munky Posted January 19, 2006 Share Posted January 19, 2006 (edited) Ok, just wanted to outline a theory here. There have been separate confirmations of GMA900-based and ATI X1600-based machines booting succecssfully with the relevant 10.4.4 kexts, but ending up with a totally black screen with a mouse pointer. In this state, the machine appears to be running, remote login and system_profiler reveal QE and CI as 'supported', and issuing a reboot command reveals the light-blue screen with the progress spinner before powering down. My theory is that this black screen is NOT the result of incompatability or error, but is deliberate behaviour when some apple-specific string is not found in the firmware of the card, or possibly if 10.4.4 kernel is not running. I have suggested a couple things to the dude who is testing his X1600 (trying to restart windowserver etc to see if there's any signs of life). Anyone else have any thoughts/ideas on this? EDIT: restarting the window server revealed a light blue screen also. Edited January 19, 2006 by munky Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/7182-black-screen-with-ati-gma900-1044-drivers/ Share on other sites More sharing options...
munky Posted January 19, 2006 Author Share Posted January 19, 2006 cmon.. someone must have an opinion on this? maybe the windowserver sits on top of whatever basic gui environment loads first, and maybe its just the windowserver environment which is blacked out. would explain the pale blue screens seen when restarting w/s and when shutting down. how we even begin to dig into what the driver is looking for is anyone's guess. who has experience of tinkering with the drivers? care to give any advice so we can try to get X1600 working? Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/7182-black-screen-with-ati-gma900-1044-drivers/#findComment-44933 Share on other sites More sharing options...
ajv Posted January 19, 2006 Share Posted January 19, 2006 Just cross posting my X1600 experiments. Rebooting the windowserver only makes the mouse pointer dissapear for a second... no blue screen. Rebooting the loginwindow is what gives the blue screen, so maybe the problem is there. Changing SystemVersion.plist to fake a 10.4.4 8G1165 install had no effect. I'd be willing to give ssh access to some kext hacker known on the boards to poke around if they want. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/7182-black-screen-with-ati-gma900-1044-drivers/#findComment-45094 Share on other sites More sharing options...
suleiman Posted January 19, 2006 Share Posted January 19, 2006 a very quick and easy way to find out if this is "apple protection" or another problem with the kexts: try plugging in an external monitor to your laptops and see if it boots past the blue screen. Us GMA900 users have been stuck with this problem since the days of 10.4.1's inauguration back in August! Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/7182-black-screen-with-ati-gma900-1044-drivers/#findComment-45097 Share on other sites More sharing options...
xtraa Posted January 20, 2006 Share Posted January 20, 2006 (edited) Just cross posting my X1600 experiments. Rebooting the windowserver only makes the mouse pointer dissapear for a second... no blue screen. Rebooting the loginwindow is what gives the blue screen, so maybe the problem is there. Changing SystemVersion.plist to fake a 10.4.4 8G1165 install had no effect. I'd be willing to give ssh access to some kext hacker known on the boards to poke around if they want. I had exact the same issues. fortunately, i was able to hit the shutdown-line in the menue "blind". But before that, when I started up in verbose mode, it told me that the windowserver could not find the display. So I had all three possibility bootups here (ok except a panic ) - black screen with mouse - multicolored fractal screen - and the "not booting into gui" commandline stuck. But even in the commandline, I could start and hear frontrow with my hotbutton, and everything was working fine. //oh, I have an Ati x300 PCIe running here. Edited January 20, 2006 by xtraa Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/7182-black-screen-with-ati-gma900-1044-drivers/#findComment-45137 Share on other sites More sharing options...
ajv Posted January 20, 2006 Share Posted January 20, 2006 I had exact the same issues. fortunately, i was able to hit the shutdown-line in the menue "blind". But before that, when I started up in verbose mode, it told me that the windowserver could not find the display. Now that is interesting. I noticed from the system profile that the display name was in what looked to be Korean. Maybe loginwindow chokes on that. Does anyone know how to change the display name? I'll grep though the whole filesystem and see if can find where the string is stored. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/7182-black-screen-with-ati-gma900-1044-drivers/#findComment-45152 Share on other sites More sharing options...
ajv Posted January 20, 2006 Share Posted January 20, 2006 (edited) If I kextunload -c com.apple.ATIRadeonX1000, and hup the windowserver, the screen comes back. Additional info from kextstat: com.apple.ATIRadeonX1000 (65) is linked against 50, 49, 16 and 11 which are: com.apple.iokit.IONDRVSupport (50) com.apple.iokit.IOGraphicsFamily (49) com.apple.iokit.IOPCIFamily (16) com.apple.kernel.6.0 (11) copying IONDVRSupport, IOGraphicsFamily and IOPCIFamily from 10.4.4 extensions didn't help. ugh... and now that I've copied over those extra kexts from 10.4.4, unloading X1000 and HUPing the windowserver doesn't fix it anymore. I have to actually remove the X1000 kext and reboot. Strange... Edited January 20, 2006 by ajv Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/7182-black-screen-with-ati-gma900-1044-drivers/#findComment-45163 Share on other sites More sharing options...
munky Posted January 20, 2006 Author Share Posted January 20, 2006 (edited) waitwaitwait.... looking back at your original system_profiler post... it still reports the bus as PCI. iMac Core Duo reports the bus as PCIe: http://appleintelfaq.com/imac/system_profiler.html maybe we need to find/enable the kext which does this - maybe this is why windowserver cant find the display? anyone have any info on the linkage on the iMac ? perhaps we could enlist kinkadius to assist with his iMac Core Duo Edited January 20, 2006 by munky Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/7182-black-screen-with-ati-gma900-1044-drivers/#findComment-45322 Share on other sites More sharing options...
munky Posted January 20, 2006 Author Share Posted January 20, 2006 ajv? what do you think dude? i think getting it recognised as PCIe would be a step in the right direction at least... (ok i should've just said 'bump' and be done with it...) Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/7182-black-screen-with-ati-gma900-1044-drivers/#findComment-45612 Share on other sites More sharing options...
ajv Posted January 21, 2006 Share Posted January 21, 2006 I can't find the IOPCI2PCIBridge.kext you mentioned in the other thread. Where did you see it? Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/7182-black-screen-with-ati-gma900-1044-drivers/#findComment-45744 Share on other sites More sharing options...
supermegatron Posted January 21, 2006 Share Posted January 21, 2006 has anyone tried using vnc to see if the os actually loads? even with the black screen we could use the vnc client to unload and load kexts Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/7182-black-screen-with-ati-gma900-1044-drivers/#findComment-45861 Share on other sites More sharing options...
ajv Posted January 21, 2006 Share Posted January 21, 2006 os loads fine, as I mentioned i can ssh in and everything works. It's only the gui that's blacked out. Even the mouse works. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/7182-black-screen-with-ati-gma900-1044-drivers/#findComment-45957 Share on other sites More sharing options...
munky Posted January 21, 2006 Author Share Posted January 21, 2006 hey guys, ajv: its not a kext, its a class in the heirarchy, shown in the ioreg output from appleintelfaq.com - i think its the thing that does the bridging between the CPU and the PCI-E bus. we need someone with experience in the mac os x kexts to help us figure out which kext is running. if we could find out the device ID of the PCI-E controller on the iMac, that might be a start - we could look for that ID in the kexts. im kinda at my depth here... anyone else shed some light?? Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/7182-black-screen-with-ati-gma900-1044-drivers/#findComment-46006 Share on other sites More sharing options...
np_ Posted January 23, 2006 Share Posted January 23, 2006 Ok, just wanted to outline a theory here. There have been separate confirmations of GMA900-based and ATI X1600-based machines booting succecssfully with the relevant 10.4.4 kexts, but ending up with a totally black screen with a mouse pointer. In this state, the machine appears to be running, remote login and system_profiler reveal QE and CI as 'supported', and issuing a reboot command reveals the light-blue screen with the progress spinner before powering down. My theory is that this black screen is NOT the result of incompatability or error, but is deliberate behaviour when some apple-specific string is not found in the firmware of the card, or possibly if 10.4.4 kernel is not running. I have suggested a couple things to the dude who is testing his X1600 (trying to restart windowserver etc to see if there's any signs of life). Anyone else have any thoughts/ideas on this? EDIT: restarting the window server revealed a light blue screen also. i forget this also can be caused about to big resolution framebuffer can't handle ( apart of broken OpenGL plugin ) (i seen same efect puishing framebuffer to do 2560x1600 before to start NV driver ) these intel iMac and iBook comes with LCD's my bet there max res is hard coded ( to avoid work on low level driver more easy is add hard coded res's ) munky did you try with lower res like 1024x768 ? or 800x600 ? what's this intel iMac/Book mas res supported ? Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/7182-black-screen-with-ati-gma900-1044-drivers/#findComment-47244 Share on other sites More sharing options...
munky Posted January 23, 2006 Author Share Posted January 23, 2006 hi dude.. i dont have an ATI card yet, so i cant try. ajv has an X1600 PCI-E, so maybe he could try? Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/7182-black-screen-with-ati-gma900-1044-drivers/#findComment-47259 Share on other sites More sharing options...
ajv Posted January 23, 2006 Share Posted January 23, 2006 (edited) no dice... I removed the GraphicsMode line entirely from boot.plist. It booted into 1024x768x32 but with the same black screen and (slightly larger) mouse pointer. And np_, what are you doing hang out round here?!? Get that macvidia driver out so I can put my 6600gt back in and be done with it. No worries... don't listen to any of those morons. It's your work. you can release the code or keep it as you want, but you don't need me tell you that. I think opening it up and ignoring the idiots is the best course, that's what I've done with my projects, but it's your call. In my experience the feedback is often valuable. Anyway this is getting off topic. Edited January 23, 2006 by ajv Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/7182-black-screen-with-ati-gma900-1044-drivers/#findComment-47271 Share on other sites More sharing options...
munky Posted January 24, 2006 Author Share Posted January 24, 2006 the native resolution of the 17'' iMac is 1440x900. dunno if this helps (i suspect not) Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/7182-black-screen-with-ati-gma900-1044-drivers/#findComment-47517 Share on other sites More sharing options...
xtraa Posted February 11, 2006 Share Posted February 11, 2006 Now that is interesting. I noticed from the system profile that the display name was in what looked to be Korean. Maybe loginwindow chokes on that. Does anyone know how to change the display name? I'll grep though the whole filesystem and see if can find where the string is stored. Yes, afaik you can change it in the com.apple.windowserver.plist. The funny thing is, that the x86 releases (except 10.4.4. on a real Macintel) does not even have this file. So thats why the driver is not able to load it: It is simply missing. I will try to test the new drivers with a 'selfmade' windowserver.plist, and see how far I get. My guess on this failure-loads is, that the graphics card just don't know how to handle the resolution, the Hz and the type of display. Additionally it could be caused by a wrong VRam. If any of these values could be entered correctly in the windowserver.plist, we may have a working solution. (I already sneaked a peek in the windowsereer.plist, and there are all values for displays, and even display- sets, e.g. dualmonitor setups) What do you think? Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/7182-black-screen-with-ati-gma900-1044-drivers/#findComment-55339 Share on other sites More sharing options...
xiberia Posted February 11, 2006 Share Posted February 11, 2006 i tried putting in a windowserver.plist, didn't make any difference. still just get a pointer and not much else. i get display: vram error on boot, so maybe thats it. dunno Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/7182-black-screen-with-ati-gma900-1044-drivers/#findComment-55376 Share on other sites More sharing options...
jb_gmd Posted February 24, 2006 Share Posted February 24, 2006 I think this has something to do with IO ranges and memory ranges. I was wondering if anyone has tried to hack current ATI9700 driver to accept the correct IO/memory ranges? I am trying to figure it out tell me if I'm crazy I just found this inside the ATI9700 driver. It looks like an error handling part but looks like it might point to not finding it on the PCI:E bus. ATI_PCIe:startupPCIeGART () (findPCICapability(kIOPCIPCIExpressCapability) failed, IGNORING...)..ATIRadeon9700::wait_for_rb_space: Overflowed block waiting for FIFO space. Have %lu, need %lu. RBBM_STATUS 0x%08x.....set_display_mode_and_vram failed. This error matches up with the error that comes up in the system log. Feb 19 20:02:30 admins-computer kernel[0]: ATIRadeon9700::wait_for_rb_space: Overflowed block waiting for FIFO space. Have 0, need 5. RBBM_STATUS 0x80114100 I will look into it more to see if I can find out what is actually going on. As a side note could someone tell me a good hex editor for OSX? Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/7182-black-screen-with-ati-gma900-1044-drivers/#findComment-62083 Share on other sites More sharing options...
munky Posted February 24, 2006 Author Share Posted February 24, 2006 dude... this is an old thread. the issues can be resolved by upgrading to 10.4.4 or 10.4.5, afaik. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/7182-black-screen-with-ati-gma900-1044-drivers/#findComment-62349 Share on other sites More sharing options...
cljtam Posted February 25, 2006 Share Posted February 25, 2006 So if I have 10.4.5, is 1600 APG / PCIE card work out of the box? Thanks Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/7182-black-screen-with-ati-gma900-1044-drivers/#findComment-63121 Share on other sites More sharing options...
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