Neonkoala Posted July 16, 2006 Share Posted July 16, 2006 After reading this thread: http://forum.osx86project.org/index.php?showtopic=21804 it appears that it may be possible to solve the laptop VGA dongle problem with a simple patch/driver for laptop LCDs. According to the thread the problem with OS X is that it doesn't find any LCD monitor when it boots up, this means it has to have an external monitor (or faked through dongle) to continue the boot process. It may therefore be possible to make it so OS X detects the internal monitor, eliminating the need to a dongle. Possibly a detection patch ahs already been written. We now need to bring any information we have together in order to try and overcome the need for a dongle. Please post any relevant info you have and we will see what we can determine. So far: 1. OS X detects an external monitor on boot up with (possibly?) generic drivers 2. OS X refuses to boot if it detects no monitor 3. OS X *may* not be initially detecting the internal LCD during boot up and stalls accordingly Perhaps OS X does not detect the internal monitor because notebooks do not use standard DVI and VGA connectors, using internal circuits instead? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Neonkoala Posted July 18, 2006 Author Share Posted July 18, 2006 No one have any information at all? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
anarchy99 Posted July 21, 2006 Share Posted July 21, 2006 my lcd doesnt work and an external monitor is needed anyone have any info on this? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
asstastic Posted July 21, 2006 Share Posted July 21, 2006 @ anarchy, you need a video card dongle to get the laptop display detected. what this does is trick the os in to thinking you have an external monitor installed. do a search for the dell inspiron 6000 on the wiki and you should find a guide. if you can't find it, just make 2 jumpers out of a small paperclip and short pin 1 with 6 and pin 2 with 12 on the vga adapter. you count them from left to right, top to bottom. @koala, My laptop boots fine in vesa 3.0 mode with a mobile radeon x1600 but gives several "Display Family Matching Error"s at boot. The ATI drivers load with full acceleration but without resolution changing or widescreen. Patching ATINDRV with Boris' method leads to the display shutting off as soon as the driver is loaded. Booting with a dongle installed starts off with a blank screen untill the ATI driver is loaded unless ATINDRV has been patched in which case it never turns on. finally, manually adding resolution information with reschangex leads to loginwindow crashes leaving just a blue screen and a mouse. hope the info helps. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Neonkoala Posted July 21, 2006 Author Share Posted July 21, 2006 Thanks asstastic, some of these are probably due to cobbled together drivers etc, but is still useful, it appears that Display Family Matching Error could be what we're after, I will investigate the -v diagnostic messages I can get and investigate the other problems. Thanks for your contribution . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SonyVIAO Posted July 21, 2006 Share Posted July 21, 2006 My first post form within OSX. I couldn't get the JaS HOTISO to work right so I had packagefixers associate perform the install on my Sony VIAO and it doesn't require an external monitor or jumper pins anymore. Watching the install process I could tell his Installer wasn't the JaS HOTISO and the install gave me 10.4.7. He had options in it such as "OSX86 Hacks Group", "OS Updates", "Additional Video Support" and "Additional IO Support". In the "Additional Video Support" was an option for "Sony VIAO LapTop" among others. In the "Additional IO Support" selected options were "10.4.3 USB", "10.4.3 PCI", "10.4.1 Startup Disk" and "Sony VIAO Memory Card". I tried to get a copy but he wasn't very enthusiastic about sharing it so I'd like to get the ISO or the DVD for myself but I don't know what to be looking for since all the torrents I've found are for 10.4.4 or 10.4.6. Anyone here have it? I'll pay to have it mailed and even through in a couple extra for the time used to make the copy and cover the media. SonyVIAO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Neonkoala Posted July 21, 2006 Author Share Posted July 21, 2006 This sounds like it could be the solution to our problem - can anyone shed any light on this "associate" or the package fix he's produced? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
packagefixer Posted July 22, 2006 Share Posted July 22, 2006 This sounds like it could be the solution to our problem - can anyone shed any light on this "associate" or the package fix he's produced? Unfortunately I wasn't permitted a copy of this ISO either but was also lucky enough to have it installed, I still can't find a 10.4.7 update for AMD and the intel one causes it to crash on boot-up leaving me with a broken system. I can confirm the "OSX86 Hacks Group" entry in the Installer and the Sony VAIO Laptop video selection but to avoid causing any discomfort of working with "someone watching over your shoulder" scenario I pretty much kept myself busy during the process. I sent an e-mail asking about the torrent and I've been told that someone is supposed to be doing this but I wasn't able to confirm that the torrent exists at this time since I don't know what it's called. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Neonkoala Posted July 22, 2006 Author Share Posted July 22, 2006 That's unfortunate, but thanks anyway packagefixer. I'll scout about the various torrent sites in case theres a low profile one about. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
asstastic Posted July 23, 2006 Share Posted July 23, 2006 i wonder why these patches haven't been made public yet, unless these guys happen to work for apple and don't want to be associated with the hackintosh community i can't see why they would want to keep these fixes under wraps. even if they didn't want the exposure and people bugging them to fix their systems they could drop the stuff anonymously. and yeah, it seems the root of our problems is this display matching problem. the drivers read the display info from the bios or in the case of the macbooks, from efi. i can only speculate what this means or where to go from here. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Neonkoala Posted July 24, 2006 Author Share Posted July 24, 2006 We need to investigate the Graphics driver kext. I'm gonna work with the GMA900 as thats my driver but the monitor detection should apply in a similar fashion to all drivers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Neonkoala Posted July 25, 2006 Author Share Posted July 25, 2006 After reading some of Intel's whitepapers it would appear that it is probably that the internal LCD codec is interfaced with the 915GL chip through SDVO rather than VGA or even DVI. Therefore I think that for some reason OS X can't detect SDVO immediately at boot and therefore assumes there is no monitor and instead needs the more common DVI or VGA interace. Macbook screens are detected but that is most likely from the EFI driver but it could also be that their LCDs use DVI interface. It may be that we need some EFI emulation - I now need any information on the video efi modle if anyone knows anything. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Neonkoala Posted July 28, 2006 Author Share Posted July 28, 2006 I am currently stuck until someone can provide me with some decompiled 915gm / GMA900 kexts etc. Please PM me if you can help. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
packagefixer Posted July 30, 2006 Share Posted July 30, 2006 Well, I've been trying to get some collaborative work happening and find that poeple have an excuse for one reason or another to provide anything that I've been searching for in an effort to provide a solution. Due to the lack of cooperation, my intentions have now shifted direction and I will be putting together an updated installer DVD which will include options for various video, audio and network solutions. I wont be offering the LCD fix as a standalone package and it will only be offered on the updated installer DVD which will be released when I have sufficient fixes for various built-in hardware. If you have had to edit any of the kext files to get any features working for any built-in hardware please send me a PM so I can arrange to obtain the kexts and information to be included in the new installer DVD. Fixes for motherboards of specific interest with built-in hardware are Intel D915G, Intel D945G, Asus D945 (because I can test and verify on these boards). If you have a mobo not list, I'll accept the fixes for built-in hardware only. If you have such a fix, please send me a PM. For add-on (PCI/USB) devices, I'll solicit and accept these fixes when I have collected sufficient built-in hardware fixes. When the Installer DVD has been completed I'll pass it along with public notification so that it can be seeded and you can obtain it (I can't do torrent myself). The amount of time it takes to go to release will depend on the cooperation of others. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Neonkoala Posted July 30, 2006 Author Share Posted July 30, 2006 That sounds like a reasonable option, unfortunate I'll have to download yet another 4gigs to get that package but let me know about the torrent when its complete, thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GmanBen Posted July 30, 2006 Share Posted July 30, 2006 Sounds great, I'll be waiting for the updated installer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Neonkoala Posted July 30, 2006 Author Share Posted July 30, 2006 It would be best if you can get me the LCD package separately before you release this installer as I have my doubts as to it working on anything other than the intended Vaio without modifying kexts for other video cards (namely the GMA900). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
packagefixer Posted July 30, 2006 Share Posted July 30, 2006 I have the original Dell laptop package and the Sony package and the main kext's binaries are identical byte for byte, only the ID changes for the Sony in the Info.plist. I've tested the package using the JaS 10.4.6 installer to ensure that it works and success has been 100% on both the Dell and the Sony so I have put the package in my "to add" directory while I collect other video, sound and network drivers so I can generate an updated installer DVD. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Neonkoala Posted July 30, 2006 Author Share Posted July 30, 2006 Its has now become apparent, thanks to packagefixer, that a software fix for the VGA dongle problem is available and will mean that I won't have to work on fixing this myself. I look forward to receiving this package. It's strange that it hasn't become publicly available before. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SonyVIAO Posted August 2, 2006 Share Posted August 2, 2006 Devin, I spoke to our friend tonight and I hate to be the bearer of bad news but he says you don't have the LCD issue resolved and that your success is misleading since you did your test installs on your's and Sandy's laptop. From what I understand, if you run partition magic you will see a small Unknown (116k) locked partition at the end of the drive, this was added prior to installation and the only reason your re-installs worked is because this partition and it's data exist. If you attempt the install on a machine where this partition/data doesn't exists or you erase this partition it wont work anymore. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
asstastic Posted August 3, 2006 Share Posted August 3, 2006 how very cryptic. a locked drive partition. a small one at that. besides a physical space being used as virtual or device memory i can't imagine what it would do. seems too small to be an EFI implementation to grab the LCD info. can you do a dmesg to see if anything comes up durring boot that might say what the partition is used for? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
packagefixer Posted August 3, 2006 Share Posted August 3, 2006 Well, after reading the post I decided to wipe the entire drive on one of my Sony's and now it requires the dongle to work. I've got some new help from BuildSmart, a good programmer, he should be joining in the next couple of days (he says). I tried to use Ghost to backup the partition but it fails with an unrecognized partition type 312h. He tried to mount the partition and was unable to find a way to mount it for examination so he took a different approach. He was able to use a disk editor to scan the partition for content and this is what he has been able to determine so far. 1) the new sony/dell lcd driver is a modified GMA900 driver which appears to be generated from source and not by editing/hex-editing the original GMA900 binary/plists files and it includes drivers to mount this unknown partition 2) the new GMA900 driver is 11.7mb in size which concludes that it wasn't manually edited unless someone spent some considerable time which is highly unlikely due to the structure and size of the code. 3) the unknown partition has a sector size of 512bytes (not including the sector header information which appears to be something non-standard) 4) the new GMA900 driver mounts the unknown partition, executes a binary which resides on it and unmounts it 5) the binary while loaded remaps the video driver temporarily during the boot process into believing the LCD is connected on the VGA port. 6) when the login window is executed it re-initializes the video driver using the default or assigned screen resolution which restores the original video driver and removes the program that was loaded from the unknown partition. 7) it was coded in this manner as an easy solution because it is simple in design but makes it impossible to duplicate without the source code or the application that was specifically designed to create and install this partition and it's binary. 8) the person who wrote this code is without a doubt an Apple employee who is paranoid about getting caught. 9) if enough information and source is obtainable, he believes he may be able to provide a solution in a single driver without external dependancies Upon further conversations with the person who programmed this, it seems that besides myself and a handfull of people who have it installed (but do not have the DVD), only one person has a copy of the DVD and he is also an Apple employee who doesn't want to be associated with this movement. BuildSmart believe's he can obtain the source for the 10.4.7 mach_kernel and if he could find out what changes are made to get the 10.4.4 kernel working for Intel and AMD processors he can modify the kernel source to work with both thus generating a single kernel that would work for everyone. He also believes that if people like JaS, Myzar and SemaJaZa would get together with him, they could as a group provide a much cleaner installation process which has significantly less installation issues. We also discussed the multiple 10.4.7 updates and he says that only a handful of files in the JaS and MyZar 10.4.7 updates are actually modified or swappedso he believes that these can be combined in a single package leaving a single checkbox for the CPU type making installation easier for the end user to obtain a working solution while reduing the size of installed files. He states the concept of the replace.sh script to do the update while works, is a poor implementation and is not a process that should be left to the end user. After seeing some samples of BuildSmart's work, I am convinced he can be very beneficial to this project but as he states, it will only be really successful if collaboration occurs. Basically as I see it, it's up to the people I've listed (and Maxxuss if he's around and reading) to take this project to the next level otherwise there are going to be too many variation of the installer DVD floating around that don't work for everyone, are not as easy to obtain and have too many unresolved installation issues. I have already started remapping the installer DVD to be more efficient and versatile and have added some additional installation applications and his opinion is that I am moving in the right direction. I have asked people for their modified drivers so I can add them to the installer DVD but have not recieved any responses which leads me to believe that those doing the installation are only interested in getting it running on their machine and not interested in helping the cause. This leads me to my final conclusion, if some kind of collaboration and assistance doesn't start to happen soon, then I'm going to be forced into giving up helping the cause and only worry about supporting my own machines and work with BuildSmart to resolve my Sony/Dell LCD issues and the sad part will be that this stuff wont get shared with anyone. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
newbmac Posted August 6, 2006 Share Posted August 6, 2006 On my Thinkpad x41 I use this trick I read about in the Wiki. I press FN-F7 key combination the moment the grey screen turns blue. The screen then flickers and boot continues! No need for any dongle, nada! Now if I could get ethernet or wireless going so i had something to do with this OS Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jacob019 Posted August 9, 2006 Share Posted August 9, 2006 I bought an Acer Travelmate 2420. It didn't work out so well. Everything works ok but the video is an issue. I tried the wire shorting trick, but with the trick the external monitor shows up as 800x600 and mirroring is broken. It works ok with an external monitor. I'm going to sell it and try another and report back. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rainman2006 Posted August 11, 2006 Share Posted August 11, 2006 don't know if this helps but on a dell 1300 running 10.4.6 QE/CI doesn't work and the dongle/CRT-LCD switch is required for startup. However, i found that 10.4.5 has QE/CI working. why can't the drivers from a previous version work with a later version? i tried copying them over but it messes up the screen completely! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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