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neither of them work..

i had to resort to putting my evga 7900 gtx 256 meg card in the box for the time being.

From what i can tell the 256 meg version of the 8400gs works but the 512 meg version is not supported as of yet.

 

When i install it goes fine then you reboot and it goes right to a black screen.

  • 2 weeks later...

Hi, I have this same card. The Device ID is 0x0404 so it's recognized by nvinject but the dvi doesn't work (black screen). I booted once with dvi and vga connected and the dvi monitor did come on and show my background image, but it seemed like it was the extended desktop and the vga monitor didn't come on at all.

 

I had a different 512 8400GS that worked great... I'm a bit bummed now.

 

Anyone have any suggestions?

Hi, I have this same card. The Device ID is 0x0404 so it's recognized by nvinject but the dvi doesn't work (black screen). I booted once with dvi and vga connected and the dvi monitor did come on and show my background image, but it seemed like it was the extended desktop and the vga monitor didn't come on at all.

 

I had a different 512 8400GS that worked great... I'm a bit bummed now.

 

Anyone have any suggestions?

 

I have the XFX 8400GS 512MB card and got it to work (1280 x 1024, QE/CI enabled) by doing the following:

  1. Changed the DeviceID under the key <IOPCIPrimaryMatch> in each of the Info.plist files to 0x042410de under the following KEXTs; NVDANV10Hal NVDANV30Hal NVDANV50Hal NVDANV20Hal NVDANV40Hal NVDAResman GeForce
  2. Followed this tutorial to generate GFX string for EFI replacing the NVCAP value in the template.plist file to 04000000 00000300 04000000 00000007 00000000 (to enable DVI output). Note: You will need PlistEditPro (link) to edit the plist file as the NVCAP is a binary value.
  3. Removing NVinject.kext

HTH

 

Chagani

  • 3 weeks later...
  • 2 months later...

I'm having the same problems as you all with the 8400gs 512mb. Its very frustrating because somehow a few installs ago it just WORKED, DVI, dual screen and all and I figured it wasn't a big deal but it didn't have quartz extreme enabled. So I started tweaking my kext's and lost the DVI support. Somehow amidst many attempts it miraculously worked though so let it be known it can be done. Also, this was before I knew what an NVCAP was and didn't need to edit those, but now I'm very frustrated.

 

It's apparently an issue with the 512mb version. I don't know if its due to that amount of memory or the card itself. If I find a workaround I'll upload my kext's and hopefully if anyone else is lucky they'll do the same :D

I have the XFX 8400GS 512MB card and got it to work (1280 x 1024, QE/CI enabled) by doing the following:
  1. Changed the DeviceID under the key <IOPCIPrimaryMatch> in each of the Info.plist files to 0x042410de under the following KEXTs; NVDANV10Hal NVDANV30Hal NVDANV50Hal NVDANV20Hal NVDANV40Hal NVDAResman GeForce
  2. Followed this tutorial to generate GFX string for EFI replacing the NVCAP value in the template.plist file to 04000000 00000300 04000000 00000007 00000000 (to enable DVI output). Note: You will need PlistEditPro (link) to edit the plist file as the NVCAP is a binary value.
  3. Removing NVinject.kext

HTH

 

Chagani

 

@Chagani, Thanks for info on this. I got a successful boot (1680x1050 resolution w/ QE) using this method but not with dual displays. My DeviceID is 0x0404 could this having something to do with that you think?

  • 3 weeks later...

I wanted to add a post to possibly help to clarify how I got an 8400GS 512mb working with QE/CI enabled. I'm using the following system:

 

Dell Vostro 200 slim

1.6 ghz core duo

1gb 800 MHz ddr2 memory

80 GB hard disk

 

This system has a Foxconn motherboard running ICH9 chipset from intel, GMA900 graphics built-in from intel, an intel based ethernet built-in, and ALC888 built-in sound. Everything is working except the built-in ethernet and I don't care about that as I put a RTL8169-based card in (I had to remove the front plate to get it to fit the slim case) and OS X recognized it straight away. Coincidentally, I believe those experiencing the welcome movie loop problem are getting that due to the lack of a proper network connection. For the number of times I have installed OS X on the two systems I'm using it on, every time I had no working network the welcome movie loop problem came up and when the networks were available during install, I breezed through the setup screens with no problems.

 

To start, I put the 8400GS card in (specifically, it is a Video-PX8400GS-Ex 512mb card from JATON which I picked up from newegg.com in a low-profile form factor for the vostro 200 slim. I installed Leo4allv3 on the hard drive (partitioned MBR and formatted HFS Journaled; no dual-booting as I use KVM switch for using other OSes) making sure to select "customize" and third-party drivers: Chipsets ICHx, Audio ALC888, **Graphics drivers for GMA900 and NVInject. Upon boot I discovered the 512MB VRAM problem and the system would hang after just before the GUI took over.

 

I followed the fix provided by Chagani but I wanted to add precise details of how I accomplished it. Since the system wouldn't boot to GUI with the 8400GS installed, I used an ubuntu 8.04 live CD to boot to Linux desktop to run lspci -nn to obtain the DeviceID, which turned out to be 0x06e410de. lspci lists the device ID with the segments backwards such as [10de:06e4]. I then removed the 8400GS, booted to the GUI using the built-in video adapter, and downloaded the files gfxutil and template.plist. I used textmate to then edit the kexts listed by Chagani: Geforce.kext, NVDANV10Hal.kext, HVDANV20Hal.kext, HVDANV30Hal.kext, HVDANV40Hal.kext, HVDANV50Hal.kext, NVDAResman.kext. Under <key>IOPCIPrimaryMatch</key> insert the DeviceID: I appended 0x06e410de to the end of each list instead of replacing the entire list. I then deleted NVInject.kext (or rather moved it to my desktop instead of having it in /System/Library/Extensions. Then I turned off the system, reinstalled the 8400GS, and rebooted. It still hung at the point of switching to GUI control but that was okay as I simply rebooted with -s switch, mounted the file system using the following commands:

/sbin/fsck -fy

/sbin/mount -uw /

cd to Users/<username>/Desktop to find gfxutil and template.plist from osx86.wikidot.com/how-to-s/#toc6. run command ./gfxutil -f display to get PciRoot string. I then used nano to edit template.plist to change the PciRoot string at the top and edit the model name. Then I ran gfxutil -i xml -o hex ./template.plist ./out.hex . That saved the huge hex string for the graphics display in the file out.hex. I turned off the computer, removed the 8400GS, restarted to desktop with built-in video, edited /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.boot.plist and added the lines from the wiki:

<key>device-properties</key>

<string>LONG HEX STRING</string> copying and pasting hex string from out.hex.

 

Powered off, inserted 8400GS, booted, and voila: now running 8400GS QE/CI 1280x1024. System Profiler is showing 256MB RAM but I really don't care about that.

 

Hope this helps someone that may be a bit new to this mess.

 

bh

Thanks bh for the detailed heroic effort!

 

Are you able to select higher resolutions? Also, is it DVI or VGA output you ar getting?

 

I haven't been able to get my 8400GS 512MB to work yet, I also tried the gfx string, but I probably did not change the device ids in those kexts.

 

Also using the efi util, what string did you fill in in the model name? Is it realy important or is it just a cosmetic thing that shows up in the profiler under Displays?

 

Thanks!

  • 2 months later...
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