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Total Noob needs expert help


ulic3190
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This is a request to the experts in the field to please give me some advice.

 

The Goal: To run a geforce 570gfx on my true/real mac pro.

 

Progress so far: I have installed the new Lion OS, updated kexts for the cards pid and opengl math

 

Problem: Total noob to this area, complete interest resides in operating this card in the machine and have no experience messing with the boot sequence of a mac.

 

I have ready numerous posts in many different forums and it seems to boot this card and to "Inject" it I must install Chameleon and enable graphic acceleration. However many posts say never to install chameleon on a true mac system as this will ruin the boot sequence.

 

Hence my dilemma please can someone shine some light on this for me and point me in the right direction, it would honestly be greatly appreciated!

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DO NOT INSTALL CHAMELEON ON THE REAL MAC. Why? Chameleon is intended to be used on PC ONLY. Macs have EFI instead of BIOS. PC has BIOS/UEFI instead of EFI. Chameleon is designed to emulate the missing EFI environment (plus many other features) on a PC to enable OS X boot and work. You don't need to emulate EFI on a real Mac, cos' it's already there. On a Hackintosh Chameleon can enable VGA card (like it is native Mac card). It has a build-in module for this. Hence recommendations to use Chameleon to enable graphics with none-Mac card. BUT YOU CAN'T use Chameleon on Mac. There are other solution(s) for your problem.

 

To use the PC card on a Mac, the card has to have EFI enabled ROM (all Mac versions of PC cards has that, pure PC cards don't have EFI part, hence the difference between the Mac card and PC card).

 

However the EFI part can be "injected" on-fly thus making it look like EFI enabled to Mac OS. Therefore such card can be made to work in Mac OS (injector, for the most part, provides all needed date for the Mac OS to recognize the card and enable it like natively supported).

 

Usually this injector is used for this purpose (don't know if Lion is supported). I don't know all the steps needed to make your card work (google is your friend), but in general you need to install the above injector (provided that your card is supported by this injector) and the card should work. AFAIK you need a helper card (a Mac version of any card must be used side by side with the other card, as there is no output signal is present from none-Mac card till OS X is loaded completely) for this solution to work.

 

If there would be the Mac version of the same card present (is there?), then you could cross-flash the ROM file from Mac card to PC card and make it work natively.

 

5cnt from none-expert

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Thank you so much for you post and advice, I can understand a lot more from your explanation.

 

I have been googling all day and visited lots of sites and trawled through posts and posts but the problem is that people just say what they did but never HOW they did it.

 

I have seen posts that cut short and never finish, or posts with questions that never get answered but as yet I have not seen an explanation of what to do anywhere.

 

On this board and others rominator has said he has done exactly what I am looking for but I cant find the info I need so that I can follow his steps.

 

Please if anyone knows the process for running the injector with a helper card can they enlighten me.

 

Thanks again for your help 3.14r2

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I guess you should check these two links:

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=955949

http://forum.netkas.org/index.php/topic,631.0.html

 

Read thoroughly. Probably it will be help you to get the job done. PM if you have farther questions.

 

Thank you for coming to the rescue again, I was looking for 5 series cards and not for earlier models I thought the old info would be out of date, but I think I have the idea now just have to take the plunge and install the card.

 

Life is not fair sometimes you know...

 

I open the box of my shiny new 570gtx and there are only 4pin molex to 6 pin power connectors.

So I had to order 6 pin to 6pin pcie power cables. So I can do nothing now till they arrive.

 

This also got me thinking of something else that I have read while reading the posts and searching the forums, if I have to install a "helper" card into slot 3 (the 8800GT in my case) do I have to supply power to that as well?

 

The motherboard only has 2 6-pin power points and the 570 needs both so where will the helper card get power from?

 

Also according to the mac pro user guide the max should be 300w for all pcie cards together, I know that with a full load the 570 can hit 330w on its own... with the 8800GT as well it might go to high.

 

Anyone here faced this problem?

 

If so please let me know.

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You want to believe that this is diffcult and are making it so.

 

You need to get 2 of the REAL Mac power cables, if you are running an 8800GT you already have 1 (S-Video selling them for $7 on sale right now)

 

If you are using a 3,1 or newer Mac Pro it is an EFI-64 machine and you would be better to use a GT120 for helper card

 

If it is 2,1 or 1,1 Mac Pro it is EFI32 and you should use a 7300GT as helper card

 

Install the Lion ATY_Init and edit the 100 kext, good to go

 

once you have this up and running, you will be amazed that you ever thought it difficult

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You want to believe that this is diffcult and are making it so.

 

You need to get 2 of the REAL Mac power cables, if you are running an 8800GT you already have 1 (S-Video selling them for $7 on sale right now)

 

If you are using a 3,1 or newer Mac Pro it is an EFI-64 machine and you would be better to use a GT120 for helper card

 

If it is 2,1 or 1,1 Mac Pro it is EFI32 and you should use a 7300GT as helper card

 

Install the Lion ATY_Init and edit the 100 kext, good to go

 

once you have this up and running, you will be amazed that you ever thought it difficult

 

Ok that is really good news!

 

I have ordered a gt120 and the power cables and will post back when I get the card in the machine.

 

Thanks to all for help but would like to point out its not hard to think instaling an unsupported card may be hard when you spend some time looking through the posts on these forums especially for the uninitiated :)

 

But very very glad to hear its truly as easy as that!!

 

P.S.

I love the retro batman pic, did the fan you added to the car make it even faster :D

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Ok my g120 came today.

 

I installed the 64bit ATY_Init.kext for lion posted on feb 2011.

 

I put the pid of the 570 into the proper kext.

 

I checked both were in place correctly.

 

Then I switched of the machine removed the 8800GT,

Installed the g120 in slot 3.

Installed the 570 in slot 1 attached the power cables.

 

Made sure all cards sitting well.

 

Plugged in but nothing but a blank screen, though I could hear the OS boot through the sound.

I then tried to boot into windows by blindly holding the boot key and selecting the windows drive to load then hit enter.

 

Again I could hear the windows OS load completely.

 

Powered off machine checked power cables everything was good.

Removed the g120 and 570 and reinstalled the 8800GT and this time I used the new power cable that I had gotten instead of the original to test the power cable and everything worked fine.

 

Then I installed the g120 solo to test that card and it too works fine.

 

This means that my 570 is not kicking off at all not in windows or the mac.

 

Please I need help this is killing me as I have been waiting for ages to get this done and nothing is working.

 

Please help me out :(

 

Edit:-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

More information just in case this is relevant as I want to give the best picture possible to the reader of this post.

 

This is the 64 bit ATY_Init.kext I installed... 64 bit

After I made this post I went back and checked and noticed the folowing "32/64-bit aty_init, works for lion, seems to work for snow too, no atombios routines, so only single card systems supported."

 

So I thought maybe that is the reason it was not working as I was using two cards so I removed that and installed this ATY_Init.kext ...New ATY_Init as this was directly under the post where Rominator got the 570GTX working.

 

Still make no difference.

 

Also I opened the case while the machine was on just to verify that the card was receiving power and yes the 570 fan was operating fine.

 

Also another piece of information that may be relevant I am using [url="http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/279450-why-insanelymac-does-not-support-tonymacx86/"]#####[/url] to install the kexts, I just placed them on the desktop and ran the program, then browsed to the system/library/extensions folder and saw that the files had been dated as just edited so I think everything there is fine but mentioned it in case I may have missed something.

 

Please someone whats wrong is the card doa?

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Can you look in System Profiler and see what it says about 570?

 

Are you certain that you edited the kext properly?

 

I copied the two kext files into another directory and opened them.

I also checked and they both have read/write permissions for the system entry.

 

This is from the NVDAGF100HAL.kext

 

<key>IOKitPersonalities</key>
<dict>
	<key>NVidiaRM</key>
	<dict>
		<key>CFBundleIdentifier</key>
		<string>com.apple.nvidia.nvGF100hal</string>
		<key>IOClass</key>
		<string>NVDAGF100HAL</string>
		<key>IOMatchCategory</key>
		<string>IOService</string>
		<key>IOPCIPrimaryMatch</key>
		<string>
			0x06c010de&0xffe0ffff
			0x0dc010de&0xffc0ffff
			0x0e2010de&0xffe0ffff
			0x0ee010de&0xffe0ffff
			0x0f0010de&0xffc0ffff
			0x104010de&0xffc0ffff
			0x108110de&0xffc0ffff
		</string>
		<key>IOProbeScore</key>
		<integer>60000</integer>
		<key>IOProviderClass</key>
		<string>IOPCIDevice</string>[quote][/quote]
	</dict>
</dict>

 

This is the only nvidia entry I could find in the ATY_Init.kext file

<key>NVIDIA</key>
		<dict>
			<key>@0,compatible</key>
			<string>NVDA,NVMac</string>
			<key>@0,device_type</key>
			<string>display</string>
			<key>@0,fboffset</key>
			<integer>131072</integer>
			<key>@0,name</key>
			<string>NVDA,Display-A</string>
			<key>@1,compatible</key>
			<string>NVDA,NVMac</string>
			<key>@1,device_type</key>
			<string>display</string>
			<key>@1,name</key>
			<string>NVDA,Display-B</string>
			<key>@2,compatible</key>
			<string>NVDA,sensor-parent</string>
			<key>@2,device_type</key>
			<string>NVDA,gpu-diode</string>
			<key>@2,hwctrl-params-version</key>
			<data>AAAAAg==</data>
			<key>@2,hwsensor-params-version</key>
			<data>AAAAAg==</data>
			<key>@2,name</key>
			<string>sensor-parent</string>
			<key>@2,reg</key>
			<data>AAAAAg==</data>
			<key>VRAM,totalsize</key>
			<data>AAAAIA==</data>
			<key>device_type</key>
			<string>NVDA,GeForce</string>
			<key>name</key>
			<string>NVDA,Parent</string>
			<key>rom-revision</key>
			<string>netkas.org</string>
			<key>AAPL,slot-name</key>
			<data>U2xvdC0x</data>
		</dict>

 

As for looking in the system profiler how can I do that if I have no display signal?

 

Is there another way to check the card?

 

I will ofc try anything that you can suggest.

 

One question though when I booted my machine and held down the key to select the windows 7 seperate HDD and loaded that OS should the 570 have worked in that enviorment regardless of the kexts etc...

 

Or is it that the g120 stopped it somehow or that just by going through the boot menu screen of the mac that the card was never initalised?

 

In any case rominator please whatever you can suggest I will do no matter what it is.

 

Thanks for your quick reply.

 

Edit:----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

I also never installed any additional drivers as this was never mentioned as it was my understanding that lion shipped with the capability to use the 570gtx ... but do I need to install any?

 

I also have a GeforceGLDriver.bundle that I have not installed because I did not want to put anything extra in that was not mentioned by rominator.

 

So I just edited the kext installed ATY_Init and bought the g120.

 

Also the make of the card is the following in case that makes a difference : EVGA GeForce GTX 570 797MHz 1280MB PCI-E HDMI SuperClocked

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Ok Update...

 

I tried the g120 in slot 1 and the 570 in slot 2.

 

The result was that I got to the boot screen, but after a few seconds the system crashed.

 

So I powered the machine down and then turned it back on but this time booted into windows.

 

Windows loaded fine, I installed the drivers from the evga setup disk and restarted the machine with the video cable still plugged into the 570. The result was that the whole boot was black and only when the windows 7 blue splash screen appeared did the display fire on.

 

However the card is working fine and I am just going to start some 3d tests.

 

This is still not an agreeable situation though as everytime I want to run my Mac I would have to open the machine and remove the 570.

 

Edit:-----------------------------------

Just ran crysis 2 and Witcher 2 ultra settings on each and great performance from the card, so being in slot 2 does not hamper it at all. Temp hit 75% running witcher 2 but thats the highest its been seems solid atm.

 

Please if anyone has any ideas that can help let me know.

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Hey, I too have been doing lots of reading (mostly in topics with netkas, Rominator, and Cindori). I just bought a Galaxy GTX 470 because compatibility seemed good from other testimonies. I have a similar setup, but with the GTX 470 in Slot 1 and GT 120 in Slot 3. If you only get a black screen with the GTX, your GT 120 should work regardless so that you can switch back to the GT 120 live and swap out kexts without having to remove cards.

 

There's an even newer version of ATY_Init from July 22nd, but perhaps nothing really changed for Nvidia. Visiting netkas' site is somewhat addictive, looking for the latest update.

http://netkas.org/

 

I installed it with Kext Helper, which repaired the permissions and rebooted OS X Lion. (Had to force-quit Kext Helper, though.) Both DVI ports work.

http://cheetha.net/

 

To get basic video output on the GTX 470, I did not modify any kexts, just installed ATY_Init. I guess GTX 570 still requires a little modding of Nvidia properties?

 

Finally, to improve OpenGL performance, I've been tinkering with AppleGraphicsPowerManagement.kext. I want to see if I get better performance by simply deleting it or changing one of the fields.

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tibbar, great to hear you got 470 going.

 

a little understood fact...if you keep a partion with 10.6.8 with the Nvidia Quadro drivers, all you need is ATY_Init. There is no need for helper card. You don't get boot screen, but you can test how many Nvidia cards take to OSX with no edits to kexts.

 

ulic....you have added the device id to the 100HAL kext

 

I'm going to recreate

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ulic....you have added the device id to the 100HAL kext

 

I'm going to recreate

 

Thanks Rominator,

 

Can you also confirm that I did everthing correctly?

 

I mean that the 100HAL is the right string AFAIK, and that I used the correct ATY_Init?

 

Just running windows 7 atm as the current graphics setup means I cant boot the mac.

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Thanks Rominator,

 

Can you also confirm that I did everthing correctly?

 

I mean that the 100HAL is the right string AFAIK, and that I used the correct ATY_Init?

 

Just running windows 7 atm as the current graphics setup means I cant boot the mac.

 

 

Here is how I modded 100Hal

 

 

<key>IOMatchCategory</key>

<string>IOService</string>

<key>IOPCIPrimaryMatch</key>

<string>

0x06c010de&0xffe0ffff

0x0dc010de&0xffc0ffff

0x0e2010de&0xffe0ffff

0x0ee010de&0xffe0ffff

0x0f0010de&0xffc0ffff

0x108010de&0xffc0ffff

0x120010de&0xffc0ffff

</string>

<key>IOProbeScore</key>

<integer>60000</integer>

<key>IOProviderClass</key>

<string>IOPCIDevice</string>

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Ok Rominator,

 

I am waiting for a HDD to arrive then I will open up the case and try it again.

 

I did notice something though in the hal kext edit you have posted above, in that the pid is for the 580 card not the 570.

Is that the one that worked with the 570 on your machine?

 

If that is the case it would explain why my card never initialised as I have entered 1081 the pid for the 570.

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HDD drive did not come yet but I could not wait to see if those changes you made to the 100HAL kext made any difference and the answer is no ;)

 

I opened up the machine pulled the 570 out and booted into lion, edited the kext with your changes, shutdown the machine, put the GT120 in slot 3 and the 570 in slot 1.

 

Again the same problem, mac boots fine but no display information is being sent to either card.

 

I tried 120 in slot 4 and 570 in slot 1

I tried 120 in slot 4 and 570 in slot 2

I tried 120 in slot 1 and 570 in slot 2

 

For each of the above the 120 picked up the display and began to load lion but then the system crashed before lion could load.

 

The only difference is the 120 in slot 3 and the 570 in slot 1 which gives me no display signal at all to either card but both win 7 and lion os load fine.

 

Lion will load with the 120 in all four slots provided its the only card in the machine.

 

So for now I have returned to having the 120 in slot 1 and the 570 in slot 2 and running windows 7.

 

As I can not get lion to load in any card configuration that involves the 570 I can get no mac system information on it and can tell nothing from windows other than the card works perfectly.

 

Has anyone any idea why this is happening, obviously the slot 3 helper and slot 1 main card is the right way to go as the OS for both platforms loads but why is there no display signal from either card in either OS.

 

Again any help is GREATLY appreciated guys.

 

Am down to fingernails from pulling out the hair :)

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This absolutely SHOULD work.

 

The only thing I realized just now is that I am using flashed GT120 cards with Dual DVI, not the OEM real ones with DP. WHo knows, maybe there is some weirdness with the real GT120, but I doubt it.

 

I will toss the 570 in with a OEM GT120 later today and report back.

 

Meanwhile, you need to step back and think about this.

 

Is it possible that you buggered up the OpenCl fix? Killing the GLDriver bundle would make cards not work.

 

Ideally you would have a GTX470 to try out to make sure the GF100 driver path is functional. I don't suppose that you are in LA?

 

Can you get GT120 to desktop and run some OpenGl test to make sure it isn't on "Software render"?

 

Which Mac Pro do you have? If it is the 3,1 model I wonder if that may be an issue. The helper card needs 4 lanes, I know on 1,1 I have to use Expansion Slot Utility to give slot 3 a total of 4 lanes. Not sure how 3,1 works.

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Sorry Rominator just wanted to clear up one thing before I try the OpenGl test to make sure it isn't on "Software render"? and the Expansion Slot Utility to give slot 3 a total of 4 lanes.

 

I only did what you said to do and edited the 100HAL.Kext and added the ATY_Init.Kext.

 

I installed no extra drivers and no GLDriverBundle because I was not sure if I needed any.

 

The only card I had in this machine before was the card it shipped with the Geforce 8800GT.

 

So from your reply should I have installed other packages and drivers?

 

I just want to be sure that I have tried all things correctly and the system is running as you are imagining it to be (With regard to drivers and extra installs etc..)

 

Thanks again though Rominator for your continued help with this, obviously would go nowhere without you ;)

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ULIC as it happens I am trying also to connect two PC Nvidia GTX470 cards in my Mac Pro and I was having the same problems with you. An hour earlier I found a solution. Most probably you have problems because you own a MacPro 3.1 i.e. late 2008 model you can check from system info....

 

Although what Rominator here and in other forums says is correct and works perfectly for him (he has noted that he has a MacPro 1.1 and a 4.1 and not a 3.1) it doesn't work for the MacPro 3.1.

 

On the 3.1 the helper card GT120 or GT8800 needs to be not on slot 3 but on slot 2 otherwise there is a Kernel Panic whenever ATY_INIT is loaded with PC NVIDIA cards connected.

 

I do not know if this is due to ATY_INIT or there is something specific to the MacPro 3.1

 

I haven't run any test to see how fast the cards are but they are working full resolution, full acceleration appearing correctly in System Profile (Except for the memory which shows as 512MB instead of 1.2GB).

 

I will post later more info when I connect them to my water-cooling system and be able to run full tests...

 

Hope this helps. Tests run on Lion 10.7 with latest ATY_INIT posted 22 July

 

To Rominator: is it normal that the memory is reported as 512 instead of 1280 is it just cosmetic or the rest of the memory is disabled for some reason?

 

Alex

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Wouldnt a kernel panic crash the machine at boot?

 

I mean as said both OS load fine with slot 3 and slot 1 combo just no display signal when this happens.

 

Sorry if this is incorrect btw I admit to having enough knowledge of hackintosh setups to fill a postage stamp.

 

:)

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alex may be on to something, I seem to recall that there was also someone with a MP 3,1 that had an injected GTX260 running fine in SL, but lost function in Lion

 

Using slots 1 & 2 results in KP for me in most cases so I have always said 1 & 3 whilst saying that in the Macs that support Expansion Slot Utility, it is important to give at least 4 lanes to whichever slot helper card is in.

 

I really don't know the 3,1 very well. I am jealous that they don't have issues with AGPM, but I am also curious that my 570 only seems to run well when I use a modified AGPM with it's id in it.

 

Maybe 3,1 and 570 won't ever work well together?

 

In any case, Ulic needs to find a way to get screen up on another card or via screen sharing and and see what machine sees in those slots. Armchair Quarterbacking whilst postulating whys, if's and maybes isn't going to get this going. You need to bust out the cards and methodically, SCIENTIFICALLY try each thing separately. Key part of Scientific method is to only change one thing at a time so as to be able to track what affects what.

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