Month: October 2007

What’s in the ATI Radeon X1900 XT Firmware Update?

brunerd

OK so there’s an update for the Radeon X1900 and we really don’t know what’s been improved…
If you wanna know where the ROM is it’s here
ATI Radeon X1900 XT Graphics Card Update.app/Contents/Resources/
ATIFacelessFlash.app/Contents/Resources/R580Alopias_1.202_EBC.ROM

And what’s in it? Pure binary. No symbol tables, no strings save for the the device number and copyrights….

ATY,Alopias
ATY,RadeonX1900
113-A52027-202
109-A52027-00
01.00.202
AMD Inc. All Rights Reserved. 2005-2007

If we had the original ROM and this we could see what’s different then reverse engineer the binary! Whatcha think? :roll:

Me thinks Apple and AMD/ATi should pimp themselves better for all their hard work…. unless it’s a bone headed bug they had to fix :lol:

Mac Pro 10.4.10 AutoNegotiation Woes

brunerd 2 Comments

In case you didn’t know, MacPro’s with 10.4.10 are connecting at 10Mb speeds to 1000Mb switches and hubs… bummer :(

So a kext is the culprit:
/System/Library/Extensions/IONetworkingFamily.kext/
Contents/PlugIns/AppleIntel8254XEthernet.kext

In 10.4.9 it’s version is 1.1.7a3, in 10.4.10 it is 1.1.8a2, in 10.4.11 it is 1.1.8a6
That doesn’t matter much really, but that’s the details.

So you gotta roll back the kext:
1. Get the 10.4.9 Intel Combo Updater
2. Get OpenUp or Pacifist
3. Open the DMG
4. Show contents on the PKG
5. Copy out the pax.gz file to the desktop
6. un-Gzip the pax, and open that up (with Pacifist or OpenUp)
7. Get the old IONetworkingFamily.kext
8. Copy it into your /System/Library/Extentions

Now, the ownership on the kext need to be changed to root:wheel or if you’re in Finder system:wheel
Also, you should either delete the kernel caches or:
sudo touch /System/Library/Extensions
this changes the date stamp on the directory and OS X will recreate the kernel caches…

And yes, the 10.4.11 seed update corrects this.

Bonus Log files: These have been “prettied up” for readability, but you’ll see, 10.4.10’s driver is just spitting out Zer0s so the network switch/hub has no choice but to say “O K… I ‘ l l s p e a k s l o w e r t h e n…”

10.4.9:
Auto-Neg Advertise Reg (04d) = 0xde1,
Link Partner Ability Reg (05d) = 0xc5e1,
Gig Advertise Reg (09d) = 0xe00,
Gig Link Partner Ability Reg (10d) = 0x7800

10.4.10:
Auto-Neg Advertise Reg (04d) = 0xde1,
Link Partner Ability Reg (05d) = 0x0,
Gig Advertise Reg (09d) = 0xe00,
Gig Link Partner Ability Reg (10d) = 0x0

10.4.11(seed, much prettier logging in this kext):
Auto-Negotiation Advertisement Register (04d) = 0xde1
Auto-Negotiation Link Partner Ability Register (05d) = 0xc5e1
Auto-Negotiation Gigabit Advertisement Register (09d) = 0xe00
Auto-Negotiation Gigabit Link Partner Ability Register (10d) = 0x7800
PHY Specific Status Register (17d) = 0xaf48

If this info from 10.4.11 is NDA well bite me, I think people should know it’ll be fixed in the future, right? :)