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Updating to 10.6.3 - now dual monitors don't work

pfjellman

pfjellman

macrumors regular
Original poster
Mar 18, 2010
209
4
Oregon
I have a Mac Pro 1,1 with a flashed ATI Radeon HD 4870 XFX. Had no problems with it ever.

Installed Mac OS X 10.6.3 software update and now the second monitor says No Input detected. Switched second monitor to first monitor and it worked fine, but the second DVI port no longer works.

Need to get this figured ASAP as I have a lot of work to do today... very unhappy with this update. Anyone else having a similar issue or have any thoughts on what to try? I've done everything I can think of.

Do I need to flash it again? Seems silly to have to flash it every time you update the OS. The video card is still recognized in System Profiler. HD 4870 with 1GB GDDDR5 VRAM.
 
from netkas.org:

radeon 4830/4850 – new framebuffer has same problem as leopard’s – inability to work without dvi2vga dongle in second port, to fix it – use 10.6.2 framebuffer, to do it – make backups of the following kexts before update:

ATI4800Controller.kext
ATISupport.kext
ATIFramebuffer.kext



gonna try a fix
 
i'm not using any vga. it's an hdmi to dvi cable running from my second monitor.

so either way - how do i get the required files to fix, and what do i do with them? even a link to a guide would be useful. i'll do some google searching.

thanks for the fast help.
 
so there's no solution? man i don't want to have to worry about my monitors not working every time i update mac os. i was under the impression that the flasher utility would flash the video card to be a mac readable mac understandable video card indefinitely.

saving $100 on a video card is not worth it if we have to go through this every time - i've already lost $100 in productivity today just messing with this. very lame.

should i just downgrade back to 10.6.2? not even sure if i know how to do that. sigh...
 
confirmed to affect 4890 too.

Netkas tip worked. will use it to include fix in Zeus update
 
ok thanks. i guess this is something we'll have to do every time an update comes out then huh?

i will check out netkas.org as well and see if i can bang out a solution. post here when you find it in case i'm unsuccessful or others looking find this thread and need assistance.

thanks again.
 
ok. I will make a fix button in Zeus that re-enables dual dvi automatically. But I will not update zeus until netkas releases the QECI patch too (a day or two?)

in the meantime you can re-enable Dual Dvi manually. I prepared a fix-package



http://groths.org/dualdvi.zip

Unzip, open kexthelper
Drag all the kext files to kexthelper
Enter password, press Easy Install

reboot and voilá, dual dvi back.
 
thank you, the kernel extensions did the trick. much appreciated. now i can get back to work!
 
pfjellman said:
I have a Mac Pro 1,1 with a flashed ATI Radeon HD 4870 XFX. Had no problems with it ever.

Installed Mac OS X 10.6.3 software update and now the second monitor says No Input detected. Switched second monitor to first monitor and it worked fine, but the second DVI port no longer works.

Need to get this figured ASAP as I have a lot of work to do today... very unhappy with this update. Anyone else having a similar issue or have any thoughts on what to try? I've done everything I can think of.

Do I need to flash it again? Seems silly to have to flash it every time you update the OS. The video card is still recognized in System Profiler. HD 4870 with 1GB GDDDR5 VRAM.
Click to expand...

Let this be a lesson to you, then. If you are running non-standard hardware, such as a flashed video card.. don't apply system updates on day one unless you can tolerate problems!
 
OK with real Mac Pro 1,1 and NVidia 8800

No problems with dual 30" monitors via an 8800 on my old 2006 Mac Pro. Using the DVI and DisplayPort->DVI convertor. Monitors are an Apple ACD and a HP3065. :)
 
pfjellman said:
saving $100 on a video card is not worth it if we have to go through this every time - i've already lost $100 in productivity today just messing with this. very lame.
Click to expand...
Who are you angry at? You're using a hacked piece of hardware. Apple doesn't recommend or even support the Apple version of the 4870 on your computer.
 
Hmac said:
Who are you angry at? You're using a hacked piece of hardware. Apple doesn't recommend or even support the Apple version of the 4870 on your computer.
Click to expand...

This reminds me of an absolutely hilarious segment on Leo Laporte’s radio show. Someone called in to complain that her wireless access no longer worked. Here's a key snippet:

Laporte: “You were using somebody else’s Wi-Fi.”
(pause before answering)
Jennifer: “Not uncommon.”
Laporte: “This person probably caught on and turned it off.”
Jennifer: “No, it was a Linksys in my neighborhood.”

We do have a quite refined sense of entitlement in this country. The whole thing is out on YouTube.
 
Fast Shadow said:
Let this be a lesson to you, then. If you are running non-standard hardware, such as a flashed video card.. don't apply system updates on day one unless you can tolerate problems!
Click to expand...

I don't even do it with standard hardware. I don't get paid to beta test OS releases anymore, I'm not going to jump out of my shorts to be one of the first people to install an update that'll break as much as it fixes.
 
i'm not angry at anyone. i've only had this video card installed for about 5 days so forgive my ignorance. i didn't think updating the system would make any difference because from what i understood the flashing was done on-card and made it compatible as a standard piece of Apple-certified hardware and was independent of system version/loaded kernel extensions, etc.

i will check the steps needed before performing another system update.
 
Well, it IS compatible as a standard piece of Apple certified hardware - the thing that's not is that half of the card is not what OS X is expecting to find - a Mini DisplayPort, so that's why dual DVI is broken, why VGA isn't working, why there weren't two dual-link ports in the past. I'm curious about 4870s with DisplayPort and how they work, but nobody's flashed one and reported about it yet.

I could be wrong about this - feel free to correct me, Netkas or Cindori, Rominator - but that's my understanding of it.
 
As someone else pointed out, there's no guarantee your update would have been trouble free if you were using nothing but official Apple hardware, either. The bottom line is that if you have any kind of critical work coming up, or are on a deadline - definitely do not make any changes to your computer until you have completed that work. This is just a good rule of thumb, across the board.
 
Hmm.

I cloned my boot drive and ran Time Machine, fully expecting to run into the same issues, and ready to swap the kexts.

Installed and rebooted: both monitors working fine.

I'm using the Sapphire 4870 1 GB. I also flashed way back before Cindori & co. made it ludicrously easy, though I don't think that makes a difference.

Either way, I was expecting to run into problems and didn't. Pleasant surprise, I guess, but I'll confess that my machine has been remarkably trouble-free from day one.

That said, I find myself wondering what was done to the kexts in 10.6.3 that caused these incompatibilities. 's update notes are as vague as always. Netkas, can you tell us what they changed?
 
TheStrudel said:
Well, it IS compatible as a standard piece of Apple certified hardware - the thing that's not is that half of the card is not what OS X is expecting to find - a Mini DisplayPort, so that's why dual DVI is broken, why VGA isn't working, why there weren't two dual-link ports in the past. I'm curious about 4870s with DisplayPort and how they work, but nobody's flashed one and reported about it yet.
Click to expand...

The card he was using wasn't an Apple card, it was a PC card that he flashed to work with his Mac. It doesn't have a minidisplayport, it has two DVI ports.

And, even the "Apple Certified" version of the 4870 is specifically disclaimed by Apple as not being supported on his 2006, 32-bit EFI Mac Pro.
 
Yes, I know it wasn't...did you not read my post? I was pointing out that the hardware is mostly the same and the software can't tell it isn't - one of the ports just will never work properly because it's not what the software is expecting.
 
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