Use Mavericks 10.9 drivers in Snow Leopard 10.6

[Tuscarora]

Anyone know if this is possible? My 7870XT works a treat in 10.9 but ain't happy at all in 10.6.8 - which, at this stage, I'd quite like to downgrade to (Mavericks has broken too much of my software!).

I've tried just dropping the kext over and that does not work, does anybody have any ideas?

 

[totenkopf4]

Anyone know if this is possible? My 7870XT works a treat in 10.9 but ain't happy at all in 10.6.8 - which, at this stage, I'd quite like to downgrade to (Mavericks has broken too much of my software!).

I've tried just dropping the kext over and that does not work, does anybody have any ideas?

Tuscarora
That depends on how good you are at Coding ....

Using the new kexts w the Old Kernel .... as the Madagascar penguins say " That Ain't Gonna Fly" will require you to patch the kexts ( video and the kernel) to address the needs of SL and the video hardware.... to start.

Great summer project tho...

 

[Tuscarora]

My coding skills are very much in their infancy. I'm studying engineering at the min and there is a module on C++, I've picked up a bit from Hackintoshing (like device ids in plists and so on) and while I've done a couple of XCode tutorials... most of them went over my head. I've poked around with a debugger, otool and class-dump to examine binaries a bit but not much experience.

You reckon I'd need to be running a patched kernel as well as patching the kexts? I recently hackintoshed a new computer for my dad, and used the patched ML kernel to boot SL on an Ivy Bridge CPU, which seems an encouraging sign, although I'd be willing to bet there's been a lot of changes to the Mavericks kernel.

Would the apple dev pages give me an idea of the changes between SL and Mavericks - and steer me in the right direction of what needs patched?

 

[toleda]

I've tried just dropping the kext over and that does not work, does anybody have any ideas?

Your probability of success porting AMD7xxxx kexts to Snow Leopard is zero. An alternative is downgrading the graphics card. The Sapphire HD6870 Vapor-X and HD5870 Vapor-X are supported OOB in 10.6.8.

 

[Tuscarora]

Ahh-so the task is on the scale of difficult to impossible. I guess that makes sense. Well I'll continue learning more about coding and mac development and keep it in the back of my mind while my skill grows.

It'd be worth it if I can do it, however I'll not hold my breath for a quick resolution. I'll see how well my software unbreaks with progressive updates, but it sure would be nice to have Rosetta back again..

As for GFX downgrade, I'll check it out and have a think.