DSDT.aml location when booting with Chameleon on an external drive

[methane]

Hi all,
I'm trying my hand at dsdt patching to get my Nvidia 8800GT 512mb working. I've found PEGP device code for the 8800GT on some other threads and I've created a dsdt patch that includes it. I've put my DSDT.aml in just about every location I can think of and my video card is still not listed correctly in System Profiler. Because I get no other errors or KPs this leads me to believe that my patched dsdt.aml is not getting picked up by Chameleon. So for now I'm simply trying to determine if my DSDT patch is even getting loading and where it's loading from.

Sidenote: Is there a good way to test that the dsdt patch is loaded? It's possible that my DSDT is loading and just not working. I tried the Wait=y to read the output but it wasn't picking that up (perhaps that wasn't supported in Chameleon RC1?)

My install setup may be a tad unique I dual boot XP and OSX from the same drive. I followed the lifehacker thread on setting up a hackintosh and installed my SL install disk and Chameleon RC1 to an eSata external drive. To boot SL I select that external drive from the bios boot menu it loads Chameleon.  To boot XP I simply do nothing and it loads from the default HD

My internal hard drive looks like this:

disks01 EFI <-- Empty
disks02 10.6.4 - GPT
disks03 WinXp - NTFS

eSata looks something like:
disk11 EFI
disk12 GPT <-- Contains chameleon and SL install disk

My question is when I boot Chameleon from the eSata drive it shows me 3 drives. The eSata, the Osx partition and the XP partition. When I choose the OSX partition (disks02) where does Chameleon look for the DSDT.aml? I've got it on the eSata /Extra folder and I've tried it on the disks02 root and /Extra folders as well. It doesn't appear to pick up my changes no matter where I put it.

I've seen similar behavior with the com.apple.Boot.plist as well. The one on the eSata only seems to apply to the initial Chameleon startup. But if I set -v for instance, it doesn't boot my OSX partition with verbose. Again if I make this change on the OSX partition's Boot.plist in /Extra it's still not picked up. Is this a problem with having an /Extra folder on both the eSata and OSX partition?

Sorry for the long post and thanks in advance.

[Terc]

Sorry if I've missed something, but have you tried using

Code: [Select]

<key>GraphicsEnabler</key>
<string>Yes</string>
in your boot.plist and also tried different PciRoots (default is 0, try 1 and 2)

Code: [Select]

<key>PciRoot</key>
<string>1</string>
If you can enable your graphics with your DSDT, that's nice, but this works for me and I don't feel like the extra effort is worth it.

[methane]

I've tried that and it didn't appear to work, but I still think that could be because I'm not modifying the correct Boot.plist

Let me ask you this; If I boot Chameleon via an external drive a select the OSX partition on my internal primary HD to boot, where should Chameleon be looking for Boot.plist and dstd.aml when loading the OSX partition? Will it keep using the ones it loaded when it booted off the eSata, or will it look for new ones on the OSX partition?

It seems no matter where I modify Boot.plist I can't seem to get it to affect the OSX partition. I've been trying to set kernel flags to boot with verbose (-v) for example. I've put a Boot.plist on estata's root and its /Extra  I've also tried disks02's root, /Extra, /System/Library/SystemConfiguration and a few other spots. For some reason it still boots with the gray apple logo screen after I choose the partition from Chameleon.

I did at one point suspect maybe it was loading these files from my EFI, but when I try to mount_hfs EFI it I get "invalid argument" which from what I've read means it's empty. Maybe I'm doing something wrong there and it's not?


PS: I'm using Chameleon RC1 if makes a difference. Maybe I should try upgrading to RC4 or 5?

[Terc]

I'd go with RC4 http://forum.voodooprojects.org/index.php/topic,1001.0.html

Your com.apple.boot.plist should be in the same drive that you install Chameleon on (must be FAT32 or HFS+) and should be located inside a folder named Extra that is located at the root of the drive.

I use a USB flash stick to install chameleon on, then keep all my files on that (with some exceptions that most people wouldn't need to worry about).

[methane]

Thanks Terc,

I'll try RC4 tonight when I get home from work and see if that's any better. Right now I have been modifying Boot.plist on the eSata /Extra directory and those changes (-v for example) don't carry over to OSX partition after I select it for boot.  Maybe this is a problem because I did at one point install chameleon to OSX partition in an attempt to boot directly from it. This didn't work along side XP which is why I went back to the external drive route. It's safe to delete the "boot" file from the root of my OSX partition if I'm using external drive correct?

One other question in regard to dsdt patching if you know anything about it. Is there a simple way for me to verify that it's loading my patch? Maybe a vendor string or something I could set in there that I could see in System Preferences?

[Gringo Vermelho]

Extract your DSDT under OS X. If the extracted DSDT has the patch then you're good.

[methane]

Updating to RC4 seems to work now. I also made sure to remove boot and /Extra from my OSX partition just in case.

Still not loading my video card via dsdt patch but GraphicsEnabler is detecting it now which is really my ultimate goal anyways. I may play with dsdt patching another day but at least for now I can move on to other things with my video card working.

Thanks again guys.