[How to] Intel GMA 900 done right: full QE/CI for leopard

[Klaus Rudi Peter Dietrich]

solved!

 

I have to say that I struggled to get this to work. I did this on my toshiba m55-s3293 (old, put proved to have the perfect hardware for a hackintosh)

 

Step 1: first I installed Ideneb 1.3 and selected no graphics drivers from the customize menu during the installation.

edit: you need to also install the application pacifist from the useful application list.

 

 

the install would go fine until I reboot and I am faced with the notorious light blue screen. no matter what I did (-x, -f, -v, Graphics Mode, etc...) I always end up with that blue screen.

 

Step 2: the only thing that enabled me to get to the system was to boot from the iDeneb CD again and hit f8 during the startup of the CD. Then I typed rd=disk0s2 -x

 

this command instructs the iDeneb CD to ignore booting from the CD and boot from the first hard Drive (disk0) and the Second partiton (s2) which is where I installed the osx iDeneb in step 1

 

This got me to boot the system in safe mode without the blue screen blocking the way.

 

Step 3: I used another machine to download the "Leopard Graphics Update for 10.5.2" from apple's website and then I downloaded the two kexts attached to this post. I then used a flash disk to transfer them to the machine where I installed iDeneb.

 

Step 4: install the Leopard Graphics Update. This didn't work for iDeneb because it's 10.5.5. The way to do it is to open the dmg file using the application Pacifist. you will find folder hierarchy simillar to that in the System.

 

in the package, go to System>Library>extensions and install all kexts that start with AppleIntelxxxxxxxx by dragging them to the application icon called Kext Helper b7 which is located in the iDeneb Folder in Applications.

 

when Kext Helper tells you that the install is fine, reboot the system as in Step 2

 

Step 5: once you are back in, install the two Kexts you downloaded from this post using Kext helper b7.

 

Step 6: when Kext helper tells you everything was installed fine, Cross your fingers and reboot normally without using the CD.

 

Your system should not hang at the blue screen anymore and you should have full qe/ci with hardware acceleration.

 

 

I hope this helps someone someday.

 

that did NOT WORK on my machine

[giles2005]

Worked great on my GMA900 running snow leopard 10.6.2 full support for QE CI

 

Been trying for ages to get my Nvidia 6200 256mb pcie card to work but got bored and tried the standard GMA900 first attempt with this and it worked!!

[kocoman]

Is there any way to add two screen display? ie: internal and then VGA output?

 

thanks

[kocoman]

Also has anyone got it to work with the 10.6.4 update? I tried 10.6.2 to 10.6.4 but it not work, maybe 10.6.3?

 

the AppleIntegratedFramebuffer – 1.4.20 to 1.6.16,

so I replace it back.. but I can only boot to console mode, but it has a beachball or mouse cursor only

[DrP]

Ok I am having trouble getting this to work correctly with my laptop and OSX 10.6.3. I have installed iATKOS S3 version2. I have not installed any video drivers at all. Therefore using all stock. So let that boot and it gets up to login and a grey desktop and that's it. But thats ok because I dont expect it to work yet. Note: I do have pins 6 & 12 of VGA out shorted. Then I installed the ElliottAppleIntelGMA950LegacyEnabler.kext. Reboot still just grey desktop. Ok then I install the FrameBuffer kext and then it works. I get the welcome intro movie. Then I let that finish to get the setup screens and notice an issue again that I cant resolve where the colors are completely wrong or some other display issue. Anyway I fill in the setup and get to desktop and reboot.

 

What I now see is what looks like initially the driver works then switches to a incorrect color depth. I let it boot and you get to the login stage and you see the usual blue color desktop. The screen flickers off, then on (still blue desktop), then off and on again and still blue desktop but then it turns to a greeny/aqua color desktop. Then 1sec later the desktop loads and the graphics are complete wrong! Does not look 3d at all. Looks flat and low color depth like 16 colors total. That or the color temperature is too hot? I have tried different GMA950 kexts, maybe a diff FrameBuffer, different IOGraphicsFamily.kext and ISDRVFamily or what ever it was called. When I say different I mean from 10.5.8 (iDeneb). Results are the same or not video at all.

 

I have attached some screen captures of what I see although the colors in the pics are different to what I see on screen. E.g the picture with empty trash dialog window looks dark grey with same color Shadow around whole dialog window. I dont see that dark gray. More the normal white color dialog window and none of that surrounding shadow. Also what I see for example is the usual blue menu highlight color is actually pink. Command buttons that usally highligh in the shaded blue are just flat white. Anyway take a look at the pics. If anyone has any ideas or fixes I would be forever grateful. By the way I have installed iDeneb 10.5.8 OSX on this same laptop and everything is fine using this Legacy enabler and framebuffer. Infact I got all hardware working under 10.5.8. But something about snow leopard is different in how the 915GM is used.

 

Hardware: IBM T43 Thinkpad laptop. Intel 915GM/GMS/910GML gfx card. ICH6 chipset.

 

PS. Yeah in the pics you see a lot of gray and blue. But on screen that dark gray would be white and the blue fo the desktop wallpaper would be white and other items more pink. Very strange. But as I mention on initial login I see the correct color blue login screen/desktop which then switches to funny aqua/green color. So that make me believe that initially the driver works then switches modes?

[join join]

Reporting great success in 10.4.8 (JaS, on a Lenovo 3000 C100 w/GMA 900) (but I had first applied a patch for GMA900 in order to have QE/CI with external monitor or paperclip).

Will upgrade to 10.4.11 (crossing fingers ) soon.

 

Thanks for this post, no longer stupid paperclip !

 

EDIT

In fact, it also works with 10.4.11, but in order to make it work properly you have to install B612's solutions for GMA900 (my kexts were so scrambled after the update I had to boot in safe mode; if it doesn't work you have single user mode too to make changes). To recap, once you have 10.4.8 (or 10.4.11), combo update safely with obijohn's update scripts, then install B612's files (GMA900 support + OpenGL fast) and only then install the 2 kexts of this post. After all that, you can unplug your paperclip and use it to stir a coffee !

[syamxp]

Working fine on my acer aspire 3620 with OSX 10.5.5, iatkos 10.5.7 and ideneb 10.5.8.... yum yum

 

next i wanna try with iatkos s3 v2 10.6.3..

[besweeet]

Hmm... This gave me resolution change in 10.5.8, but no QE/CI. I'm using all of the stock files.

[besweeet]

Nevermind! Got it working. It's nice to have 10.5.8 running on this old laptop perfectly:

 

I'll attempt to get Snow Leopard on here... Eventually.

[crazyJAT]

Ok I am having trouble getting this to work correctly with my laptop and OSX 10.6.3. I have installed iATKOS S3 version2. I have not installed any video drivers at all. Therefore using all stock. So let that boot and it gets up to login and a grey desktop and that's it. But thats ok because I dont expect it to work yet. Note: I do have pins 6 & 12 of VGA out shorted. Then I installed the ElliottAppleIntelGMA950LegacyEnabler.kext. Reboot still just grey desktop. Ok then I install the FrameBuffer kext and then it works. I get the welcome intro movie. Then I let that finish to get the setup screens and notice an issue again that I cant resolve where the colors are completely wrong or some other display issue. Anyway I fill in the setup and get to desktop and reboot.

 

What I now see is what looks like initially the driver works then switches to a incorrect color depth. I let it boot and you get to the login stage and you see the usual blue color desktop. The screen flickers off, then on (still blue desktop), then off and on again and still blue desktop but then it turns to a greeny/aqua color desktop. Then 1sec later the desktop loads and the graphics are complete wrong! Does not look 3d at all. Looks flat and low color depth like 16 colors total. That or the color temperature is too hot? I have tried different GMA950 kexts, maybe a diff FrameBuffer, different IOGraphicsFamily.kext and ISDRVFamily or what ever it was called. When I say different I mean from 10.5.8 (iDeneb). Results are the same or not video at all.

 

I have attached some screen captures of what I see although the colors in the pics are different to what I see on screen. E.g the picture with empty trash dialog window looks dark grey with same color Shadow around whole dialog window. I dont see that dark gray. More the normal white color dialog window and none of that surrounding shadow. Also what I see for example is the usual blue menu highlight color is actually pink. Command buttons that usally highligh in the shaded blue are just flat white. Anyway take a look at the pics. If anyone has any ideas or fixes I would be forever grateful. By the way I have installed iDeneb 10.5.8 OSX on this same laptop and everything is fine using this Legacy enabler and framebuffer. Infact I got all hardware working under 10.5.8. But something about snow leopard is different in how the 915GM is used.

 

Hardware: IBM T43 Thinkpad laptop. Intel 915GM/GMS/910GML gfx card. ICH6 chipset.

 

PS. Yeah in the pics you see a lot of gray and blue. But on screen that dark gray would be white and the blue fo the desktop wallpaper would be white and other items more pink. Very strange. But as I mention on initial login I see the correct color blue login screen/desktop which then switches to funny aqua/green color. So that make me believe that initially the driver works then switches modes?

 

 

I don't think that your issue has to do with the video driver at all. If I'm right, you have a CPU that doesn't have the SSE3 instruction set. If that is the case, the SSE3 emulator for SSE2 CPUs is broken in all versions of the 10.x.0 kernel (meaning all kernels available for Snow Leopard).

 

If you can, try upgrading the CPU. If not, Leopard is the only solution.

[crazyJAT]

I have a Dell Dimension 4700 with a GMA900. I have ElliottAppleIntelGMA950LegacyEnabler.kext and the AppleIntelIntegratedFramebuffer.kext from the same thread.

 

I have full QE/CI and Resolution change in Snow Leopard 10.6.6, however in many applications, including Word 2008 and DSDTSE I have terrible cursor artifacts. As I move my cursor over certain windows, the cursor image will stay in certain places. Does anyone know a solution to this?

[snakeman]

I have a Dell Dimension 4700 with a GMA900. I have ElliottAppleIntelGMA950LegacyEnabler.kext and the AppleIntelIntegratedFramebuffer.kext from the same thread.

 

I have full QE/CI and Resolution change in Snow Leopard 10.6.6, however in many applications, including Word 2008 and DSDTSE I have terrible cursor artifacts. As I move my cursor over certain windows, the cursor image will stay in certain places. Does anyone know a solution to this?

 

 

Did you ever get the guide done? For The Dell you mention above. I would love to do a retail install on mine. Never found a compatible boot disk! Working on a DSDT file now. I also notice you were working on the artifact problem. (Back to topic) Did that get resolved.

 

 

 

snakeman

[Dai__]

Hi

 

Just installed Iatkos v7 (10.5.7) on a Dell lattitude d610 and struggling to get the gma900 acceleration to work tried the 2 attachments here but ends up in graphics corruption and a boot into safemode to remove them.

 

When I installed Iatkos chose following options

 

Kernel voodoo 9.7

vga intel gma 950 laptop

vga intel gma 950 rare

system - sata/ide - intel sata/ide

system - usb

network - wireless - broadcom bcm43xx

voodoo ps2 driver with trackpad plug in

 

I also used the iwi2200 driver to get wifi working, just this video and audio to get sorted :-)

 

Have previously got a hackingtosh running 10.5.8 running on a dell desktop which also had some intel GMA card but just can't get this one to play ball.

[kch0pa]

Hi

 

Just installed Iatkos v7 (10.5.7) on a Dell lattitude d610 and struggling to get the gma900 acceleration to work tried the 2 attachments here but ends up in graphics corruption and a boot into safemode to remove them.

 

When I installed Iatkos chose following options

 

Kernel voodoo 9.7

vga intel gma 950 laptop

vga intel gma 950 rare

system - sata/ide - intel sata/ide

system - usb

network - wireless - broadcom bcm43xx

voodoo ps2 driver with trackpad plug in

 

I also used the iwi2200 driver to get wifi working, just this video and audio to get sorted :-)

 

Have previously got a hackingtosh running 10.5.8 running on a dell desktop which also had some intel GMA card but just can't get this one to play ball.

 

The reason it doesn't work is because you selected patched gma 950 kexts on your installation. Reinstall, and don't selected anything on the video/graphics tab, then add the kexts provided in the thread and it should work.

Cheers

[bornagainpenguin]

Thanks for this! Reporting great success here with my Dell GX280's onboard graphics, using iPC 10.5.6....

 

--bornagainpenguin

[jazzyguy]

Any news of this working in snow leopard? It worked in 10.6.3, but didn't in 10.6.8, after I replaced the appleintelintegratedfb and elliot was still there. I saw where some people with gma 950 were having problems so I also replaced the gma950 kext when I saw it wasn't working with stock.

 

What should I do?

[slamsteel]

Does not work on my i915.

Using iAtkos v4.1. I did not install any graphic drivers from the installation.

This the input of system profiler.

Intel GMA 950:

 

Chipset Model: GMA 950

Type: Display

Bus: Built-In

VRAM (Total): 64 MB of shared system memory

Vendor: Intel (0x8086)

Device ID: 0x2592

Revision ID: 0x0003

Displays:

Display:

Resolution: 1280 x 800

Depth: 32-bit Color

Built-In: Yes

Core Image: Software

Main Display: Yes

Mirror: Off

Online: Yes

Quartz Extreme: Not Supported

QuartzGL: Supported

Display Connector:

Status: No display connected

 

How do i fix that?