[Partial Fix] Intel GMA950 for OS X 10.8

[Dr. Hurt 227]

The Bad:
As of Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, Apple has completely removed support for 32-bit kernel extensions and the new kernel no longer supports booting in 32-bit mode. As you probably know by know, most GMA950 drivers that were provided by Apple were 32-bit extensions and therefore will no longer work with OS 10.8!

The Good:
Apple has included 64-bit drivers for GMA950 in the OS X 10.6.2 update. These drivers can be used to provide partial support for GMA950 under OS 10.8

The Ugly:
The drivers are painfully slow especially at higher resolutions. System animations lag, full screen videos are almost unwatchable, flash videos are not working properly.

The "partial" fix:
Use the 10.6.2 extensions attached below to get resolution changing and QE/CI. Install using kext wizard or whatever other utility you like. You still need DSDT or EFI string injection.

The real fix:
Well... I think its time for an upgrade. A cheap nVidia GeForce 210 or ATI Radeon HD5450 will get the job done perfectly if you have a desktop PC. Laptop users however, are out of luck this time.

GMA950.zip

[eep357 964]

Hmm, I wonder if this might work for my Macbook, minus the DSDT of course. high resolution isn't an issue. I should be able to get the installer to run using a few hackintosh tricks. We'll see!

[OcciJano 1]

Thanks a lot Dr. Hurt it works. You're right, it's time to get a graphic card.

 

Thanks a lot!

[-aKy- 1]

Shold work on MacBook, but without QE/CI, so it's quite useless , we have to stick with Lion I think.

[unrealdtc 0]

Thank you!

 

It works on my Mac Mini 1,1! As you said, the graphics are a bit slow, but I intend to use the Mini headless anyway, and this driver allows me to choose the VNC resolution, which was impossible before, so it's a great deal better than nothing!

 

Stephen

[eep357 964]

Shold work on MacBook, but without QE/CI, so it's quite useless , we have to stick with Lion I think.

I'm thinking I'd still have to use DP1 Kernel due to 32bit EFI anyway.

[nekonoko 6]

I'm thinking I'd still have to use DP1 Kernel due to 32bit EFI anyway.

 

You could potentially "Hackintosh" it by using BIOS emulation to boot Chameleon and run the 64-bit kernel that way (the same method used to get ML installed on MacPro1,1 -- provided your MacBook has a 64-bit capable CPU of course). Unfortunately the video driver issue probably wouldn't make it worth the trouble.

[fantomas 3,971]

apparently, 32bit EFI + the kexts from 10.7.0 can working on 10.8

 

there are the kexts to install from 10.7.0 :

 

AppleIntelGMA950.kext

AppleIntelGMA950GA.plugin

AppleIntelGMA950GLDriver.bundle

AppleIntelGMA950VADriver.bundle

AppleIntelIntegratedFramebuffer.kext

 

 

 

it's just for the info, I can't confirm it !!!

[unrealdtc 0]

apparently, 32bit EFI + the kexts from 10.7.0 can working on 10.8

 

there are the kexts to install from 10.7.0 :

 

AppleIntelGMA950.kext

AppleIntelGMA950GA.plugin

AppleIntelGMA950GLDriver.bundle

AppleIntelGMA950VADriver.bundle

AppleIntelIntegratedFramebuffer.kext

 

 

 

it's just for the info, I can't confirm it !!!

 

The GMA950 drivers from 10.7.0 are 32-bit only. This won't work (Mountain Lion GM required all drivers be 64 bits).

[crumpo 4]

thanks, this will hopefully breath some extended life into my late 2006 macbook (just doing xcode development, no media stuff)

[unrealdtc 0]

thanks, this will hopefully breath some extended life into my late 2006 macbook (just doing xcode development, no media stuff)

 

Well, I've been using those 10.6.2 drivers for about a week now, and I'm actually quite pleased. No kernel panics, very few bugs (I do have a graphic bug with the notification center, but I don't really care...). I've even installed VMWare fusion and Lion as a guest OS, and appart from it being a bit slow, that works fine too.

[mnfesq 573]

I'm having the same experience with the X3100 graphics drivers from 10.6.2. But I don't get QE/CI, just correct resolution. Do you think it is more likely that someone will come up with better 64-bit drivers for these graphics cards or that someone will come up with a 32-bit kernel for ML?

[crumpo 4]

I'm having the same experience with the X3100 graphics drivers from 10.6.2. But I don't get QE/CI, just correct resolution. Do you think it is more likely that someone will come up with better 64-bit drivers for these graphics cards or that someone will come up with a 32-bit kernel for ML?

 

Not sure if a 32 bit kernel will do the trick or they removed 32 bit support completely in ML. In regards to new video drivers, I reckon that this is highly unlikely. Look at the virtualization section, they have been struggeling for years to get a driver w qe/ci support and are nowhere near. afaik there is no single video driver in the wild that comes from the community, and you won't see anything from either apple or intel here

[Bunta 0]

Question; will ML actually boot up on a C2D Macbook running GMA950, in-terms of it actually showing somesort of GUI so that you can run kext utility to install the 10.6.2 kexts?

[crumpo 4]

there is a guide on macrumours that has more details and explains what is working and what not

[crumpo 4]

Now that the new kernel sources are out http://opensource.apple.com/release/mac-os-x-108/, could someone with a deeper knowledge comment on if it would be doable and feasable to bring 32 bit kext support back to ml?

[Dr. Hurt 227]

Hey guys,

Netkas has compiled a 32-bit version of XNU kernel. Could someone please try it as I'm currently away from my ML system?

http://rghost.net/39532549

 

I'm not sure if it'll work though since some essential kexts may lack the required 32-bit code!

 

back up the original kernel as follows:

sudo -s

mv /mach_kernel /old

 

and copy the new kernel to the root directory, and boot using arch=i386 in the boot.plist.

 

If you get a kernel panic, boot using "old -x" at chameleon prompt.

[leox86pc 0]

Wow,,wonderful thanks a lot Dr.hurt!

it's worked in Mountain Lion!

 

Key, use stock kernel Intel GMA 950 kext's from 10.6.2 update + modified by using DSDT metode.

My spek is : Intel Dual Core E2140 + Gigabyte GA-945GCM-S2C + RAM 3 GB

but, my sound ALC 662 still kernel panic with using various VoodooHDA.kext. any suggest for this?

 

Hey guys,

Netkas has compiled a 32-bit version of XNU kernel. Could someone please try it as I'm currently away from my ML system?

http://rghost.net/39532549

I'd tried this mach_kernel, but still got kernel panic.

- backup original mach_kernel + system.kext

- copy modified mach_kernel + system.kext from netkass

- i used bootflag: -v -f arch=i386

- finally, always got kernel panic.

[RCOO 5]

So, does replacing the mach_kernel actually work for full QE/CI on X3100 using 32 bit drivers?

[GnatGoSplat 0]

I tried this with 10.8.2 on an old Jetway J9F2-KHDE motherboard. It boots and detects 1920x1200 resolution, shows the gray login wallpaper and mouse cursor, but no login. Does this problem sound familiar to anyone?

[chrisrand 3]

I wish this topic would have been more active from its inception.  Though now it has fizzled away, I am reviving it in hopes of it not dieing all together.

 

Now that OS X 10.9 Mavericks has come out, maybe there will be more interested in postponing the death of our systems, both official Apple computers and Hackintoshs alike.

 

Thank you and have a good night.

[BuXb 76]

Any news here?

 

[Hervé 1,913]

@BuXb None, especially 8 years after this thread was created and 7 years after its last got a contribution.

 

In case you missed it all over the last 8 years, support for GMA950 (and others such as GMA X3100, GeForce GT7xxx) was dropped in 2012 when ML was introduced with 64bit-only kernel and kexts.

 

A special hack called MLPF was developed soon afterwards in order to run ML on platforms with such GPUs. The hack basically consisted of reverting the kernel, the kexts and several graphics-related frameworks to versions of ML DP1, the only ML version that was released in fat-binary mode. From DP2, it was 64bit only. There never was support for GMA950 (and others) in 64bit kernel mode, so ML had to be run in 32bit kernel mode to obtain graphics acceleration. The fat-binary graphics kexts provided in 10.6.2 were very buggy in 64bit mode and hardly usable.

 

This hack was limited to ML and no hacks provided support for those old and obsolete GPUs in subsequent OS X/macOS versions. A link to the old 2012 thread at MacRumors was provided above, you may refer to it.

 

I had posted a few guides re: installation of MLPF'ed ML on GMA950/GMX X3100/GeForce GT7xxx Hacks back in 2013 but it would appear the thread disappeared in some distant past.

 

Copies still exist here at OSXL.

 

Let's lock this defunct topic