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OSX on DELL Vostro 3450 / Inspiron N4110 / XPS L702x UEFI Clover

TimeWalker75a

By TimeWalker75a,
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Zprood
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i can see from debug log, PCH die temp is higher than other, maybe i need a cooling mod. And, when windows 8.1 is out, dell doesn't release the video driver which means it gives up support 14R, fool sh..t. 

I try someone's catalyst driver, works well but brightness doesn't match the right one. so i think i should stay away with windows.

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TimeWalker75a
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Yeah, PCH is hotter because DELL uses just a silicon thermal pad on it to make contact with the heatsink.

For me even if I leave the laptop completely idle CPU die can be as low as 39C, while PCH die will be 46C.. and they share same heatsink/heatpipe assembly..

On AMD SG models of both 14R and 3450 the heatsink is massive if you compare it to intel models .. and yet the tems are high for chipset..

 

We are at least lucky to have a heatink on it, 3360 and 3560 (newer generation ivy bridge vostro) have PCH underneath the keyboard just above the touchpad and there's no heatsink on it.. it gets to 60C even if you type in word and fan runs most of the time to cool it down, while it can't actually cool anything down .. becase again, no heatsink. Dell kept the firmware in EC to behave same as on our generation of laptops - if either CPU or PCH get to 57C - enable fan. But since there's no heatsink on PCH these laptops are f*cked to be hot and noisy.

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TimeWalker75a
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I know this may be unrelated to this thread, but I presume most of us are multi-booting.

I've taken another project as a base to start my own thing (consider  this an alpha?)... currently fan control has been made possible.. Anyone care to try fan override for windows?

sample_image2.png

It will publish GPU temps for AMD models as well. See readme for configuration details. 

 

https://github.com/Dolnor/Dell-SCT-IT8518E-Fan-Control

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TimeWalker75a
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Its not setting custom speed, its not possible on any dell laptop. It catches or should I say tries to catch the fan at the speed that you've pit in the config file. Manual control sometimes resets by EC, hence the fan may unstick, but it will revert to a steady sped when there's an opportunity.

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TimeWalker75a
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I have further noticed that the more you read from EC the more garbage information appears there for no reason. I guess this memory space is just too sensitive.. 

I'm now reading the following http://puu.sh/6VRAs.png and it constantly reads gpu temps, chipset temps, cpu temps as 100, fan speeds as 16k rpm etc.. at one point my battery said "no battery installed" even though all the data about it was in ec and it was obviously installed. on second iteration i lost power adapter .. i guess just the fan control would be enough for those who need it .. 

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TimeWalker75a
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I've done some crucial changes to the slim app. the notifyicon text can hold only 64 characters, so it's not much we can utilize- don't go with  profile names.. been looking at baloontips (which can update when you have them show up), but they are ugly.

 

1. config changed, now each setting is a separate entry. no more legacy point entries.

2. some crucial checks for when the fan is not controlled by bios. if fan has locked at a greater speed than requested - give bios control back. if fan speed is 0 and 0 is not requested per profile's config - give bios control back

3. because of changes in 2 I made the fan speed bar colorize depending on the mode. if fan has locked the speed bar will be white, if bios still controls the fan it will be green. if passive mode is used the notifyicon text will say that "Mode: Locked" if fan was locked in off state because there's no bar to report this.

4. if gpu temp is found to be 0 then never again should the program read gpu temp from 0x56 register, because it will produce garbage if done otherwise

5. added possibility to specify -delay XX in the app shortcut to delay the start of the application, since the port driver takes some time to start (with SSD anyway).

I will push the code later at some point. (setting in your shortcut IT8518E-SCT-FC.exe" -delay 15 will delay the app start for 15 second)

 

6WQKG.png 6WQLp.png

 

 

I've done some changes to OSX ACPI tables for fan control .. the one thing that you need is _PTS patch to reset TCTL bit after every power state transition. Also, I should implement additional checks from (2) into the acpi table as well. but you can use it none the less at its current state.  https://github.com/Dolnor/Vostro-3450-Fan-Override (the alt one is the one that locks the fan at 3000rpm, you can change the value if you want). Basically you replace the PollDevc table with this one, all the configuration is done inside this table. Then you just edit the ACPISensors plist for ACPIProbe to math the name PLL0000 and not POLL0000. Then it should work in the same manner as the windows app does (except the checks i've mentioned).

 

bins-it8518e-fc.rar

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Zprood
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thx for great job. just test under windows, works well, but seems dell quits win8.1, so i use os x more than windows. 

 

For alt-ssdt test, i found there are two methods named  "XCNT", "OSYS" under "Platform Profile" of "ACPI Debugging Plugin", so i get :

 

2/15/14 6:21:15.000 PM kernel[0]: ACPIProbe (PLLD): [Error] unable to register method "XCNT"

2/15/14 6:21:15.000 PM kernel[0]: ACPIProbe (PLLD): [Error] unable to register method "OSYS"
 

But i correct "TAVG","TCTL" instead. then get.... it works.

 

2/15/14 6:36:12.000 PM kernel[0]: ACPIProbe (PLLD): method "TAVG" registered

2/15/14 6:36:12.000 PM kernel[0]: ACPIProbe (PLLD): method "FCTL" registered
2/15/14 6:36:12.000 PM kernel[0]: ACPIProbe (PLLD): TAVG = 57
2/15/14 6:36:12.000 PM kernel[0]: ACPIProbe (PLLD): FCTL = 1
2/15/14 6:36:13.000 PM kernel[0]: ACPIProbe (PLLD): TAVG = 57
2/15/14 6:36:13.000 PM kernel[0]: ACPIProbe (PLLD): FCTL = 1
2/15/14 6:36:15.000 PM kernel[0]: ACPIProbe (PLLD): TAVG = 58
2/15/14 6:36:15.000 PM kernel[0]: ACPIProbe (PLLD): FCTL = 1
 
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TimeWalker75a
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There you go .. the behavior coded in is the same as "Audible" profile under Windows.

I will update the "Passive" profile's analog and push this to git when I have time. 

HWMonitor application has been patched to include monitoring for fan control mode. As expected - it's either auto or steady.

 

6X0xt.png

 

osx-fan-control.zip

mirror: https://www.dropbox.com/s/t69jtriziymbtih/osx-fan-control.zip

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TimeWalker75a
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Thanks for testing both of the apps. The behavior in OSX is more stable because it directly reads from ACPI and writes by means of ACPI too, while in Windows it requires third party driver to access EC port.. and this driver sometimes writes rubbish data into EC memory space.

 

I will see if I can persuade @kozlek to implement profile switching for acpi probe. 

As in, you could have a set of profiles defined in SSDT. Each profile should have a INVL value defining the update interval in ms and a set of method names that should be polled based on that profile. Then it would be cool to have a button somewhere in HWMonitor's GUI which would report all the parsed profiles from SSDT table and would actually let you chose the profile you want. This will allow to have multiple fan control profiles and profiles for debugging certain things in ACPI tables.

 

P.S. Pushed acpi tables (with comments) and binaries (with HWMonitor patch) to my git.

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onastvar
onastvar
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Hi,

 

I'm getting the following error message when I type 

 

bcfg boot add 3 fs3:\EFI\CLOVER\CLOVERX64.efi "Clover"

 

bcfg is not recognized as an internal or extenal command, operable program , or batch file

 

My hard disk is fs0 fs1 fs2, while usb drive is fs3

 

Any suggestions how to resolve?

 

 

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TimeWalker75a
TimeWalker75a
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You are using wrong shell binary that has no bcfg support. The shell you are supposed to use is hidden and will appear when you press F3 in GUI. The stock clover shell binary doesn't know bcfg.

 

Also, don't add clover from USB drive to bcfg, there's no point in doing that. This part is for adding boot entry that points to efi system partition.

 

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TimeWalker75a
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I guess I stand corrected, I was under the assumption it was insyde. I guess I had it mixed up with some newer gen Vostros then... If even that. Does Dell even use Insyde yet? Or they are still paying premium for SCT and Aptio which both become sh+t after going through Dell's OEM customizations.

 

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TimeWalker75a
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The notifyicon text is rendered all together, so I can't set the color to individual part of it. The notifyicon icon is rendered from a font resource. The font color is plain white, so for it to turn red I'd need to recolor the font and add a secondary resource file. I suppose I could do that, but would it make a dramatic difference? Chances of it exceeding 70C when you are seeing your task bar are slim.

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