Nvidia card refuses to function properly, tried everything...

[sfwdiy]

I cannot get my Nvidia card to work properly. It's driving me insane. Details below...

 

Hardware:

Asus P5W mobo

Intel E4700 Processor

Zotac 7300 GT 256 mb video card.

 

Everything used to work fine on 10.5.8 on this machine, video, audio, everthing. A few days ago it started to kernel panic and finally I couldn't get it to boot anymore so I figured it was time for a fresh install. I followed the directions in this thread: http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=128274

 

Then I grabbed the files listed in this thread: http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=165071

(Use Google Translate to translate the French into English if necessary.)

That got everything working but the video, still stuck in 1024x768. (Video is over VGA, by the way.)

 

Then I started trying various methods to enable the Nvidia card. Everything I've tried causes the machine to freeze with the spinning beachball immediately upon reaching the desktop.

 

What I've tried:

Natit.kext

NVEnabler.kext

NVInject.kext

The graphics enabler app available from netkas.org

EFI Studio, using the strings for the 7300 GT as well as trying a few others for fun. I've also tried putting the string in both the boot.plist on the boot drive as well as in the boot.plist in the Extra -> Boot.plist on the bootloader partition.

 

Once I remove whatever graphics enabler method I attempted I can boot back to the desktop just fine and everything works, but I'm stuck with 1024x768 and crappy color.

 

Again, this all used to work really well before the install finally became unstable and wouldn't boot. Any ideas? Anything I'm missing?

 

--B

 

Edit: Thought I fixed it by using an earlier version of NVInject that I got off the project website. It recognized the card and enabled more resolutions, but I realized that Quartz Extreme wasn't working. Does anyone have this card and a working kext for it under 10.5.8? The more I try to mess with it the worse it seems to get. I'm getting really frustrated here.

[sfwdiy]

Ok, I've got QE enabled. I used the NVinstaller app. Now the machine won't boot to the desktop. I have ssh enabled. I can log in remotely and when I run system_profiler I get

 

Graphics by NVIDIA:

     Chipset Model: Graphics by NVIDIA
     Type: Display
     Bus: PCIe
     PCIe Lane Width: x16
     VRAM (Total): 256 MB
     Vendor: NVIDIA (0x10de)
     Device ID: 0x0393
     Revision ID: 0x00a1
     ROM Revision: NVinject 0.2.1
     Displays:
       Display Connector:
         Status: No Display Connected
       TLX-04240B:
         Resolution: 1360 x 768 @ 60 Hz
         Depth: 32-Bit Color
         Core Image: Hardware Accelerated
         Main Display: Yes
         Mirror: Off
         Online: Yes
         Quartz Extreme: Supported
         Rotation: Supported
         QuartzGL: Supported

 

The machine just sits there at the desktop with the spinning beachball and I can't do anything. I've run top to see if anything is frozen and it doesn't appear so. I've tried killing and relaunching various processes. I've tried dumping plists for windowserver, loginwindow, finder, etc. What is going on here? I'm at the point where I think I may just have to start over again from scratch. Is there anyone out there who has a similar setup running 10.5.8? I'm out of ideas.

 

--B