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Middle of Block 5 »

You’re building an OSx86 (“Hackintosh”) machine. You’ve got everything working great, but just can’t manage to add a powerful XFX 4890 graphics card to your rig. You’ve tried all the options at the InsanelyMac Forums, but still get garbled text upon a normal boot-up.

Here’s a possible solution (keep in mind that the process of flashing video cards has potential risks, and I’m not responsible for a.) ruining your card or b.) the process not working). This is merely another option for you to try.

Assumptions

1. You’re running Netkas’ PC EFI v 10.6 as your bootloader.
2. You don’t have any keys/strings in the com.apple.Boot.plist file (under the bootloader’s “Extra” folder) which try to load a specific ATI rom. In other words, you don’t have any “-useATIrom” flags.
3. Third, your XFX 4890 card has two DVI outputs and one S-Video output. HDMI outputs will not work.
4. You’ve updated your computer to 10.6.2. With this assumption, I’m hoping you followed Netkas’ guide to update the sleepEnabler kext (the 10.6.1 version will not work with 10.6.2).

Process

1. Boot OSX in safe mode by highlighting the Apple icon on the bootloader screen and typing “-x” followed by the return key.
2. Once you’re at the desktop, download the 10.6.2 combo update from Apple’s site. This may take a while depending on your Internet connection.
3. Download Cindori’s Zeus flashing utility.
4. Download the XFX 4890 EFI rom (link to rom).
5. Download Netkas’ quartz enabler package for 10.6.2.
6. Launch Zeus, and click on “Browse” under the ATI tab. Navigate to the XFX 4890 EFI rom, select your OS (Snow Leopard), and click “Flash.”
7. After successfully flashing the card, install the 10.6.2 combo update. When the installation is finished, you’ll be prompted with a screen to restart. At this point, install the quartz enabler package. Only after this is also complete, then it’s okay to restart.
8. Boot into OSX as you normally would, except this time, with your fingers *and* toes crossed. The graphics card should be recognized and operate with dual screens (both DVI with no DVI-VGA converter).

If you have any questions, please leave a comment and hopefully I’ll be able to address them. Usually I just edit kexts or build my own, but this process worked for me, and hopefully it’ll work for you too.

Legal

As a third year medical student at Baylor College of Medicine, my posts are intended to educate others and share my experiences from this incredible journey without violating patient privacy at all costs. These blurbs are not to serve as a replacement for recommendations provided by licensed physicians under any circumstance.