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Success with 4890 solution in 10.6.2!

BarryBar

By BarryBar,
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BarryBar
BarryBar
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First of all let me say how much I appreciate this forum for the information on offer and all the people who contribute to it.

 

For years I used a good ATI x1950 XT card but it became time to replace it. Since the ATI 5000 series is not yet supported with drivers. I decided to go for a Club3D Radeon HD 4890 super-clocked card, 950 Mhz. Nvidia was not option since I find the price - quality of their products in comparison to ATI lesser. Also this company has a despicable policy like switching Physx off on a dedicated card when a ATI card for the main display is detected. All of that in the windows environment of course.

 

So besides the ATI 4890 I bought also a GT 220 Nvidia card for Physx since there is a patch available which prevents the above from happening.

 

After making everything work in Windows 7 I went to OSX Snow leopard. First thing is that you need to recompile the DSDT.aml file in windows with a tool that is already mentioned in this forum. Iasl.exe it is called. Otherwise your osx system won't start with the new video card installed. In my case two cards.

 

Then I installed the latest netkas package for exotic cards. Reboot gave me only distortion and a garbled screen. So graphicsenabler did not work for me. Of course I had managed to install the latest Chameleon with PC EFI v10.5. Only safe boot was possible but the video card gave the sound of vacuum cleaner since no driver is loaded.

 

The working solution

I consider DSDT editing for the video card but that is too technical for me. And it would cost me too much time. So after much reading here and other places I already had downloaded the 10.3 PCEFI package from the EVOSX86 website which came with a ATI.ROM image for the 4890 which has to put in the Extra folder. You can find that here => http://www.osx86.es/?cat=32

 

After total frustration I read here that other people had heard of it but had not tried that. So I thought what the heck and after placing the ATI.ROM in Extra and the two com.apple.Boot.plist files in the right places. One in Extra and the other in the /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/ the system booted with crispy graphics! Quartz extreme and Core image acceleration goodness, yes! To be clear I still use PC EFI v10.5 since I considered that v10.5 certainly can do what v10.3 is capable off

 

So a big thanks goes out to netkas who makes all this possible with his great PCEFI contribution to the OSX86 community. And his binary patching of the kexts for the 4890 of course.

 

Hopefully this account will help other 4890 owners who are stuck at the moment with 10.6.2. Maybe even a custom ROM made from the used 4890 card would work even better. I had no time to test this and I leave it for now since my system is working.

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Vanillian
Vanillian
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Let me get this right.

You have 10.6.1

You have PC EFI 10.5

 

1. You installed 10.6.2

2. You installed NetKas' QE/CI exotic 10.6.2 patcher.

3. Upon reboot you got garbled screen.

4. While in safemode, you placed the ATI.Rom into the extra folder.

5. You added:

<key>ATIROM</key>

<string>Yes</string>

To the com.apple.Boot.plist in the Extra folder, and added it to the com.apple.Boot.plist within /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/.

6. Upon restart you had full video/res/QE/CI?

 

Did you ever watch in verbose mode to see if you got any errors related to your 4890 before you added the ATIROM stuff?

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BarryBar
BarryBar
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Let me get this right.

You have 10.6.1

You have PC EFI 10.5

 

1. You installed 10.6.2

2. You installed NetKas' QE/CI exotic 10.6.2 patcher.

3. Upon reboot you got garbled screen.

4. While in safemode, you placed the ATI.Rom into the extra folder.

5. You added:

<key>ATIROM</key>

<string>Yes</string>

To the com.apple.Boot.plist in the Extra folder, and added it to the com.apple.Boot.plist within /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/.

6. Upon restart you had full video/res/QE/CI?

 

Did you ever watch in verbose mode to see if you got any errors related to your 4890 before you added the ATIROM stuff?

 

 

In regard to step 5 I actually put the com.apple.Boot.plist files in that came with the PC EFI 10.3 package. But indeed in these files the string <key>ATI.ROM</key>

<string>Yes</string>

is essential to load the ATI.ROM file which is put in the Extra folder.

 

Another update is that I am now using my own ATI.ROM file made from my Club3D HD 4890 Superclocked. I noticed it is bigger than the PC EFI 10.3 package ROM file namely 128 bytes instead of 64 bytes.

 

For those of you who would like to do that also. Here is how. In windows you can export the bios with the free tool GPU-Z. That will save a bin file. In my case the file is called by default RV790.bin. Okay this bin file can loaded and if needed edited in the Radeon Bios Editor also a free tool. If you save the loaded ATI bios in that program it will created the ROM file you need in osx. Just rename to ATI.ROM and put it in the Extra folder.

 

And no I did not see errors in verbose. After seeing the line device in slot-1 it got garbled. But I had the same problem in 10.6.1. I have tried the Evoenabler in combination with netkas kexts but that did not work for me.

 

I also have a screenshot herescreenshot20091209at746.th.png

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sixpackmac
sixpackmac
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In regard to step 5 I actually put the com.apple.Boot.plist files in that came with the PC EFI 10.3 package. But indeed in these files the string <key>ATI.ROM</key>

<string>Yes</string>

is essential to load the ATI.ROM file which is put in the Extra folder.

 

Another update is that I am now using my own ATI.ROM file made from my Club3D HD 4890 Superclocked. I noticed it is bigger than the PC EFI 10.3 package ROM file namely 128 bytes instead of 64 bytes.

 

For those of you who would like to do that also. Here is how. In windows you can export the bios with the free tool GPU-Z. That will save a bin file. In my case the file is called by default RV790.bin. Okay this bin file can loaded and if needed edited in the Radeon Bios Editor also a free tool. If you save the loaded ATI bios in that program it will created the ROM file you need in osx. Just rename to ATI.ROM and put it in the Extra folder.

 

And no I did not see errors in verbose. After seeing the line device in slot-1 it got garbled. But I had the same problem in 10.6.1. I have tried the Evoenabler in combination with netkas kexts but that did not work for me.

 

I also have a screenshot herescreenshot20091209at746.th.png

 

Could you please host the QE_C_Exotic.pkg on mediafire. The links on netkas site are all broken.

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dungeon
dungeon
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Thank you!

 

 

 

After using the Qe/ci exotic and following BarryBars instructions my graphics work perfectly except for dual screen. System Profiler even recognizes my card as Radeon HD 4890!

did you use the generic ATI.ROM or made your own?

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airecken
airecken
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So I too can confirm that this works.

 

I have a XFX 4890 1GB with 10.6.2 and followed the steps above. I used the ATI rom from the spanish site.

 

However, now that it appears graphics is working correctly, my Geekbench score has fallen to the 5000s previously in the 7000s. I also hear the graphics card fan going nuts, on and off continuously.

 

Anybody else notice a drop in Geekbench score and weird fan phenomenon?

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BarryBar
BarryBar
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Nice to hear about your success!

 

The fan speed of my 4890 is actually spot on. Before the kexts load there is a lot fan noise but then it goes down and stay down until you play a game but that is normal.

 

@Vanillian

I copied his steps that I outlined above but I still get corrupted graphics and an error related to the ATI4800Controller.kext

 

I don't know what to do next. I wish there was a way to downgrade.

 

It is important that the ATI.ROM file is loading. Maybe you have seen this then I have said nothing

 

but there should be a dot in between ATI and the ROM extension

 

5. You added:

<key>ATIROM</key>

<string>Yes</string>

To the com.apple.Boot.plist in the Extra folder, and added it to the com.apple.Boot.plist within /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/

 

My guess is that if you forgot the file won't load.

 

I believe downgrading is simple using time machine but I have to admit I am not using it either. To get system going again you need to remove the 4800 controller kext and the patched atiradeonx2000.kext. Then you can boot normally again. Otherwise only safeboot (-x) is possible.

 

Good luck with finding the solution.

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dungeon
dungeon
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Nice to hear about your success!

 

The fan speed of my 4890 is actually spot on. Before the kexts load there is a lot fan noise but then it goes down and stay down until you play a game but that is normal.

 

@Vanillian

 

 

It is important that the ATI.ROM file is loading. Maybe you have seen this then I have said nothing

 

but there should be a dot in between ATI and the ROM extension

 

5. You added:

<key>ATIROM</key>

<string>Yes</string>

To the com.apple.Boot.plist in the Extra folder, and added it to the com.apple.Boot.plist within /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/

 

My guess is that if you forgot the file won't load.

 

I believe downgrading is simple using time machine but I have to admit I am not using it either. To get system going again you need to remove the 4800 controller kext and the patched atiradeonx2000.kext. Then you can boot normally again. Otherwise only safeboot (-x) is possible.

 

Good luck with finding the solution.

there is no dot in the com.apple.Boot.plist file from the spanish site though.

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sixpackmac
sixpackmac
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So I too can confirm that this works.

 

I have a XFX 4890 1GB with 10.6.2 and followed the steps above. I used the ATI rom from the spanish site.

 

However, now that it appears graphics is working correctly, my Geekbench score has fallen to the 5000s previously in the 7000s. I also hear the graphics card fan going nuts, on and off continuously.

 

Anybody else notice a drop in Geekbench score and weird fan phenomenon?

My card may also be doing this weird fan thing but it doesn't really bother me. I think that the card specific ati.rom may fix it. I don't know much about the geek bench score other than that lynnfield users don't have the best kernel yet with 10.6.2 like the new imacs (they have a custom build not available through apple yet). I'm waiting to see what kind of performance gains I get with 10.6.3.

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airecken
airecken
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So the geekbench thing I realize is not related to this. Now I'm back at 8000+ with my core i5. I was messing around trying to get it to sleep at the same time but I give up on that for now.

 

The weird fan thing is still going on for me. I hope it's a specific ROM thing and will try to get my own ROM file once I get windows up and running.

 

Thinking of buying a second monitor, is it confirmed that second monitor is not working on this yet?

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Alex HQuest
Alex HQuest
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This fan issue is pretty much a BIOS setting for fan speeds and temperatures -- or a plain wrong temp reading from OSX.

 

At any case, one may try to edit this provided BIOS file with RBE and try to either move it to a dynamic adjusted model or to decrease fan speeds when a bit hot (let's say, if default is 29% fan speed @ 45C, try to push same 29% fan speed when @ 50C), then put back this modded BIOS on OSX. There you can find out what is going wrong.

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Solarbird
Solarbird
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I don't know if I am doing this right. I am totally new to this.

I am running 10.6.2 booting with USB thumb drive with Chameleon 2 rc 3 + PC EFI 10.5

First I installed NetKas' QE/CI exotic 10.6.2 patcher, I don't know where the destination would be so I installed both on my HD and thumb drive (bootloader)

I copied ATI.Rom into the extra folder, one com.apple.Boot.plist in the Extra folder, and one com.apple.Boot.plist to /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/

I am using gigabyte X58 UD5 motherboard so I use the x58_mobo_patch_installer to place ATY_Init.kext back to system extension. (I was trying to use ATI4800controller.kext + ATIRadeonx2000.kext + EVOenabler.kext before trying out BarryBar's method but it gave me distortion and a garbled screen, only working in safe mode, so I uninstallered them)

So BarryBar's method works for me after I rebooted

system recognized 4890

but my internet doesn't work now.. is there anything I did wrong here?

should I use any of (ATI4800controller.kext ATIRadeonx2000.kext EVOenabler.kext) at all?

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Vanillian
Vanillian
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I don't know if I am doing this right. I am totally new to this.

I am running 10.6.2 booting with USB thumb drive with Chameleon 2 rc 3 + PC EFI 10.5

First I installed NetKas' QE/CI exotic 10.6.2 patcher, I don't know where the destination would be so I installed both on my HD and thumb drive (bootloader)

I copied ATI.Rom into the extra folder, one com.apple.Boot.plist in the Extra folder, and one com.apple.Boot.plist to /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/

I am using gigabyte X58 UD5 motherboard so I use the x58_mobo_patch_installer to place ATY_Init.kext back to system extension. (I was trying to use ATI4800controller.kext + ATIRadeonx2000.kext + EVOenabler.kext before trying out BarryBar's method but it gave me distortion and a garbled screen, only working in safe mode, so I uninstallered them)

So BarryBar's method works for me after I rebooted

system recognized 4890

but my internet doesn't work now.. is there anything I did wrong here?

should I use any of (ATI4800controller.kext ATIRadeonx2000.kext EVOenabler.kext) at all?

 

When you updated to 10.6.2 and got the garbled text did you see any errors in verbose mode?

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BarryBar
BarryBar
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ati.rom boot key ? lol

 

in my original it was -useatirom key and proper rom name in /Extra...

 

First of all it is nice to see that you are reading this thread. Secondly I never claimed to be technically acclaimed. There is no doubt that I respect your abilities and accomplishments and I give credit to that.

It is great that you developed in PC EFI the possibity to load rom files since it is certainly working for me.

 

I just tried to help another forum member out but you are welcome to laugh loud about that. That says more about you than me.

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airecken
airecken
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Posted

Actually,

 

I realized my XFX 4890 in 10.6.2 vanilla works perfectly with PC EFI 10.5 with simple graphic enabler as yes.

 

I removed all references to the ATIROM and deleted the bios file, and it all still works perfectly.

 

However, that annoying fan issue still persists and not sure if it's with the card itself. I never get it when I boot up into Windows 7 though.

 

Ordered a second DVI monitor. Will test later this week whether dual monitors works.

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