Aspire TC-780: no VGA output

[Lost-Entrepreneur439]

I have an Aspire TC-780, a while back I did the connector patching for HDMI, but now I want to get VGA working too. As this is a Kaby Lake machine, VGA should be DisplayPort internally, as it has been since Skylake, and I verified this by booting in VESA mode, and indeed, I did get VGA output there. If it truly was VGA internally, it wouldn't work, even in VESA. Without VESA, I get no signal after verbose, I figured I just needed to do connector patching, typical hackintosh things, so I just enabled screen sharing, turned it on with the VGA monitor and connected into it on another hack, but here's the issue: macOS isn't even detecting the VGA monitor. It's not like it's outputting to an incorrect connector, no, there's straight up no display0 in the ioreg, it's acting like no monitor is detected. I checked, and framebuffer 0 and 2 are already set to DisplayPort, 1 is set to HDMI from previous connector patching (it was DisplayPort originally). My only guess is I need a 4 connector-count framebuffer, but Kaby Lake desktop only has 3 connector-count framebuffers, so I'm not sure what to do in this case. Is there any hope of getting VGA working? I am currently running Ventura.

 

Some kexts are missing from my EFI, I had to remove them to get it to fit in the 3.78MB file size limit, they are still in the config.plist.

EFI.zip

[Hervé]

I'm surprised such questions still arise today.

 

There's been no native or official support for VGA output off Intel iGPUs in Apple Mac operating system for years. Last Intel iGPUs on which framebuffer patches applied to obtain VGA output was Sandy Bridge HD3000 (and, from memory, Ivy Bridge HD4000 up to Lion or very early versions of ML). Your reasoning when booting in VESA mode is incorrect, your information and understanding being wrong on the matter. (Accelerated) VGA output just happens to work on HD4400 laptops and on some later laptops but it does so OOB and IO consultation then shows the port attached to a connector natively listed as a DP output. I guess it's possibly some signal conversion. This being said, afaik, you will find no patch to get VGA working off the iGPU of your KBL desktop, i.e. If it does not work OOB, It won't work at all.

 

I don't follow your rationale for a 4th connector when you can simply patch the 1st or 3rd one (i.e. con0 or con2) to modify them, whether the mod relates to the type, BusId, index, etc. A 4th connector would be of absolute no use re: VGA output and would not make no difference at all. It would only be useful if you actually had 4 supported video outputs and wanted to use them all. This would require you to patch your selected framebuffer accordingly (see our SNB/HD3000 patching guide for reference).

 

Happy to be proven wrong on the VGA patch after more than 10 years of course but if it is multi-screen with HDMI and VGA monitors you're after, get a cheap AMD card like an RX560 for instance (VGA/DP/HDMI outputs being all supported). Or if you have other ports such as DVI, DP or even a 2nd HDMI output, use an active adapter to attach to your VGA screen.

 

One thing you could try though, because I just remembered it fixed an issue I had with DVI output on my Haswell laptop when I had it, is to disable/bypass AGDP checking. Patch is detailed in my old Haswell iGPU patching guide.

[Lost-Entrepreneur439]

Well, first of all, let me make this clear, it is not a VGA port internally. Intel removed support for VGA back in the Skylake days, so it is very much impossible for it to be VGA internally, and the way every manufacturer worked around it was by converting to DP internally. Some Googling can confirm this.

 

The issue isn't that I have a VGA screen, the issue is it's all the system has. HDMI and VGA is all Acer put on this system, and I need dual-monitor support. I also can't get a dGPU, because Acer doesn't let you. This system doesn't send any video output with a dGPU connected unless an OS loads the driver for that dGPU, and after doing some research, this is what most low-end Acer systems do, they're hard-coded to only let you use the iGPU.

[Hervé]

I would personally never claim that that every manufacturer provided VGA in the manner you state and they certainly did not convert VGA to something else internally: it's the other way round: digital to analog conversion of the signal. Dell (and obviously some others) have indeed done so from a DP output. If it were the case in your Acer desktop, you'd already have VGA output. But you don't, so...

 

As I said, you could try and bypass AGDP but you may also experiment with various patches of your 1st and/or 3rd connector knowing that port 0 is always LVDS/eDP but "standard" ports 5, 6 and 7 (i.e. connectors with indexes 1, 2 and 3) are used for other types. Of course, you can create your own connectors through various combinations of indexes and BusId. You use KBL FB 0x59120000 in which you simply patch con1/port6 to HDMI type:

ID: 59120000, STOLEN: 38 MB, FBMEM: 0 bytes, VRAM: 1536 MB, Flags: 0x0000110B
TOTAL STOLEN: 39 MB, TOTAL CURSOR: 1 MB (1572864 bytes), MAX STOLEN: 115 MB, MAX OVERALL: 116 MB (122171392 bytes)
Model name: Intel HD Graphics KBL CRB
Camellia: CamelliaDisabled (0), Freq: 1388 Hz, FreqMax: 1388 Hz
Mobile: 0, PipeCount: 3, PortCount: 3, FBMemoryCount: 3
[1] busId: 0x05, pipe: 9, type: 0x00000400, flags: 0x00000187 - ConnectorDP
[2] busId: 0x04, pipe: 10, type: 0x00000400, flags: 0x00000187 - ConnectorDP
[3] busId: 0x06, pipe: 10, type: 0x00000400, flags: 0x00000187 - ConnectorDP
01050900 00040000 87010000
02040A00 00040000 87010000
03060A00 00040000 87010000

 

To give you a practical example, as described in my initial Ventura beta early findings thread, I use KBL mobile FB 0x5916000 on my SKL Latitude E7270 laptop and just patch con1/port6 to HDMI type in order to obtain HDMI audio.

ID: 59160000, STOLEN: 34 MB, FBMEM: 0 bytes, VRAM: 1536 MB, Flags: 0x00000B0B
TOTAL STOLEN: 35 MB, TOTAL CURSOR: 1 MB (1572864 bytes), MAX STOLEN: 103 MB, MAX OVERALL: 104 MB (109588480 bytes)
Model name: Intel HD Graphics KBL CRB
Camellia: CamelliaDisabled (0), Freq: 1388 Hz, FreqMax: 1388 Hz
Mobile: 1, PipeCount: 3, PortCount: 3, FBMemoryCount: 3
[0] busId: 0x00, pipe: 8, type: 0x00000002, flags: 0x00000098 - ConnectorLVDS
[1] busId: 0x05, pipe: 9, type: 0x00000400, flags: 0x00000187 - ConnectorDP
[2] busId: 0x04, pipe: 10, type: 0x00000800, flags: 0x00000187 - ConnectorHDMI
00000800 02000000 98000000
01050900 00040000 87010000
02040A00 00080000 87010000

 

KBL FB 0x591B0000 is the default one for laptops, according to the WEG user manual:

ID: 591B0000, STOLEN: 38 MB, FBMEM: 21 MB, VRAM: 1536 MB, Flags: 0x0000130B
TOTAL STOLEN: 39 MB, TOTAL CURSOR: 1 MB (1572864 bytes), MAX STOLEN: 136 MB, MAX OVERALL: 137 MB (144191488 bytes)
Model name: Intel HD Graphics KBL CRB
Camellia: CamelliaDisabled (0), Freq: 1388 Hz, FreqMax: 1388 Hz
Mobile: 1, PipeCount: 3, PortCount: 3, FBMemoryCount: 3
[0] busId: 0x00, pipe: 8, type: 0x00000002, flags: 0x00000098 - ConnectorLVDS
[2] busId: 0x04, pipe: 10, type: 0x00000800, flags: 0x00000187 - ConnectorHDMI
[3] busId: 0x06, pipe: 10, type: 0x00000400, flags: 0x00000187 - ConnectorDP
00000800 02000000 98000000
02040A00 00080000 87010000
03060A00 00040000 87010000

but, if I use it, I get no HDMI output unless I patch con1 to index 1, BusId 5 and pipe 9. DP output works with either port 6 or 7.