MSI Alpha 15

TuxToaster

New member
AMD OS X Member
Joined
Sep 11, 2020
Messages
1
Hello all,

Not looking for a sanity check as much as hoping to add some additional info and insight into an old post (https://amd-osx.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=9527) as I feel like I'm close to having something potentially working with this machine.

I actually have a mostly working 10.15.1 install (more on that below), and am hitting a rather interesting scenario when trying to install 10.15.6. But first, some proof that it's at least not impossible:


MSI Alpha 15.jpg

Like many MSI notebooks, this model includes a feature where the power button LED changes color to indicate GPU status -- white when using the APU, orange when using the GPU. Interestingly, this is orange at boot, and remains orange when booting into macOS, so it would imply that the GPU is at least ready to function by default, rather than requiring some sort of special initialization.

So in this case, as you can see from the System Information output, it appears that it is seeing the internal display as connected through the APU. As full support for the RX5500M wasn't included until 10.15.2, it detects the GPU but doesn't have any details about it, and nothing happens when I plug in an external display over HDMI. For 10.15.6, I see a bit different of a scenario -- the installer and recovery GUIs work fine, as does the Apple logo during boot. But when macOS reboots into the final OS to wrap up installation, the display remains on the verbose text output and does not show the logo or GUI. However, connecting an external display proves that it is working, as it correctly gets recognized as a second display and shows the background color of the screen, and the mouse moves into view if moved to the right.

Though, since the installation has not been completed at this point, it's not possible to SSH into it or change the display arrangement, but it proves to me that the only hurdle to getting this working is figuring out how to trigger the internal display to show the GPU's output. It would appear from discussion and linked YouTube videos on the above thread that disabling the APU entirely prevents the internal display from working, however, with my 10.15.1 install, it does not seem that disabling is necessary as macOS is able to actually use the APU without much issue. So I'm still digging to see if I can figure out a way to clear this last hurdle.

Beyond the display, things generally work, with some caveats:

  • I was able to get the internal SATA controller working with a bit of prodding (by adding the PCI device ids to the CtlnaAHCIPort.kext)
  • NVMe worked out of the box, though I started seeing freezes after leaving the system idle for a few minutes. NVMeFix.kext doesn't seem to be having an impact on those. For now, I disabled via the nvme=-1 boot flag to focus on other things first.
  • Audio is not yet working. It's supposedly a Realtek ALC233 chipset, though AppleALC has not yet been able to initialize it with the documented layout ids.
  • USB works perfectly for both USB 2 and 3 devices, including the Apple Ethernet-to-USB C adapter.
  • Keyboard seems to work perfectly. The Fn+Function key shortcuts for switching displays do not seem to be hardware controlled
    • Fn+F12 for sleep appears to partially work as the OS stops responding and behaves as if the computer has gone to sleep (though the display remains on but frozen). Pressing a key immediately refreshes the display and shows the password prompt.
    • Fn+Volume keys work (though not much help until audio is detected)
    • Fn+Brightness does not work, though that's not uncommon without some custom logic to detect + change brightness
    • SteelSeries LED controller appears as a USB device. The SteelSeries Engine app did not immediately detect it, though the app is a bit laggy (possibly due to the use of the APU) and has some rendering issues. However, the open source SSKeyboardHue app is able to adjust the RGB colors of the keys without problem.
  • Touchpad works, though clicking currently does not. Currently using an external USB mouse until I can figure out that issue.
  • Ethernet (Killer E2600) works using the RealtekRTL8111.kext.
  • Wifi + Bluetooth do not work out of the box, as they are based on Realtek RTL8822CE, there does not appear to be any macOS drivers for this particular chipset, though some exist for similar USB-based devices. But best bet would be to replace the internal card with a Broadcom based chipset that is natively supported by macOS.
  • Card reader (Realtek RTS5129) does not appear to be supported.
  • Webcam support is currently unknown. It does not appear as a USB device, and does not seem to toggle with FN+F6, though this may be due to this being software controlled. Will try again after enabling from Windows or in BIOS to see if it appears.
Hopefully these details will help anyone else still hoping to get this combination working.
 

Simo Ritto

New member
AMD OS X Member
Joined
Jun 16, 2022
Messages
1
Heyy man thank you so much for this valuable information! I have the same laptop and I wonder if you could share the EFI folder, I'm new to this field and I find it really overwhelming
 

Middleman

Active member
AMD OS X Member
Joined
Jan 29, 2021
Messages
723
Hello all,

Not looking for a sanity check as much as hoping to add some additional info and insight into an old post (https://amd-osx.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=9527) as I feel like I'm close to having something potentially working with this machine.

I actually have a mostly working 10.15.1 install (more on that below), and am hitting a rather interesting scenario when trying to install 10.15.6. But first, some proof that it's at least not impossible:


View attachment 1327

Like many MSI notebooks, this model includes a feature where the power button LED changes color to indicate GPU status -- white when using the APU, orange when using the GPU. Interestingly, this is orange at boot, and remains orange when booting into macOS, so it would imply that the GPU is at least ready to function by default, rather than requiring some sort of special initialization.

So in this case, as you can see from the System Information output, it appears that it is seeing the internal display as connected through the APU. As full support for the RX5500M wasn't included until 10.15.2, it detects the GPU but doesn't have any details about it, and nothing happens when I plug in an external display over HDMI. For 10.15.6, I see a bit different of a scenario -- the installer and recovery GUIs work fine, as does the Apple logo during boot. But when macOS reboots into the final OS to wrap up installation, the display remains on the verbose text output and does not show the logo or GUI. However, connecting an external display proves that it is working, as it correctly gets recognized as a second display and shows the background color of the screen, and the mouse moves into view if moved to the right.

Though, since the installation has not been completed at this point, it's not possible to SSH into it or change the display arrangement, but it proves to me that the only hurdle to getting this working is figuring out how to trigger the internal display to show the GPU's output. It would appear from discussion and linked YouTube videos on the above thread that disabling the APU entirely prevents the internal display from working, however, with my 10.15.1 install, it does not seem that disabling is necessary as macOS is able to actually use the APU without much issue. So I'm still digging to see if I can figure out a way to clear this last hurdle.

Beyond the display, things generally work, with some caveats:

  • I was able to get the internal SATA controller working with a bit of prodding (by adding the PCI device ids to the CtlnaAHCIPort.kext)
  • NVMe worked out of the box, though I started seeing freezes after leaving the system idle for a few minutes. NVMeFix.kext doesn't seem to be having an impact on those. For now, I disabled via the nvme=-1 boot flag to focus on other things first.
  • Audio is not yet working. It's supposedly a Realtek ALC233 chipset, though AppleALC has not yet been able to initialize it with the documented layout ids.
  • USB works perfectly for both USB 2 and 3 devices, including the Apple Ethernet-to-USB C adapter.
  • Keyboard seems to work perfectly. The Fn+Function key shortcuts for switching displays do not seem to be hardware controlled
    • Fn+F12 for sleep appears to partially work as the OS stops responding and behaves as if the computer has gone to sleep (though the display remains on but frozen). Pressing a key immediately refreshes the display and shows the password prompt.
    • Fn+Volume keys work (though not much help until audio is detected)
    • Fn+Brightness does not work, though that's not uncommon without some custom logic to detect + change brightness
    • SteelSeries LED controller appears as a USB device. The SteelSeries Engine app did not immediately detect it, though the app is a bit laggy (possibly due to the use of the APU) and has some rendering issues. However, the open source SSKeyboardHue app is able to adjust the RGB colors of the keys without problem.
  • Touchpad works, though clicking currently does not. Currently using an external USB mouse until I can figure out that issue.
  • Ethernet (Killer E2600) works using the RealtekRTL8111.kext.
  • Wifi + Bluetooth do not work out of the box, as they are based on Realtek RTL8822CE, there does not appear to be any macOS drivers for this particular chipset, though some exist for similar USB-based devices. But best bet would be to replace the internal card with a Broadcom based chipset that is natively supported by macOS.
  • Card reader (Realtek RTS5129) does not appear to be supported.
  • Webcam support is currently unknown. It does not appear as a USB device, and does not seem to toggle with FN+F6, though this may be due to this being software controlled. Will try again after enabling from Windows or in BIOS to see if it appears.
Hopefully these details will help anyone else still hoping to get this combination working.
Congrats so such a good build! It's good to see some progress was made even with Catalina.
We are currently working on Monterey on some of the other machines.

As to solving your issues, for your display you'll need to somehow inject the device-id of your 5500M into the PCIRoot path. That would be device-id of 40730000.
You will also need the key no-gfx-spoof to your device properties with 01000000 as Value and Data as Type and adding npci=0x2000 agdpmod=pikera into the boot-arg section to activate the card.

For the touchpad and SD card issue you can check it out under my Acer Nitro 5 guide here, I have them both fully working > https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/...7-8750h-samsung-1tb-960-evo-pcie-nvme.319629/

The loading order of the VoodooInput and VoodooPS2 kexts is important so remember to set them out exactly as shown in my config.plist.
 
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