Hoping to save some other soul pain. Here's what I should have done.

Machine: Old Dell GX280
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Video Card: XFX PV-T86S-WH
GF 8400GS 256MB On Board Supporting 512 MB DDR2 DVI VGA PCI-E
UPC: 7-7866-05112-6
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1. Erase any helper kext's - inject/natit /etc..

2. Make sure all the Apple kexts are in place namely:[list]
GeForce.kext
GeForce7xxxGLDriver.bundle
GeForce8xxxGLDriver.bundle
GeForceGA.plugin
GeForceGLDriver.bundle
GeForceVADriver.bundle
NVDANV40Hal.kext
NVDANV50Hal.kext
NVDAResman.kex

3. Remove any EFI Strings for your card.
- Run OSx86tools
- Click "Add EFI Strings"
- if the bottom text box has a bunch of stuff, clear it out and click "Apply Changes"
- if the botom text box says "Enter EFI string here" you're cool.

4. Get and unzip this attachement (which is Option 3 - sub option 1 from above actually)

5. Run "Kext Helper b7"
- drag NVinject.kext to the Kext Helper window, click 'install'

6. reboot and relax and enjoy.


NOTES: ........

This is kind of obvious but it took my brain some time to understand.

A simple understanding of the NVidia Driver system for the Hackintosh.

0. You have a recent NVidia video card
1. Apple's already written a driver for your card (with a few exceptions)
2. Your hackintosh may not be able to correctly inform the OS what kind of card you have, and not letting the driver load correctly. In a perfect world EFI does this. The EFI Strings stuff - is a way for you to explicitly say to the OS - here is my video card and this is what it supports. (for this card and my machine after 4 days.. this didn't get any better.)

5. Another way of giving the OS all the info it needs about your card is through the use of an 'injector' , which 'injects' the cards specs into the Device tree on boot-up. The catch is the injector doesn't go in an query your card and then spit out the proper info.. its up to you .. or some really nice gal or guy on the interwebs to find all that info, and then insert it into the injector via a Plist hidden in the injector 'bundle' . The method for doing this yourself, is roughly - boot the card in a PC, run the NVFlash tool to download the ROM from the card, run that rom through another tool to get a Plist with the cards specs, massage that plist gently, then copy it in to the proper plist in the NVInject.

What is in the first attachement in this thread are 4 NVInject.kext files, each with a different plist - describing the type of card to the OS. The one that works for this particular card is option 3- suboption 1.

6. Once the proper device information is handed to the driver, the driver .. well, drives the card properly and all is goodness and light. Or at least Quartz and Quicktime.

This process is completely exasperated by the fact that the failure of this process is either silent, or crashes the box neither of which leaves a clue in the console as to what exactly cause the failure or what you might want to change. Typically is that the card boots in VESA (plain jane) mode with no QE.. and the logs just say .. nothing. Trying to enable QE - doesn't do it, if the proper drivers are not driving the card, and if they can't and arent - the system doesn't tell you that or give you a reason why. So the most logical method is to find the details of your card, install that EFI string (if it works with your card).. barring that.. to do the rom dump/plist making and insert that into the NVinject.kext and try that.. or if you're not quite up to that challenge, search the net for an NVinject that has been tweaked to include support for your card - which is the option in this thread.

btw.
A quick way to tell if you have succeeded - is to put the display properties in the menu bar. If you have more than the one basic resolution -and if you have a monitor idenfication (EDID is working) then you've made progress. Next you can look at a 3D screen saver, if QE is not working then those screensavers will say something about not being supported on this environment or something, and show a black screen in the preview.

The TV hackintosh is up and running thanks to y'all, much obliged.

'Zaphod

Attached Files

NVinject.kext for XFX 8400 GS.zip (11.7 KB, 308 views)