Thanks for the tips. I will follow your suggestion and look at the site for DSDT options. However it is a nightmare; to start with I am struggling with even finding the entry for my Graphics Card (can find the Framebuffer, but looks nothing like the example shown, and all is kind of cryptic!?). That is the reason I need more time, I will try and investigate DSDT, entries, etc before making an attempt. If I do not get anywhere I will write again to see if we can try another way of doing things.
I did try booting with the DSDT you supplied and GE=No but no difference at all. My IOReg explorer is always showing ATY,RadeonFrameuffer@0 in a branch, no matter what. So you are right, seems like Chimera is not recognizing my card, this is also confirmed by the fact I had installed recently Chamaleon from testing branch and all of a sudden my card got recognized as HD5400 Series 1. As I can not boot properly with Chamaleon, I had to reinstall Chimera and back to were I started!
I will try with DSDT, just need a few days to try. I do not like giving up so easy.
Thank you very much for your help!
Argh, seriously don't even bother with the DSDT method unless you REALLY want to. I was just trying to cut a few corners...
I got it to work on my Radeon HD 6670 once, but it wasn't the perfect solution for my machine, so i just went back to the Chimera in the end.
Adding your card to ati.c in Chimera is probably the easiest, especially if you already have Xcode and right GCC / C++ stuff installed and if you know how to compile.
Here's a quick guide to editing ati.c files:
First, you'll want to download the latest source code by running the following command in Terminal.
This will download the latest Chimera Release folder to your desktop:
Code:
svn co http://forge.voodooprojects.org/svn/chameleon/branches/Chimera/Release ~/Desktop
Now navigate to the ati.c file in Release/i386/libsaio/ati.c
Open ati.c with either xCode or TextEdit
Search for "Layout is device_id" and you'll see a quick comment/description of what the parameters represent and which ones you need from your card.
Now search for "0x68e1" which is the main PCI ID for your card, you'll see a few results but none exactly match your card's SubSystem ID and SubSystemVendor ID (you can see these in your BIOS dumps you made from redsock_bios_decoder and radeon_bios_decode), which is why your card is not being recognised properly.
Chimera uses these IDs to match your card, assign it a chip family name, a card name and then assign a default framebuffer as you can see below.
The closest result to your card is this one:
Code:
{ 0x68E1, 0x3000174b, CHIP_FAMILY_CEDAR, "ATI Radeon HD 5450", kEulemur },
Copy this entire line and paste it beneath the existing entry.
Now change the 0x3000174b to 0x6000174b
See what we did there? Your card's IDs are SubsystemID: 0x6000 and SubsystemVendorID: 0x174b
So we just changed the existing 0x3000 SubsystemID to your one 0x6000. 0x174b stays the same.
This creates an EXACT match your make and model of card only.
If, for example, you wanted to create an entry for ALL graphics cards that use the 0x68E1 PCI ID (including your card), you could put in an entry like this:
Code:
{ 0x68E1, 0x00000000, CHIP_FAMILY_CEDAR, "ATI Radeon HD 5400 Series", kEulemur },
This ignores SubsytemID and SubsystemVendorID matching and uses only the 0x68E1 to match ANY cards that use this PCI ID. But as not all cards that use this ID are HD 5450s (there are also Mobility HD 5430s that use 0x68E1), it's best to assign a more generic card name like "ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5400 Series". In fact this entry already exists in the latest ati.c source, which is why your card was recognised as a Mobility model when you briefly tried Chameleon. You can actually put anything in here that you want, but for accuracy and consistency it's best to follow what has been done already.
You can now save the ati.c file and get ready to compile...
In Terminal go to the Release folder on your Desktop:
Now compile* your new Chimera boot file:
*NOTE: You will almost definitely have problems compiling the source with any version of Xcode above v4.2.1. So if you're using Mountain Lion, you might be fighting a loosing battle.
If you have success with the compile, find the resulting 'boot' file (you can leave the other files) in the newly compiled folders in the Release folder and use this to replace the boot file at the root of your Macintosh HD. Note: the current boot file that is already there is invisible, so you might get an error message when you try and copy your new boot file to Macintosh HD. You can use the ShowAllFiles.app to reveal it. Be sure to make a backup (ie. rename it to boot.bak or something). Just in case.
You can now reboot and the new Chimera boot file you just patched will do the rest. ie. Match your card.
In fact you shouldn't even need to specify "AtiConfig=Eulemur" anymore, as Chimera will now automatically assign this to your card when it matches it at boot. WIN!!!
I still have a Snow Leopard install with Xcode on one of my computers, so i'll be able to patch and upload a new version of Chimera boot file for you tomorrow if you're having trouble on your side
Chat then...
j.
