Guys, and gals; More and more shiny NetBooks are floating out onto the market, the highend are coming with Nvidia Ion or GMA4500, bu the lowend are shipping with the GMA500 GPU. This is pretty much down to the power consumption and ability to decode HDVideo.

Now, I moved from a MSI Wind U100 to an Acer Aspire 751h (Z520, 2GB, GMA500) - it has an 11.6" (1366x768) display, which I thought would be great for OS X, Now, I am no noob when it comes to hackintoshing, (I remember hacking the intel release of 10.4!) - but I had a certain faith in the community when it came to developing support to these products. But now, many months on, I find myself looking into forums and scratching my head looking for ANY movement on GMA500 development.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not angry, miffed or otherwise pissed, I'm simply commenting. There are plenty of capable machines out there that could be used to great effect, if only their graphics issues were addressed. Now, I could sit here and comment all day, but I have been doing my research - back in the day, when certain audio chipsets were unsupported, the OS X driver developers looked to linux to provide a leg up. If there was a linux river, then more likely that not, and OS X driver could be built.

Now, before you all poo poo this by pointing out that linux has no support for GMA500, I would like to direct you to some very new news from Mandriva. Their latest and greatest (which is still in RC) has support for moblin, and the GMA500 chipset. This is rather interesting when you consider that Intel have been lazy with the drivers for linux.

My thought is simple: many of us lack the skills required to hack together our own drivers or support - so I offer my hand in friendship and support to those of you willing to take the challenge. We now have a starting block, a toe on the stairs so to speak. I just hope this fantastic community can rally once more, and put together a driver for that last third of the NetBook market!

Im on the same cart. Got myself a MSI x320 for very cheap price of $389, which is suppose to be Macbook air killer, but cant run Mac os on it because of lack of drivers for GMA500. I think we should organize some kind of bounty for programmers to claim when they develop such driver for mac. And here is the link with drivers for Fedora, http://www.happyassassin.net/2009/08/10/in...compiz-support/
, might help. Im personally noob with all hackintoshing myself, and was thinking of having get my first laptop modified with osx86, but faced problem

Same here. Got a Dell Mini 10 and was planning to put OSX86 on it... only to find out that GMA500 is not supported. Instead of putting OSX86, I was planning to put Linux on it. Some guys were able to install Linux and use the GMA500. (I'm talking about Ubuntu here). Currently, I'm searching for the sources of these linux drivers... and willing to lend a hand in the development of the driver.

There just may be one - The GMA500 is based off of the PowerVR SGX 535 core from Imagination technologies, and this is the same core used in the iPhone 3GS and iPod Touch 3rd gen.
Possibly, just possibly, one can extract the drivers from the iPhone and tweak it to work on the GMA 500.
Technical info from Wikipedia:

Apple unidentified—SGX535 + VXD (Samsung manufactured), in the Apple iPhone 3GS and the Apple iPod Touch 3rd Gen (32GB/64GB)

Intel System Controller Hub US15/W/L—SGX535(Intel GMA500) + VXD370, in a heck of a lot of devices

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerVR#Series5_.28SGX.29
I'm assuming the VXD in the iPhone is the same thing as the VXD370 in the 500, which is a HD decoder.

Good work DaFD!

I've extracted the SGX535GL driver from my iPhone 3GS - it's a .bundle file (attached). Not sure what we can do with it though, as the .bundle file contains just a .plist file and a binary. I guess we'd have to decompile the binary - is that even possible?

Cheers,
Nick

Did anybody have any luck with the file I attached above?

Nick

Hi All,

I am willing to volunteer for any development for the GMA 500.

Count me in for anything! I own an Acer AO751H and got pretty much everything working except video. This particular model has 11.6" and this display looks awesome which makes it a good candidate for a Mac Netbook at an affordable price.

Subscribing to the thread!

I have in my hands same graphic on ao751h and iPhone3gs
Can't accept iP3gs is showing same movies, graphics much better and even hd.

i tried rename this file You posted here to: AppleIntelGMA500.kext or replace with AppleIntelGMA950.kext using Kext Helper b7 and Kext Utility. all strange tricks of hoping user of gma500

just replace/rename AppleIntelGMA950GLDriver inside AppleIntelGMA950GLDriver.bundle with IMGSGX535GLDriver from it's bundle place it i extensions and run kext utility...

I can HEAR it's something different. ao751h "cooler" is running almost all the time

Are you saying that the driver works properly when you do this?

Nick

No, IMGSGX535GLDriver is arm only, not i386/x86

I just did it without much of research. I'm checking .divx, YouTube, .jpg and I have new experience regarding .jpg - now I can watch picture in Preview/slideshow - before I couldn't. I'm not a geek...

and strange feeling dock pops out animation looks better...

Dear riws
How did You manage to run 10.6.3 on Acer? Is is true that gma500 has some more support on 10.6.3?

Thanks

Simple Update and nothing else, pure vanilla. I think not, there is not a sign about that in 10.6.3

Do You know some tutorial for 10.6.3 update? Thank You

With vanilla System, just install the Update.

sorry I'm just beginner. I don't know how to install/find 10.6.3
I don't know if I could get it anywhere...

Apple ADC

Thank You
I'm too small for Developer. So You wrote there is no hope for gma500 hackintosh regarding 10.6.3
Do You see any path or way about gma500 driver? I just don't know much about it, did this thing with arm driver instinctively trying to run better graphic on ao751h. I don't know much about drivers - I'm annoyed with apple politics regarding mac os and soft. I started to kill their software limitations because I wanted to edit movies in FCP on iBookg3... And find solution in need. Now I feel this ao751 could be great hardware for editing or graphics.

Thank You for any advice

here it comes .bundle i changed driver inside:

But does it get loaded? Do a ioreg -l and search for AppleIntelGMA950GLDriver

i don't know how to check it if it's get loaded...

In Terminal type ioreg -l and search for it.

Thank You
No I can't find it. So it means it doesn't get loaded. Any way to force it?

No, its compiled for ARM, your x86 CPU does not understand it natively.

do You know if someone is interested in creating gma500 driver for mac?

That will be cool! I am willing to donate to get this driver built.

Lets us know if someone is interested!

bump

i would but currently doing a different graphics driver atm if no one takes it up i might look into it

lastowl,

Thanks for the offer extension! Let us know what you need when the time permits.

The Acer 11 inch makes for a good mac netbook and I think that the video card is the only thing lacking for a complete swap to SL.

And if we could get a WIFI fix, just need icelord to hack the BIOS like he did on the hp mini 311( everything works on that netbook now). I am tempted to trade(hp 311 has Nvidia Ion graphics) but I been through alot with this ao751, and I have a feeling it will get there eventually, just need to wait.

I can only post what Hagar did post in another tread (Tread about my blunt way to tell people it dont work tho but it is relevant info for you guys also)

http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php...t&p=1419363

I can just say this: Good luck and i will bet you it will never happen unless apple deside to use the GMA500 (really small chance for that)

Hi Mushishi,

I understand that for graphics cards, it may be a bit different than other hardware like Eth cards, wireless cards, sound cards, etc. I see a lot of the latter hardware providing their own software/driver to work on OSX. However, it is true that nothing besides the supported video hardware seems to be working if not originally supported by Apple.

It is sad to hear the message of the developers effort. I am a Moderator at evolution m.net (Same username) which focus on Mitsubishi Evolution Cars and participated on many developments for certain changes to the main car ECU way far beyond the reach of Mitsubishi Support. Assemblying and Disssaemblying BIOS, flashing memory,pushing boot loaders, etc. I thought there would be similar approach here.

On another note, it may be the case that this is not possible on OSX86 to accomplish that. I just do not have the experience and exposure to Apple to say one way or the other.

Thanks a lot for pointing this out! Seems fair to me.

joedr Well problem is that osx is diffrent from linux, unix and bsd even tho it is closer to the last then the first, so if you have to do a driver here you will have to write it from buttom up...

What we have of help so far as support for non apple audio codecs, are not full drivers (Ok voodoohda is in a way), but they just inject the corrrect values in to the apple drivers (In the audio case into AppleHDA)

But everything (well 99% of everything) is just a hacked version of drivers out there or is injectors for the same drivers. but they do need the apple drivers to work.

Ohhhhh! I understand now!

It would require somebody to write a driver from zero which is a steep goal. Not everybody has the skill sets and experience required to do it just for fun or hobby.

BTW... you just cleared me the term "inject" commonly used on the Mac scene/forums. That has been an eye opener for me.

Oh well! It seems that the Netbook will have to be put on hold. BTW... the Mackbook Air at 1800 USD is out of reach for the moment. No that it is not worth it, its just the price is to high. For that money I would be able to get a supported netbook and a desktop running OSX86.

I may consider selling my netbook and buy a supported one.

hi

were you able to install mac os x on acer aspire one ao751h

alex wes

http://www.aspireoneuser.com/forum/viewtop...=14&t=19536