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Yeah, I know ML got released but it isn’t very interesting…

So, back to topic, sometimes it happens so you flash a videocard and after reboot the system doesnt see it at all, usualy happens with nvidia cards.

What to do ?

need to erase flash rom chip, but how, if one is not soldering guru and has no spi programmer ?

well, just need to prevent videocard from reading flash rom chip and here is how:

1) hardest part, find the spi rom chip, its 8-pin chip, usualy looks similar to this one, color doesnt matter

see the dot on it, its pin #1
there is few chips that looks similar, but only one is flash spi rom chip, be carefull
2) short pin 4 and pin 5,omni suggested it’s better to short pins 1 and 4,  better to do it with some thin wire, and make sure you didnt short anything else, also make sure you can unshort it when the card is running and dont short anything else doing so.

this trick prevents videocard from sending any command to flash rom chip, and so it cant read content of rom chip
3) now start the computer(obviously you will need the second card to do this), now the card will be visible, with 0000 as subsystem devid and vendor id,
make sure system and flashing app see the card fine
4) now very carefully, while the system is running, cut the wire you used to short 1 and 4 pins
5) flash the card (in case of nvflash use options -5 -6)
6) after flashing is done, quickly switch off computer, remove the card, remove all wires you used to short pins
7) enjoy

Comments(7)

more here

long story short – by default opencl doesnt work on gk104 but works on apple’s gk107 from new mbps. Now it works on gk104 (gtx670-gtx690)

Update: obviously ML drivers are much better (still need a patch so)

Comments(8)

10.7.5/mbp2012 drivers run opencl on Fermi just fine out of box, no more need to enable it binpatching, but..

If you have a card with more than 2 gb of video memory, opencl suddenly gets disabled, wtf?

Here is why: (warning, assembler skills needed for the pic)

basicaly, if your video ram amount > 2GB by at least 1 byte, then you are screwed.

Funny Apple, they decided to control it themselves instead of putting check in the nvidia driver.

But, we can just disable the check and enjoy.

The file you wanna patch is /System/Library/Frameworks/OpenCL.framework/Versions/A/OpenCL

Just do these two simple patches you can do with any hex editor and you are good to go:

1) for 32-bit part:
find 3d 01 00 00 80 73 e7
replace with 3d 01 00 00 80 90 90
yes, its just last two bytes to disable the check
2) for 64-bit part, for lion
find ff 50 68 48 39 d8 73 e5
replace with ff 50 68 48 39 d8 90 90
for mountain lion
find ff 50 68 4c 39 e0 73 e7
replace with ff 50 68 4c 39 e0 90 90
P.S. doesnt applies to gtx670/gtx680, they have a different problem

Comments(37)

Apple just released ML GM, aka what will be the rtm of ML.

Video drivers in lion was slightly updated.

More info will be posted later.

Interesting things:
1) they have cleaned ML, there is not a single kext with 32-bit part anymore.
2) video driver support is same as in dp4: 6970 with a patch and cold boot bug( cmon apple/amd, you had it fixed in dp2 and have it now fixed in lion). Nvidia gtx670/gtx680 works, no GE/aty_init or efi(on a mac needed)

Comments(13)

The nvidia drivers from mbp2012(and from 10.7.5 beta, they are same) are really leaky one.

For example, yeasterday I had a site with many flash ads openned in opera and bam, kernel (kernel_task, video driver is part of it) eats 690 MB of memory. Normally its around 200mb.

Watching an online video in flash player – 700 mb for kernel_task

Only happens when nvidia card installed, no problem with ati.

Be aware.

Comments(18)