E6230 Upgrade to Mojave - Has Anyone Had Success?

[rwar]

There's a new BIOS for our Latitude E6230s, version A20. Has anyone tried it? Is it safe?

https://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/19/product-support/product/latitude-e6230/drivers

[Hervé]

You'd probably have to re-patch its DSDT in order to get rid of the graphics corruption that affects all BIOS > A11, so you may not want to bother. Do you feel you'd have much to gain from that BIOS update? You feel at risk from a security point of view?

 

I had to repatch raw DSDT of BIOS A19 to be able to use it...

 

[jpz4085]

On 4/13/2019 at 4:10 PM, rwar said:

There's a new BIOS for our Latitude E6230s, version A20. Has anyone tried it? Is it safe?

https://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/19/product-support/product/latitude-e6230/drivers

 

On 4/13/2019 at 4:13 PM, Hervé said:

You'd probably have to re-pach its DSDT in order to get rid of the graphics corruption that affects all BIOS > A11, so you may not want to bother. Do you feel you'd have much to gain from that BIOS update? You feel at risk from a security point of view?

 

I had to repatch raw DSDT of BIOS A19 to be able to use it...

 

 

I'd recommend trying the framebuffer patch below which completely eliminates the graphics corruption on my E6230. I came across it on another Hackintosh site some time ago and it was posted by a person with a different model Dell laptop that had the same corruption issue with an Ivy Bridge HD4000 IGPU. The post stated the issue is caused by an incorrect framebuffer memory size. Apparently for HD4000 based laptops it should be 8MB and not 16MB as defined in the AppleIntelFramebufferCapri kext by default. The post didn't provide a detailed explanation about exactly how this was determined and was several years old but it works all three versions I've used between A17 and A19 and probably others too.

 

Clover KextsToPatch:

 

<key>KextsToPatch</key>
		<array>
			<dict>
				<key>Comment</key>
				<string>HD4000 0x01660003 FrameBuffer 8 MB</string>
				<key>Disabled</key>
				<false/>
				<key>Find</key>
				<data>
				AwBmAQECBAIAAAAEAAAAAQ==
				</data>
				<key>InfoPlistPatch</key>
				<false/>
				<key>Name</key>
				<string>AppleIntelFramebufferCapri</string>
				<key>Replace</key>
				<data>
				AwBmAQECBAIAAAAEAACAAA==
				</data>
			</dict>
		</array>
	</dict>

 

If using WhateverGreen.kext patching, add to Clover Devices/Properties:

 

<key>Properties</key>
		<dict>
			<key>PciRoot(0x0)/Pci(0x2,0x0)</key>
			<dict>
				<key>framebuffer-fbmem</key>
				<data>
				AACAAA==
				</data>
				<key>framebuffer-patch-enable</key>
				<data>
				AQAAAA==
				</data>
			</dict>
		</dict>

 

Or to your DSDT file (along with the other properties) in the DSM method under the IGPU device:

 

Method (_DSM, 4, NotSerialized)
            {
                If (LEqual (Arg2, Zero)) { Return (Buffer() { 0x03 } ) }
                Return (Package()
                {
                    "framebuffer-patch-enable", Buffer() { 0x01, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00 },
                    "framebuffer-fbmem", Buffer() { 0x00, 0x00, 0x80, 0x00 },
                })
            }

 

[Hervé]

I don't have garbled screen with my patched A19 DSDT. I would get a garbled screen if I update to BIOS A12 or higher and run DSDT from an earlier BIOS version (could be from A11, could be from before).

 

All I get with my patched A19 DSDT is a screen corruption at the point where desktop shuts down after initiating a restart or a shutdown. It does not bother me the slightest. I won't get that if I revert to BIOS A11. It only comes with BIOS versions starting at A12.

 

Nevetherless, I tried the patches you posted and only the binary mod. of the Capri FB kext did the business:

Find:    03006601 01020402 00000004 00000001
Replace: 03006601 01020402 00000004 00008000

Thanks for the info!

 

2nd DSDT patch alongside Latest Lilu + WEG changed nothing at all.

 

[jpz4085]

Yeah, I realize the screen corruption is very minor now so this isn't a big issue. From what I remember when I started out with the laptop any BIOS above A11 caused extremely severe issues on 10.11. That's what prompted me to look into this in the first place but later versions of macOS had almost no problems. I retained the patch because it eliminated the shutdown glitch.

 

I've modified the WEG patches in my original post with what should be the minimum needed to implement them. I originally assumed existing WEG patches and didn't include the enable setting. The DSDT in the attached Clover folder provides an example.

 

E6230-EFI-CLOVER.zip