HOW-TO: boot OS X with 8800 GTX SLI

[wolfc]

Prerequisites

 

- two non-EFI 8800 GTX cards in SLI setup (may work for other setups, good luck )

- booting OS X in vesa mode

- GFX Strings gfxutil

- PCI Tools 3.0.0

 

Booting OS X in vesa

 

Do a favorite distro install without installing any NVidia patches. This should create a setup in which the machine boots, but doesn't do any fancy QE stuff and only 1280x1024.

 

GFX Strings

 

Read http://aquamac.proboards.com/index.cgi?boa...=509&page=1 and download the single card version of GeForce 8800 GTX.

 

Now the first thing it says is do:

./gfxutil -f display

 

On my machine the answer was: PciRoot(0x1)/Pci(0x3,0x0)/Pci(0x0,0x0)/Pci(0x2,0x0)/Pci(0x0,0x0)

 

It's lying, this is not the real card in use.

 

PCI Tools

 

Use PCI Tools to find the real PCI location.

 

$ lspci -t
-[0000:00]-+-00.0
	   +-03.0-[0000:01-04]----00.0-[0000:02-04]--+-00.0-[0000:03]----00.0
	   |										 \-02.0-[0000:04]----00.0

As you can see it's very similar to the previous output. Ignore the bits in between brackets and imagine PciRoot(0x1) prepended.

Now you see there is the other card which is first: PciRoot(0x1)/Pci(0x3,0x0)/Pci(0x0,0x0)/Pci(0x0,0x0)/Pci(0x0,0x0)

 

Use this as the real location path and continue with the single card GFX Strings method.

Do not enter a definition for the second card.

 

Note that the PCI locations on your machine may differ.

 

Reboot OS X

 

Observe your 8800 GTX in System Profiler.

NVIDIA GeForce 8800GTX 768MB:

 Chipset Model:	NVIDIA GeForce 8800GTX 768MB
 Type:	Display
 Bus:	PCIe
 PCIe Lane Width:	x16
 VRAM (Total):	768 MB
 Vendor:	NVIDIA (0x10de)
 Device ID:	0x0191
 Revision ID:	0x00a2
 ROM Revision:	3172a
 Displays:
DELL 2407WFP:
 Resolution:	1920 x 1200 @ 60 Hz
 Depth:	32-bit Color
 Core Image:	Hardware Accelerated
 Main Display:	Yes
 Mirror:	Off
 Online:	Yes
 Quartz Extreme:	Supported
 Rotation:	Supported
Display Connector:
 Status	No display connected

 

I've attached my EFI definition just be complete.

gfx_efi_one.txt

[Duckshot]

Thanks!

 

I've been trying to sort this out for a while.

 

8800 GTX FTW!