Latitude 5414 Rugged - High Sierra 10.13.6

[Jake Lo]

Connector type shown as DisplayPort in IOReg, did you test if HDMI audio works?

Does system have DisplayPort?

FYI, the Radeon is disabled via DSDT/SSDT patching.

[FoxND001]

@Jake Lo, that is interesting.  The 5414 has an HDMI port and a VGA port - no DisplayPort at all.  I suspect that this is partly due to Dell's tendency to like to re-use motherboard designs between systems.  I'm willing to bet that the 5414 motherboard could have had a DisplayPort, but that feature was not physically implemented in the 5414.  However, this is just an educated guess.

 

Regardless, more testing!  I tried the VGA port today.  This went very well - the external monitor came on almost immediately when connected via VGA cable; more importantly, the Built-In display stayed on too.  I was able to do mirrored screens from built-in, mirrored screens from external, and separate displays.  Dual screens with VGA functions flawlessly on this machine - I'm calling that a win!  I'm attaching a new IOReg that was captured while the VGA cable was connected and the screens were set to mirror from the built-in display.  I hope you find this useful.

 

Now for the problem encountered.  Sleep is acting differently than it did previously.  In earlier testing, I could sleep the system if I manually selected "Sleep" from the apple menu, and I could successfully wake the system and use it; closing the lid simply made the screen turn black, and the screen would not come back on until you rebooted.  That's the old behavior.

 

This behavior has changed.  Now I can sleep the system anytime by choosing "Sleep" from the apple menu or by closing the lid.  This works consistently, and I get the "breathing" power light after about 20-25 seconds.  So far, so good.  However...

 

When I then try to wake-up the system by pressing the power button or by opening the lid, the system does wake up and the screen lights up, and I am even able to type a few characters.  After that, the system grinds to a halt and becomes unresponsive.

 

The symptoms are after the system "wakes-up":
1) sluggish performance
2) keyboard becoming unresponsive
3) In the WiFi menu, entries appear very wrong.  If you click the WiFi icon, you'll see entries like this:
  kAirPortStatusScanningKey
  kAirPortTurnOffKey
  kAirPortOtherKey
  kAirPortCreateNetworkKey
  kAirPortOpenNetworkPrefsKey
4) the mouse becomes unresponsive after a few clicks
5) sometimes the background of the desktop disappears and turns black
6) eventually, the system completely locks up and becomes unresponsive

 

I'm attaching the current debug file.  I can't get one after resuming from sleep , as the system crashes shortly after wake-up, so this debug file is taken immediately before sleep.  Hopefully this will help.

 

Any ideas or instruction on how I should proceed?  Let me know and I'll follow your instruction.

Latitude 5414 Rugged - Built-In and VGA External Mirrored.ioreg.zip

debug_7772.zip

[Jake Lo]

Give this Config a try. Add the following patches:

Add HDMI audio  @ port #5

Convert DP to VGA @ port #6

config.plist.zip

[FoxND001]

@Jake Lo, here are the results of testing for today:

 

I applied your modified config.plist and then rebuilt permissions - no problems there that I could tell.  I then tested the external displays.

 

External displays performed exactly the same as before, with no changes that I could find.  HDMI out still required closing and opening the lid to show on the built-in and external displays.  VGA out performed flawlessly.

 

I then decided to hook-up both two external displays, one via HDMI and one via VGA, to see what would happen.  The results were very good - all three screens (Built-in, HDMI, VGA) worked.  In this configuration, I was able to select up to 1920x1080 for the Built-In and HDMI screens; for the VGA, I was only able to select up to 1360x768.  Still, to have two external screens on one laptop is pretty nice, so I'll take that as a win.  For completeness sake, I captured the data - I have IOReg dumps for when the HDMI monitor is connected, for when the VGA monitor is connected, and for when both are connected at the same time.  The dumps are big, so I'll attach them individually in follow-up posts.

 

Question - do you want to try forcing the HDMI port to be seen as HDMI instead of DisplayPort or VGA?  I could then capture the data just like I did above.  No need to do it if you don't think it's worth the time, but I thought I'd offer to do the testing if you think it's worth it.

 

On to audio.  There was a change with audio output.  HDMI audio out stopped functioning, and the HDMI output device no longer shows up in System Preferences -> Audio -> Output when you connect the HDMI cable.  Previously, a new audio device would show up, but it's definitely gone now.  Audio input was completely unaffected, and functioned as expected.

 

There was no change in the behavior for Sleep - it still hangs when the system wakes up.  However, I did find a bit more information.  When I tried to open iTerm2 after the system wakes up, I got an error that basically said "I can't write to this temporary file on your disk".  I wasn't quick enough to capture the exact verbiage, but that was the gist of the error.  Since I am currently booting from the SD Card, I'm wondering if the problem may be that the bus that the SD Card reader is attached to may not be responding correctly after resume.  I don't have much to base this on, but it makes sense from observation - the system recovers from sleep by what is in RAM, but can't access it's disk, so it grinds to a halt.

 

Given the above with Sleep, I'm going to hunt down a spare SSD or SSHD and swap out the main system drive (I don't want to loose the other OS on the main system drive just yet).  Once I swap out the drive, I'll re-install HS based on what has been done thus far, and then re-test everything.  This will take some time, but I'll reply here once I have more data from testing without booting from the SD Card.

 

That's it for today.  Do you have any other suggestions for me or configs/patches you would like me to try?  Please let me know and I'll get the testing done.  Also, I'll attach the debug for today's efforts; the IOReg files for the various monitor configurations are coming shortly

 

Thanks again for all your help!  This really would not be possible without it, and I (and I'm sure countless others) are very grateful.

 

debug_30967.zip

[FoxND001]

Here is the IOReg for both external monitors connected at the same time, with all three displays (Built-in, HDMI, VGA) setup as separate displays.  Latitude 5414 Rugged - Built-In HDMI VGA Three Separate Screens.ioreg.zip

[FoxND001]

@Jake Lo, looks like I hit the upload limit for today, I can't post the other two files for just HDMI and just VGA connected.  I think the important one was with both HDMI and VGA connected, so that's posted above.  Sorry for any inconvenience.

[Jake Lo]

Sounds like the SD card (USB based) is not powering back up after sleep, you should try installing to an internal SSD drive.

As for HDMI audio, if it was working prior then I guess the new patch forcing it to display HDMI is not as important.

Launch the Config file with Clover Configurator, navigate down to KextToPatch and disable the HDMI Audio patch.

See if that restores the HDMI audio for you after reboot.

[FoxND001]

@Jake Lo, I'm back and have gotten a lot done.  Here are the results of testing over the past couple of days:

 

Sleep:  I went ahead and got ahold of a good SSHD drive and put that into the 5414, and then installed HS and followed all of the steps we have taken thus far.  The result: it looks like our theory was correct, and the USB-based SD Card slot seems to not be powering up after recovering from sleep, and that was the reason why the system would crash after it wakes-up.  With the SSHD drive in the system, sleep performs perfectly as expected, and I was able to both close the lid and manually sleep the system multiple times, and it woke-up every time.  Problem solved there.

 

ExpressCard:  I was also able to test out the ExpressCard slot on this system.  I managed to get ahold of an ExpressCard 54 USB adapter.  I got it to work, but I had to enable the Disable Port Limit for AppleUSBXHCI patch via CloverConfigurator.  Once I did that, the card was able to see almost every USB device I plugged into it.  I did notice one of my external hard drives and my external DVD drive didn't function without giving them extra power; given that the ExpressCard standard only provides about 1A of power, this was not surprising.  Counting this as a win - the ExpressCard slot works.  I'm going to go ahead and leave the Disable Port Limit patch in place.

 

Serial Port:  I gave up on the RS-232 serial port for now.  The reason is simple - I just can't find a device locally to test the serial port with.  I was going to try to use a serial cable to connect to an old school router or modem, but I literally can't find any in my area to test with.  If you or anyone has any suggestions on what I could use to test the serial port, I'd be glad to try.  I may try getting some older equipment via eBay to test against at some point, but I think that goes way out of the scope of what we are trying to get done for now.

 

HDMI Audio:  Looks like I was either mistaken or missed something in testing - HDMI Audio does work, but only in a very specific hardware configuration.  So, with our current patches and configuration files, we get these results:

- If you boot the system with the lid closed and connected to an external HDMI monitor, you see the HDMI Audio device show up in System Preferences -> Audio -> Output.  When you select the device, audio comes out of the speakers from the HDMI display and appears to function as you would normally expect.

- If you boot the system with the lid open and connected to an external HDMI monitor, the HDMI Audio device never shows up in System Preferences -> Audio -> Output.  Only the Internal Speakers or Headphone Out are available.

 

So that's it for now.  The only thing left to figure out is why HDMI Audio works correctly when you boot with the lid closed, but not when you boot with the lid open.  Any thoughts there?  I'm attaching the IOReg that was taken when the HDMI Audio was working - I hope this helps.  I also have an IOReg from when HDMI was not working, and I have Debug files for both working and not working states available if you want them. I went ahead and attached the IOReg from when HDMI Audio was not working, as well as the Debug files from both states, HDMI Audio working and not working.  Also went ahead and compressed with 7zip to reduce the space used by these files.

 

Thanks again - we are very close to having the 5414 completely working!  I'll go ahead and update the main post with these results.  If there is anything else you think I should try/test, I'll be happy to do so.

 

Latitude 5414 - External HDMI Monitor Only - HDMI Audio Works.ioreg.7z

Latitude 5414 - Built-In HDMI Mirrored Monitors - HDMI Audio Not Working.ioreg.7z

debug_14216_hdmi_audio_works.7z

debug_22549_hdmi_audio_not_working.7z

Edited August 27, 2018 by FoxND001
2018-08-26: Minor type-o fix. Added all IOReg and Debug files for both HDMI Audio working and not-working states.

[FoxND001]

Status update on this - I'm putting the 5414 through it's paces to do some stability testing; want to make sure the system works correctly under normal use with the current config files and patches.

 

The result: it does not.

 

The system seems stable enough with short term usage.  After using for a while, typically between 20 and 30 minutes, the system will either slow down to a crawl, and then go back to the HS login screen, or will freeze entirely.

 

Have checked the forums and various other places online for similar symptoms.  Have found some references to the Intel Graphics driver as being a possible cause.  Will further investigate and try to see if I can isolate an exact cause.  If anyone here has any ideas, would be appreciated - debug files are posted above; the system's configuration has not changed since they were posted.

 

Will keep at it.  Hopefully, we'll have a stable build process for a rugged latitude soon.

[FoxND001]

Update - I read that VT-D might cause these sorts of symptoms, so I disabled VT-D in the BIOS.  Have been running for about an hour now, and so far no crash.  Will continue stress testing the system for the next few days to see if it is stable.  More to come.