# 10.6.8 Broke Display Port on 5770 MacPro1,1



## Dadi_oh

Was successfully running a Flashed PowerColor 5770 on my MacPro1,1 with 3 monitors. 2 monitors on DVI and 1 monitor running off a dual link DP-DVI adapter. Installed 10.6.8 and now the monitor on the DP shows no display. Display preferences shows it as connected but nothing gets to the display.

Anyone know how to revert the video drivers back to 10.6.7? Was planning on upgrading to Lion in July but if Apple is planning on breaking this on a regular basis now then I may hold off.

Thanks


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## monokitty

So cynical.  Apple isn't 'trying' to break anything - but also isn't expected to naturally support non-Apple shipped video cards. Sorry - not sure about reverting video drivers.


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## Dadi_oh

Lars said:


> So cynical.  Apple isn't 'trying' to break anything - but also isn't expected to naturally support non-Apple shipped video cards. Sorry - not sure about reverting video drivers.


Sorry. Wasn't trying to sound cynical but I can see how it could be interpreted that way. It is more an "oh crap. Maybe I can't use 3 monitors anymore" kinda reaction.  

If I were cynical I would assume Apple was intentionally breaking my Flashed 5770 in order to enable sales of their own 5770's. 

Even the official 5770 only states support for 2010 models but we all know there are lots of people using 5770's in their pre-2010 MP.

"Compatibility: Requires Mac Pro (Mid 2010) with PCI Express 2.0 slot"

The more likely explanation is that they have tweaked something and just never tested it on the earlier machines. My concern is that, even if they are made aware of the issue they might never address it since, technically, the 5770 is only supported on 2010 MP's.

Given that 10.6.8. is likely the last iteration before Lion I am worried that Lion will dump the 5770 that I have been enjoying and there seems to be no impetus for Apple to fix it.

So... Anyone know if there is a way to roll back the kext's without rolling back the whole update?


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## broad

i dont know of one off hand, but in the time it would take to research it you could probably roll back to 10.6.3 from disc and update using the 10.6.7 updater off the apple site


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## Dadi_oh

broad said:


> i dont know of one off hand, but in the time it would take to research it you could probably roll back to 10.6.3 from disc and update using the 10.6.7 updater off the apple site


Thanks. So does "rolling back" just mean installing from my Snow Leopard install disk over top of what I have? My disk is the original Snow Leopard retail so I think it is only 10.6.


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## wonderings

If you have a time machine backup, I would imagine you can just reinstall from the hour before you did the update.


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## broad

hehe i assumed no such thing existed, figuring that would too easy of a solution


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## Dadi_oh

wonderings said:


> If you have a time machine backup, I would imagine you can just reinstall from the hour before you did the update.


I do have a Time Machine on this. So I take it that there is a feature within TIme Machine to rollback the entire system to a particular time? I was only aware of the ability to grab individual files or to do a new installation including Time Machine. I guess I have some reading to do on how to do this


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## monokitty

Yeah, you can't rollback via TM an entire system update - individuals files or folders only as far as I recall. What 'broad' suggested at first I think would work best.


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## Dadi_oh

Aaahhh. Found out I can boot from install DVD and then select restore from Time Machine at a particular date/time. It does say it could take quite a while though. I may see if I can determine which kext files changed in the display and grab just those. Depends on how lucky I'm feelin'


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## monokitty

Dadi_oh said:


> Aaahhh. Found out I can boot from install DVD and then select restore from Time Machine at a particular date/time. It does say it could take quite a while though. I may see if I can determine which kext files changed in the display and grab just those. Depends on how lucky I'm feelin'


Yeah - it will take a while because it will erase your hard drive and restore your backup from scratch. So depending on how many gigs of data you have...


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## Dadi_oh

broad said:


> i dont know of one off hand, but in the time it would take to research it you could probably roll back to 10.6.3 from disc and update using the 10.6.7 updater off the apple site


Can I manufacture a 10.6.3 install DVD image from my retail install DVD image?


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## Dadi_oh

Lars said:


> Yeah - it will take a while because it will erase your hard drive and restore your backup from scratch. So depending on how many gigs of data you have...


Well the boot drive is 60GB SSD but my user folder is a 1TB WD Black. My time machine is a 2GB firewire 800 external but I think the time machine is only using about 600GB if I remember correctly.


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## Mr. CoBalt

*Solution!*

Well! Ran into the exact same issue and let me just say, that was an adventure I wasn't really hoping to have on a Friday night  Guess it goes to show I should do some research before blinding upgrading my borg-ified MacPro1,1

*Dadi_oh* (or anybody else in the same trouble): if you're looking for a quicker solution than doing a full backup restore here it is, or at least what worked for me: 

The TL;DR version is you need to restore just the *ATI5000Controller.kext*, *ATIFramebuffer.kext* & *ATISupport.kext* from a 10.6.7 installation into 10.6.8's _/System/Library/Extensions/_

That's the gist of it but if you want a bit more detail (gotta feed the Google) my steps were as follows…

Download Kext Helper
Restore a copy of the 3 kexts from your backups. Not entirely sure if Time Machine will let you restore to an alternate location but you can give it a try. I grabbed mine from my previous evening's SuperDuper! backup. Alternately, look here if all else fails 
Download and install the full 10.6.8 Combo Update (yes, again, even though 10.6.8 is already installed) and then _force quit_ the installer once it asks you to restart.
Launch Kext Helper, drag those three replacement kernel extensions into the window, enter your password and click *EASY INSTALL* (no need to be fancy). The program should even automatically back up the 10.6.8 kexts at the root of your boot disk.
Quit Kext Helper, launch Disk Utility and repair permissions on your boot drive.
Once that finishes cross your fingers and restart!

Worked perfectly for me although I'm sure it's not ideal to further hackintosh my system  Obviously still no grey boot screen, etc. over DVI, but the only "odd" thing I've noticed that's different from 10.6.7 is a flash of what looks like buffer garbage output to the screens right before the login window loads. Other than that it seems to be fine. (whew!)

Must say, credit for this fix goes to a very buried comment on the tonymacx86 site so my thanks to Mr. *Roy1971*. I suspected those three kexts were the culprits but I was being quite overwhelmed with trying to compare contents of the 10.6.7 combo update with the 10.6.8 combo before he showed me the light 

Hope this helps!


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## Dadi_oh

@ Mr. Cobalt

You da' MAN 

I'll give this a try and see if it helps. I'd mail you a beer but they are on strike 

What seems odd is that ATISupport.kext has a date modified of 2009-08-03, ATI5000Controller.kext has a date of 2010-08-06, and ATIFramebuffer.kext is 2009-08-03. Wouldn't the update have a new "date modified"?

I will go digging in my backup and see what dates are on those files.


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## Dadi_oh

Dadi_oh said:


> @ Mr. Cobalt
> 
> You da' MAN
> 
> I'll give this a try and see if it helps. I'd mail you a beer but they are on strike
> 
> What seems odd is that ATISupport.kext has a date modified of 2009-08-03, ATI5000Controller.kext has a date of 2010-08-06, and ATIFramebuffer.kext is 2009-08-03. Wouldn't the update have a new "date modified"?
> 
> I will go digging in my backup and see what dates are on those files.


hmmm... I compared your files to mine and they are the same as what was in my S/L/E folder. I only ran the 10.6.8 Update file (474MB) rather than the full combo update (1.01GB). I was on 10.6.7 already so I figured I didn't need the full combo file. But looks like my ATI files didn't get updated? I am going to try downloading the full combo update now and see what files I end up with.


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## MacDoc

It could make a mess but if you boot off another drive and run 10.6.7 combo updater on the 10.6.8 OS drive might fix it.

Caveat emptor of course.


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## Dadi_oh

MacDoc said:


> It could make a mess but if you boot off another drive and run 10.6.7 combo updater on the 10.6.8 OS drive might fix it.
> 
> Caveat emptor of course.


Yeah. Not sure what happens running a previous combo. Maybe it won't let me? I am going to start with just trying 10.6.8 and replacing the 3 ATI kext files first. Keeping my fingers crossed. Download is taking a while....


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## Mr. CoBalt

Dadi_oh said:


> hmmm... I compared your files to mine and they are the same as what was in my S/L/E folder. I only ran the 10.6.8 Update file (474MB) rather than the full combo update (1.01GB). I was on 10.6.7 already so I figured I didn't need the full combo file. But looks like my ATI files didn't get updated? I am going to try downloading the full combo update now and see what files I end up with.


Yeah, it's weird but the 10.6.8 installer doesn't actually seem to touch the external "shell" of the extension: mine had old modification dates on the kext folder but the files inside were timestamped with when I installed 10.6.8.

If you have the dev tools installed you can run FileMerge targeting the old and new kexts to see if they are indeed different... but they sure should be otherwise I have no idea why you'd be having issues


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## MacDoc

If it's run off a separate drive it might.
Worth a shot if all else fails.

Also is you install a new OS on the other drive you could migrate.
Depends on the resources you have


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## MacDoc

Might be something here 



> You can, however, force the installation of older versions of specific components with the aid of Pacifist. This can be useful in situations where a newer component causes problems that can be alleviated by reverting to the older version. For instance, if a new version of the AirPort kernel extension (/System/Library/Extensions/AppleAirport.kext) breaks wireless connectivity, you can force installation of an older version of this kernel extension via these steps:
> Download the appropriate combo updater from Apple's download page.
> Download and install the shareware application Pacifist
> Drag the Mac OS X combo installer package (e.g. MacOSXUpd10.4.9Intel.pkg) onto the Pacifist application icon.
> Find the file you are looking for by clicking the disclosure triangles to reveal the targeted location.
> Select the file in question and click the Install button in Pacifist. You will be required to enter your administrator password.
> Restart your Mac
> You should generally not mix and match components from different system versions because of potential compatibility issues. You will also lose any refinements brought about by the revision. Still, in a bind, replacing newer items with older ones can solve otherwise insoluble issues.
> 
> 
> Read more: Re-running Mac OS X combo updater does not overwrite newer updates | MacFixIt - CNET Reviews


Re-running Mac OS X combo updater does not overwrite newer updates | MacFixIt - CNET Reviews


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## Mr. CoBalt

Dadi_oh said:


> Yeah. Not sure what happens running a previous combo. Maybe it won't let me? I am going to start with just trying 10.6.8 and replacing the 3 ATI kext files first. Keeping my fingers crossed. Download is taking a while....


It won't let you run a 10.6.7 combo on a .8 install unless you do some hacking of the combo package, and even then that's liable to cause a lot more trouble since you'll end up with scattershot versions across everything either combo touches. In other words, I wouldn't recommend it 

Installing a combo over a same-version install should be no problem though, I've done it quite a bit even before this rigamarole.


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## Dadi_oh

OK. This seems to have solved it (using kexthelper to write the 3 kext's back into S/L/E after combo installation). It took me a while. The system seems to have been unstable as well as having broken DP. Kernel Panic twice part way through the download of the combo update 

Something else may have been corrupted. Just running some stability tests now (memtest and cputest) to make sure there is not some sort of coincidental HW issue. 

But the good news is that I have 3 displays again


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## Dadi_oh

Dadi_oh said:


> OK. This seems to have solved it (using kexthelper to write the 3 kext's back into S/L/E after combo installation). It took me a while. The system seems to have been unstable as well as having broken DP. Kernel Panic twice part way through the download of the combo update
> 
> Something else may have been corrupted. Just running some stability tests now (memtest and cputest) to make sure there is not some sort of coincidental HW issue.
> 
> But the good news is that I have 3 displays again


I spoke too soon. System is still crashing randomly. Not sure if I am battling a coincidental HW issue or is something is corrupted to the point of random hangups. System just freezes with display images intact. Requires a hard reset. The resulting report seems to indicate CPU errors on random processors? Never had this happen before the update.

I just performed a fresh install off my Snow Leopard retail and it brought back all my data but system is at 10.6.0 now. Just downloading the 10.6.7 combo and will see if I can get back to where I was. Fingers crossed.... Just hope I don't have some sort of HW issue...


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## Mr. CoBalt

Dadi_oh said:


> I spoke too soon. System is still crashing randomly. Not sure if I am battling a coincidental HW issue or is something is corrupted to the point of random hangups. System just freezes with display images intact. Requires a hard reset. The resulting report seems to indicate CPU errors on random processors? Never had this happen before the update.
> 
> I just performed a fresh install off my Snow Leopard retail and it brought back all my data but system is at 10.6.0 now. Just downloading the 10.6.7 combo and will see if I can get back to where I was. Fingers crossed.... Just hope I don't have some sort of HW issue...


Huh... This is extremely interesting because I've been having kernel panics as well, also referencing CPU errors  Mine happened before the 10.6.8 update hassles though so I'm not sure what they might correspond to… I've been saving the panic reports and will be creating a separate thread so as to not threadjack this one. I'll post a link when it's up.


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## Dadi_oh

Mr. CoBalt said:


> Huh... This is extremely interesting because I've been having kernel panics as well, also referencing CPU errors  Mine happened before the 10.6.8 update hassles though so I'm not sure what they might correspond to… I've been saving the panic reports and will be creating a separate thread so as to not threadjack this one. I'll post a link when it's up.


Will keep an eye on your other thread and see if I can help. After the fresh install of 10.6.0 with Time Machine and then a 10.6.7 combo update things seem to be back to normal (touch wood). Something must have been corrupted I guess. My stability issues showed up immediately after the 10.6.8 update. 

There is one other piece of info I need to add. My "Hands Off" did some sort of update around the same time as my 10.6.8 update. I was getting a non-booting condition and when I enabled verbose mode it was something to do with Hands Off so I booted in safe mode and uninstalled Hands Off. I have not re-installed Hands Off since then. It may be related.


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## Mr. CoBalt

Dadi_oh said:


> Will keep an eye on your other thread and see if I can help. After the fresh install of 10.6.0 with Time Machine and then a 10.6.7 combo update things seem to be back to normal (touch wood). Something must have been corrupted I guess. My stability issues showed up immediately after the 10.6.8 update.
> 
> There is one other piece of info I need to add. My "Hands Off" did some sort of update around the same time as my 10.6.8 update. I was getting a non-booting condition and when I enabled verbose mode it was something to do with Hands Off so I booted in safe mode and uninstalled Hands Off. I have not re-installed Hands Off since then. It may be related.


Yeah so my system KP'd while I was in the process of writing up the other thread so I decided that's it…  Yanked it apart, pulled the heatsinks and processors, cleaned off all the old Arctic Silver, re-tinted and reapplied paste then put what was originally CPU B in socket A and vice-versa (mainly as voodoo but also because when the system KPs it shows a CPU B fail light on the mobo).

Things are now (somewhat) put back together 
System is currently on its side with only the top RAM riser in (the memory cage isn't even screwed in), only the SSD installed, original 7300GT running a single monitor, and the CPUs blasting through 8 instances of _yes > /dev/null_ plus CPUTest set to small test type, 8 instances, and unlimited repetitions. While I doubt the issues I'm encountering are stability or heat related as the kernel panics tend to happen when idle or almost idle, I figured I might as well stress it. Temperature Monitor reports all cores holding steady around 60 to 75° C, heatsinks at 45 to 53°

After a couple hours of this next comes some intense MemTest runs


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## Guest

And this type of thing is the reason I swore off of running flashed video cards or after-market modified systems. Somehow it ends up this way all too often and my (up)time is valuable to me


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## Dadi_oh

mguertin said:


> And this type of thing is the reason I swore off of running flashed video cards or after-market modified systems. Somehow it ends up this way all too often and my (up)time is valuable to me


You might have a point but what I have not yet heard is if someone running an official Apple 5770 on their Macpro1,1 can get 3 displays working with 10.6.8. It is possible that the official owners club is in the exact same boat that us flashers are.

I can still run 2 displays happily on the flashed 5770. I was enjoying running the third display without the added power draw of the 7300GT. For now, the low effort approach I took was to throw my 7300 back in there so I have my 3 displays again.


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## Guest

I have 3 video cards in my mac pro, currently running 4 monitors (I could get away with pulling one of them but I'm too lazy!)

It is possible that it's not a flashed card related issue, you're right. I'm old school and will happily stick to no more than 2 monitors per card


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## Dadi_oh

mguertin said:


> I have 3 video cards in my mac pro, currently running 4 monitors (I could get away with pulling one of them but I'm too lazy!)
> 
> It is possible that it's not a flashed card related issue, you're right. I'm old school and will happily stick to no more than 2 monitors per card


That works too. I was trying to reduce the power consumption on my machine for a couple of reasons. The primary reason was to reduce the load on my UPS and give a little more run time to allow a graceful shutdown. I am currently loading my undersized APC BackUPS 750VA to 45% with the 7300GT and 5770 in there which gives me about 3 minutes to get her shutdown  I mainly just want to survive the power bumps that are more frequent in the country.

The other is just to reduce the heat I put out of this machine in my office. It may not be a lot (not sure exactly what the 7300GT draws) but every bit helps.

I buy mostly official Apple stuff but I got this 5770 for $100 and it was (and is) an experiment. I kinda liked the 2 DVI ports since my first two monitors were DVI I didn't need any adapters initially. And it has quite a large fan (non-reference design) so it runs cool and quiet.

I gave up on Hackintoshing for the reason you cite. My time is worth too much to be worrying about every update breaking something XX)

For what its worth it looks like there is a possibility that Lion will run some ATI cards without any flashing required. I think there are guys over at netkas.org running a 6870 without any flashing required. May be a good sign for future.


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## dpb

Mr. CoBalt said:


> Worked perfectly for me although I'm sure it's not ideal to further hackintosh my system  Obviously still no grey boot screen, etc. over DVI, but the only "odd" thing I've noticed that's different from 10.6.7 is a flash of what looks like buffer garbage output to the screens right before the login window loads. Other than that it seems to be fine. (whe


I tried this fix but am unable to verify that it works because I need the gray boot screen. I just bought my card so I'm still trying to get it to work but I understand that you can get the gray boot screen with a DVI-VGA adapter which I have been using. I have 10.6.8 and Windows 7 Home installed. It defaults to Windows 7 so that works fine but I need to be able to hold alt and select my mac boot. 

Has anyone else been able to get the gray boot screen with the DVI-VGA adapter.?


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## Dadi_oh

dpb said:


> I tried this fix but am unable to verify that it works because I need the gray boot screen. I just bought my card so I'm still trying to get it to work but I understand that you can get the gray boot screen with a DVI-VGA adapter which I have been using. I have 10.6.8 and Windows 7 Home installed. It defaults to Windows 7 so that works fine but I need to be able to hold alt and select my mac boot.
> 
> Has anyone else been able to get the gray boot screen with the DVI-VGA adapter.?


I get the gray boot screen with a DVI-VGA cable on 10.6.7. I have not gone to 10.6.8 again since I am stable at 10.6.7 so not sure about boot screen in 10.6.8.


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## dpb

So are there shortcuts to select a startup disk during the gray boot screen? I need to select the mac drive to test this. It defaults to my windows boot though i think there's a way to change the default boot too. I suppose I could use my other gfx card and measure the mouse movement from the top left corner down to the mac boot icon on a sheet of paper or something. I'm assuming that screen is still loaded, but i just can't see it.


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## Mr. CoBalt

dpb said:


> So are there shortcuts to select a startup disk during the gray boot screen? I need to select the mac drive to test this. It defaults to my windows boot though i think there's a way to change the default boot too. I suppose I could use my other gfx card and measure the mouse movement from the top left corner down to the mac boot icon on a sheet of paper or something. I'm assuming that screen is still loaded, but i just can't see it.


Try hitting right arrow then return? If that boots into OS X then great  Otherwise next time try hitting right arrow twice. Or maybe left? You should get it eventually 

On second thought, doesn't Boot Camp install a Startup Disk control panel in Windows? I thought it used to...

And another thought: I'm pretty sure that holding down the X key from power-on will cause Macs to boot into OS X regardless of what startup disk is selected.


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## Mr. CoBalt

Bumping this thread! 

Anybody now tried out Lion with a flashed 5770 running triple monitors? (I'm sure this applies to many, many people )


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## Dadi_oh

Mr. CoBalt said:


> Bumping this thread!
> 
> Anybody now tried out Lion with a flashed 5770 running triple monitors? (I'm sure this applies to many, many people )


I am working up the courage to try this 

Currently installing it on my iMac and will see how I like it. But anyone who does try their mac pro with flashed 5770 and three monitors please report back. Pretty please.


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## Mr. CoBalt

Dadi_oh said:


> I am working up the courage to try this
> 
> Currently installing it on my iMac and will see how I like it. But anyone who does try their mac pro with flashed 5770 and three monitors please report back. Pretty please.


I tossed the old 7300 plus a spare drive back mine and did a fresh install, then put the 5770 back in…

*No joy on DisplayPort*  Same symptoms as 10.6.8 where the system seems to recognize the display, just doesn't send video to it. For example, in "System Information" (the new System Profiler) my Graphics/Displays sections is as follows:


Code:


ATI Radeon HD 5770:

  Chipset Model:	ATI Radeon HD 5770
  Type:	GPU
  Bus:	PCIe
  Slot:	Slot-1
  PCIe Lane Width:	x16
  VRAM (Total):	1024 MB
  Vendor:	ATI (0x1002)
  Device ID:	0x68b8
  Revision ID:	0x0000
  ROM Revision:	113-C0160C-155
  EFI Driver Version:	01.00.436
  Displays:
Cinema:
  Resolution:	1680 x 1050
  Pixel Depth:	32-Bit Color (ARGB8888)
  Display Serial Number:	2A5420GMUFZ 
  Main Display:	Yes
  Mirror:	On
  Mirror Status:	Master Mirror
  Online:	Yes
  Rotation:	Supported
  Adapter Type:	DVI Or HDMI
  Adapter Firmware Version:	8.18
Cinema Display:
  Resolution:	1680 x 1050
  Pixel Depth:	32-Bit Color (ARGB8888)
  Mirror:	On
  Mirror Status:	Hardware Mirror
  Online:	Yes
  Rotation:	Supported
Cinema:
  Resolution:	1680 x 1050
  Pixel Depth:	32-Bit Color (ARGB8888)
  Display Serial Number:	2A8151E0XMM 
  Mirror:	On
  Mirror Status:	Hardware Mirror
  Online:	Yes
  Rotation:	Supported

You'll notice mirroring is on; I had to enable it because when I plug in the DisplayPort screen it defaults to being my primary no matter what I do :roll eyes: But anyways, the system sees the screen and "thinks" it's outputting to it even (verified with VoiceOver and tabbing around on the "invisible" display) but there's no actual video being sent. Time to hunt for driver hacks I guess…

But anyways the moral is Lion seems pretty cool but it's killing my three-screen buzz XX)


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## Dadi_oh

Well thanks for trying it anyways. I am currently just running with my 7300GT in there for my third display but I still didn't want to update to 10.6.8 since I was having stability issues. The stability may not have been related to the display port issue but this is my server and I don't want to take any chances. So I think I will be content to just upgrade all the other Macs in my house and leave my Mac Pro on 10.6.7 working like a charm.

edit: I wonder if anyone with the "real" Apple 5770 is having these issues on macpro1,1? Maybe I should just bite the bullet and buy the Apple version...


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## dpb

Mr. CoBalt said:


> Try hitting right arrow then return? If that boots into OS X then great  Otherwise next time try hitting right arrow twice. Or maybe left? You should get it eventually
> 
> On second thought, doesn't Boot Camp install a Startup Disk control panel in Windows? I thought it used to...
> 
> And another thought: I'm pretty sure that holding down the X key from power-on will cause Macs to boot into OS X regardless of what startup disk is selected.


Well the arrow keys dont work and neither did my traced map to move the mouse cursor from the top-left corner to the mac icon. I haven't tried holding X yet.


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## dpb

Nope X didnt work either. I've reinstalled Snow Leopard putting it back to 10.6.3 and it still doesnt work with that. I tried the solutions on this page too when I was at 10.6.8


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## dpb

oh it's minimum is 10.6.4 installing that now. This is a new card that I bought after 10.6.7 so its never worked on my mac yet. Maybe I have to do the 10.6.4 graphics upgrade first. I never did that


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## Dadi_oh

No joy in Mudville. Curiosity finally got the best of me and I did a fresh install of lion from the DVD I made on my iMac. Installed lion, installed my most common apps, did sw update on everything it wanted... And the result was a machine that was continuously kernel panicking, freezing, etc... Not sure if it is the interaction with the flashed 5770 interacting badly. Whatever it is, I don't need lion on this machine (it is my server) so back to 10.6.7 I go and back to three displays on my 5770. That was a perfectly stable setup. Moral of the story... If it ain't broke... Then mess with until you do break it... And then put it back the way it was


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## dpb

Hmm well seems my issue is bigger than just the 10.6.8 update. I reinstalled back to 10.6.4, did the apple graphics update, that didnt work so I installed the boot camp drivers on my other windows hard drive so that I could boot into windows and then from the boot camp control panel, tell it to reboot into mac os x. That didnt work either. So it seems that it doesn't want to boot into mac with my 5770 at all, however windows is fine. When I bought this, I was told it would work with OS X, but maybe it needs to be flashed. 

I noticed too that there are different versions of the 5770 and mine has 2 DVI and 2 HDMI ports on it. I notice the Mac one have 1 DVI and 2 display port. So apparently they advertised their product incorrectly. Am I correct?


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## Dadi_oh

I couldn't just install 10.6 from my snow leopard install disk with the 5770 still in there. So I had to pull the 5770 and leave the 7300 for first install. Then combo update to 10.6.7. Then replace the 7300 with 5770 and everything is back to stability and three displays on the 5770. I get boot screen by using a dvi-VGA on one display, straight DVI on the second, and active dual link dp-DVI on the third display. Not touching this setup for a long time. If I want to play in lion I will use my iMac


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## Guest

I'll say it again ... it's really just not worth trying to use flashed or other non-mac supported cards ... this is exactly what happens. If it's a hobby or on a fun machine and you like that stuff fine, but I don't have that kind of time on my hands any more!! I need my stuff to work, always.


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## Dadi_oh

mguertin said:


> I'll say it again ... it's really just not worth trying to use flashed or other non-mac supported cards ... this is exactly what happens. If it's a hobby or on a fun machine and you like that stuff fine, but I don't have that kind of time on my hands any more!! I need my stuff to work, always.


Yup. Not arguing with that. If I feel the need to lionize my mac pro I'll get an apple card. 

One other thing in my machine that is non-Apple is my eSATA PCIe card based on the intersil chipset. It is possible that is what is causing the stability issues but I have run out of desire to mess with this machine anymore.


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## Mr. CoBalt

Dadi_oh said:


> …I have run out of desire to mess with this machine anymore.


Aww, that's too bad  Apple just released the 10.6.8 Supplemental Update which apparently addresses the audio/printing/etc issues some people were having. From a quick glance at the package though it doesn't touch any of the graphics driver kexts though, just AppleHDA.kext and the CUPS stuff. Alas


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## Dadi_oh

Mr. CoBalt said:


> Aww, that's too bad  Apple just released the 10.6.8 Supplemental Update which apparently addresses the audio/printing/etc issues some people were having. From a quick glance at the package though it doesn't touch any of the graphics driver kexts though, just AppleHDA.kext and the CUPS stuff. Alas


Well the other possible source of the instability could be my after-market eSATA card that fits in a PCIex1 slot. I wonder if any of the supplemental addresses that? It may be a while before I attempt to go beyond 10.6.7 again. Too many other places to burn my time


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## dpb

Well just as an update, I am giving up on trying to get this 5770 to work with a MAC. I bought it thinking it was an Apple version, but it's not. I tried reflashing it and all this other mumbo-jumbo and could never get it to work. It works fine with my windows boot but not at all with my Mac.

The card would never show up in the system profiler as a 5770 or 5700-series card. It just said ATI vga-capable card and didnt list anything about the specs of the card.


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## i-rui

do the kernal panics in SL/Lion happen when there are just 1 or 2 displays attached to the flashed 5770?

I was thinking of experimenting with a flashed 5770 for a second card, but i don't want to go near it if there are kernal panics when using the DVI ports (i can live without the mini display/hdmi ports on this second card)


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## Dadi_oh

i-rui said:


> do the kernal panics in SL/Lion happen when there are just 1 or 2 displays attached to the flashed 5770?
> 
> I was thinking of experimenting with a flashed 5770 for a second card, but i don't want to go near it if there are kernal panics when using the DVI ports (i can live without the mini display/hdmi ports on this second card)


I believe so. I haven't looked at this in a while since it is stable in 10.6.7 with 3 displays. I don't have a lot of incentive to fiddle with it anymore since it does what I need for now.

There is another possibility however. I have 2 pieces of non-Apple hardware in my machine. One being the 5770 but the other "was" an intersil eSATA PCIe card. I found that even in 10.6.7 I could get a machine hangup when doing heavy IO like copying across an entire disk of movies onto a backup disk across the eSATA bus. Partway through I would sometimes return to a dead machine (not responding, black screens). Only way to get it back was to power cycle it.

Suspecting that this card was an issue I ordered a Newertech card from OWC NewerTech MXPCIE6GRS MAXPower PCIe eSATA 2-Port... in stock at OWC
and it seems to be more stable or at least I have not seen it crash yet.

I have heard good things about the 6870 so if I am bored I might get one and try it.

So, I am not entirely convinced that the instability was the 5770 card. Definitely there was an issue with only 2 displays working but but necessarily the instability.


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## Dadi_oh

Dadi_oh said:


> I believe so. I haven't looked at this in a while since it is stable in 10.6.7 with 3 displays. I don't have a lot of incentive to fiddle with it anymore since it does what I need for now.
> 
> There is another possibility however. I have 2 pieces of non-Apple hardware in my machine. One being the 5770 but the other "was" an intersil eSATA PCIe card. I found that even in 10.6.7 I could get a machine hangup when doing heavy IO like copying across an entire disk of movies onto a backup disk across the eSATA bus. Partway through I would sometimes return to a dead machine (not responding, black screens). Only way to get it back was to power cycle it.
> 
> Suspecting that this card was an issue I ordered a Newertech card from OWC NewerTech MXPCIE6GRS MAXPower PCIe eSATA 2-Port... in stock at OWC
> and it seems to be more stable or at least I have not seen it crash yet.
> 
> I have heard good things about the 6870 so if I am bored I might get one and try it.
> 
> So, I am not entirely convinced that the instability was the 5770 card. Definitely there was an issue with only 2 displays working but but necessarily the instability.


Well I stumbled across this discussion linked below. Seems like my stability issues are likely related to my upgraded (and unsupported) E5345 quad-core processors. Seems that the fix is to update the Macpro1,1 firmware to Macpro2,1 firmware. This installs some quadcore microcode and recognizes the processors. Most users say it solves the stability issue.


Scoopz Blog » Apple update 10.6.8 and Lion (10.7) cause Kernel Panics on MacPro 1,1


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## i-rui

interesting. thanks for digging that up. Maybe i will try to flash a 5770 for a 2nd card.


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## Mr. CoBalt

Resurrecting this thread, but has anybody tried out 10.7.2 with their flashed 5xxx cards and triple displays? Consensus at netkas.org (at least during the developer previews) seems to be that it's all good to go now, but I was wondering if anybody here's tried it out.

Apple's already posted the full 10.7.2 installer to the App Store so I'm going to re-download that version, burn it to disc, and give it a whirl later on today I think (woo, exciting Friday night plans! )


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## Dadi_oh

Mr. CoBalt said:


> Resurrecting this thread, but has anybody tried out 10.7.2 with their flashed 5xxx cards and triple displays? Consensus at netkas.org (at least during the developer previews) seems to be that it's all good to go now, but I was wondering if anybody here's tried it out.
> 
> Apple's already posted the full 10.7.2 installer to the App Store so I'm going to re-download that version, burn it to disc, and give it a whirl later on today I think (woo, exciting Friday night plans! )


This would be great news. Looking forward to positive results being posted.


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## Mr. CoBalt

Dadi_oh said:


> This would be great news. Looking forward to positive results being posted.


Alas, initial trials show negative results  Maybe I misunderstood what people were talking about on the Netkas forums but I started a thread there and so far at least one guy said it worked in the betas and not in the final so yay Apple 

I really want to get this system on Lion and this is becoming a huge hassle, almost makes it worth buying the Apple card and the two Active MiniDP adapters I'd need


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## Mr. CoBalt

Semi-related: OWC has the official Apple 5770 card on sale for $218 USD right now... Tempting...


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## Guest

Mr. CoBalt said:


> I really want to get this system on Lion and this is becoming a huge hassle, almost makes it worth buying the Apple card and the two Active MiniDP adapters I'd need


That's how most people that run flashed cards feel at the end of it all  Been there, done that, got tired of having to research every time software update pops up, bought the Mac happy card and never looked back.


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## Mr. CoBalt

mguertin said:


> That's how most people that run flashed cards feel at the end of it all  Been there, done that, got tired of having to research every time software update pops up, bought the Mac happy card and never looked back.


Heh, that's the nicest way of saying "I told you so" that I've heard in awhile


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## Guest

Mr. CoBalt said:


> Heh, that's the nicest way of saying "I told you so" that I've heard in awhile




It's one of those things you have to do for yourself. When you start into it it's all good fun, when you finish it's a royal pain. I feel the same way with Hackintosh machines.


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## i-rui

i actually have the apple version of the 5770, and i've also experienced problems with it.

first it's been documented that many 30" displays have issues with it :





+
YouTube Video









ERROR: If you can see this, then YouTube is down or you don't have Flash installed.






this is exactly what happened with mine. the only way i could solve it was by hooking up the 30" display via a *very expensive* dual-link dvi to mini-display port adapter, and then run my second monitor (a wacom cintiq) via the cards dual-link dvi connector (even though the cintiq doesn't need a dual-link connection).

very frustrating.


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## Guest

I've read about a lot of people having problems with mini display port -> DVI on more than one current ATI card (even the apple ones). The apple store pages are full of people raging about adapter problems to drive DVI monitors.

I really wish that Apple would come to their senses and drop this whole proprietary monitor connection routine again and go back to standard dual link DVI on mac pro cards... I need to upgrade right now and have been dreading it for this exact reason. I need to power 2x30" (dual link) and 2x23" all DVI based monitors and have very little budget to do it with and I really want to avoid expensive adapters.


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## i-rui

i can understand minidisplay ports on laptops, but i agree completely that apple should do away with it on desktops (or at least on mac pro video cards)


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## Mr. CoBalt

An update: I bit the bullet and bought the the previously-linked $218 Apple OEM 5770 off OWC. Combined with a couple of these miniDP to DVI *Active* adapters I've got all three outputs working perfectly in a clean installation of 10.7.2, simultaneously driving three 20" Apple Cinema Displays at their default 1680x1050 resolution. 

Now I'm just doing some burn-in testing to see if I get any of the kernel panics people have reported with 10.6.8-10.7.1 and upgraded X5365 processors in a MacPro1,1.

PS - Anybody looking to buy a flashed 5770? Works perfectly in 10.6.7 - 10.7._x_ *if* you only want to drive two screens, max


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## Dadi_oh

Very very interesting. Might do this myself. Stability issues are almost certainly solved b y flashing macpro1,1 to 2,1. Solved mine.


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## MacDoc

Mark each video card drives a 30 without an adapter and a 23 with the cheap adapter


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## Guest

MacDoc said:


> Mark each video card drives a 30 without an adapter and a 23 with the cheap adapter


Yes .. I've changed my setup around again already (only 1x30" on main workstation) and as you know am installing a brand new 5770 today. I'll probably end up with 5770 driving the 30" (DVI connector) and my 3870 driving a pair of 23" ACD.

I'm also going to try and swap the CPU modules between my quad core 2.66 Nehalem Mac Pro and my Octo core 2.26 Nehalem Mac Pro machines ... I want to swap their purposes but I don't want to have to gut and rebuilt both machines. I have too many cards, drives, etc in my setups!! Both machines are pretty much maxed out in terms of cards (well there's one open slot in the quad core currently).


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## Mr. CoBalt

Dadi_oh said:


> Very very interesting. Might do this myself. Stability issues are almost certainly solved b y flashing macpro1,1 to 2,1. Solved mine.


Sadly my Mac Pro is running the MP11.005D.B00 Boot ROM (which only shipped on some refurbished MacPro1,1 models and was never released by Apple for download).

From what I've read on Netkas the firmware updater just flashes up briefly and never updates. Not to mention that with no public release there's no way to downgrade back to 005D should something come up, short of finding a way to dump the existing ROM


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## Dadi_oh

Mr. CoBalt said:


> Sadly my Mac Pro is running the MP11.005D.B00 Boot ROM (which only shipped on some refurbished MacPro1,1 models and was never released by Apple for download).
> 
> From what I've read on Netkas the firmware updater just flashes up briefly and never updates. Not to mention that with no public release there's no way to downgrade back to 005D should something come up, short of finding a way to dump the existing ROM


Bummer. I had read there were some of those out in the wild.


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## Guest

mguertin said:


> Yes .. I've changed my setup around again already (only 1x30" on main workstation) and as you know am installing a brand new 5770 today. I'll probably end up with 5770 driving the 30" (DVI connector) and my 3870 driving a pair of 23" ACD.
> 
> I'm also going to try and swap the CPU modules between my quad core 2.66 Nehalem Mac Pro and my Octo core 2.26 Nehalem Mac Pro machines ... I want to swap their purposes but I don't want to have to gut and rebuilt both machines. I have too many cards, drives, etc in my setups!! Both machines are pretty much maxed out in terms of cards (well there's one open slot in the quad core currently).


For the sake of completeness the CPU module swap went totally fine, no problems.

What is interesting though is that I've had this occasional problem with my main workstation, where after zapping the PRAM it would freeze at startup at the grey screen. THe last time this happened I ended up pulling almost everything from the machine, booting it up, and then re-adding all the pieces and it worked out. This time around I figured out exactly what the problem was (because I ran into it again).

The problem was that I have a hard drive dock plugged into my eSata card. For some reason only after zapping the PRAM I guess the mac polls all the available drives to find the boot drive ... and with the hard drive dock (that had no drive in it) it would halt the process. Unplugging the dock instantly got me past the grey screen and booted. Just for fun I tried it again, but this time I put a drive in the dock ... as soon as the drive finished spinning up it booted fine. And just for giggles I tried it again with a different (better) hard drive dock and it showed the exact same symptoms.

Hopefully this might help someone in the future if their machine hangs at the grey screen during startup and they have similar hardware. One of those strange but true things. This only happens with a "bootable" eSata card by the way (didn't happen with my eSata RAID cards which require drivers and are not bootable). Smells like an EFI bug to me.


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