[Works] Sapphire 6450 512MB full CI/QE

[osx86geek]

Oops, hit the quote button and not the edit without thinking, and submitted. Sorry for the double post.

 

[Proletaire]

I had the same outturn, except VGA and DVI doesn't work. Only HDMI works for me. Does DVI work for you? Thanks!

I'd forgotten all about that, but now that you mention it, no, DVI doesn't work for me, either. I haven't tested VGA but I'll try to find an out old VGA cable and see if that's the same.
Cheers
P

 

[osx86geek]

Ok, I finally got EVERY port working on my SAPPHIRE ATi Radeon HD 6450!!! I got it to work using a modified Pithecia framebuffer. To do it I used bcc9's guide to patch the framebuffer, and mucha's guide to find values. (Links at bottom.) I'm not sure if it will work for non-Sapphire cards, but its not a bad idea to try. To patch you need to follow bcc9's thread. It took me forever to figure out, but you need to hex edit the framebuffer into ATI6000Controller. This is my patched framebuffer:

0008 0000 0403 0000 0000 0000 2103 0302
0400 0000 1402 0000 0000 0000 0000 0404
1000 0000 1000 0000 0000 0000 0100 0001

Pretty much what you are going to want to do is download the file attached at the bottom, and open up terminal. Make sure you have an un-modified vanilla ATI6000Controller.kext. Put the file on your desktop, and go to terminal and type this:

$ sudo dd if=~/Desktop/pitheciaPatch of=/System/Library/Extensions/ATI6000Controller.kext/Contents/MacOS/ATI6000Controller bs=1 count=48 seek=523624 conv=notrunc

next type:

sudo dd if=~/Desktop/pitheciaPatch of=/System/Library/Extensions/ATI6000Controller.kext/Contents/MacOS/ATI6000Controller bs=1 count=48 seek=176512 conv=notrunc

These commands patch the controller, they only patch Pithecia, though. Make sure you type it in right, and also have a backup of the un-modified kext just in case. Please do ask questions, as I'm not sure if this is an efficient explanation.

Make sure to set AtiConfig to Pithecia in the Boot.plist!

bcc9's thread: http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=249642
mucha's thread: http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=252061

FILE: pitheciaPatch.zip

 

[philwil007]

Nice work! I was having trouble finding the correct values in Hex Edit. In fact, I couldn't find any of the personalities I looked up in the 6000 kext. Unfortunately, Yes, it will probably only work with Sapphire cards, mine is HIS. The patch gave me DVI output only. Going to check out the other posts and see if I can correctly patch for my card. I can smell framebuffer and HDMI audio!! SOOOOOOO close!


Just to recap: HIS 6450 1gb DDR3, hdmi/vga/dvi all work with default Pithecia buffer, just no audio over HDMI. Obviously due to wrong sense id in Pithecia.


Edit: As you'll notice in my next post, sense id was not the issue, it was the connector id.

 

[osx86geek]

Nice work! I was having trouble finding the correct values in Hex Edit. In fact, I couldn't find any of the personalities I looked up in the 6000 kext. Unfortunately, Yes, it will probably only work with Sapphire cards, mine is HIS. The patch gave me DVI output only. Going to check out the other posts and see if I can correctly patch for my card. I can smell framebuffer and HDMI audio!! SOOOOOOO close!


Just to recap: HIS 6450 1gb DDR3, hdmi/vga/dvi all work with default Pithecia buffer, just no audio over HDMI. Obviously due to wrong sense id in Pithecia.

Thanks! It sounds like all you have to do is dump your VBIOS, decode is using bcc9's tool, calculate the new sense ID, and patch it in!

EDIT: BTW; I haven't tested HDMI audio yet.. So that could still not work with the SAPPHIRE...

 

[philwil007]

Well folks, that's all she wrote. I can confirm now that my HIS 6450 works perfectly with audio as well. Thank you for everyones help. The eventual fix seemed a lot easier than the required learning it took to get there; however, it was a simple connecter type issue with the Pithecia buffer for myself.

Default Buffer:

Personality: Pithecia
ConnectorInfo count in decimal: 3
Disk offset in decimal 500508
0000000 00 04 00 00 04 03 00 00 00 01 00 00 21 03 02 04
0000010 04 00 00 00 14 02 00 00 00 01 00 00 00 00 04 03
0000020 10 00 00 00 10 00 00 00 00 01 00 00 00 00 00 01
0000030

My Bios Decode:

ATOM BIOS Rom:
SubsystemVendorID: 0x1787 SubsystemID: 0x2012
IOBaseAddress: 0x0000
Filename: ST1G01.001
BIOS Bootup Message: CAICOS PRO 1G/64B DDR3 DVI-D/HDMI/VGA 625E/500M

PCI ID: 1002:6779
Connector at index 0
Type [@offset 44245]: HDMI-A (11)
Encoder [@offset 44249]: INTERNAL_UNIPHY1 (0x20)
i2cid [@offset 44319]: 0x93, OSX senseid: 0x4
Connector at index 1
Type [@offset 44255]: DVI-I (2)
Encoder [@offset 44259]: INTERNAL_UNIPHY (0x1e)
i2cid [@offset 44346]: 0x92, OSX senseid: 0x3
Connector at index 2
Type [@offset 44265]: VGA (1)
Encoder [@offset 44269]: INTERNAL_KLDSCP_DAC1 (0x15)
i2cid [@offset 44373]: 0x90, OSX senseid: 0x1

As you can see, the Pithecia buffer lists my first output type incorrectly, should be 00 08 for hdmi. With information from the aforementioned threads, and a little luck, I successfully edited the buffer.


I replaced this:

00 04 00 00 04 03 00 00 00 01 00 00 21 03 02 04

with this:

00 08 00 00 04 02 00 00 00 01 00 00 21 03 02 04


There you have it, made those changes with hex edit, and one reboot later, TA DA... blissful digital audio.

Why all the headache you ask? Well, the no-name radeon buffer that loads with GE=No, gave me great video and audio I thought, just no hardware acceleration. The problems started when I began to notice occasional screen flickers and audio drops. So, hope this does it.

 

[osx86geek]

Well folks, that's all she wrote. I can confirm now that my HIS 6450 works perfectly with audio as well. Thank you for everyones help. The eventual fix seemed a lot easier than the required learning it took to get there; however, it was a simple connecter type issue with the Pithecia buffer for myself.

Default Buffer:

Personality: Pithecia
ConnectorInfo count in decimal: 3
Disk offset in decimal 500508
0000000 00 04 00 00 04 03 00 00 00 01 00 00 21 03 02 04
0000010 04 00 00 00 14 02 00 00 00 01 00 00 00 00 04 03
0000020 10 00 00 00 10 00 00 00 00 01 00 00 00 00 00 01
0000030

My Bios Decode:

ATOM BIOS Rom:
SubsystemVendorID: 0x1787 SubsystemID: 0x2012
IOBaseAddress: 0x0000
Filename: ST1G01.001
BIOS Bootup Message: CAICOS PRO 1G/64B DDR3 DVI-D/HDMI/VGA 625E/500M

PCI ID: 1002:6779
Connector at index 0
Type [@offset 44245]: HDMI-A (11)
Encoder [@offset 44249]: INTERNAL_UNIPHY1 (0x20)
i2cid [@offset 44319]: 0x93, OSX senseid: 0x4
Connector at index 1
Type [@offset 44255]: DVI-I (2)
Encoder [@offset 44259]: INTERNAL_UNIPHY (0x1e)
i2cid [@offset 44346]: 0x92, OSX senseid: 0x3
Connector at index 2
Type [@offset 44265]: VGA (1)
Encoder [@offset 44269]: INTERNAL_KLDSCP_DAC1 (0x15)
i2cid [@offset 44373]: 0x90, OSX senseid: 0x1

As you can see, the Pithecia buffer lists my first output type incorrectly, should be 00 08 for hdmi. With information from the aforementioned threads, and a little luck, I successfully edited the buffer.


I replaced this:

00 04 00 00 04 03 00 00 00 01 00 00 21 03 02 04

with this:

00 08 00 00 04 02 00 00 00 01 00 00 21 03 02 04


There you have it, made those changes with hex edit, and one reboot later, TA DA... blissful digital audio.

Why all the headache you ask? Well, the no-name radeon buffer that loads with GE=No, gave me great video and audio I thought, just no hardware acceleration. The problems started when I began to notice occasional screen flickers and audio drops. So, hope this does it.

Glad to hear it! For me it wasn't that easy, I had to change transmitter and encoder value, and my sense IDs were wrong... lol

Anyone else try this yet?

 

[claes]

This is interesting... when I was testing frame buffers I noticed Pithecia worked, but all of the outputs were green! It'd be interesting to see some cinebench results with this method, maybe Pithecia was the right one all along.

 

[shibirian]

This is interesting... when I was testing frame buffers I noticed Pithecia worked, but all of the outputs were green! It'd be interesting to see some cinebench results with this method, maybe Pithecia was the right one all along.

Seems Pithecia works okay with your Mobo-Graphic cards combo. Let us know of the results, please.

 

[philwil007]

Interesting you should mention the green-tinted outputs, I got them on a few other personalities I tested, pithecia always worked great on my card, except for the audio thing of course. I had my His 6450 in a machine with a pentium dual core e6700 ('10 model) over clocked to 3.87 w/ 8 gb ddr3 @ ~1300mhz and only pulled an 11.64 open gl score w/ cinebench. Pretty poor; however, I do not game with this card so no big deal. Just as a reference point, I picked up a Diamond 5670 card pretty cheap and put it in the same rig and pulled amost 40. The card only cost $10 more than I paid for my 6450 lol. Not sure what framebuffer I used, can't seem to find a working combo yet for that card. The personalities that give me full res and qe/ci force my displays into a stuck mirrored mode with a phantom monitor showing connected to VGA (fyi no screen attached to the vga port). If anybody has any bright ideas on the Diamond 5670 let me know. My wall right now is the vbios for that card, seems to not exist on techpowerup. Nor can I find a model similar enough to base some patching off of.