Anyone interested in a Hi-def (1920 x 1200) mod for PB/MBP?

[narzola]

I still can't recreate these results. I have followed your steps perfectly. I must be missing something. I am still getting the bad colors. The only thing I can't do is create a color profile using the Dell external. wondering if the new C2D is a little more forgiving.

I think that with the right files, the old MBP CD would also work. If someone knew where the color profile gets stored, I would post this file. Then I don't think you would need to have an external 1920x1200 monitor.

I really hope you succeed because I know what it feels like to know that someone else got it working but the solution doesn't seem to work for you.

 

[Multimedia]

Congrats On Fantastic 1920 x 1200 Install and Instructions. Did You Take Photos?

I am excitedly writing to tell you that Belldandy may have been telling the truth.

Last weekend, I bought a new 15.4" MacBook Pro Core 2 Duo 2.33. This laptop replaces a previous 15.4" PowerBook 1.67. Apart from the low resolution in the screen, I am very happy with the new MacBook Pro.16. Logging in on the external monitor, I went into System Preferences, Displays, and switched the frequency for the display to 56 hz. All of a sudden, everything worked and here I am writing about my success.

17. When I rebooted again (to make sure this was not a fluke) and with the external monitor not connected, everything worked. The only "wierd" thing is that the boot screen with the spiny thing is a little grainy and the spiiny thing has weird colors.

I wanted to upload some pictures, but didn't feel like shrinking them to fit what this BBS software will allow. You can find some pictures I took at http://pysite.net.

If anyone has any questions, I'll answer them in the morning. I haven't put my MBP together yet because I still need to remove the stupid ears/tabs.

I wanted to thank Baxterbrittle especially, and everyone else who provided useful information. This would not have been possible without all of your posts. Thanks.

If you happen to be near Seattle, WA and want to see my 1920x1200 MacFrankenBook Pro, I would be happy to convince skeptics this is real.

Congrats to being the first to have a C2D 1920x1200 15.4" MBP! Wow. I would like it on a 17". Any chance I can do that the same way you did to the 15.4"? Did you take photos?

 

[craigatkinson]

Just guessing, but is it Library/colorsync/profiles ?

I think that with the right files, the old MBP CD would also work. If someone knew where the color profile gets stored, I would post this file. Then I don't think you would need to have an external 1920x1200 monitor.

 

[narzola]

Color Profiles for Samsung LTN154U1-L03

Just guessing, but is it Library/colorsync/profiles ?

I looked in ~/Library/ColorSync/Profiles and found nothing. I looked in /Library/ColorSync/Profiles/Displays and found these two files. I believe the one my system is currently using is the "Color LCD" one, not the "Samsung....". I've attached both for anyone who might find them useful. Best of luck to all.

 

[narzola]

Congrats to being the first to have a C2D 1920x1200 15.4" MBP! Wow. I would like it on a 17". Any chance I can do that the same way you did to the 15.4"? Did you take photos?

I can't imagine why it would not work with a 17" MBP. I'm not familiar with LCD panels (I stumbled on this discussion from Digg/Reddit). I have to thank Baxterbrittle for doing the hard work of realizing that there was a higher resolution panel that was exactly the same size of the MBP panel.

In getting my panel to work, I had to do a lot of research. My guess is that you would need to get a panel that was a similar as possible to the on in you 17" MBP. The key items that I can help you identify are color depth (the MBP panel and Samsung panel both use something called 6+2 which results in 262,000 colors), panel size (cause you want it to fit in the space you have when you are done), panel depth (to thick and you won't have an attractive MBP or, worse, the LCD enclosure won't come together), connectors (this seems to have made life difficult for a lot of people), and frequencies (this one is the hardest because data sheets are so hard to come by and running an LCD panel at a bad frequency may shorten its life -- or so I have been told). There may be more important compatibility issues and the ones I mentioned may not be as important -- I'm just guessing.

 

[skippy911]

Just purchased my CD MBP the one I talked about. I submitted a best offer on the ebay ink you provided. Hopefully if all goes well I can have the screen, and install it before I goto Tokyo Wish me luck :-D

 

[RickAdair]

can you post the native display override file that you copied to get brightness working? That is the only thing that I can figure would be different on my system. Thanks.

 

[lovely666]

I was looking at the lastest screen shots on (pysite.net)

It has two things that are different to my mac book pro

His:
EFI Driver Version: 1.00.139
ROM Revision: 113-xxxxxx-139

Mine:
EFI Driver Version: 1.00.068
- Missing -

I was wondering if this might a problem.

I doubt the new mac book pros hardware is causing this to work, as the windows works with these displays on the old mac book pros.

 

[lovely666]

Hello Narzola,

can you please do an run a command and upload the result for me. (Please run it without your external display attached).

In Terminal:
ioreg -l -w 0 > ~/Desktop/ioreg.result

You can ether attach it to a post here, or email it to me at lovely at crm114.net. (it's size will be about 646kb)

 

[narzola]

Hello Narzola,

can you please do an run a command and upload the result for me. (Please run it without your external display attached).

In Terminal:
ioreg -l -w 0 > ~/Desktop/ioreg.result

You can ether attach it to a post here, or email it to me at lovely at crm114.net. (it's size will be about 646kb)

Too large to upload, and I figure other people might be able to use this file so I've uploaded it to http://pysite.net/.

can you post the native display override file that you copied to get brightness working? That is the only thing that I can figure would be different on my system. Thanks.

Also uploaded to http://pysite.net

 

[narzola]

New MBP firmware available

http://www.tuaw.com/2006/11/13/apple-releases-efi-firmware-updates-for-intel-macs/

For those that do not have C2D's, these firmware updates might make the WUXGA screens work.

 

[RickAdair]

I gave that a try this morning along with the files you posted. Thanks for posting them by the way. I am still having no luck getting it to work. I think it's just about thime to pack this in.

 

[skippy911]

http://www.tuaw.com/2006/11/13/apple-releases-efi-firmware-updates-for-intel-macs/

For those that do not have C2D's, these firmware updates might make the WUXGA screens work.

Interesting find there narzola. I hope lovely666 gets the screen soon and tests it out since I will be in tokyo by the time mine arrives and wont be able to test till mid December.

 

[JDL1306]

Has anyone considered making a DVI/VGA adapter for the panel and using it as the external display for testing prior to taking apart the MB/MBP? A lot safer and you won't loose the primary so you can test all you want.

Not sure if it's possible, but just some feedback i thought might be useful to someone!

 

[lovely666]

Has anyone considered making a DVI/VGA adapter for the panel and using it as the external display for testing prior to taking apart the MB/MBP? A lot safer and you won't loose the primary so you can test all you want.

Not sure if it's possible, but just some feedback i thought might be useful to someone!

Not possible, as dvi and LVDS used with notebook screens is completely different. LVDS used with notebooks doesn't need to deal with long cables, where as DVI was designed to deal with longer cables.

 

[baxterbrittle]

Not possible, as dvi and LVDS used with notebook screens is completely different. LVDS used with notebooks doesn't need to deal with long cables, where as DVI was designed to deal with longer cables.

Actually it's not impossible but it is not cost effective either. Controllers can be had but they are expensive and hard to get.

I haven't been around here for a while but I'm glad things are progressing nicely. I didn't think belldandy was a fraud, I checked out those screen caps pretty closely and there were minor things that were just too acurate to be fraudulent. Unless he was just playing with us and just by accident stumbled upon the answer.

So we have 1 MBP C2D working at the moment and possibly a CD. I'd like to thoroughly congratulate narzola for being brave and paving the way, belldandy was the first MBP to work but doesn't seem too interested in sticking around so we all should be thankful for narzola as he could easily just go off and enjoy his new creation and forget about the rest of us.

I really have little to add here anymore as I sadly still have no MBP and most likely wont be getting one anytime soon (poor student and all), but I will still check in every now and then to see how things are going. Besides time is marching on and I've got other projects to work on.

Oh and cheers to all for making my first EVER thead anywhere on the net a good one.

 

[narzola]

...

So we have 1 MBP C2D working at the moment and possibly a CD. I'd like to thoroughly congratulate narzola for being brave and paving the way, belldandy was the first MBP to work but doesn't seem too interested in sticking around so we all should be thankful for narzola as he could easily just go off and enjoy his new creation and forget about the rest of us.

Oh and cheers to all for making my first EVER thead anywhere on the net a good one.

...

I'm so grateful you posted this thread in the first place. Actually, my coworkers are much more glad that you posted this thread because they used to hear my whine that my PowerBook was awesome except that the display sucked. Of course, now they have to hear me talk about how nice it is to have a large display and not have to move windows around all of the time......

Anyway, all kidding aside, thanks for figuring out that this was even possible.

If anyone in Seattle or willing to come to Seattle and wants help getting their MBP C2D (and possibly a CD) to work, let me know. It takes a couple of hours (mostly because I like to work slowly and carefully), but the results are worth it. I know that it is a lot easier to believe this is possible if you get to see and touch one that does first.

 

[lovely666]

I'm so grateful you posted this thread in the first place. Actually, my coworkers are much more glad that you posted this thread because they used to hear my whine that my PowerBook was awesome except that the display sucked. Of course, now they have to hear me talk about how nice it is to have a large display and not have to move windows around all of the time......

Anyway, all kidding aside, thanks for figuring out that this was even possible.

If anyone in Seattle or willing to come to Seattle and wants help getting their MBP C2D (and possibly a CD) to work, let me know. It takes a couple of hours (mostly because I like to work slowly and carefully), but the results are worth it. I know that it is a lot easier to believe this is possible if you get to see and touch one that does first.

On behalf of the other readers and dreamers in this thread, i wish to thankyou for your positive and helpful attitude. Your friendlyness and willing to help is much appreciated.

I'm sure will see a lot more C2D working in the furture and possible a CD working.

 

[lovely666]

I believe the problem with the CD mbp, is to do with the efi firmware,

This is all speculation. (I'll research into EFI more tomorrow)

i believe there are multiple stages in the loading of the os.

1. First Stage EFI - Main Bootloader
2. Selection Mac/Win
3a. Second Stage EFI
3b. BIOS Emulator
4a. OSX
4b. Winblows

The problems to do me exist ether in the second stage EFI or in the loading of osx.

As when the machine has a pram reset, it will continually boot into windows (With correct colors) without requiring another pram reset. But as soon as you boot into osx you'll need to reset the pram before color works again booting into windows.

I suspect there is further graphics mode/capablities detection occuring in the second stage efi/osx loader, which is rewritten to the pram, and used on the next boot by the first stage/bios emulation.

This second stage or osx loader is making a mess of something. Ether hard coded values, or incorrect detection code.

I believe that the C2D hardware isn't much different to the CD hardware as windows works on CD, which implies to me that gfx subsystems can run WUXGA without problem.

PS: Still waiting on my display.

(RickAdair: Did you reset your pram after you updated your firmware, and i can have the numbers which your firmware was updated to, EG EFI Firmware version inside the gfx section of system profiler).

 

[lovely666]

Yet another thought.

I remember reading back when people where trying to get windows to run on mbp, they couldn't get a compatible video driver for windows, and they suspected that x1600 had a custom efi firmware in it.

As i was reading about efi booting, it seems that efi doesn't or can't load a custom firmware into the card, so the firmware must exist on the graphics card.

So maybe what apple did to get x1600 running under windows was to load a load a regular firmware (at runtime). And maybe this is the difference between CD and C2D. C2D might have a new x1600 firmware.

However at the moment, the reseting of pram and windows working and not working without reseting pram doesn't link with this theory.

 

[RickAdair]

I did several pram resets. No luck at all. I agree with you that it comes down to the efi firmware of the x1600. The EFI Frimware version of my x1600 is 01.00.068, the same as yours. I think we need to flash the x1600 to get this working on the CD systems.

 

[lovely666]

I did several pram resets. No luck at all. I agree with you that it comes down to the efi firmware of the x1600. The EFI Frimware version of my x1600 is 01.00.068, the same as yours. I think we need to flash the x1600 to get this working on the CD systems.

We need to find software to do it under mac thought. As i believe if we just dump the firmware in windows, it won't be the same. But i might give dumping it in bootcamp ago.

Does anybody know if the non apple x1600 drivers work ? in bootcamp. (eg ones downloaded from the ati website)

 

[lovely666]

I had no luck in dumping the vga/x1600 firmware in windows .

Does any body know how to do this ?

 

[lovely666]

Found out something else.

the new C2D mbp have a newer kernel version.
Darwin Kernel Version 8.8.2: Thu Sep 28 20:43:26 PDT 2006;
root:xnu-792.14.14.obj~1/RELEASE_I386

My Cd mbp, has 8.8.1

This might be a soultion as well.

Been looking into efi and trying to get in contact with some of the people who write hacks for pc gfx cards that run mac osx.

 

[jrsade]

Does anybody know if the non apple x1600 drivers work ? in bootcamp. (eg ones downloaded from the ati website)

I have Vista running on my MBP with the standard video driver. So, I think there might be no special firmware in the X1600.