CoolBits Posted March 11, 2006 Share Posted March 11, 2006 First of all Hello everybody I have installed and fully working x86 10.4.5 native... except for graphics on nvidia 6800 and SATA... So i did some research on how does nvidia work on a G5 or G4 and found that they are FLASHING these cards to get them working in a MAC http://strangedogs.proboards40.com/index.c...ard=experiments Can someone comfirm that this is a possibility to get them working in hackintosh... Im checking these roms now on pc with NiBitor but not sure to flash... Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/11667-nvidia-on-x86/ Share on other sites More sharing options...
quantum88 Posted March 11, 2006 Share Posted March 11, 2006 interesting read.... would this render my nvidia card useless for my linux partition? Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/11667-nvidia-on-x86/#findComment-73145 Share on other sites More sharing options...
johan Posted March 11, 2006 Share Posted March 11, 2006 First of all Hello everybody I have installed and fully working x86 10.4.5 native... except for graphics on nvidia 6800 and SATA... So i did some research on how does nvidia work on a G5 or G4 and found that they are FLASHING these cards to get them working in a MAC http://strangedogs.proboards40.com/index.c...ard=experiments Can someone comfirm that this is a possibility to get them working in hackintosh... Im checking these roms now on pc with NiBitor but not sure to flash... old news and not relevant for intel macs this only works on ppc macs there are no intel nvidia drivers Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/11667-nvidia-on-x86/#findComment-73151 Share on other sites More sharing options...
CoolBits Posted March 11, 2006 Author Share Posted March 11, 2006 old news and not relevant for intel macs this only works on ppc macs there are no intel nvidia drivers Did someone try this before? Cos i never saw anything about bios flashing for mac till now... Anyway something is moving... http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=4914 btw the nvidia .kexts are there they just dont load... i dont think that they would include ppc drivers in x86 dvd even developers have no use of it... and the drivers are provided from nvidia... i think Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/11667-nvidia-on-x86/#findComment-73153 Share on other sites More sharing options...
blackentangled Posted March 11, 2006 Share Posted March 11, 2006 fyi: this was discussed before... but it doesn't really hurt if you tinker around a little and maybe find something, eh? goodluck! Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/11667-nvidia-on-x86/#findComment-73196 Share on other sites More sharing options...
CoolBits Posted March 11, 2006 Author Share Posted March 11, 2006 yeah im sure it was.. but i cant find anywhere that someone tried to flash a card with apple rom succesfuly and working on a pc... not even that its a bad flash... Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/11667-nvidia-on-x86/#findComment-73208 Share on other sites More sharing options...
phor2zero Posted March 11, 2006 Share Posted March 11, 2006 PPC Mac's used something called OpenFirmware that required a special Mac edition of Nvidia products. These cost nearly twice as much as Windows versions of the same graphics cards. Some users discovered that they could purchase a cheaper Windows version and flash the Mac version's ROM onto the card, so it would work on a PPC Mac. These "flashed" cards won't work on a Windows machine anymore, they also wouldn't work on an Intel Mac. The Intel Mac's don't use OpenFirmware. OS X86 uses standard ATI cards (although bugs are apparent, the fact that they work at all is proof) so our best expectations are that when Apple provides working Nvidia drivers with an upcoming hardware release, they will function on our Hackintoshes as well. Most of the code in OS X86 are Universal Binaries, including the nvidia.kext's -- they have PPC code and partially completed x86 code inside. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/11667-nvidia-on-x86/#findComment-73257 Share on other sites More sharing options...
macgirl Posted March 11, 2006 Share Posted March 11, 2006 Did someone try this before? Cos i never saw anything about bios flashing for mac till now... Anyway something is moving... http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=4914 btw the nvidia .kexts are there they just dont load... i dont think that they would include ppc drivers in x86 dvd even developers have no use of it... and the drivers are provided from nvidia... i think You can think whatever you want but the fact is that Nvidia Kexts are PPC only at this stage, and yes there are a lot of PPC only Kexts on the Mac OS X because it has UNIVERSAL Binaries, PPC Binaries and Intel binaries, you can use the Install DVD to boot and install on an PPC Mac. You can verify how many kexts are PPC only with this command in Terminal: kextload -e -z -a i386 a list of kexts appears then. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/11667-nvidia-on-x86/#findComment-73356 Share on other sites More sharing options...
CoolBits Posted March 11, 2006 Author Share Posted March 11, 2006 TNX for clearing this up for me Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/11667-nvidia-on-x86/#findComment-73449 Share on other sites More sharing options...
phor2zero Posted March 12, 2006 Share Posted March 12, 2006 I decided to look into this a little deeper and here's what I found: Geforce.kext (Nvidia Geforce Kernel Extension) - 444KB PPC / 356KB i386 GeforceGA.kext (Nvidia Geforce Graphics Driver) - 40KB PPC / 44KB i386 GeforceFXGLDriver.kext (Nvidia Geforce FX OpenGL Driver) - 1.5MB PPC / 1.5MB i386 GeforceVA.kext (Nvidia Geforce VA Driver) - 148KB PPC / 156KB i386 These all appear to be complete Universal Binaries. At least they have as much i386 code as they do PPC. However, the following files are almost entirely PPC with only the most basic skeleton of i386 code. NVDAResman.kext (Nvidia Resman Kernel Extension) - 2.6MB PPC / 72KB i386 NVDANV40Hal.kext (Nvidia NV40 Resman Kernel Extension) - 1.6MB PPC / 28KB i386 I'm not entirely sure, but I think Resman = Resource Manager. It includes references to IOKit and Framebuffers. Although these have a few i386 components, they are essentially PPC only. It's the missing Resman that won't load the Nvidia drivers. Trying to load Geforce.kext results in the Kernel Loader Daemon also trying to load NVDAResman.kext, which fails with a large number of undefined symbols, although NVDAResman is reported as a valid extension. NVDAResman is the top level dependency for the entire Nvidia graphics library. The Macvidia project was started (and may or may not be operational still) to add those missing function calls to the binary file. It's a nearly impossible task. If nothing comes of that project, our only other option is to wait for Apple to release a fully functional NVDAResman.kext and NVDANV40Hal.kext (or more likely an NV50 for the 7800 series). This may happen with the release of a full tower Mac. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/11667-nvidia-on-x86/#findComment-73937 Share on other sites More sharing options...
CoolBits Posted March 12, 2006 Author Share Posted March 12, 2006 Yes this is correct... problems are only with NVDAResman.kext and NVDANV40Hal.kext... Isnt it in any way possible to translate this PPC extensions throug rosetta cos thats what rosseta does, it translates PPC calls to x86 ... or not ? Just asking Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/11667-nvidia-on-x86/#findComment-73958 Share on other sites More sharing options...
rohde Posted March 12, 2006 Share Posted March 12, 2006 Oh man, it's so sad NVIDIA doesn't work. Good post phor2zero. I'd give my right arm for a working NVIDIA driver. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/11667-nvidia-on-x86/#findComment-73962 Share on other sites More sharing options...
phor2zero Posted March 12, 2006 Share Posted March 12, 2006 Yes this is correct... problems are only with NVDAResman.kext and NVDANV40Hal.kext... Isnt it in any way possible to translate this PPC extensions throug rosetta cos thats what rosseta does, it translates PPC calls to x86 ... or not ? Just asking I don't think so. First, I thought the same thing, but I don't know how to invoke rosetta to force it to translate and save a binary file. If it could be done then I doubt _np would have gone as far as he reportedly did with the Macvidia project. Also, I don't think rosetta can handle drivers or other types of programs that talk directly to the hardware. I "think" rosetta is just a translation layer between an application and the kernel. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/11667-nvidia-on-x86/#findComment-73987 Share on other sites More sharing options...
warfab Posted March 12, 2006 Share Posted March 12, 2006 Try http://macvidia.plusmediamusic.com/ Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/11667-nvidia-on-x86/#findComment-74023 Share on other sites More sharing options...
phor2zero Posted March 12, 2006 Share Posted March 12, 2006 Try http://macvidia.plusmediamusic.com/ Still no ETA on beta driver. I check every day. Supposedly np_ has reached the point that he has QuartsExtreme support for Nvidia graphics in 10.4.3, but only through DVI-d. No analog support yet, and not sure if it will work in 10.4.4/5. Even the webmaster of the site hasn't heard from him in over a month. Ignorantcow will NOT leak the pre-beta driver, so it's just a waiting game. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/11667-nvidia-on-x86/#findComment-74029 Share on other sites More sharing options...
macgirl Posted March 13, 2006 Share Posted March 13, 2006 Rosetta does not work for kexts/drivers. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/11667-nvidia-on-x86/#findComment-74338 Share on other sites More sharing options...
jregdi Posted March 13, 2006 Share Posted March 13, 2006 Some things to consider when speaking of flashing video cards for Mac/PC compatibility: 1. All NVidia and ATI gpus are the same for both Mac and PC versions of v. cards. I stress GPU here, because many Mac editions have differently keyed AGP configs, an extra slot-type power connector, etc. Many Mac editions are physically different from their PC counterparts. 2. Flashrom contents are NOT the same on similar-spec v. cards for mac or PC. In the case of AGP cards, Mac editions have 128k boot ROMS, while PC flavored ones are 32k boot ROMS. In some cases, PC-type AGP cards do also have 128k ROMS, which makes them "flashable" to "Mac edition" 3. I believe Open Firmware looked for a certain signature in the v. card's ROM. 4. This info applies to AGP cards, but some PCI cards are also flashable to Mac edition. I don't know for PCI-E cards. I don't think flashing a video card will help OS X driver compatibility, since it doesn't seem to matter to OS X whether you have a mac or pc version of a video card when they DO work in OSx86. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/11667-nvidia-on-x86/#findComment-74809 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Careless Posted March 14, 2006 Share Posted March 14, 2006 Some things to consider when speaking of flashing video cards for Mac/PC compatibility: 1. All NVidia and ATI gpus are the same for both Mac and PC versions of v. cards. I stress GPU here, because many Mac editions have differently keyed AGP configs, an extra slot-type power connector, etc. Many Mac editions are physically different from their PC counterparts. 2. Flashrom contents are NOT the same on similar-spec v. cards for mac or PC. In the case of AGP cards, Mac editions have 128k boot ROMS, while PC flavored ones are 32k boot ROMS. In some cases, PC-type AGP cards do also have 128k ROMS, which makes them "flashable" to "Mac edition" 3. I believe Open Firmware looked for a certain signature in the v. card's ROM. 4. This info applies to AGP cards, but some PCI cards are also flashable to Mac edition. I don't know for PCI-E cards. I don't think flashing a video card will help OS X driver compatibility, since it doesn't seem to matter to OS X whether you have a mac or pc version of a video card when they DO work in OSx86. yeah i thought the flashing was more of a mac specific hardware issue with the powerpc kind. now that we are using X86, i think it might be possible to just write a driver that will read the card as is. atleast thats what i think MacVidia says theyre trying to do. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/11667-nvidia-on-x86/#findComment-75013 Share on other sites More sharing options...
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