Jump to content
13 posts in this topic

Recommended Posts

Some laptops, in particular, don't provide a mechanism for increasing the amount of video memory allocated at boot time. Some vendors have BIOS updates available that address this. Chris Jones reports that as of April 2004, DELL has such a BIOS update (A29) for its 852GM/855GM laptops.

 

At boot time, Darwin only recognise 3MBytes, because of this crappy video bios.

 

Most of the laptops are using a i8xx chipset, so a lot of people are concerned by this problem.

 

If you check all the posts who are talking about adding the 830 and/or 915 kext, then they get a blue screeen after boot, it is because the window server of OS X can't allocate the required memory for Quartz Extreme support.

 

The only way is to start on XP first (the Intel's Video driver will allocate 64MBytes for the video card) and then restart on OS X (without turning off the laptop, otherwise this will reset the video bios settings).

 

Unfortunately, it doesn't work for my VAIO PCG-TR1/B, probably because the bios is flushing all its settings (as i think, all the VAIO TR series are concerned)

 

Another way (for linux users) is to start Linux first and restart (no power off) to OS X, Xfree86 is doing the same as XP's intel drivers, and it's using AGPART for the video bios memory allocation.

 

 

Anyway, i probably found a possible work around :

 

855Patch

 

But i can't compile it as long as it's written for Linux/Xfree. (i just hope someone skillful in coding will be able to release a darwin/x86 binary)

Yes, I'm the admin of PearPC China, it's really amazing!

VaiOSX: booting XP first doesn't work for me at all, instead the famous "blue screen", I always get a big blocks/squares problem( or actually these 2 are the same one? ).

I'v been trying to make QE work for the last whole month, unfortunely I have made it for only one time - QE once worked, though unnormally, and after reboot, the big blocks/squares problem came again.

 

EDIT:Darwin allocates 31M REM when it boots, I'm using "Acer NLC2304" btw.

Yes, I'm the admin of PearPC China, it's really amazing!

 

Hi felixding, I followed the link to your forum and was wondering if you could confirm if that user has actually got CI working (I have QE already), and maybe a translation of the relevant posts?

 

I'm willing to give it a try and get CI working, if I can get some instructions.

Thanks for the visit and welcome :)

yes, I can confirm he has made it. According to his guide, the only thing he does is to modify 830, 915 and integrated ( 35828086 in IOPCIMATCH ), but sometimes both QE&CI are supported, and sometimes neither, a little odd.

  • 2 weeks later...

hmmm.....this thread raises a most interesting ponit. For the first time I think I am starting to understand why so many of us are getting the blue screen at boot. OS X can't allocate enough video memory for QE and CI. Makes perfect sense. Now the only thing that boggles my mind, is why it would then work with an external display connected. The amount of video ram detected by the OS doesn't change right? So how comes we're green light with an external and red with an internal?

 

Also...unfortunately there's no way of changing permanently the amount of video ram allocated to the GMA900 (I tried to check in the bios but the setting can't be changed, then I tried to update to the latest graphics drivers from Intel, and those didn't permit me to upgrade!) But if there were some way to permanently set the amount in the bios, or at least to get Darwin to detect it, I think we'd be up and running here.

×
×
  • Create New...