Panther 10.3 and 10.2.7 and Old Video Cards |
October, 29, 2003 4:52 PM |
joevt |
Is anyone currently running Panther (I know it doesn't work on Old World Macs yet)? Do you get a "ROM ndrv for ??? is too old" message in verbose mode when using an old video card (or maybe built-in video) and are the number of resolutions limited or set to grayscale? I saw on xlr8yourmac.com a note refering to an Apple article http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=25582 which says: "If your video card's ROM (or firmware) is older than March 2003, Mac OS X 10.3 will not load the ROM driver during start up. Instead, it will try to load a newer software driver file if one is present. Make sure the installed driver works with Mac OS X Panther." I looked at the Darwin Panther Source code (IOGraphics) and found that the exact date is actually: March 2, 2001 12:00 AM Maybe the Darwin code is older than the release code of Panther and the date has been updated to 2003? It looks like this date check was added in 10.2.7 (which uses the 2001 date). Has anyone seen video problems with 10.2.8 and old video cards? It looks like the code will ignore the date of you add something like this romndrv=1 to the boot-args. I don't have Panther right now so I can't test that. This info might be useful for Old World Macs when Ryan finishes adding Panther support to XPostFacto. Maybe he's already addressed the video problem if it exists. |
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RE: Panther 10.3 and 10.2.7 and Old Video Cards |
October, 31, 2003 10:38 PM |
lyonsdj88 |
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jseling, it won't work. You can flash a GF2MX 400 PCI with a NV10 chip and it will work. Most of the later GF2MX 200 cards are NV11 chips and won't work unless you change the firmware to match NV11. |
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RE: Panther 10.3 and 10.2.7 and Old Video Cards |
October, 31, 2003 6:21 PM |
jseling |
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Just adding my 2 cents here but I have seen a couple of PCI 4mx cards (forget what brand they are)as well as the new PC 9100? (ala 8500)PCI cards. I have been trying to find out if I could flash a new ATI PC card for MY BW. I wonder if a 4MX PCI would boot into OS X with out flashing in a BW? |
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RE: Panther 10.3 and 10.2.7 and Old Video Cards |
October, 31, 2003 10:03 AM |
nees |
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I just thought I might bring this to peoples attention here. I saw this on the xlr8 web site today and thought it might be applicable. Be sure to read everything. "Reader Tip/Fix for 'Rom too Old' Graphics card problems in 10.3 - (Update - although he didn't say what video card he had, one reader wrote to say that the tweak below "...rendered my Dual 867 G4 unbootable. I had to reinstall Panther." - I wrote to ask what graphics card (or cards) he was using. Since it's a nvram mod, I wonder if he mistyped the command. I don't know why a nvram tweak would be fixed by an OS re-install (vs clearing nvram). If any other readers using an old graphics card with 10.3 problems see anything similar - let me know, and include details in reports. Thanks.) I don't have any Macs running 10.3 with an old graphics card (3dfx, older ATI card, etc.) - but a reader sent a note with a tip for the 'rom too old' error reported previously by users of some older graphics cards: " Mike, Read this on the Apple Discussion board and tried it with a 3dfx Voodoo3 2000. Type this in the 10.3 Terminal: sudo nvram boot-args="romndrv=1" (enter admin password) This worked on my Quicksilver G4, running OS X 10.3, ATI Radeon 7500 (stock) and the 3dfx card. -David " I assume he had the problem of only 640x480/256 color mode before and asked if this resulted in more resolution/color depth options and he said yes. (But it won't add 3d/opengl acceleration for the 3dfx cards - there are no drivers for them in OS X.) He also said this is reported to help older ATI cards with the problem also (such as the B&W G3 RagePro/VR cards perhaps) but I don't have the Apple forum thread link to see what others reported on using it. If any other readers that had problems with older graphics cards try this tip let me know if it helps. (Include system and graphics card details in reports - thanks)."" |
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RE: Panther 10.3 and 10.2.7 and Old Video Cards |
October, 30, 2003 11:21 AM |
joevt |
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Do you think you'll use the one from pre-Panther OS X or will there be some legal issue with that? We discussed the control.ndrv before. Remember that the control.ndrv that OS X uses is a patched version from Mac OS 8.0 which is a newer version than the one in the Mac ROM but it is older than the latest included with 9.1. It does not exist in a clean install of 9.2. If you want, I could tell you what bytes need to be changed in the 9.1 version so that it has the same patches as the 8.0 version so that you could make XPostFacto copy it from the OS 9.1 System file and modify it to make it compatible with OS X. I don't know yet if the 9.1 version will be compatible with OS X after making the patches though. |
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RE: Panther 10.3 and 10.2.7 and Old Video Cards |
October, 30, 2003 9:16 AM |
OSXGuru |
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What I haven't quite figured out yet is whether the lock-out of older ROMs is based on some actual change in the IONDRVFramebuffer class that would make the older ROMs problematic, or whether it's just arbitrary. My best guess at this point is that it's arbitrary, but we'll see. I'll either add an option to XPF to generate the romndrv=1 boot argument, or I'll just subclass IONDRVFramebuffer to get rid of the date check. In some ways, the romndrv=1 option is better, but I hate to use up precious NVRAM :-) The other thing I need to do is figure out how to get the control.ndrv back into the equation (for built-in video). Pre-panther versions of Mac OS X picked it up from / System/Library/Extensions/AppleNDRV, but it's no longer there. I've got several options for putting it back--I should have something worked out this weekend. |
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RE: Panther 10.3 and 10.2.7 and Old Video Cards |
October, 30, 2003 1:16 AM |
joevt |
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Since most firmware is from before March 2003, I would guess that the Apple article is wrong and should say March 2001. The date that is being checked comes from the ndrv driver which is either in the card's Mac firmware (Open Firmware code) in the "driver,AAPL,MacOS,PowerPC" property or is stored in the AppleNDRV folder. Built-in video support on Old World Macs depends on the ndrv's in the Mac's Open Firmware or in the AppleNDRV folder (chips65550.ndrv and control.ndrv; I'm not sure about Macs that have built-in ATI chips). Maybe built-in video problems are caused by this date check? Maybe the date check exists because Apple removed some code that made those ndrv's work? The date check only affects ndrv drivers. It shouldn't affect cards that have real OS X kext drivers. I don't think Ryan has created a bug for the built-in video problem yet so I don't know what he's seen so far. |
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RE: Panther 10.3 and 10.2.7 and Old Video Cards |
October, 30, 2003 12:39 AM |
willschou1 |
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I am reasonably sure Ryan will be adding the missing Video drivers files back to XPFacto for us ;-) It does seem Apple is dropping support files left and right but Ryan is good at keeping up with them! |
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RE: Panther 10.3 and 10.2.7 and Old Video Cards |
October, 30, 2003 12:23 AM |
lyonsdj88 |
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I've seen it and it seems foolish. After 10.0-10.1.5 broke 3dfx cards and 10.2 brought them back I thought Apple may be moving to generic 2D/3D. What cards have a dated firmware after 3/2003, not many. This is a work a round for NOT putting out new Fcode Roms for video cards some of us like to flash from PC. Remember the last NVIDIA firmware update was for JAG and I was hoping 10.3 would break some of the code and new firmware would be coming. Now the old firmware will be fine to boot and the new firmware takes over before Quartz loads. ATI will also use this for ALL firmware updates to come. NO MORE ROMS FOR YOU DIRTY LITTLE PC HARDWARE FLASHERS. SHAME ON YOU FOR BUYING $42 PC CARDS AND NOT PAYING $129.99 OR MORE FOR A CARD WITH NO FEATURE CONTROL. Seems to be the same deal for DiscBurn. NO IF YOU WANT A FASTER DRIVE TO WORK WITH ITUNES YOU WILL HAVE TO BUY A NEW MAC. You know NVIDIA makes MOMBO's too all I need to go Linux x86 is NVIDIA to do a Linux OS. If NV goes 'nix with there own OS and cheap PC hardware the games and pro apps will fallow. Won't hurt Redman as much a Computo' |
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RE: Panther 10.3 and 10.2.7 and Old Video Cards |
October, 29, 2003 6:16 PM |
tempest |
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How old is old? I think my Radeon 7K is old, but 10.2.8 uses it without any problems. Ryan has stated in his log that his remaining problem with Panther support is built-in video. Other outstanding problems have been resolved. |
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RE: Panther 10.3 and 10.2.7 and Old Video Cards |
October, 29, 2003 5:28 PM |
nick.ashton |
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I did see a report that this problem was related to nVidia GeForce 2MX and 4MX cards but I can't confirm that is the case. However, as far as I am aware none of these cards is available in a PCI version to run on old-world machines so maybe we won't have to worry about it. |