No Quartz Extreme Love: PNY 9800GT EB

[whozurmommy]

I'm a OSX86 newbie and trying to get Snow Leopard running. Everything is pretty much working EXCEPT Quartz Extreme.

My system:

MB: Gigabyte EX58-UD5
video card: PNY 9800GT EB 512MB RAM

I've tried everything, including my latest attempt, which is to use your single card GFX Strings tutorial. It seemed to have improve something on my system, because now I'm able to watch HD trailers fullscreen and it looks good. I'm also able to play Neverball. But when I add an item on the F12 windows (not sure what these widgets are called)...I do NOT get a ripple effect. The screensaver seems to be struggling (though I am running at 1920x1200). I am not able to play DVD's with the DVD Player as it gives me a error saying "Initialization Error..."

It seems to me that QE is not installed, but let me know if there is a more concrete way of determining it.

BTW, I followed the LifeHacker tutorial to make it this far, and found a EXTRA folder from another EX58-UD5 user in another forum to get my KEXT's in order. So now I have a Install Flash drive that I am booting from and manually switching to my MAC partition. Perhaps this is my problem (not sure). Do I need to make my hard drive bootable to get this working? A tool I found asks if I want an EFI partition or a System Bootloader (I guess EXTRA folder). I'm not sure which method is better, but I've been going with the System Bootloader method in the past (where past = the last 20 times I've reinstalled the Mac OS trying to get this working). I'm hoping to dual boot Win7 and OSX86.

Any help getting this working would be greatly appreciated.

[aquamac]

I guess your system disk is not formatted as GUID if you are using windows on the same disk and that your disk is formatted as MBR. I have never really advocated putting these 2 operating systems on the same HDD and I would always format a mac system disk as GUID just like Apple do. Are you using 10.5.8??

[whozurmommy]

Am I using 10.5.8?

I guess I'm not sure what your asking about. I'm trying to install Snow Leopard 10.6. Is that your question? I built my flash drive using a new MacBook Pro which is 10.5.6. I haven't even tried installing Win7 on the drive yet. Following the LifeHacker tutorial I created 3 partitions on my one drive, the first being a MS-FAT partition, then a MAC partition then another MS-FAT partition. I DID select the GUID partition option. Do you think the disk partitions are effecting my video cards ability to support Quartz Extreme? Or are you just concerned that I'm setting myself up for more pain when I install Win7 on my first partition? I can always install another drive if you think it will help. At this point though I'm more concerned about seeing if my hardware will support the Mac OS.

[aquamac]

I was trying to work out how you had got Snow Leo onto your partition, some people have used the OSInstall.mpkge whilst booted from an existing working install of Leopard.

I would personally try putting the install on it's own drive formatted as GUID. It does sound like QE is not working although it is no longer mentioned any more in System profiler in Snow Leopard. You can check by opening up the chess program and trying to move a piece. If you can move, then it is working. It should not be a problem booting from a pen-drive, that is the method I am using with the latest version of chameleon. You can also try putting your copy of the com.apple.boot.plist in both your Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration folder and your extra folder. This is what mine looks like for my snow leopard install:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>Graphics Mode</key>
<string>1680x1050x32</string>
<key>Kernel</key>
<string>mach_kernel</string>
<key>Kernel Flags</key>
<string>arch=x86_64</string>
<key>device-properties</key>
<string>120c00000100000003000000020400001600000002010c00d041030a000000000101060000030101060000000101060000020101060000007fff040014000000400032002c006e0061006d00650000001100000073656e736f722d706172656e74220000005600520041004d002c0074006f00740061006c00730069007a0065000000080000000000004036000000400032002c00680077006300740072006c002d0070006100720061006d0073002d00760065007200730069006f006e00000008000000000000021c0000006400650076006900630065005f0074007900700065000000100000004e5644412c4765466f7263650e0000006e0061006d00650000000f0000004e5644412c506172656e7422000000400030002c006400650076006900630065005f00740079007000650000000b000000646973706c6179100000006d006f00640065006c0000001e0000004e5649444941204765466f72636520475458203238302044444c22000000400031002c006400650076006900630065005f00740079007000650000000b000000646973706c617912000000400032002c007200650067000000080000000000000222000000400032002c006400650076006900630065005f0074007900700065000000120000004e5644412c6770752d64696f646520000000400032002c0063006f006d00700061007400690062006c0065000000160000004e5644412c73656e736f722d706172656e7422000000400032002c002300730069007a0065002d00630065006c006c0073000000080000000000000020000000400031002c0063006f006d00700061007400690062006c00650000000e0000004e5644412c4e564d616314000000400030002c006e0061006d0065000000120000004e5644412c446973706c61792d41220000004100410050004c002c0073006c006f0074002d006e0061006d00650000000f0000005043496520536c6f7420333a000000400032002c0068007700730065006e0073006f0072002d0070006100720061006d0073002d00760065007200730069006f006e000000080000000000000226000000400032002c0023006100640072006500730073002d00630065006c006c0073000000080000000000000114000000400031002c006e0061006d0065000000120000004e5644412c446973706c61792d4220000000400030002c0063006f006d00700061007400690062006c00650000000e0000004e5644412c4e564d61631e00000072006f006d002d007200650076006900730069006f006e000000090000003331373261100000004e00560043004100500000001800000004000000000003000000000000000007000000000e0000004e00560050004d0000002000000001000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000020400001600000002010c00d041030a000000000101060000070101060000000101060000000101060000007fff040014000000400032002c006e0061006d00650000001100000073656e736f722d706172656e74220000005600520041004d002c0074006f00740061006c00730069007a0065000000080000000000004036000000400032002c00680077006300740072006c002d0070006100720061006d0073002d00760065007200730069006f006e00000008000000000000021c0000006400650076006900630065005f0074007900700065000000100000004e5644412c4765466f7263650e0000006e0061006d00650000000f0000004e5644412c506172656e7422000000400030002c006400650076006900630065005f00740079007000650000000b000000646973706c6179100000006d006f00640065006c0000001e0000004e5649444941204765466f72636520475458203238302044444c22000000400031002c006400650076006900630065005f00740079007000650000000b000000646973706c617912000000400032002c007200650067000000080000000000000222000000400032002c006400650076006900630065005f0074007900700065000000120000004e5644412c6770752d64696f646520000000400032002c0063006f006d00700061007400690062006c0065000000160000004e5644412c73656e736f722d706172656e7422000000400032002c002300730069007a0065002d00630065006c006c0073000000080000000000000020000000400031002c0063006f006d00700061007400690062006c00650000000e0000004e5644412c4e564d616314000000400030002c006e0061006d0065000000120000004e5644412c446973706c61792d41220000004100410050004c002c0073006c006f0074002d006e0061006d00650000000f0000005043496520536c6f7420353a000000400032002c0068007700730065006e0073006f0072002d0070006100720061006d0073002d00760065007200730069006f006e000000080000000000000226000000400032002c0023006100640072006500730073002d00630065006c006c0073000000080000000000000114000000400031002c006e0061006d0065000000120000004e5644412c446973706c61792d4220000000400030002c0063006f006d00700061007400690062006c00650000000e0000004e5644412c4e564d61631e00000072006f006d002d007200650076006900730069006f006e000000090000003331373261100000004e00560043004100500000001800000004000000000003000000000000000007000000000e0000004e00560050004d0000002000000001000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000020400001600000002010c00d041030a000000000101060000030101060000000101060000000101060000007fff040014000000400032002c006e0061006d00650000001100000073656e736f722d706172656e74220000005600520041004d002c0074006f00740061006c00730069007a0065000000080000000000004036000000400032002c00680077006300740072006c002d0070006100720061006d0073002d00760065007200730069006f006e00000008000000000000021c0000006400650076006900630065005f0074007900700065000000100000004e5644412c4765466f7263650e0000006e0061006d00650000000f0000004e5644412c506172656e7422000000400030002c006400650076006900630065005f00740079007000650000000b000000646973706c6179100000006d006f00640065006c0000001e0000004e5649444941204765466f72636520475458203238302044444c22000000400031002c006400650076006900630065005f00740079007000650000000b000000646973706c617912000000400032002c00720065006700000008000000000000022200000040003200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</dict>
</plist>

It is long but that is because it supports more than one card.

Can you post your System Profiler Output, it should look something like this, except for the different card of course:

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280 DDL:

Chipset Model: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280 DDL
Type: GPU
Bus: PCIe
Slot: Slot-1
PCIe Lane Width: x16
VRAM (Total): 1024 MB
Vendor: NVIDIA (0x10de)
Device ID: 0x05e1
Revision ID: 0x00a1
ROM Revision: 3172a
Displays:
Cinema HD:
Resolution: 2560 x 1600
Pixel Depth: 32-Bit Color (ARGB8888)
Main Display: Yes
Mirror: Off
Online: Yes
Rotation: Supported
Display Connector:
Status: No Display Connected

and also your PCI Root address which should look something like this:

PciRoot(0x0)/Pci(0x3,0x0)/Pci(0x0,0x0)/Pci(0x0,0x0)/Pci(0x0,0x0)

[whozurmommy]

I got Snow leopard on my partition by following the tutorial on Lifehacker. Here is the link (http://www.lifehacker.com.au/2009/09/how-to-build-a-hackintosh-with-snow-leopard-start-to-finish/)

Strange, I AM able to move a chess piece in the chess game, but even it seems shaky...like its running at 5 frames a second or something.

I just tried running OpenMark and it did not start stating: "OpenGL: Unable to choose the right pixel format for this device"

How am I supposed to know what kext is driving what hardware? I don't have any NV*Kexts anywhere and there are a ton of kext's in my extensions folder.

I'll try yet another re-install. I bought a new HD and this time I'll make the whole thing a MAC partition.

BTW, I don't have an EXTRA folder on my MAC partition as I've been booting off of the flash drive each time. I haven't wanted to mess with my flash drive EXTRA folder in fear that I'd corrupt it and have to rebuild it each time. Could this be part of my problem? I was assuming that flash drive files weren't important, but now that I look at it I see a ATY_Init.kext that might be my video card driver. Well I'll install a boot loader on my drive and see if that solves my problem. I'M SLOWLY STARTING TO GET THIS!

Here is the info you requested:

Chipset Model: NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT
Type: GPU
Bus: PCIe
PCIe Lane Width: x16
VRAM (Total): 512 MB
Vendor: NVIDIA (0x10de)
Device ID: 0x0614
Revision ID: 0x00a2
ROM Revision: netkas.org
Displays:
DS_245W:
Resolution: 1920 x 1200 @ 60 Hz
Pixel Depth: 32-Bit Color (ARGB8888)
Main Display: Yes
Mirror: Off
Online: Yes
Display Connector:
Status: No Display Connected


And here is the PCI root address as described by your gfxutil program:
PciRoot(0x1)/Pci(0x7,0x0)/Pci(0x0,0x0)

[aquamac]

Aha,

If you have ATY_nit.kext then that is what is initialising your drivers. This will overwrite your strings. So if you have GFX Strings installed you should delete this kext for the strings to work properly.