No network connectivity when 2nd videocard is present?

[relik1989]

OK I wasn't sure what section to post in considering that this issue involves a few different things.

Heres my system info:
OS: Mountain Lion 10.8.2
CPU: Intel I7-920
MB: Intel DX58SO
RAM: 8GB DDR3
GPU1: Nvidia GeForce 660Ti
GPU2: Nvidia GeForce 210

I have been running dual monitors off of the 660Ti since day one of installing OSX and everything was running great. I recently got a hold of a 3rd monitor, but I do not have an active display port to dvi adapter to connect it to my 660Ti, frankly I don't want to either because of the memory bandwidth of the card. So I figure the next best thing would be to run a second graphics card, that's where the 210 comes into play. I used NVenabler to get the 210 running, and GraphicsEnabler is set to No, both cards run perfect and I was able to get my monitors up and running using both cards, and now I can even output to my tv at the same time Here is the problem though, when ever the second video card is present OSX does not even detect my on board Ethernet, I have tried several pci Ethernet cards with the same result. If I remove the second video card my Ethernet works just fine again, but as soon as I reconnect the second videocard card my Ethernet stops working again. I have absolutely no idea what could be causing this issue. It may be worth noting that my old AMD motherboard a M3A770DE used to do the exact same thing except it would randomly swap between the Ethernet not working and the sound not working so it doesn't seem to be isolated to any of my hardware in specific, especially because when I had my old AMD system I was using two completely different video cards (never really ran OSX on the AMD system, I just thought the info would be relevant). Lastly I thought I would mention that I have tried using 3 different secondary video cards, the Geforce 210, a radeon HD4850, and a radeon HD5450, and I have the same result with all 3, although I would like to stick with using the 210 because it works the best out of all the cards, and the HD4850 would be overkill anyway.

Can anyone help me out with this it's so frustrating being so close then being stopped by something so stupid.

 

[DarfWeder]

It can be because the cards share some common resource. For instance if you stick a PCIe card in say slot 4, it means slot 3 is then disabled etc. This really depends on your motherboard though and should be written in it. My MSI motherboard book says similar things: 'when using slot x, slot y won't work'.

So your graphics card inadvertently may either occupy some IO resources it needs and then blocks the NIC(s) or simply by using another slot on the motherboard you could be able to make this work.

Have a look at your motherboard book and see if there is any mention of it.

 

[relik1989]

I don't have the original book but I will certainly look it up online right now. as far as trying a different slot my board has a 4x pcie slot that can accomodate a 16x card so I have already tried that, unfortunately it gave me the same result.

I scanned through the entire manual and found nothing. I did see that if you use a pcie card above a certain wattage that you have to connect a standard 4pin molex to the aux power port on the board so i gave that a shot and it made no difference at all. here is a link to the manual if it may be of some help.
http://downloadmirror.intel.com/18128/eng/DX58SO_ProductGuide02_English.pdf

EDIT...again. So it would seem that it is not just my on board nic that doesn't work when the video card is present, I tried two different pci network cards without the video card in place and confirmed that they both do in fact work. I then reinstalled the second graphics card, and none of the network adapters worked or were even detected. So I now have 3 network cards that all work just fine, but when I install the second video card they all 3 stop working.

I do have a wireless N network adapter I could try but I cannot find the kext for it because I cannot figure out what chip set it uses, it is a Belkin F6D4050 v2, if someone could help me find the kext for this adapter I could give this a try and see if I can get a network connection using a usb device, if I can then Ill just go buy an apple usb Ethernet adapter, they sell them up at best buy and my girlfriend works there so can you say discount!

 

[DarfWeder]

http://downloadmirror.intel.com/18128/eng/DX58SO_TechProdSpec.pdf pages 11, 12 and 13.

To me slots B and F would be used to put a LAN card in, I stuck one in the lowest on my board but that is a MSI board.
When using PCIe slots C and G (G being primary and closest to the CPU) you will share resources with the x4 slot H.
At least that is how I read it.

When even if you don't add an extra NIC card you already have issues with your onboard NIC when using the two graphics cards, then the common denominator (p13) is the IO controller hub. Can you possibly reset the DMI data?

I would be inclined to think an PCIe x1 NIC card would work, but that may be optimistic.

Otherwise, was there another card in the PCIe x16 slot before, and you took a DSDT at that point and you are using that? If so it may require a DSDT edit...

 

[relik1989]

http://downloadmirror.intel.com/18128/eng/DX58SO_TechProdSpec.pdf pages 11, 12 and 13.

To me slots B and F would be used to put a LAN card in, I stuck one in the lowest on my board but that is a MSI board.
When using PCIe slots C and G (G being primary and closest to the CPU) you will share resources with the x4 slot H.
At least that is how I read it.

When even if you don't add an extra NIC card you already have issues with your onboard NIC when using the two graphics cards, then the common denominator (p13) is the IO controller hub. Can you possibly reset the DMI data?

I would be inclined to think an PCIe x1 NIC card would work, but that may be optimistic.

Otherwise, was there another card in the PCIe x16 slot before, and you took a DSDT at that point and you are using that? If so it may require a DSDT edit...

As far as resetting the DMI data I'm really not sure how to do that? I have already reset the CMOS, if that's relevant.

I tried a BIOS update about 3 weeks ago and it failed but I was able to recover the board using the built in rescue utility. I never bothered to check what BIOS version I am currently running though, I was just happy that my board wasn't toast at the time, maybe an update is in order? I'll go check asap.

As far as the DSDT goes,
1. No there has never been another card on this board ever, aside from my Radeon HD7870 which I had before ever attempting to install OSX and the 7870 was replaced by the 660Ti prior to installing OSX.
2. I'm not using a DSDT as far as I know, I do have the DSDT.aml file for my board though, but I have no idea how to edit or even use the DSDT file. Currently the DSDT.aml file is sitting in my downloads folder, It was included in a download for my motherboard found by using the tutorial linked below.

http://www.tonymacx86.com/mountain-...mountain-lion-intel-dx58so-fully-working.html

I followed that tutorial exactly, and everything until now is in fact working fine, but as you can see there is no mention of using the DSDT even though it is included in the download that was linked at the beginning of the tutorial.

EDIT: Ok so some progress has been made. I finnaly got a successful update on my BIOS so im now at the latest version. Since the BIOS update OSX is now detecting the onboard NIC, however it is still not working properly. If left set to DHCP I get an ip address that is not part of my network and my subnet is set to 255.255.0.0 instead of 255.255.255.0. If I set the ip address and subnet manually then the config screen says that it is connected and working, but I still endup with no network access, I cant even ping my router.

 

[DarfWeder]

Ahaaa, progress!!!!

The nic behaviour you describe really sounds like a lnx2mac driver issue, and you should read http://lnx2mac.blogspot.de/2011/03/reviving-dead-ethernet-ports.html

I have to say that mostly in my case disconnecting the PC from the power did help somewhat but not always and I have resorted to getting a PCIe NIC.

But you have an intel 82567LM gigabit NIC... ? (at least onboard) So what kext are you going to use for that?

Sometimes it helps to press the Renew DHCP Lease button in the network pref pane several times.

 

[relik1989]

Ahaaa, progress!!!!

The nic behaviour you describe really sounds like a lnx2mac driver issue, and you should read http://lnx2mac.blogspot.de/2011/03/reviving-dead-ethernet-ports.html

I have to say that mostly in my case disconnecting the PC from the power did help somewhat but not always and I have resorted to getting a PCIe NIC.

But you have an intel 82567LM gigabit NIC... ? (at least onboard) So what kext are you going to use for that?

Sometimes it helps to press the Renew DHCP Lease button in the network pref pane several times.

I tried everything you mentioned, everything mentioned in the post, and even a few things that were mentioned in the comments and nothing worked. as far the what kext, I'm currently using the IONetworkingFamily.kext that was included with the download from the tutorial I followed, it contains a kext named "AppleIntel8254XEthernet" which I'm assuming is the kext that my card is using, though im not 100% sure.

I'm not sure what else to do, whenever the second video card is NOT present my Ethernet works 100%, but as soon as that second card is in place that's when the issues start.

 

[DarfWeder]

OK

had a a little chat with PJALM and so here is the result.
Working those 660ti and GF210 is not going to work, as the 210 need GE =Yes and the 660 GE=No.
Chimera will have issues handling that.
The nvenabler method is for Lion and SL but we do not support that method in ML anymore.

The "best" thing to do seems to use a 610 card, dirt cheap and doesn't confuse chimera.

The x58 is also not supported by ML or OS X for that matter, but tons of patches out there to make it work.

 

[relik1989]

OK

had a a little chat with PJALM and so here is the result.
Working those 660ti and GF210 is not going to work, as the 210 need GE =Yes and the 660 GE=No.
Chimera will have issues handling that.
The nvenabler method is for Lion and SL but we do not support that method in ML anymore.

The "best" thing to do seems to use a 610 card, dirt cheap and doesn't confuse chimera.

The x58 is also not supported by ML or OS X for that matter, but tons of patches out there to make it work.

I do have GE=No in chimera, but I was able to get the 660ti and the 210 to both work using nvenabler, however I never checked to see if it had any ill side effects(such as loosing HW acceleration or anything like that), as a side note I have been running all these "tests" using my CCC backup so I don't mess up my main installation. However, you did mention that the x58 isn't supported...I do have everything running just fine, but maybe the lack of support is why it doesn't act right with another card in place, and I also discovered that on this board OSX doesn't detect ANY PCI cards at all, no matter what kind of card it is.

At this point maybe the simplest thing to do would be to just get the Display port to DVI adapter...at least until I can afford a new, and much more compatible, motherboard. On that note, do you know whether the 660ti would require an active display port adapter, or could I just buy a passive one? I cant find the answer anywhere, but I do know that AMD cards require an active adapter but I don't know about Nvidia.

Thank you very much for all of your help on the issue.

I should at least be happy that I have a hackintosh that runs this damn good to begin with, obviously a few issues here and there, but overall this thing still continues to amaze me.