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For Testing: Drivers for Packard Bell EasyNote V7 This system is extremely close to the MacBook Pro and it uses EFI.
Following Drivers did NOT work:
- Omega Drivers
- Drivers for Acer Travelmate 8200
- Drivers for Asus A6J
- DNA Drivers
- ATI Catalyst Mobility drivers v5.13b
However, the ATI Catalyst Mobility drivers seem to be the best base for further testing as they identify the card properly and the INF files are good "out of the box" Download Here
Someone please confirm that the following registry settings contain driver information which could be modified/hacked to work with one of the drivers mentioned below: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E968-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318} HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Class\{4D36E968-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318} HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet002\Control\Class\{4D36E968-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}
They contain these folders and values: \0000
- DriverDate
- DriverDesc
- DriverVersion
- InfPath
- InfSection
--\Settings
- DefaultSettings.BitsPerPel
- DefaultSettings.XResolution
- DefaultSettings.YResolution
- Device Description
- InstalledDisplayDrivers
- MultiFunctionSupported
- NV_Modes
- NV_R&T
- VgaCompatible
Perhaps they could be tweaked somewhat to retrofit an existing driver.
I'm sure the MBP default resolution is a tad different than the hard-coded default resolution in my Windows XP SP2 laptop (mine has 800x600 default with NVIDIA GeForce4 MX 440, an rather old video driver). Note that they are DWORD entries, so just switch to Decimal format and enter in the value.
Here's the screenshot of my current registry settings: NVIDIA GeForce4 MX 440 default settings
You may need to install from Safe Mode to ensure each device driver file is completely copied, it has been reported that Windows may freeze in normal mode during file copy. <-- [This freezing is the same freezing that locks the system when you boot up with the new drivers installed. The lockup occurs when the driver is actually initialized by the system. Interestingly enough, SOMETIMES the entire system is not frozen -- only the display. You can still ping and receive replies from a machine in this state. UltraVNC was attempted on such a frozen system, but only a black screen was visible (although local and remote pointer motion could be observed).]
Further testing should include booting to safe mode with the above drivers and changing ATI registry flags (like DisableAGPFW, etc.) then trying Windows in normal mode again- seeing if any registry setting allows the driver to successfully initialize.
The current prevailing feeling is that there is either a conflict with the EFI loader we are using, or with the firmware of the video chipset itself that is preventing the video drivers from initializing properly. The developer of the EFI loader could probably debug and see if the drivers are making any standard BIOS / VGA calls to see if that is a likely cause of error or not.
The drivers expect the ATI Bios to be present in order to initialize the chip. Things like clock frequencies, memory frequencies, power management, all the is done through the video bios. The macpro video chip only supports EFI, it has the old BIOS completely stripped out. Thus I find it very doubtful that any video drivers will work out of the box. As I see it there are a couple of possible solutions, from easiest to hardest.
- Flash the onboard chip with the bios from a PC version and hope to god it has the EFI support as well. (This would likely render the entire Mac useless and unable to output any video. Do so at your own risk.)
- Have the custom bootloader load the bios from a PC version into RAM and map all BIOS calls to that.
- Have the custom bootloader load the video EFI driver, and a thin BIOS layer that reroutes all BIOS calls into the corresponding EFI calls.
- Try to duplicate all the video BIOS functionality.
NOTE There are reports that installing the above drivers may break your XP install (OS X remains fine, as always). Be very cautious. If you crash after rebooting, hold down the power button for a few seconds to turn off your system. When you start back up and boot XP again, you should get a text mode notification stating that Windows did not start properly. Choose the "Last known good settings that worked" option to get back into Windows.
ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 has a device ID of ati2mtag_M56, PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_71C5&SUBSYS_00921025 Maybe some driver .infs could be hacked to force them to install on this card? Just a thought.
TIP (blackcrayon on OsX86) While testing video or any other kind of drivers that may prevent XP from booting the next time, you might find it useful to create a different hardware profile (or create several) using the Hardware Profiles under the System control panel. This way, you can have Windows give a selection of hardware profiles at boot time, and you can always select your "safe" hardware profile (as an alternative to last known good, etc), or you can save multiple profiles so you don't lose track during testing... (This method does seem to work for me using xom on my macbook) (vaiOSX on forum.onmac) a way to boot in safe mode: Start OS X, and open boot.ini (root of your windows partition) with textedit. Add these command right after /fastdetect : /BASEVIDEO /SAFEBOOT Save and restart windows.
Here's the ATI Radeon X1600 user's manual
One of the obstacles in our way:
"When asked about using a PC ATI card in a Mac, however, it was pointed out that the Mac cards still feature different firmware sets as well as use different drivers."
Something to try here: http://forum.onmac.net/showpost.php?p=1433&postcount=13
WandaLust is trying to use standard vga.sys instead of XOMDD.sys. Many people are reporting that it does not work
