options in the latest versions of bios for m17x r4, r5, m18x r2 - I checked). In general, for ivy bridge platform I've seen only one successful case of enabling this function - for desktop ASUS P8Z77-V PRO, but it uses their proprietary bios and there is just such a hidden option.
In the case of our laptops we use another platform bios from Insyde and there is no such setting either for ivy bridge platform or for Haswell and I don't know anything about adding such support, it is necessary to have access directly to the documentation of this company.
That's why I say that it is easier to modify the vbios of the card and remove this check that did not allow to start the laptop with native vbios, but at the same time with the bios from dell it started.

Of course, so far these are my assumptions, but I want to check them in practice.

At least it is possible to test the card in a desktop motherboard with the debug connector connected and see the error message.

Just for fun, I checked - the "4G decoding" setting appears in the bios of the Alienware 17 R2. In earlier models, unfortunately, it just doesn't exist

[ssj92]

12 hours ago, panda_zzz said:

Can I ask you the price you bought it for back then? I understand it's just not sold on Ebay and can only be bought directly in the US. It's just that I'm in Europe and need to look for intermediaries).

About the bios. According to my assumption for correct start of Vbios card there should be a response from system bios about 4g addressing support. Presence of ReBar module is secondary and is necessary for acceleration of work, but is not a prerequisite. Therefore 4G decoding is a problem in our case, because it is not provided in the bios itself (there are no such hidden options in the latest versions of bios for m17x r4, r5, m18x r2 - I checked). In general, for ivy bridge platform I've seen only one successful case of enabling this function - for desktop ASUS P8Z77-V PRO, but it uses their proprietary bios and there is just such a hidden option.
In the case of our laptops we use another platform bios from Insyde and there is no such setting either for ivy bridge platform or for Haswell and I don't know anything about adding such support, it is necessary to have access directly to the documentation of this company.
That's why I say that it is easier to modify the vbios of the card and remove this check that did not allow to start the laptop with native vbios, but at the same time with the bios from dell it started.

Of course, so far these are my assumptions, but I want to check them in practice.

At least it is possible to test the card in a desktop motherboard with the debug connector connected and see the error message.

Just for fun, I checked - the "4G decoding" setting appears in the bios of the Alienware 17 R2. In earlier models, unfortunately, it just doesn't exist

At the time it was $2,500. Aetina ships worldwide if you want to get it from them. They have newer Ada Lovelace RTX cards now too. 

 

Yes I also tried looking for above 4g decode but never found it. Editing vBIOS is tricky because Quadro vBIOS is encrypted and signed. If it is modded the card won't boot. HP/Dell/Lenovo vBIOS allows card to boot but upon driver install I got code 43 error. This is most likely due to vBIOS and card id not matching. 

 

One theory I had was find a way to remove the device id. On desktop cards, even with MXM used in PCIe adapter, there is no unique device id added from the pc. 

 

In our laptops there is unique device id added to the mxm card. This is also why we need to modify INF everytime but on desktop there is no need to modify INF. 

[panda_zzz]

@ssj92

Thanks for the reply. I will try to contact Aetina to see if they will agree to send me the card and if they will contact me at all.)

Yes I have seen the new Ada Lovelace modules, but I'm afraid to imagine how much they cost and what problems they will have. If Ampere family bios are still somehow studied, these new ones will be full of surprises.