I had a 2011 17in Pro laying around that we replaced for my wife quite a while ago due to this issue. I found your details and then your video about a month ago. I bought the bits and pieces outlined in your video and had a chance to work on the MacBook today. It worked like a charm ! Thanks dosdude1. How you work this stuff out is beyond me but it's people like you who work miracles for the rest of us. One thing I did find is that your instructions indicate that if the pads lift during the soldering process then it's game over. Well this happened to us BUT we traced the PCB tracks and found another point just near the connector pads and used that. Maybe that will help someone else ho runs into a similar issue. Thanks again.
Collin, you are the man! I'm an electrical engineer with over 40 years of experience in embedded computing design and implementation. I can appreciate the feat that you have accomplished with this fix. I'm truly impressed. A few years ago, my 17" 2011 Macbook Pro died with the GPU death. It was the second time and this time out of warranty. S, I put it on the shelf and bought a new 2016 Macbook Pro. I need to use my machine daily in my work. I just came across your fix for the 2011, so I thought I would try it. The only trouble I had was soldering onto the tiny pads with my 67 year old hands and eyes - LOL. I ended top using some 30 gauge wire wrap wire. Anyway, after all of that, I tried it and it worked flawlessly first time. Thank you. Now I have my favorite machine back and will give it new life with a couple of SSDs and more RAM. Thank you immensely!
Happy to read comments about people bringing grat machines back to life, the 17'' with 16gb of ram and a SSD is still a beautifull machine today, can't beat the price - quality
Hello "smilie face emoji" Im writing you, thanking you from my 17 inch 2011 macbook pro that I just finished fixing with your help, it's been about three years since this GPU failed on me rendering my computer unusable, Im so thankful and grateful for your very detailed guide and awesome work, Again thank you so much, one little hint for whoever attempts this, if you tried to flash the GMUX and failed with only 50% progress bar, try to disable your firewall and antivirus from windows settings, that did it for me
Thank you very much, Colin. My friend the technician revived my gf's and my almost identical 17" 2011 MacBook Pro with you DeMux reprogramming. Worth every penny and the wait! the MBP 17" 2011 is a LOVELY machine. I wonder what Louis Rossman is thinking about this... :-D
Many thanks for the amazing job and posting. I purchased the license and the Lattice cable - all worked from the first time, without any problems and as advertised. The most complex thing was to solder the lattice cable wires to the tiny pads and do it properly from the first time. I do not have special equipment - used regular 30wt solder iron and raisin. I also used a self-made tin tip on the solder iron In order to prevent overheating the pads. Microscope is a must for this job - I used electronic USB scope for QC of my soldering, they are very cheap now. Washed the residual raisin with 90% isopropyl alcohol and dried. Another advice - the lattice programmer and the cable need to be fixed, otherwise it is easy to break the pads or connections. I used double-sided sticky tape, it did the job perfectly. So, my friends, my 17 inch Macbook Pro is back in service! Doesnt have discrete graphics now but I don't need it anyways. Also brightness is no longer adjustable. The rest works just great! Many thanks, Collin!
@@adam_orlando I'm sorry my friend, I'm afraid I can't help. I think any electronics repair shop can do it for you much cheaper and faster than mailing to me) you may order lattice cable on Amazon, it is very cheap and give it with the instruction to the repair technician, he will do it for you.
Hola como estas? Vi q sos de argentina y pudiste solucionar el problema de estas macs. Yo estoy en la misma. Entendi el video pero tengo algunas dudas y si t copas pasame algun modo d contacto así m ayudas. En fb e ig salgo como guidopuntorojo. Saludos!
iv done this on a couple 15 inch 2011,s and a couple 17 inch 2011s, and it works flawlessly. I just soldered the wires to the board and flashed it that way. also use the brightess control app from App Store and it works perfect for software brightness control. looking forward to a firmware that supports hardware brightness control and looks like there working on it. totally worth the 20$ thanks!!
@@melvinharris7859 Yes that's why I went for it! I have a 17" mid 2010 and the capacitor is yet to fail so I will just replace it when it eventually does and then yes, I'll have probably one of the most reliable unibody mbp's!
Mitch K be careful. I followed the diagrams triple checked wiring. Same programmer etc. after it failed once.. the green light could never be got again and the machine wouldn’t take a charge anymore. No light on charger at all. Bricked MacBook. Made numerous replies on previous video asking for help, nothing.
I can't see how this process could possibly brick a machine, as it has nothing to do with any of the main power circuits of the board. I'd check and make sure you're using a genuine 85W MagSafe power adapter.
Amazing! It took a couple of tries but managed get it working using a makeshift solderless connection made up of a spliced CAT6 cable and some painters tape to hold the alignment in place.
I'm sorry but you are amazing. Impressed. Was going to reflow mine after it flopped last week after 7 years of solid use but after a little more digging i came across this. May wait until the backlight thing is resolved before i purchase but i'm patient.
thank you, i followed your video and completed mod in twenty minutes. good fun doing it too. look forward to backlight mod and catalina patch. makes me sad to think how many mbp's have been binned when they could have been rescued. but keep up the good work and all the best.
Love your good work! And a big thanks for making it possible to keep these good machines alive. I am an MBP 17"-lover and when working as an Apple-tech, my machine actually had the good taste to die at the same time that Apple had their extended warranty for the 2011/12-machines. Fingers crossed, it hasn´t died again yet, but i wouldn´t be surprised if it did. Lot of machines came back after some time. I think that Apple just refurbed with the same bad stuff. My advice with good machines is to use GfxStatus to see that it never gets into using the dGPU. Check your apps to not use it either. Chrome is an example that is default to "use hardware acceleration" and has to be turned off. And of course, never use an external monitor. Again, thanks. Now i know who to ask when mine breaks again.
just finished doing this 15 minutes ago (anxious as hell-first time soldering), this video came out 12 minutes ago. story of my life :p Still don't know if it worked cause I don't have an available SSD (or a mac for that matter) to load an os. Yet no errors appeared. Thank you for doing this I hope it works! you saved many owners of those shitty apple MacBooks some money.
Just hold down the Alt(Option) key on boot up and then connect to wifi or plug in an ethernet cable with internet access. You should be able to boot into internet recovery.
@@tschuuuls486 still need an ssd/hdd. In addition, i will try a clean install of mojave on an ssd using doadude's patcher :p hope everything works great
Some quick tips and tricks. This method isn’t very difficult, but must, i can’t not stress this enough, must be very diligent, don’t rush your work and ruin your board. The simplest way I found was putting flux on my board, and apply just a little bit of solder, if this is too difficult you can skip this step and tin your wire extremely well. For my fpga, I cut legs off of some diodes i had lying around and i can’t tell you how easy it makes it. Literally place it on, tap the iron, that’s all it takes. WHEN WORKING ON YOUR BOARD, UNPLUG THE BATTERY, WHEN FLASHING YOUR GMUX, YOU DONT NEED THE BATTERY. I wouldn’t even have the battery in the system until the flash is complete and it runs. DONT CROSS THE LINES, 3V3, Ground, etc, THEY WILL FUCK UP YOUR SYSTEM. finally notes on the pc side, disable your firewall, install the drivers, and run demux as administrator, that’s pretty much it, you’re good to go, be patient, works great, minor issues right now that shouldn’t be a problem to iron out, keep up the work collin.
hey! I was hoping you could clarify a few things..So the diode legs (im guessing you'd need 6 of them) would be placed on each tiny pad on the logic board and afterwards you connect the 6 tinned wires to them from the programmer?
Awesome work! They said it couldn't be done! I plan to do this on my 15" once the new version of the firmware is available, and the adapter is for sale!
Just did my mbp 17" and after several of those error messages, i disabled the firewall and antivirus and kept checking the mbp's black screen. When the programmer reached the end, a brief white flash occurred on the mac screen. Success!! no more error messages and the mbp booted up fine. I used #30 wire-wrap and tacked each end to the 6 bar strip shown in the web sites pictoral. The other end of the wire i soldered standard header posts which inserted into the programmer's colour-coded labeled jacks (TCK,GND,TMS,TDI,TDO,VCC)
You have done a really nice job. I bought an “repaired” MacBook where the graphics chip was already changed. My plan was to reflow it in order to make the software bypass from Macmods. But no chance, it started only with black screen and the NVRAM was terrible hot. It took 10 attempts to flash the demux but now the MacBook is working! Trying to flash several times was an important information in your video. So I did not give up:) Isn’t there any possibility to get the brightness back by for example soldering wires or with a software tool? On the macmods Homepage there was a brightness hardware mod for High Sierra.
Hello Collin. Thanks for everything you've done, really. I already lost all hopes regarding that macbook that suddenly stopped working a couple of years ago. Now I'm getting ready to do the flash. I bought the Lattice and as soon as I got all the components I'll buy the licence to update the firmware. However I have never solder anything and as I imagine the pads are quite delicate. If it's possible could you upload a video while you do the soldering? I really wished you didn't cut that part out of the last video. :) It'd be great, but I completely understand if you can't. Keep up the good work! Cheers!
Okay so, I know this might not be the best way to reach out to you ... but I found a couple more software mechanisms to limit the dead GPU's in these models. 1) Is semi well-known, pmset -a gpuswitch 0. Though it shouldn't be set in single user mode, as it will be reset by various power management KEXT's each time you boot. Just do pmset -g ... to see :). It needs to be in a LaunchAgent, and preferably run late in the boot process ... you could tie it to certain power-management logs to fire off when they are written if you want to get fancy. 2) AppleGraphicsPowerManagement offers you potentially the ability to disable the discrete card. I'm not sure the setting actually works, but it is there. Likewise, once on the iGPU you can tweak the P-states a bit to give you more power should you wish to overclock things a bit. Search for your model (for me that's MacBookPro8,2). There will be a list of two sets of configurations, one for the iGPU and the other for the discrete.
Where do you buy the programmer? Or, the entire kit used in this video? I have 4 or 5 to do, and will continue to see more coming in. DJ's love this machine. Thanks Collin for your amazing work. I don't know what inspires you, but I need that inspiration in my life. Your brain amazes me. I can do anything but write code. That's an incredible talent!!
Hi Collin, your calm and clear views are very professional and at 67 have inspired me to take the back off every laptop I can! Anyway my question is once you have flashed the GPU and disabled the Radeon GPU, is it possible to reinstall the original firmware, if so where would I find it? My 2011 MacBook Pro runs hot but the Radeon GPU still works, for reliability I'm considering dialling it but would like to know if I need ed more graphics power I could deactivate it later, for Photoshop for example.
I want to report that i successfully demuxed my late 2011 MBP running OSX 10.12.6 - after 3 times of repairing the nVidia GPU without long trem success. For the permanent 100% brightness problem i found a simple software solution called Brightness Slider (available in the App Store). Thank you, Collin!
I do have one doubt before buying the software and lattice. My late 2011 15" MBP was patched with the software solution but it occasionally goes into the black screen boot loop (I'm aware it is caused because the GPU is still receiving power). I fix these boot loops temporarily by wrapping the MacBook around a blanket and letting it heat up until it boots again but aside from the boot loop I no longer get any other graphical glitches. I am very new with this sort of stuff and I just want to be 100% sure the fix will also get rid of the black screen boot loop. Anyways, if you're reading this dosdude1 you are a legend!
Yep, that is happening due to your NVRAM getting reset. This custom gMux IC firmware is 100% permanent, and therefore will resolve all those issues you've been having.
Thanks god, You’re genius!! Help so many guys in this world for computer issues.🙏😭 I have a Mac Pro is used your Catalina patch, work very very fine👍 Sad for hearing Apple is turn macOS to arm cpu... It’s mean my powerful Mac Pro 5.1 to be gone soon😢
It's not necessary, as my custom firmware cuts all power to the dGPU anyways. Removing R8911, or the entire GPU, can still be done though, if you want.
Fantastic job man, you have resuscitated my loved early 2011 MacBook Pro. Just one question, the fix disables only the video display port? o the thunderbolt connection completely?
Cool. I really wanna see this project to full potential. Question, are you able to rewire the external display port back to the Intel HD Graphics? Just curious
Hello Colin. I just purchased the serial and getting everything set to start the flashing. Finger crossed, thanks to your amazing work it will be sorted out smoothly. Any update related to the brightness control patch? Cheers
I tried 20 times and after finishing all these trying I forgotten that it was my MacBook pro and hopelessly tried once again it was great to see my MacBook pro is breathing..I was really overwhelmed.I was really hoping that it will never be able to work again thanks from Bangladesh.
This is incredible work, but just curious you said you were working on a version of the firmware that has back light functionality, but the license is one time use. Does this mean if i want back light functionality i should wait to purchase a license when that revision is released? Is it possible you could implement some sort of revision check to the software to let you do only one successful flash per firmware revision?
If you do flash now with the current implementation, and would like to reflash later once the backlight control functionality is implemented, just let me know, and I can provide a second key for free to use in order to reflash.
Any ETA of the no soldering solution? if I buy you version right now, I need to buy another one when you fix the brightness control? Thanks for your hard work, is very appreciated.
Hi Collin, if this thing really will restore the sleep/brightness functionality, it will be a glorious day, you'll 100% have my money. I've got an 15" Early 2011 and I've just removed the dGPU power resistor and use your Mojave patcher to install it, everything works OK, but there is no sleep possible and of course, no brightness F1/F2 :(. The laptop does nothing for the sleep command, seem to have been disabled by the patcher. It could be due to the screen not coming back when dGPU is disabled without using an extra hw mod, that I will refrain doing it for a while, maybe we're lucky and you manage to do a full reprogramming of the beast ;). Or at least a working suspend.
Hiya Colin , Salute to your efforts for saving planet and helping humanity. I am debited to you, my two old mini are back to life because of ur patch of high Sierra, it worked like charm. I am intended to donate small amount once life return to normal after lockdown( gesture of respect and apprecaition) I think, $10 to $20 for any user should be nothing for the kind of handwork and innovation. I am keen to apply ur hardware patch on 2011-15 inch waiting for you final version with heating or brightness issue sorted. Mac2011 is beautiful machine. Colin I am afraid to suggest if possible please encourage small computer repair shops to provide your solutions at a small fee please. Once again many thanks, will keep eye , I am keen if anybody in UK who would like to sell or lend me hardware for 1 time use would be highly appreciated since it would be one time operation. Thanks regards R
So if we buy the firmware, and when you make the brightness work on future firmware version, well we have to buy again? Or will you offer the upgrade for free?
Hi, real thx for your job ! I bought 8 licenses and they worked very well, but there is a problem of temperature (90°), they heat very quickly with simple applications. it does that on the 8 MBP that I repaired. Do you have a solution? Thx Best regards H
Done it! BUT Was it the LED lighting/Switched mode PSU's causing failure? "Demuxed" my 17" Macbook but only after a succession of flashing failures. Added the 10pf capacitor and it still failed a couple of times - although the progress bar went further. Turned off all the LED lights in the room + any switched mode PSU's (except the one for the Dell Laptop running the flashing software) and... Success! Whether turning off these sources of interference was an issue or a just a co-incidence - who knows???
Amazing work! You have done an awesome job with this! One question.....would there be any technical way to wire the intel graphics to the thunderbolt port? (Even if via a wire mod)
Hello Dos dude! I appreciate all that you do for the community, going to be purchasing 2 keys here from you except i am having a little issue naming what those pins that are soldered to the board? I have the lattice already just can't quite seem to find those pins that connect to the motherboard, if you could help I'd appreciate it.
You would have to wire the programmer correctly but this would avoid soldering to the board. www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Hand-held-6-pogo-test-pin-programmer-tool-holder-adapter-JTAG-2-54mm-XH2-54/193861414356?_trkparms=aid%3D111001%26algo%3DREC.SEED%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D20160908105057%26meid%3De23a6c7e2b5240de914f87c9dc448eec%26pid%3D100675%26rk%3D2%26rkt%3D15%26mehot%3Dnone%26sd%3D384034267172%26itm%3D193861414356%26pmt%3D0%26noa%3D1%26pg%3D2380057%26brand%3DUnbranded&_trksid=p2380057.c100675.m4236&_trkparms=pageci%3Ae5aa7ee1-8cb4-11eb-99d1-56fa2c5b65c8%7Cparentrq%3A64d574d01780a4b4f30437ebffad8846%7Ciid%3A1
hi I was soldering the wires to the board and accidently riped off one of the pads, its the tck on the 2011 15 board any way to connect to something else on the board that has tck to flash the gmuc ic?
I would Download the Board Schematic to search for other points to connect TCK. There you can click on the TCK pad and it will show you the connections.
@@marcinobdarcin7729 i ended up finding another point some guy helped me on the macromours forum, there's 2 points a really small cap microscopic point but i got it on there and flashed the mac and it worked flawlessly.
Hi dosdude1 before anything you rock! I have a question since you say you are working in a brightness fix y was wondering what method are you gonna use (I use hackintosh as my main pc but its a laptop with a Nvidia 1060 ) I have said that coz in my case I don't have brightness because a problems in the correct implementation of the device... I have tried without luck patching the dsdt but only getting the hdmi/dp working the main display always is black with that patch running so idk if that may work but probably a dsdt patch in the gfx0 probably do the work
This is what I ended up getting. Hope it gets here soon: www.ebay.com/itm/USB-Download-Cable-Jtag-SPI-Programmer-for-LATTICE-FPGA-CPLD-HW-USBN-2A/312583428115?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649
Hello Dosdude, I know you work on an update to support Backlight brightness by Demux. I wait for your software fix for this. Thank you and let us know.
any updates on the brightness issue? what about the sleep mode? any other caveats we should be familiar with? how does it behave when a software update is installed? noticed, you are running mojave on that laptop?
I've done this repair yesterday. It went quite well and flashing succeeded. Sadly my display now shows one or two vertical lines which change position from time to time. Any idea what could be causing this?
@@dosdude1 whats really weird is that those lines weren't there before. The display looked totally fine. I will try to disassamble the MacBook and put it back together hoping that it's just a bad connection somewhere. I already spend too much time with this old thing. I'm a big fan of your work and I got this Macbook just to save it from a landfill.
Love your work man! Have you considered attempting something similar with the 2.5GHZ 2011 Mac mini too? It's got the same issue as the MacBooks but apple never addressed it.
That's only on the 2010 15" and 17" machines, which have a completely different GPU. The garbage AMD Radeon HD 6xxx series chipsets the 2011 machines use are defective.
Hello. Do you think that this flashing process could help me? I have a MABP15/L11 that makes the chime but black screen, i think its the dGPU that is Faulty.
Hi Enrico. It probably can help you. I had a 2011 in the shop that was also black screen. What I did to temporarily fix it was to power it on, hold down command+s to get into single user mode (won't work if you have firmware password), even though the screen was off I did that, typed in the command : nvram fa4ce28d-b62f-4c99-9cc3-6815686e30f9:gpu-power-prefs=%01%00%00%00 pressed enter, typed reboot, and the thing came back to life! I then proceeded to do the realmacmods GPU fix until I get a lattice fpga programmer from china. It may not work for you, but luckily it did for mine!
@@sagebrushrepair Well, I have to give it a try! I have just received the 6 pin adapter to use with the Lattice programmer. Still waiting for this one. But, hey, thanks a lot!
How is the experience using a macbook pro without dedicated graphics? I only use(d) mine for watching youtube, am i still able to do that with the dedicated graphics disconnected?
Hey @dosdude1 any updates for the back lighting and the lightning port? Do you think you can provide me with a link of the lattice programmer where I can purchase it from?
Hey! are you still selling this adapter? I have never soldering before and I am afraid to do some damage in my board. I would like to know if it is still possible to buy one with you!
I had a 2011 17in Pro laying around that we replaced for my wife quite a while ago due to this issue. I found your details and then your video about a month ago. I bought the bits and pieces outlined in your video and had a chance to work on the MacBook today. It worked like a charm ! Thanks dosdude1. How you work this stuff out is beyond me but it's people like you who work miracles for the rest of us. One thing I did find is that your instructions indicate that if the pads lift during the soldering process then it's game over. Well this happened to us BUT we traced the PCB tracks and found another point just near the connector pads and used that. Maybe that will help someone else ho runs into a similar issue. Thanks again.
Collin, you are the man! I'm an electrical engineer with over 40 years of experience in embedded computing design and implementation. I can appreciate the feat that you have accomplished with this fix. I'm truly impressed. A few years ago, my 17" 2011 Macbook Pro died with the GPU death. It was the second time and this time out of warranty. S, I put it on the shelf and bought a new 2016 Macbook Pro. I need to use my machine daily in my work. I just came across your fix for the 2011, so I thought I would try it. The only trouble I had was soldering onto the tiny pads with my 67 year old hands and eyes - LOL. I ended top using some 30 gauge wire wrap wire. Anyway, after all of that, I tried it and it worked flawlessly first time. Thank you. Now I have my favorite machine back and will give it new life with a couple of SSDs and more RAM. Thank you immensely!
Happy to read comments about people bringing grat machines back to life, the 17'' with 16gb of ram and a SSD is still a beautifull machine today, can't beat the price - quality
Hello "smilie face emoji"
Im writing you, thanking you from my 17 inch 2011 macbook pro that I just finished fixing with your help,
it's been about three years since this GPU failed on me rendering my computer unusable,
Im so thankful and grateful for your very detailed guide and awesome work,
Again thank you so much,
one little hint for whoever attempts this, if you tried to flash the GMUX and failed with only 50% progress bar, try to disable your firewall and antivirus from windows settings, that did it for me
Thank you very much, Colin. My friend the technician revived my gf's and my almost identical 17" 2011 MacBook Pro with you DeMux reprogramming. Worth every penny and the wait! the MBP 17" 2011 is a LOVELY machine.
I wonder what Louis Rossman is thinking about this... :-D
ruclips.net/video/tfATGKH_39k/видео.html
Many thanks for the amazing job and posting. I purchased the license and the Lattice cable - all worked from the first time, without any problems and as advertised. The most complex thing was to solder the lattice cable wires to the tiny pads and do it properly from the first time. I do not have special equipment - used regular 30wt solder iron and raisin. I also used a self-made tin tip on the solder iron In order to prevent overheating the pads. Microscope is a must for this job - I used electronic USB scope for QC of my soldering, they are very cheap now. Washed the residual raisin with 90% isopropyl alcohol and dried.
Another advice - the lattice programmer and the cable need to be fixed, otherwise it is easy to break the pads or connections. I used double-sided sticky tape, it did the job perfectly.
So, my friends, my 17 inch Macbook Pro is back in service! Doesnt have discrete graphics now but I don't need it anyways. Also brightness is no longer adjustable. The rest works just great! Many thanks, Collin!
Can I mail my 17” Mac to make it for me and I will pay you.?
@@adam_orlando I'm sorry my friend, I'm afraid I can't help. I think any electronics repair shop can do it for you much cheaper and faster than mailing to me) you may order lattice cable on Amazon, it is very cheap and give it with the instruction to the repair technician, he will do it for you.
The 20 best spent dollars of my life! Thank you so much! After reviving it three times with heat I had already given up! Greetings from Argentina
Hola como estas? Vi q sos de argentina y pudiste solucionar el problema de estas macs. Yo estoy en la misma. Entendi el video pero tengo algunas dudas y si t copas pasame algun modo d contacto así m ayudas. En fb e ig salgo como guidopuntorojo. Saludos!
Oh I'm buying this adapter as soon as it's available and upgrading to Catalina with your patcher. You truly are a god.
ウェンデルティム I'd consider him more of a legend
@@jsrmedia Both
iv done this on a couple 15 inch 2011,s and a couple 17 inch 2011s, and it works flawlessly. I just soldered the wires to the board and flashed it that way. also use the brightess control app from App Store and it works perfect for software brightness control. looking forward to a firmware that supports hardware brightness control and looks like there working on it. totally worth the 20$ thanks!!
I can confirm exactly as shown here, did my test MBP last week. It’s another service I can now offer.
Where are you located? Are there any London shops that can do this for me?
How long until you have the non-soldering cable ready for production? Is there anyway to purchase one that's ready ahead of time?
I’m waiting for this too
Please non soldered fix need it in Australia
could always just hold the wires in place with tape or your hands
i'm still waiting for it ! Soldering for me will take too much time!
@@user-jp1yd2ut9r does it work with tape?
I always thought you should start charging a little bit of money for your stuff. You deserve it for being an amazing software developer!
Fantastic work! I have a mid 2010 model but If I had a defective 2011 model I would not hesitate whatsoever to try this out!
@@melvinharris7859 Yes that's why I went for it! I have a 17" mid 2010 and the capacitor is yet to fail so I will just replace it when it eventually does and then yes, I'll have probably one of the most reliable unibody mbp's!
Looking forward to giving this a try! Thanks Dosdude!
Mitch K be careful. I followed the diagrams triple checked wiring. Same programmer etc. after it failed once.. the green light could never be got again and the machine wouldn’t take a charge anymore. No light on charger at all. Bricked MacBook. Made numerous replies on previous video asking for help, nothing.
I can't see how this process could possibly brick a machine, as it has nothing to do with any of the main power circuits of the board. I'd check and make sure you're using a genuine 85W MagSafe power adapter.
Fantastic work dude. The Mojave patcher on my 2008 imac still works perfectly. You're the boss !
Amazing! It took a couple of tries but managed get it working using a makeshift solderless connection made up of a spliced CAT6 cable and some painters tape to hold the alignment in place.
I'm sorry but you are amazing. Impressed. Was going to reflow mine after it flopped last week after 7 years of solid use but after a little more digging i came across this. May wait until the backlight thing is resolved before i purchase but i'm patient.
thank you, i followed your video and completed mod in twenty minutes. good fun doing it too. look forward to backlight mod and catalina patch. makes me sad to think how many mbp's have been binned when they could have been rescued. but keep up the good work and all the best.
Are you in London?
Love your good work! And a big thanks for making it possible to keep these good machines alive. I am an MBP 17"-lover and when working as an Apple-tech, my machine actually had the good taste to die at the same time that Apple had their extended warranty for the 2011/12-machines. Fingers crossed, it hasn´t died again yet, but i wouldn´t be surprised if it did. Lot of machines came back after some time. I think that Apple just refurbed with the same bad stuff. My advice with good machines is to use GfxStatus to see that it never gets into using the dGPU. Check your apps to not use it either. Chrome is an example that is default to "use hardware acceleration" and has to be turned off. And of course, never use an external monitor. Again, thanks. Now i know who to ask when mine breaks again.
just finished doing this 15 minutes ago (anxious as hell-first time soldering), this video came out 12 minutes ago. story of my life :p Still don't know if it worked cause I don't have an available SSD (or a mac for that matter) to load an os. Yet no errors appeared. Thank you for doing this I hope it works! you saved many owners of those shitty apple MacBooks some money.
Just hold down the Alt(Option) key on boot up and then connect to wifi or plug in an ethernet cable with internet access. You should be able to boot into internet recovery.
@@tschuuuls486 still need an ssd/hdd. In addition, i will try a clean install of mojave on an ssd using doadude's patcher :p hope everything works great
Thank you for your help. Now I flashed my IC today. All went well. I shared some pictures on your Twitter
Some quick tips and tricks.
This method isn’t very difficult, but must, i can’t not stress this enough, must be very diligent, don’t rush your work and ruin your board.
The simplest way I found was putting flux on my board, and apply just a little bit of solder, if this is too difficult you can skip this step and tin your wire extremely well. For my fpga, I cut legs off of some diodes i had lying around and i can’t tell you how easy it makes it. Literally place it on, tap the iron, that’s all it takes.
WHEN WORKING ON YOUR BOARD, UNPLUG THE BATTERY, WHEN FLASHING YOUR GMUX, YOU DONT NEED THE BATTERY.
I wouldn’t even have the battery in the system until the flash is complete and it runs.
DONT CROSS THE LINES, 3V3, Ground, etc, THEY WILL FUCK UP YOUR SYSTEM.
finally notes on the pc side, disable your firewall, install the drivers, and run demux as administrator, that’s pretty much it, you’re good to go, be patient, works great, minor issues right now that shouldn’t be a problem to iron out, keep up the work collin.
hey! I was hoping you could clarify a few things..So the diode legs (im guessing you'd need 6 of them) would be placed on each tiny pad on the logic board and afterwards you connect the 6 tinned wires to them from the programmer?
@@Cosmickon That is correct.
@@OptimisedTutorials Awesome! Thanks for the quick response :D!
Awesome progress on this cursed problem. I can’t wait for the non solder version to come out!
Camera angle and video quality seems better. I like it!
Awesome work! They said it couldn't be done! I plan to do this on my 15" once the new version of the firmware is available, and the adapter is for sale!
Just did my mbp 17" and after several of those error messages, i disabled the firewall and antivirus and kept checking the mbp's black screen.
When the programmer reached the end, a brief white flash occurred on the mac screen. Success!! no more error messages and the
mbp booted up fine. I used #30 wire-wrap and tacked each end to the 6 bar strip shown in the web sites pictoral. The other end of the wire
i soldered standard header posts which inserted into the programmer's colour-coded labeled jacks (TCK,GND,TMS,TDI,TDO,VCC)
Hey Collin, at 6:00 is that one of your early 2008 Macbook Pros that you replaced the GPU with a revised 8600M GT? Great work Collin. :)
Yes, it is. It's one I got in mint condition off eBay for only $20, with dead GPU.
Hats off man! Thanks for sharing your knowledge with the public.
Dosdude,1 the computer genius that saves your broken MacBook
You have done a really nice job. I bought an “repaired” MacBook where the graphics chip was already changed.
My plan was to reflow it in order to make the software bypass from Macmods.
But no chance, it started only with black screen and the NVRAM was terrible hot.
It took 10 attempts to flash the demux but now the MacBook is working!
Trying to flash several times was an important information in your video. So I did not give up:)
Isn’t there any possibility to get the brightness back by for example soldering wires or with a software tool? On the macmods Homepage there was a brightness hardware mod for High Sierra.
You're a pretty damn good teacher as well...
Wow, that's incredible. So I guess I'll be on a hunt for a 2011 MacBook pro now
Have you tried to replace the cheap and dried up thermal paste used on the heat sink commonly used on both the GPU and the CPU?
Hello Collin. Thanks for everything you've done, really. I already lost all hopes regarding that macbook that suddenly stopped working a couple of years ago. Now I'm getting ready to do the flash. I bought the Lattice and as soon as I got all the components I'll buy the licence to update the firmware. However I have never solder anything and as I imagine the pads are quite delicate. If it's possible could you upload a video while you do the soldering? I really wished you didn't cut that part out of the last video. :) It'd be great, but I completely understand if you can't. Keep up the good work! Cheers!
Okay so, I know this might not be the best way to reach out to you ... but I found a couple more software mechanisms to limit the dead GPU's in these models.
1) Is semi well-known, pmset -a gpuswitch 0. Though it shouldn't be set in single user mode, as it will be reset by various power management KEXT's each time you boot. Just do pmset -g ... to see :). It needs to be in a LaunchAgent, and preferably run late in the boot process ... you could tie it to certain power-management logs to fire off when they are written if you want to get fancy.
2) AppleGraphicsPowerManagement offers you potentially the ability to disable the discrete card. I'm not sure the setting actually works, but it is there. Likewise, once on the iGPU you can tweak the P-states a bit to give you more power should you wish to overclock things a bit. Search for your model (for me that's MacBookPro8,2). There will be a list of two sets of configurations, one for the iGPU and the other for the discrete.
Great job! Your work is amazing. I’m going to follow your channel and support your work for sure. 👍🏻
Brilliant work, thank you so much Colin!
Where do you buy the programmer? Or, the entire kit used in this video? I have 4 or 5 to do, and will continue to see more coming in. DJ's love this machine. Thanks Collin for your amazing work. I don't know what inspires you, but I need that inspiration in my life. Your brain amazes me. I can do anything but write code. That's an incredible talent!!
Hi Collin, your calm and clear views are very professional and at 67 have inspired me to take the back off every laptop I can!
Anyway my question is once you have flashed the GPU and disabled the Radeon GPU, is it possible to reinstall the original firmware, if so where would I find it?
My 2011 MacBook Pro runs hot but the Radeon GPU still works, for reliability I'm considering dialling it but would like to know if I need ed more graphics power I could deactivate it later, for Photoshop for example.
this is truly a game changer. amazing work
Wow, one smart engineer 👍
I want to report that i successfully demuxed my late 2011 MBP running OSX 10.12.6 - after 3 times of repairing the nVidia GPU without long trem success. For the permanent 100% brightness problem i found a simple software solution called Brightness Slider (available in the App Store). Thank you, Collin!
Hey David
I cannot find that App on the App Store. Would you be able to put a link up (Now there's a question in itself: Does RUclips allow links?)
@@steves9291 apps.apple.com/de/app/brightness-slider/id456624497?mt=12
@@steves9291 Hope the link works. The tool affects also contrast and color. So it's not a real brightness slider. Just check it out.
Any update on the brightness control?
I do have one doubt before buying the software and lattice.
My late 2011 15" MBP was patched with the software solution but it occasionally goes into the black screen boot loop (I'm aware it is caused because the GPU is still receiving power). I fix these boot loops temporarily by wrapping the MacBook around a blanket and letting it heat up until it boots again but aside from the boot loop I no longer get any other graphical glitches. I am very new with this sort of stuff and I just want to be 100% sure the fix will also get rid of the black screen boot loop.
Anyways, if you're reading this dosdude1 you are a legend!
Yep, that is happening due to your NVRAM getting reset. This custom gMux IC firmware is 100% permanent, and therefore will resolve all those issues you've been having.
@@dosdude1 Awesome, thank you for everything!
Thanks god, You’re genius!!
Help so many guys in this world for computer issues.🙏😭
I have a Mac Pro is used your Catalina patch, work very very fine👍
Sad for hearing Apple is turn macOS to arm cpu...
It’s mean my powerful Mac Pro 5.1 to be gone soon😢
@dosdude1 how about bootcamp and windows 7/10? i get stuck on the OS loading menu (when I press alt)
love the NeXT/OSX error dialog on the Windows flashing software.
This is amazing I am going to wait for the brightness update and the pogo pin thingo but I’m totally going to do this on my 17 MacBook Pro
Great job Dosdue1. Do you have an approximate time for when that connector will be ready for purchase?
Thank you, it worked for me on aMacBook Pro 15” 2011.
Hello DD what about removing the supply to the AMD GPU chip R911 or removing the GPU completely
It's not necessary, as my custom firmware cuts all power to the dGPU anyways. Removing R8911, or the entire GPU, can still be done though, if you want.
@@dosdude1 will te machine work if I remove completely the dGPU?
@@alex85bz I believe you also need to remove a few small passives surrounding the GPU
Fantastic job man, you have resuscitated my loved early 2011 MacBook Pro. Just one question, the fix disables only the video display port? o the thunderbolt connection completely?
Andrea Cappello did you figure it out?
Thanks very much ,brought my macbook back to life perfectly! would love the software solution for the backlight if you manage to work it out!
Hi there.. great job. Did the deMux also works with Windows 10, or need I Windows 7? Thanks for your solution .
Very elegant solution, well done.
Cool. I really wanna see this project to full potential. Question, are you able to rewire the external display port back to the Intel HD Graphics? Just curious
This is a really useful video but I'm not sure most people searching for a "radeon macbook fix" will find it given the title ?
Hello Colin. I just purchased the serial and getting everything set to start the flashing. Finger crossed, thanks to your amazing work it will be sorted out smoothly. Any update related to the brightness control patch? Cheers
doslabelectronics.com/DyingLight.html
I tried 20 times and after finishing all these trying I forgotten that it was my MacBook pro and hopelessly tried once again it was great to see my MacBook pro is breathing..I was really overwhelmed.I was really hoping that it will never be able to work again thanks from Bangladesh.
This is incredible work, but just curious you said you were working on a version of the firmware that has back light functionality, but the license is one time use. Does this mean if i want back light functionality i should wait to purchase a license when that revision is released? Is it possible you could implement some sort of revision check to the software to let you do only one successful flash per firmware revision?
If you do flash now with the current implementation, and would like to reflash later once the backlight control functionality is implemented, just let me know, and I can provide a second key for free to use in order to reflash.
Any ETA of the no soldering solution? if I buy you version right now, I need to buy another one when you fix the brightness control? Thanks for your hard work, is very appreciated.
Someone else asked and the OP said if you contacted him he would give you another license to reflash the updated one at no charge.
Hi Collin, if this thing really will restore the sleep/brightness functionality, it will be a glorious day, you'll 100% have my money. I've got an 15" Early 2011 and I've just removed the dGPU power resistor and use your Mojave patcher to install it, everything works OK, but there is no sleep possible and of course, no brightness F1/F2 :(. The laptop does nothing for the sleep command, seem to have been disabled by the patcher. It could be due to the screen not coming back when dGPU is disabled without using an extra hw mod, that I will refrain doing it for a while, maybe we're lucky and you manage to do a full reprogramming of the beast ;). Or at least a working suspend.
Is there a reason you didn't disconnect the hard drive flex before going to the effort to align the pogo pins? Seems it just makes it more awkward?
Hats off to you my man. Any update on the brightness control?
Hey, just want to say major props for fixing this issue! Quick question - is it possible to port this fix and to get it to work with the iMac12,2?
Hiya Colin , Salute to your efforts for saving planet and helping humanity. I am debited to you, my two old mini are back to life because of ur patch of high Sierra, it worked like charm. I am intended to donate small amount once life return to normal after lockdown( gesture of respect and apprecaition) I think, $10 to $20 for any user should be nothing for the kind of handwork and innovation. I am keen to apply ur hardware patch on 2011-15 inch waiting for you final version with heating or brightness issue sorted. Mac2011 is beautiful machine. Colin I am afraid to suggest if possible please encourage small computer repair shops to provide your solutions at a small fee please. Once again many thanks, will keep eye , I am keen if anybody in UK who would like to sell or lend me hardware for 1 time use would be highly appreciated since it would be one time operation. Thanks regards R
So if we buy the firmware, and when you make the brightness work on future firmware version, well we have to buy again? Or will you offer the upgrade for free?
Nathan Evans don’t be a cheapskate. Appreciate this guy’s efforts! Smh
I'll provide a second key for free in order to reflash a system to a later revision of the firmware, if requested.
@@Roosyer that's not being a cheapskate.
Hi, real thx for your job !
I bought 8 licenses and they worked very well, but there is a problem of temperature (90°), they heat very quickly with simple applications. it does that on the 8 MBP that I repaired. Do you have a solution?
Thx
Best regards
H
replace thermal paste.. and lap the heat sink and use high quality thermal grizzly for paste , clean dust in heatsink
I do hope you used your own patcher to get Mojave on this system. :D Excellent video.
Of course LOL.
Done it! BUT
Was it the LED lighting/Switched mode PSU's causing failure?
"Demuxed" my 17" Macbook but only after a succession of flashing failures.
Added the 10pf capacitor and it still failed a couple of times - although the progress bar went further.
Turned off all the LED lights in the room + any switched mode PSU's (except the one for the Dell Laptop running the flashing software) and...
Success!
Whether turning off these sources of interference was an issue or a just a co-incidence - who knows???
Amazing work! You have done an awesome job with this! One question.....would there be any technical way to wire the intel graphics to the thunderbolt port? (Even if via a wire mod)
Hello. Have you found a solution to this request ? I am also very interested !
Hello Dos dude! I appreciate all that you do for the community, going to be purchasing 2 keys here from you except i am having a little issue naming what those pins that are soldered to the board? I have the lattice already just can't quite seem to find those pins that connect to the motherboard, if you could help I'd appreciate it.
I'm really curious to know what a machine that works intermittently would do in W10, if you just have the discreet driver disabled in device manager
Also, will this make it so that one can no longer use certain software, like Sketchup (3D application), or 3D games?
This is amazing. My wife has a 2011 Macbook Pro with this issue. When you have the pogo pin connector available, I think I'm going to try this fix!
You would have to wire the programmer correctly but this would avoid soldering to the board. www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Hand-held-6-pogo-test-pin-programmer-tool-holder-adapter-JTAG-2-54mm-XH2-54/193861414356?_trkparms=aid%3D111001%26algo%3DREC.SEED%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D20160908105057%26meid%3De23a6c7e2b5240de914f87c9dc448eec%26pid%3D100675%26rk%3D2%26rkt%3D15%26mehot%3Dnone%26sd%3D384034267172%26itm%3D193861414356%26pmt%3D0%26noa%3D1%26pg%3D2380057%26brand%3DUnbranded&_trksid=p2380057.c100675.m4236&_trkparms=pageci%3Ae5aa7ee1-8cb4-11eb-99d1-56fa2c5b65c8%7Cparentrq%3A64d574d01780a4b4f30437ebffad8846%7Ciid%3A1
hi I was soldering the wires to the board and accidently riped off one of the pads, its the tck on the 2011 15 board any way to connect to something else on the board that has tck to flash the gmuc ic?
I would Download the Board Schematic to search for other points to connect TCK.
There you can click on the TCK pad and it will show you the connections.
@@marcinobdarcin7729 i ended up finding another point some guy helped me on the macromours forum, there's 2 points a really small cap microscopic point but i got it on there and flashed the mac and it worked flawlessly.
Perfect !
Hello ! Thanks for your video !
Can I use thunderbolt port after flashing ?
Thx again
Impressive stuff! Do you imagine this will work on a mid 2012 rMBP with NVIDIA running on Mojave?
Hi dosdude1 before anything you rock! I have a question since you say you are working in a brightness fix y was wondering what method are you gonna use (I use hackintosh as my main pc but its a laptop with a Nvidia 1060 ) I have said that coz in my case I don't have brightness because a problems in the correct implementation of the device... I have tried without luck patching the dsdt but only getting the hdmi/dp working the main display always is black with that patch running so idk if that may work but probably a dsdt patch in the gfx0 probably do the work
wow amazing job! i want some too for my mbp 17 2011
Do you have a list of programmers you can use? Does it have to be a lattice one? I found a couple of Amazon not sure if they will work or not.
This is what I ended up getting. Hope it gets here soon:
www.ebay.com/itm/USB-Download-Cable-Jtag-SPI-Programmer-for-LATTICE-FPGA-CPLD-HW-USBN-2A/312583428115?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649
Cool! Will HDMI work or is it permanently disabled?
Creative Visuals New Zealand did you get your question answered?
Hello Dosdude, I know you work on an update to support Backlight brightness by Demux. I wait for your software fix for this. Thank you and let us know.
Plus any idea about the exact model of the Lattice programmer and where I can get (buy) one?
any updates on the brightness issue? what about the sleep mode? any other caveats we should be familiar with? how does it behave when a software update is installed?
noticed, you are running mojave on that laptop?
any estimate to have brightness adjustments fixed in the demux patch?
I've done this repair yesterday. It went quite well and flashing succeeded. Sadly my display now shows one or two vertical lines which change position from time to time. Any idea what could be causing this?
That's just a bad LCD, replacing the display will take care of that.
@@dosdude1 whats really weird is that those lines weren't there before. The display looked totally fine. I will try to disassamble the MacBook and put it back together hoping that it's just a bad connection somewhere. I already spend too much time with this old thing. I'm a big fan of your work and I got this Macbook just to save it from a landfill.
I beg you please start a mass production of those pogo adapters and sell them to regular customers
Hi, does this method work with MacBook Pro (15-inch, Mid 2012), 2.3 GHz Intel Core i7 ? p.s. do you accept payments by visa or master card? Thanks
Hi! If you upgrade the OS. still runing without problems?
Regards
Yes, of course. This is a permanent repair.
@@dosdude1 thanks man! already buy the hardware, so soon I´ll buy the key from you but I have to practice my skill soldering.
Love your work man! Have you considered attempting something similar with the 2.5GHZ 2011 Mac mini too? It's got the same issue as the MacBooks but apple never addressed it.
Is the actual defect not simply a capacitor, as seen so often on lios Rrossmann's channel?
That's only on the 2010 15" and 17" machines, which have a completely different GPU. The garbage AMD Radeon HD 6xxx series chipsets the 2011 machines use are defective.
12:42 "Put the bottom pan back on the machine ..." Seriously, Collin, you're expecting people to fry their eggs on their laptop bottom cases? :D
Or using their frying pans as bottom cases? :D
How did you install Mojave on that machine (with a patcher presumably) before fixing the GPU? Was it completed before the GPU failed?
Using my Mojave Patcher tool: dosdude1.com/mojave
Would the Macbook be able to boot into Bootcamp, after flashing it with this firmware?
GENIUS. YOU SHOULD WORK FOR ROSSMAN GROUP
I have to say, not a bad video! It'll be very interesting if you did Non-mac's, Like Windows laptops.
Hello. Do you think that this flashing process could help me? I have a MABP15/L11 that makes the chime but black screen, i think its the dGPU that is Faulty.
Hi Enrico. It probably can help you. I had a 2011 in the shop that was also black screen. What I did to temporarily fix it was to power it on, hold down command+s to get into single user mode (won't work if you have firmware password), even though the screen was off I did that, typed in the command : nvram fa4ce28d-b62f-4c99-9cc3-6815686e30f9:gpu-power-prefs=%01%00%00%00
pressed enter, typed reboot, and the thing came back to life! I then proceeded to do the realmacmods GPU fix until I get a lattice fpga programmer from china.
It may not work for you, but luckily it did for mine!
@@sagebrushrepair Well, I have to give it a try!
I have just received the 6 pin adapter to use with the Lattice programmer. Still waiting for this one.
But, hey, thanks a lot!
@@enricosernesi2939 where did you buy this adapter?
@@s23670 on ebay.
Standard 6 pin adapter.
@@enricosernesi2939 Thanks Do you have link from Ebay?
How is the experience using a macbook pro without dedicated graphics? I only use(d) mine for watching youtube, am i still able to do that with the dedicated graphics disconnected?
You did a great job
Hey @dosdude1 any updates for the back lighting and the lightning port? Do you think you can provide me with a link of the lattice programmer where I can purchase it from?
Hey! are you still selling this adapter? I have never soldering before and I am afraid to do some damage in my board. I would like to know if it is still possible to buy one with you!