Panther on sawtooth with aftermarket Geforce 4?

chris v

There's a thread on MacNN suggesting that 10.3 will not run on Sawtooth machines that have been upgraded to newer Nvidia cards unless you disable the video driver.



Anybody here have any experience with this? I very recently upgraded to a OWC 1.2 GZ cpu, and they had a bundle deal for a Geforce 4 MX with it.



Will Apple eventually update the drivers, or will these machines basically be SOL?



CV

chris v

Anyone?? Bueller??



CV

sc_markt

Quote:

Originally posted by chris v

There's a thread on MacNN suggesting that 10.3 will not run on Sawtooth machines that have been upgraded to newer Nvidia cards unless you disable the video driver.



Anybody here have any experience with this? I very recently upgraded to a OWC 1.2 GZ cpu, and they had a bundle deal for a Geforce 4 MX with it.



Will Apple eventually update the drivers, or will these machines basically be SOL?



CV

I hope this is not true. Not more than a half hour ago, I just got done installing a Geforce4 MX video card in a 450MHz sawtooth specifically so I can run Panther.



Guess I'll find out tomorrow...



Shoot.

emdash

OK, I just installed Panther on my Sawtooth 450 with aftermarket GeForce 4. Having been tipped off to possible problems (thank you to those who should be thanked), I installed it in its own partition and preserved my entire Jaguar install (from whence I'm posting now).



The good news is that I did, in fact, get video. However, there were major screen-refresh problems. Dragging windows around the screen left little window-artifacts all over the place; columns of folders in Finder windows got out of whack when the columns shifted as I drilled down into the filesystem.



I fled to Jaguar in order to post this, so I haven't done any troubleshooting or actually spent much time in Panther. It sure looked snappy while I was there, though. I did it mainly as an experiment; since it's a clean install on a different partition, I can't actually do much of anything in Panther at this point, but I'll try migrating over there in due course.



My main message: If you have this combination of hardware, don't do anything (yet) that will compromise your Jaguar install!!! Install Panther only if you have a spare partition lying around!

dviant

I too had recently purchased one of those 32mb GF4MX from OWC for my Sawtooth 450. It really made a difference in that machine with 10.2.8. It's too bad, I've seen other reports of this card not jiving with 10.3 (and OS 9 too actually unless you have the elusive 3.5 drivers). I guess I'll probably return it (hopefully without the 15% restock hit).



I picked up an AGP Mac Radeon for cheap on Ebay today as a replacement. Actually you might do a search for that auction it was dutch and he had a lot left. They were real cheap ($36.53 + shipping). Hopefully its not some kinda bum deal too heh.

neumac

Being a poor slob with a sawtooth G4 and a GeForce 4MX upgrade I have been hoping that a solution to this problem would quickly appear, but I've heard nada.



Does anyone here have any more recent information? I'd like to upgrade to Panther, but it looks like I'll need to spring for a new video card, unless a fix comes through.



Thanks

luca

I bet it'll be fixed with 10.3.1.

neumac

Quote:

Originally posted by Luca Rescigno

I bet it'll be fixed with 10.3.1.

I hope so, unfortunately it's like having to wait until January 12th to open your Christmas presents.

bigc

FWIW, from Macfixit:



G4 Sawtooth problems with NVidia drivers It seems that the nVidia kernel extensions included in 10.3 are causing major headaches for G4 Sawtooth owners who swapped their original ATI cards with nVidia cards. In most cases, they get a black screen during the boot process. Kevin Poole write s"Some people have found success with replacing particular Mac OS X 10.3 nVidia kernel extensions with those from 10.2.x or even 10.1.x, but that doesn't seem to work for everyone. In any case, Apple clearly didn't test such configurations before releasing 10.3, which is unfortunate."



Apple posted a Knowledge Base article on the subject, stating "Contact the video card's manufacturer to see if they have updated the card's software or firmware drivers to work with Mac OS X 10.3. For best results, install the updated software or firmware before installing Mac OS X 10.3.



"If the third-party card is the only one installed and the screen is dark when you start up the computer, you may need to reinstall the original video card temporarily, install Mac OS X Panther, install the updated third-party drivers, then put your third-party video card back in."

kecksy

God damit! I have a sawtooth with Geforce4 MX too. Good thing I haven't installed Panther on it yet, and good thing I kept the old Rage 128 video card. I guess I'll swap them until either Apple or NVIDIA come up with a fix.

ghost_user_name

Quote:

Originally posted by chris v

Anyone?? Bueller??



CV

Was this a "bump"???



I hope not! For brad will be upset.

sc_markt

I am returning my aftermarket Geforce4 MX. Got my RMA number today.

In it's place, I've ordered an ATI 8500 (at over twice the cost).

neumac

For those affectred, OWC has posted this partial fix:



Other World Computing



Note that QE is not enabled.

kecksy

Quote:

Originally posted by neumac

For those affectred, OWC has posted this partial fix:



Other World Computing



Note that QE is not enabled.

What's the point of the fix, if QE doesn't work? That's what I got the NVIDIA card for in the first place. I might as well go back to my old Rage 128, which I am considering.

neumac

Quote:

Originally posted by Kecksy

What's the point of the fix, if QE doesn't work?

Yep, but keep in mind that OWC says that they are working on a QE fix, so there is hope.



The GForce 4MX provided a nice boost over the OEM card and I really don't want to back track, so I think I'll wait this one out.