One of the problems using the Apple drivers drivers is that they are produced for a very small subset of cards that Apple support. My particualr card has three ports, HDMI, DVI and VGA. While it’s possible to get this particular Sapphire HD6670 card mostly supported by setting it’s personality to Pithecia in the boot plist, there will be no output from the HDMI port, as the Pithecia personality is for a card with DisplayPort, DVI and VGA.
So….some hacking is required……..
1. Dump the personality out of the kext.
To get a list of the supported personalities, you will need to dump them out of the kext. Download ati-personality.pl (Google it), and run it against /System/Library/Extensions/ATI6000Controller.kext/Contents/MacOS/ATI6000Controller – the bit I’m interested in is as follows:
Kext /System/Library/Extensions/ATI6000Controller.kext/Contents/MacOS/ATI6000Controller Personality: Pithecia ConnectorInfo count in decimal: 3 Disk offset in decimal 181984 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
The three lines of hex detail the configuration of each port. Taking the first line, it can be broken down as follows::
Connector 00 04 00 00
ATY, Control Flags 04 03 00 00
Features 00 01
Unknown 00 00
Transmitter 21
Encoder 03
Hotplug ID 02
Sense ID 04
2. Dump the card BIOS
You will need a dos boot USB drive (Google it), and atiflash.exe (Google it). boot off the dos drive, and run
atiflash -s o atirom.rom 20000
3. Get the card details out of the BIOS
Boot back into OS X, and run redsock_bios_decoder agains the BIOS (Google it). The output of mine looks like this:
198X14A5.S23: AMD HD6770 2G Subsystem Vendor ID: 174b Subsystem ID: e198 Object Header Structure Size: 203 Connector Object Table Offset: 34 Router Object Table Offset: 0 Encoder Object Table Offset: 9d Display Path Table Offset: 12 Connector Object Id [12] which is [HDMI_TYPE_A] encoder obj id [0x21] which is [INTERNAL_UNIPHY2 (osx txmit 0x12 [duallink 0x2] enc 0x4)] linkb: false Connector Object Id [4] which is [DVI_D] encoder obj id [0x1e] which is [INTERNAL_UNIPHY (osx txmit 0x10 [duallink 0x0] enc 0x0)] linkb: false Connector Object Id [5] which is [VGA] encoder obj id [0x15] which is [INTERNAL_KLDSCP_DAC1 (osx txmit 0x00 enc 0x10?)] linkb: false
Run radion_bios_decode against the BIOS. The output of mine looks like this:
ATOM BIOS Rom: SubsystemVendorID: 0x174b SubsystemID: 0xe198 IOBaseAddress: 0x0000 Filename: 198X14A5.S23 BIOS Bootup Message: AMD HD6770 2G PCI ID: 1002:6758 Connector at index 0 Type [@offset 44274]: HDMI-A (11) Encoder [@offset 44278]: INTERNAL_UNIPHY2 (0x21) i2cid [@offset 44348]: 0x94, OSX senseid: 0x5 Connector at index 1 Type [@offset 44284]: DVI-D (3) Encoder [@offset 44288]: INTERNAL_UNIPHY (0x1e) i2cid [@offset 44375]: 0x92, OSX senseid: 0x3 Connector at index 2 Type [@offset 44294]: VGA (1) Encoder [@offset 44298]: INTERNAL_KLDSCP_DAC1 (0x15) i2cid [@offset 44402]: 0x90, OSX senseid: 0x1
We now have all of the information we need.
4. The Connector
OK, so both BIOS decodes tell us that connector 0 is the HDMI connector. Looking at the Pithecia dump, we can see this is set to 00 04 00 00
But what does this mean?
Well, the connector type is defined as follows:
LVDS 02 00 00 00
DVI_DUAL 04 00 00 00
VGA 10 00 00 00
SVIDEO 80 00 00 00
DVI 00 02 00 00
DP 00 04 00 00
HDMI 00 08 00 00
So we can see that it’s set to Display Port. We want HDMI, so were going to use 00 08 00 00
5. The ATY and Control Flags
Again, looking at the Pithecia dump, we see that the control flags for connector 0 are set to 04 03 00 00.
What does this mean?
The ATY and control flags are defined as follows:
LVDS 40 00 00 00 or 00 01 00 00
DVI_DUAL 16 00 00 00 or 14 00 00 00 or 14 02 00 00
VGA 10 00 00 00
S-Video 02 00 00 00
DVI-? 14 00 00 00 or 14 02 00 00 or 04 02 00 00 or 16 00 00 00
DisplayPort 00 01 00 00 or 04 01 00 00 or 04 03 00 00 or 06 04 00 00 or 00 04 00 00
HDMI 00 02 00 00 or 04 02 00 00
Again, we can see that it’s set to Display Port. We want HDMI, so were going to use 04 02 00 00 as this is the option that enable HDMI audio
6. The Features
Again, looking at the Pithecia dump, we see that the features for connector 0 are set to 00 01.
What does this mean?
The features are defined as follows:
FIRST NUMBER
FEATURE_USE_INTERNAL 01
FEATURE_USE_RGB_ON_YUV 04
FEATURE_USE_BACKLIGHT 08
FEATURE_BACKLIGHT_INVERTED 10
FEATURE_USE_CLAMSHELL 20
SECOND NUMBER
LVDS 09
DVI_DUAL 00
VGA 00
SVIDEO 04
DVI 00
DP 00
HDMI 00
As none of the options for the first number are relevant, we’ll use 00 for that, and )) for the second, as we’re setting it for HDMI, so we will use 00 00
7. Unknown.
It’s unknown. Who cares? leave it at 00 00
8. Transmitter.
Now we look at the decodes, and see this for connector 0:
encoder obj id [0x21] which is [INTERNAL_UNIPHY2 (osx txmit 0x12 [duallink 0x2] enc 0x4)] linkb: false
Look at the bold text.
So we’ll use 12
9. Encoder
Again, we look at the decodes, and see this for connector 0:
encoder obj id [0x21] which is [INTERNAL_UNIPHY2 (osx txmit 0x12 [duallink 0x2] enc 0x4)] linkb: false
Look at the bold text.
So we’ll use 04
10. Hotplug ID.
This must be a unique value for each connector. Leave it as it, 02
11. Sense ID.
Again, we look at the decodes, and see this for connector 0:
i2cid [@offset 44348]: 0x94, OSX senseid: 0x5
Look at the bold text.
So we’ll use 05
12. Putting it all together
So what we have is this:
Connector 00 08 00 00
ATY, Control Flags 04 02 00 00
Features 00 01
Unknown 00 00
Transmitter 02
Encoder 04
Hotplug ID 02
Sense ID 05
to give us:
00 08 00 00 04 02 00 00 00 01 00 00 02 04 02 05
13. So how do I get this working exactly?
Download HexEdit (Google it).
Backup /System/Library/Extensions/ATI6000Controller.kext
Open /System/Library/Extensions/ATI6000Controller.kext/Contents/MacOS/ATI6000Controller with HexEdit
replace all instances of:
00 04 00 00 04 03 00 00 00 01 00 00 21 03 02 04
with:
00 08 00 00 04 02 00 00 00 01 00 00 02 04 02 05
Save your edited ATI6000Controller in a location that your are able to, as you won’t be able to save it in /System/Library/Extensions/ATI6000Controller.kext/Contents/MacOS/
Open a terminal, and copy your saved ATI6000Controller to /System/Library/Extensions/ATI6000Controller.kext/Contents/MacOS/ using sudo
touch /System/Library/Extensions
Reboot.