New Tiny SSDT example

David, also known as toleda in our community, asked me for help last year (October), but you know me… I am always busy. Or pretending to be too busy, and thus I forgot about his request for help. Then. A few days ago I received another e-mail about it and I thought… Oops I did it again. Sorry David. I complete forgot. Anyway. I have some good news, because we solved the last piece of the SSDT puzzle.

Let’s first go back in time. Look at the WiKi of my late sister Samantha. There you will find three really amazing Tiny SSDT examples. Her work in 2011 enabled us to keep the DSDT and/or SSDT tables and still be able to disable/hide and/or rename Devices. Which was a great step forward for running OS X on our hacks. Oh yeah. I almost forgot. She also found a way to decompress/compress the ZLIB files.

David, and many people with him, used her TinySSDT examples and came up with great solutions to make things even easier. Audio among others. But one thing was still impossible, and that was that we couldn’t simply rename Device (B0D3) to Device (HDAU) but I have good news because now we can. You can find my TinySSDT example, for a GA-Z87MX-D3H with F6 BIOS right here.

In short. We found a new way to disable individual devices, including LNKx, PS2n and ThermalZones. Something that was not possible before. David already confirmed that it is working for him, so let’s go have some more fun with it. Have a look at the code (the new TinySSDT example) it and please remember this; In case you asked for my help, and I forgot you, then feel free to remind me about it 😉

Edit

The last piece of the audio puzzle is to find a way to load patched copies of the XML files. A puzzle I tried to solve last year, but David was unable to reproduce my success, so I am still using my dummy AudioHDA.kext trick. Which is neat, but it is time for some improvements.

Too bad that I lost the code, because now I have to do it all over again, but I can’t help it that my main SSD decided that it had enough of me and all my read/write attempts. Well. If only I had made backups, or pushed it to some repository, but I didn’t. Stupid but anyway. You know me. I may be slow, from time to time, but I think that I can pull it off again. Let me see what I can come up with 😉

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New IONVMeFamily.kext

Well hello. I checked the latest pre-release package of Yosemite 10.10.3 (build 14D98g) and this is a pleasant surprise. Look here.

This kext is for internal Apple PCI-Express SSD Controllers, with NVM Express support. That may be (in part) why the Samsung flash storage in the new Apple MacBook Pro (13-inch) is so much faster. There are also drivers available for all kind of operating systems, except OS X of course. Expect a port some time soon. My plan however is to attack and patch the non NVM Express compliant Apple supplied driver first i.e. to work around the (broken) PCI class value that Apple is using.

Correction iFixit found a Samsung S4LN058A01-8030 controller on the SSD during their teardown of the new MacBook Pro (13-inch). That is the same controller that can be found on the Samsung SM951. The ACPI only version, and thus the SSD is not the one with NVMe support. It would have been nice if Apple had used the Samsung S4LN058X01-8030 (used for the Samsung SM953) but that is not the case. Apparently. This makes me think that the kext is there for a future update. Anyway.

More good news. I also located the model/board-id’s of the new MacBook, MacBook Air and MacBook Pro:

Mac-9F18E312C5C2BF0B.plist / MacBookAir7,1 (Early 2015)
Mac-937CB26E2E02BB01.plist / MacBookAir7,2 (Early 2015)
Mac-BE0E8AC46FE800CC.plist / MacBook8,n (Early 2015)
Mac-E43C1C25D4880AD6.plist / MacBookPro12,1 (Early 2015)
Mac-F305150B0C7DEEEF.plist / MacBook8,n (Early 2015)

I also see that the new – yet to be released – MacBook with Broadwell processor will use an even better, more efficient power management. There are also a couple of new Broadwell specific files, like for graphics support:

AppleIntelBDWGraphics.kext
AppleIntelBDWGraphicsFramebuffer.kext
AppleIntelBDWGraphicsGLDriver.kext
AppleIntelBDWGraphicsVADriver.kext
AppleIntelBDWGraphicsVAME.bundle

Still using property AAPL,ig-platform-id and a local update of AppleIntelFramebufferAzul.sh – which I will rename/release one day soon – gives me this list of frame buffers for supported devices:

[ 1] : 0x16060000 – Broadwell GT1
[ 2] : 0x160e0000 – Broadwell GT1
[ 3] : 0x16160000 – Broadwell GT2
[ 4] : 0x161e0000 – Broadwell GT2 (MacBook)
[ 5] : 0x16260000 – Broadwell GT3 (MacBook Air)
[ 6] : 0x162b0000 – Broadwell GT3 (MacBook Pro)
[ 7] : 0x16220000 – Broadwell GT3
[ 8] : 0x160e0001 – Broadwell GT1
[ 9] : 0x161e0001 – Broadwell GT2 (MacBook)
[10] : 0x16060002 – Broadwell GT1
[11] : 0x16160002 – Broadwell GT2
[12] : 0x16260002 – Broadwell GT3 (MacBook Air)
[13] : 0x16220002 – Broadwell GT3
[14] : 0x162b0002 – Broadwell GT3 (MacBook Pro)
[15] : 0x16120003 – Broadwell GT2
[16] : 0x162b0004 – Broadwell GT3 (MacBook Pro)
[17] : 0x16260004 – Broadwell GT3 (MacBook Air)
[18] : 0x16260005 – Broadwell GT3 (MacBook Air)
[19] : 0x16260006 – Broadwell GT3 (MacBook Air)

The layout of the frame buffer data itself has also changed. This sucks, because it means more work for me. Stuff for another blog post. Need to fix something in our kitchen now. Later folks…

Edit There is also a new entry in System Profiler for NVMExpress devices, but on the Early 2015 MacBook Pro (13-inch) it shows this text:

“This computer doesn’t contain any NVMExpress devices. If you installed NVMExpress devices, make sure they are connected properly and powered on.”

Ok. This confirms it. The SSD is not NVMe compatible.

Apple services under attack?

Something is going on with Apple services – services are down – and they may be (have been) under attack, because visiting the system status page brings up some interesting news:

Customers may be unable to make purchases from the App Store, iTunes Store, iBooks Store, or Mac App Store.

As in all Apple services with (links to) credit card information went off-line. It may be that hackers are exploiting a recently disclosed security issue. This can’t be a coincidence. Smells like rotten apples to me.

Without Jeremy Clarkson there is no Top Gear

I love Top Gear and the way that Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May present their show, but seriously… without Jeremy Clarkson there is NO Top Gear. Not for me. Not for many of us who like the show as is, so if the BBC is going to ax him… then the BBC lost me as a fan. And with me many viewer. It’s that simple. Period.

p.s. I had the pleasure of meeting the Top Gear crew in Spain when we were looking for a plot for our new house. Fabulous folks!

New MacBook Air serials added

Just to let you know.

There are sixty-six new Apple Serial Numbers Ending With G000-GZZZ added for the refreshed MacBook Air (11-inch and 13-inch models).

Update

A new list with 853 links for Apple Serial Numbers Ending With F000-FZZZ is now also available. The new list includes seven new serials for the refreshed MacBook Pro (13-inch model).

insanelymac.com down

Does anyone know what is going on over at Fubra in London Aldershot? I mean first (weeks ago) they lost projectosx.org and yesterday… oops insanelymac.com went down. And with it a lot of other websites hosted by Fubra.

I know that joe75 said that they had a harddrive failure and that they were/are trying to recover data from it, but he also said that a backup server was stolen. And now this. Weird stuff isn’t it? So if you know what is going on then please chime in. Thanks!

Update

That explains it. Thanks for the update!

Update-2

Good news folks. Allan, one of the moderators, just posted this over insanelymac.com

About our Forum, all the things is going back gradually, we ask your patience and understanding. 🙂

Great. Good job guys!

13″ MacBook Air with 1.6GHz Intel Broadwell CPU

Someone asked me if I could explain this on appleinsider.com:

“There is at least one issue with the screenshots that suggests that they may have been doctored before posting. The “About this Mac” display does not show a corresponding model year string following the MacBook Air moniker…”

Sure. I first visited Questionable screenshots claim to show updated 13″ MacBook Air with 1.6GHz Intel Broadwell CPU. A link that I received, and I have to say that I was a bit surprised that they don’t know this already, but let me try to explain how this stuff works.

Ok. So when you setup a new 2015 MacBook Air then the text: “(Early 2015)” will be missing. The reason for this is that Apple didn’t update their data files with links to the technical information, and then it shows up blank.

The URL that is checked is http://support-sp.apple.com/sp/index?page=cpuspec&cc=G941 and it is using the last four characters of the serial number. And as you click on that link, then you’ll see that it doesn’t show the technical information (which is normally model specific) so it isn’t really working at this moment. Well. Not yet at least, but that is nothing new. We have seen this many times in the past with new products. Especially with products that haven’t even been released.

No idea if the screenshots are real or not, but if you would ask me then I have say… yes 😉

New board-id of Mac with Retina 5K display found

I found a new board-id (Mac-65CE76090165799A) in AppleGraphicsDevicePolicy.kext/Context/Info.plist (Beta OS X 10.10.3) of a yet to be released new Mac with a Retina 5K display, but I have no idea what kind of Mac this would be. Perhaps one with a new Broadwell processor? Again. I have no idea. Really.

Edit: It uses the same Config2 and EDID data of the iMac’s with board-id Mac-42FD25EABCABB274 and Mac-FA842E06C61E91C5 (both with Retina 5K display) so it looks like another iMac.