Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

10.6.5 Exotic 4870 Patch (4890 maybe?)

K

Keita 1

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 31, 2009
20
0
Hello everyone. Sorry for the delay as I had been away for some time. This patch should restore full functionality to 4870 after the 10.6.5 update. Also if you are running a 4890 you maybe able to restore functionality if you combine it with one of netkas own patches.

Here it is and GoodLuck.
 
Last edited:
4870 is not excotic and will not benefit from patch.

4870 doesnt work for u in 10.6.5? go back to previous version. you cant run 10.6.5, old drivers aint gonna work either.
 
I just updated Zeus, it was the first OS update that broke my card that was fixed almost immediately after (some day I'll learn...). I have a 4890, though, think I remember reading that that was easier to patch with 10.6.5?
 
Is there any conclusive way to determine why these 4870's aren't working with the latest driver? Is there any way to force a specific framebuffer to work with a particular card? Does the driver check the card to see if its BIOS has corresponding vendor/subvendor ID's as listed in the EFI portion?

I'm looking for a reason as to why the latest drivers do not work. I'm also looking for a somewhat easy solution aside from going backwards.
 
On one of the other threads there's a guy who installed parts of the 10.6.5 update with Pacifist, you might try doing that. He still has 10.6.4's framebuffer IIRC.

The drivers do work, but apparently not for everyone – my 4890 works fine, for example.
 
I did a bit of digging through the flashed bios against other bits available within the latest version of Zeus (v2.2), and found the following information:
The first 64000 bytes (FA00) appear to be the main part of the ATI bios
The efi chunk is 49152 bytes in size
There is one MCuC that follows the EFI block
The MCuC block starts on 0x0001BA00, and is 3C90 in length.

There appears to be 213 bytes in between the EFI part and the MCuC block

The MCuC block is 15504 bytes in length.

There's a set of bytes located at 0xa5e3 in the 4890 efi part, and at 0x19fe3 which differ by two bytes -
the values from the 4870 are 52ee, while the 4890's values are 531e
I don't know what this is for, or what it corresponds to.

From efi.part, at offset b282, data is completely different between the efi data from a 4870 and a 4890.
21374 bytes differ entirely from the two efi parts. I do not know what is contained in the EFI data.

f800 = starting point for EFI in zeus-provided 4870efi.rom file. What gives?
Click to expand...

I uploaded my current bios, and the two other files that I based this research on, if anyone's interested in letting me know what is going on here. I'm not 100% sure that the bios is right for the card, but it has been working both in OSX and Windows for some time now, without issue.

http://www.rapidshare.com/files/433002876/Bios-roms.zip
 
Updated Link and Patch

I updated the link above with an edited patch. The patch I made earlier was not installing consistently across systems so I changed the program and method I used to install the necessary files. This should restore QE/CI function and dual monitor support.

@Cindori
I am curious as to why you thought the non standard 4870's could not be patched to work? It would be helpful if you explained yourself more rather than just making declarations.
 
Keita's patch worked beautifully for my 4870 ZWxx. I got both QE/CI and dual dvi back.

I'm not sure why Cindori said it won't work as it's fine here.
 
Glad to here of your success. I was beginning to wonder since no one had left any feedback. I you tried the patch and had success please feel free to reply.
 
Thanks Keita 1,
I’ve been struggling all week trying to get netkas QE_CI patches and various other kext files to work. I got my Sapphire 4870 1GB up and running with your patch this evening. Nice work.
 
Keita 1_ PATCH for Ati 4870 OS 10.6.5

Thank you Keita 1! Just patched my XFX ZWFC 4870 1GB card/OS 10.6.5 works great_dual monitor working fine +++:)
 
Running 10.6.5 with a 4870 ZWFL! Working splendid with Keitas patch! :)
Still old frame buffers but at least we're not stuck with 10.6.4!
 
Thank YOU!

I was on the edge to reinstall my os cause no patch worked. Until i stumbled upon this.

With a few extra patches I'm now running 10.6.5 on my Sapphire 4890 1GB New Edition with displayport. The additional patches I used was qeci from 10.6.3 and a dualdvi patch.

Thank you again!
 
Hey all,

Is this download working for anyone?

I've been trying to download and install since last night for my 4870, but the link from Mediafire doesn't seem to work. It just hangs on "your download is starting..".


ETA: Setting up a free Mediafire account allowed the download. The patch works great. Thanks for putting it out there!
 
Last edited:
apple_iBoy said:
Just wanted to echo the thanks! Glad there's still someone out there with some hope for the 4870.

Any chance of 10.6.6 update?
Click to expand...

netkas's patch doesn't work for you? It was fine for me, and I installed it twice.
 
Netkas's 10.6.6 patch didn't work for me. I've edited the .dist inside of this patch, in hopes that installing it over 10.6.6 will fix my video issues. Currently only 1 monitor is working, without QE/CI acceleration. Hope to update this post with the results.

EDIT: It works. Looks like I'm stuck on 10.6.2's framebuffer, and OpenGL 2.1 maximum. Oh well. At least I have the latest OSX patch installed and working to some degree with my video card.
 
Last edited:
didn't know there was a problem with upgrading. Thank god I stayed at 10.6.3 when dual displays FINALLY started working. Once it was fixed...

IF IT AINT BROKE, DONT FIX IT

thus, I have not upgraded.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back