MacVidia progress report, straight from the horse's mouth

[MacSpaces]

I gave up on this long time ago

something is fishy about this.Why not keep the community upated with information regarding the process? if its only 1 person now working on it

he should be smarter and include the community, im petty sure theres alot of people willing to help like stated above.

 

maybe he wants to work on it all by himself and charge for it? becaome the first osx86 charge? you know when somethings is free theres always something or somebody charging wh oknows.kinda stupid to me to alienate the community

[devilhood]

I agree, the MacVidia site actually encourages help, but throughout their entire production time there has been very little information and community involvement.

Though I remember reading about a childish tiff that happened between someone involved, tsk and then we have the defacing of the Wiki etc, it's all a shame really.

[firebush05]

MacVidia....

 

Why don't you release what you have and let the community take a crack at it?!

 

We all would have working drivers weeks ago had this been done. What is you motivation behind keeping this to yourself?

 

Please, were begging you here! If its credit your after, we will give you all the credit in the world. Please help us out and release what you have to the community.

[blinksilver]

MacVidia....

 

Why don't you release what you have and let the community take a crack at it?!

 

We all would have working drivers weeks ago had this been done. What is you motivation behind keeping this to yourself?

 

Please, were begging you here! If its credit your after, we will give you all the credit in the world. Please help us out and release what you have to the community.

 

I don't understand why you would post this here, I honestly don't think np_ come here to read what people have to say. I spend a fair bit of time in the IRC Channel, and he does not even show up there.

 

As for asking him to relase the code, I agree it would be better, but a coders choice is his own. You really can't get angry at someone for doing something pro-bono under their own guidelines.

[wiebeest]

1. Wait for apple to release Macs with nVidia cards and pray that they will not remove the support for other older cards.

Not likely, why would they want to support 'older' Nvidia cards,

if it has no benefit to x86 Mac other than encourage non-mac uses to go x86-os X?

[blinksilver]

i would agree with you, well except for one thing. Why did apple release support for the 9200 9600 9700 9800 x300 x600 and x800, thems (hehe) alot of old cards. I think apple will release support for all the old cards because when the intel macs with x16 slots come, people are not going to like it when they can't get things to work.

[cyrana]

i would agree with you, well except for one thing. Why did apple release support for the 9200 9600 9700 9800 x300 x600 and x800, thems (hehe) alot of old cards. I think apple will release support for all the old cards because when the intel macs with x16 slots come, people are not going to like it when they can't get things to work.

Considering the cards need an EFI-compatible firmware in them, this is doubtful. Only new cards are going to have it...

 

A bit sad on the total lack of info on the MacVidia thing. *shrug*

[blinksilver]

Considering the cards need an EFI-compatible firmware in them, this is doubtful. Only new cards are going to have it...

 

A bit sad on the total lack of info on the MacVidia thing. *shrug*

 

wait, I ws under the impression that the apple firmware *may* have the backward compatibilty module, has that been proven not to be the case.

[phor2zero]

If apple is only releasing EFI drivers and not Operating System drivers, then how are the ATI drivers functioning for all the people that have BIOS systems? Aren't the ATI drivers actually OS Kernel Extensions?; isn't a kext something that runs inside the OS, not in EFI?

 

I thought one of the "advantages" of EFI was that the drivers would be running on the Motherboard, completely out of the control of the OS.

 

According to Macvidia, the nvidia kexts in OS X are "nearly" complete x86 drivers, missing just a single layer for functionality; So it appears Apple has already invested a lot of work in developing OS X intel nvidia kernel extensions. Would they scrap that completely to rewrite from scratch a set of EFI drivers?

 

On another note, nvidia uses a "unified" driver architecture; same driver for most of their hardware. Perhaps Apple will completely write new drivers from scratch for only new cards (7900GTX?), but if the utilize nvidia's already existing codebase, I would think they'd work for most of them.

[deep44]

I don't blame him for keeping quiet. If he started updating people on what he's doing whenever they asked, he'd never get any work done (and he'd also go insane).

 

For all the people who want to help... why not post what *you* have? As in, what are you offering to help with? If you posted a message with your specific qualifications and a summary of how you would add value to the project, I think you would have more room to complain. The simple fact that most of you believe this driver can actually be completed (by someone other than Nvidia) in a week/month/year timeframe tells me that none of you are "qualified" helpers.

[deep44]

Disregard my previous comment about getting this done in a short amount of time; I didn't realize there were already Univeral Binary nvidia drivers for OS X.

 

However- I still say there's nobody capable of helping (i.e., there should not be anybody complaining), because the MacVidia website (which I just now looked at for the first time) has a *wealth* of information about what the problem is, what is known, etc. Anybody capable of helping has everything they need to do so.. just read the MacVidia site and let us know if you make any progress.

[sgi02]

While I can't say I dont value all of the work put forward by the Macvidia team I just feel like it is a lost cause. Taken from what has been posted in this thread , there is only one person working on the development portion of the Macvidia project. The progress has not been stellar by any means , I mean seriously were barely accesing the framebuffer nativley , QE/CI are not even close to working and all development is going twoards an obsolete build of OSX86.

 

With all of the work performed by the Macvidia party I think it is quite pompous of them not to share their source code. There are many OSX86 users out there willing to dedicate the time and resources to truly make Macvidia great. Only problem is that a decent portion of the progress made so far is closed source and quite frankly going nowheres fast. I appricate all the work and dedication given to us by the Macvidia team , but I feel its time to face the facts. The project is never going to surmount to anything worthwhile in closed source form , with one person backing it. If you are waiting for fully operational drivers from the Macvidia team , I wouldent hold my breath. Buy an ATI card or wait until Apple offically releases a Nvidia based product with competent drivers.

[snackole]

I think the name of this topic should be changed to

 

Straight from the Horse's Ass !!!

[deep44]

With all of the work performed by the Macvidia party I think it is quite pompous of them not to share their source code.

Uhh, have you read their website? Did you read my previous post? What "source code" are you referring to?

 

Seriously, do you understand that the Nvidia drivers they have been working with were included with the OS up until at least 10.4.3 (and possibly later, I haven't checked). They don't have source code.. there's nothing to release. The most you could ask for would be an in-depth description of where the files are all located, how to insert them into the kernel, and why that process isn't working as intended right now.

 

.. oh, wait! They *did* do that. It's posted on the MacVidia site. So, what "source code" are you referring to?

[phor2zero]

rumor has it that tomorrow will be the release of the intel mac mini.

 

10.4.6 is out for testing and has "improved graphics drivers"

 

If we're REALLY LUCKY, the mac mini will be nvidia powered, and 10.4.6 will give us the nvidia support we're hoping for. The rumor mill has it that the .6 update is in preparation for supporting the mac mini and the intel ibook. The 12 inch G4 Powerbook has nvidia graphics, so hopefully apple will include nvidia in some upcoming hardware before they get to the powermac's; Which aren't scheduled for release until 2007.

 

It's pretty much come down to this: I've given up hope on macvidia, and every apple update to OS X brings anticipation of nvidia support.

[dponmac]

i already gave up, i picked up an ati 9600 xt. I'll shelf my fx 5600 until we get nvidia drivers.

[Jazzz]

i already gave up, i picked up an ati 9600 xt. I'll shelf my fx 5600 until we get nvidia drivers.

 

I'm soon to give up too.

 

Anyone know if the Radeon 9600 Mobility AGP (which I think is a FireGL) will work? (qe , cl & 1600x1200 -- I don't so much care about refresh anymore cuz I'm eyeing an LCD This becasue I'm stubborn and *must* keep my low profile, I have few AGP cards to choose from. So...

[phor2zero]

I'm as unlikely to switch to ATI as I am to switch to Intel. Besides, there's no way i'm giving up two EN7800GTX cards for one ATI card. I've already invested over $1000 just in video hardware. I can't exactly complain though... at least Bill let's me do whatever I want with my computer.

 

I might actually purchase a mac mini if I can use it as Media Center/MythTV type of system. Only problem is the miniature hard drive included. Perhaps it can be hooked up to a NAS hard drive array over ethernet to record programs on.

 

Kind of off topic I know, but really, what is there to say about Macvidia?

[Jazzz]

It's funny, the turn this thread is taking.

 

I don't really want to switch from nVidia either. Nor do I want to switch from AGP to PCI-E just because the sorry lack of low-profile *supported* AGP RADEONs.

 

I guess I'll just wait it out too...

[kikos]

Yeah, I'm with you guys on sticking with nvidia. The ATI cards don't even work flawlessly on the iMac's own hardware, let alone the custom macs.

 

If the intel powermacs aren't released until December as someone here stated, that's a looong wait, especially if os x nvidia drivers won't work on custom macs

[jbjonas]

I don't know what the big deal is. Of course I would be ecstatic if the Macvidia project ever releases something useful... But, I have been very happy with the VESA 3.0 support on my Nvidia card. The OS is smooth and fast. And the only thing I can't do is Mac Gaming, which isn't that great anyway. Besides, that's the only reason I still keep my XP installation around. I doubt I'll spend more money on an ATI card, since the tradeoff for getting some acceleration is the mouse tearing problem - which I think would drive me insane! just my

[phor2zero]

jbjonas: yes I agree with you that the VESA 3.0 support is pretty good. My OS X is flawlessly smooth and fast. The reason I want QE/CI support, is to see if iMovie and iDVD (as well as DVD Player) work.

(although, I highly doubt they'll be as useful as Nero and TMPGEnc on XP)

[nixblicker]

I can't agree on the VESA thing!

I have a Laptop with max. 1650x1050 pixel and can use only 1280x1024 of them! I can't watch Quicktime-movies with more than double size (forget about fullscreen). DVD-Player don't work, every OpenGL-based Application did not update the screen, VLC sucks (pretty slow compared to the Quicktime Player), FrontRow shows only a white screen, iMovies and iDVD don't work!!!!

 

So if we just could all possible resolutions and a 2d acceleration to watch at leats videos and DVDs. Thats would be bloody fantastic!

 

But my hopes are nearly dead!!!!!

[fOZf8]

I totally concur...I had my 6600gt installed initially with 10.4.3 and it was just bloody slow with vesa 3. I finally pulled it out and regressed back to the onboard intel GMA 900...which actually kicks ass for 2D stuff in OSX, but then I boot back to XP and its like 'chug, chug, poop'...and neither will run games worth anything beyond emulators.