[Eug]

For those of you running upgraded Power Macs (including the Cube) with flashed 3rd party GeForce 6x00 cards, you may have a boot delay of a couple of minutes with Leopard.

This boot delay is related to the temperature diode. The OS seems to wait for it to become active, which can be several minutes. Once the diode is working, the OS boot continues as normal, and everything is fine in Leopard.

Obviously it's annoying if you have to wait minutes after each restart (eg. for software updates), but there is a solution. If you know what you are doing (and I don't) you can zero out the temp. diode code in the GPU firmware to turn it off. With it deactivated, there is no boot delay.

The drawback is you no longer get GPU temperature monitoring in OS X. This is usually not a problem, although some people with Cubes like monitoring the temp for obvious reasons.

So you have your choice: Boot delay or lose GPU temperature monitoring.

(Edited for clarity.)

[Big Mac]

Why does it take so long to activate?

[Eug]

Originally Posted by Big Mac 

Why does it take so long to activate?

No idea.

P.S. This seems to be a problem specifically on G4 Macs with Leopard. With G5 Power Macs, there is apparently no such delay, with the same video cards.

For me, it's not a big problem, as I like having the temp monitoring, and I don't reboot that often anyway. (I usually just sleep the computer.) Nonetheless, I'm still considering picking up a cheap $50 PC to do the firmware change. Although not the end of the world, having a 2 minute boot delay is definitely annoying.

[Eug]

I picked up an el cheapo beige PC today and did the flash for my Cube's 6200. The boot delay is gone!

[Lateralus]

So there is no way to perform the modification from a Mac?

My boot delay is damn near 8 minutes.

[Eug]

AFAIK, there is no way to do the flash from a Mac. The flashes are all done from DOS on PCs, and you generally need a setup that can be set to select either on-board video or else PCI for the primary video, and an extra AGP port for flashing. I was lucky and managed to pick up a recycled P4 machine that uses the same PC133 memory my Cube can use, and I already had an old PCI video card and hard drive lying around, so all in all it only cost me $75.

That 8 minute boot delay really does suck. I wasn't as concerned on my Cube, because the delay there is only 2 minutes, but 8 minutes is way too much.

Ironically, that $75 P4 1.4 feels faster than my upgraded Cube for office tasks and surfing, in XP. It's total crap in Vista though, since there are no drivers for my PCI Radeon in Vista, and thus I can't get Vista to support anything beyond 1280x1024.

P.S. I don't know the status of ROMs for the 6800 series cards. I know they have been working on it, but I haven't been following it closely since the only stuff I'm interested in is with the 6200.

[Lateralus]

Yeah, looks like I'm gonna have to wait for an easier fix to pop up somewhere. Because I'm not buying a PC just to fix this. That and I only reboot my machine for SW updates anyways. Sleep mode FTW.

[Eug]

I just checked, and at least one 6800 ROM has now been fixed. But yeah, you still need a PC to flash it.

[Eug]

You MAY be able to flash some machines with NVFlashUtility, that comes with Graphiccelerator.

Graphiccelerator | ROM Editing tool for Mac OSX

This will only work with cards that already have Mac ROMs. And, it probably doesn't have support for the newer cards. Most people recommend using a PC.

[Lateralus]

I was able to update my 6800's ROM to the modified version using Graphiccellerator and it worked perfectly. Boot time is now what it should be.

[Eug]

Originally Posted by Lateralus 

I was able to update my 6800's ROM to the modified version using Graphiccellerator and it worked perfectly. Boot time is now what it should be.

Excellent news. 8 minutes to 1 minute is a pretty good improvement.

My Cube was just under 3 minutes, and now its under 1 minute.

P.S. Here are the cards Graphiccelerator supports. I don't know if the support list is the same with its NVFlashUtility, but obviously we know Lateralus's 6800 works at least.

ATI
Radeon X1900 XT OEM, rev 140
Radeon X850 XT OEM, rev 108
Radeon X800 XT Mac Edition, rev 104, 107, 108 and 109
Radeon 9800 XT OEM, rev 118 and 123
Radeon 9800 Pro Mac Special Edition, rev 103, 116 and 126
Radeon 9800 Pro Mac Edition (128 and 256 MB), rev 114, 120, 130 and 134
Radeon 9800 Pro OEM, rev 116 and 117
Radeon 9700 Pro OEM, rev 114, 119 and 124
Radeon 9650 OEM, rev 114, 115 and 117
Radeon 9600 XT OEM, rev 121
Radeon 9600 Pro PC & Mac Edition, rev 101
Radeon 9600 Pro OEM, rev 120 and 126
Radeon 9600 OEM, rev 112 and 113
Radeon 9200 Mac Edition, rev 120, 121, 124 and 127
Radeon 9200 OEM, rev 101
Radeon 9100, underground hacked ROM (only supported by my older ATI OC Tool 0.9)
Radeon 9000 Pro Mac Edition (64 and 128 MB), rev 107, 112, 127, 135 and 136
Radeon 9000 Pro OEM, rev 122, 127, 130, 131 and 142
Radeon 8500 Pro Mac Edition, rev 123, 126, 220 and 227
Radeon 7500 OEM, rev 222
Radeon 7000 Mac Edition, rev 119, 208, 218 and 226
Radeon 7000 OEM, rev 109 and 110
Radeon Mac Edition AGP, rev 117, 119, 215 and 224
Radeon Mac Edition PCI, rev 106, 119, 124, 126, 215, 216 and 225
Radeon OEM, rev 116, 118, 119 and 125
Rage 128 Pro OEM, rev 108, 110, 125, 130 and 136
Rage 128 OEM, rev 108, 112, 116 and 204
Nexus 128, rev 103
Xclaim VR 128, rev 108

NVIDIA
Quadro FX 4500 OEM, rev 2149
GeForce 7800 GT OEM, rev 2152.2
GeForce 6800 Ultra OEM, rev 2103, 2112, 2118, 2119 and 2130
GeForce 6800 GT OEM, rev 2120 and 2130
GeForce 6600 OEM, rev 2149
GeForce 6600 LE OEM, rev 2149
GeForce FX 5200 Ultra OEM, rev 2055 and 2060
GeForce4 Titanium OEM, rev 1105
GeForce4 MX OEM, rev 1088, 1091, 1098, 1100, 1121, 2026 and 2032
GeForce3 OEM, rev 1045, 1049, 1055, 1057.014 and 1057.019
GeForce2 MX OEM, rev 1027, 1045, 1049, 1055, 1057.011, 1057.019, 1075 and 1100

[yikes600]

I'm using a 6200 in my G4 and I don't have the knowledge to perform this myself. Is there somewhere (mac elite wiki?) that has instructions for modifying the ROM in the manner you described, or to download an already-modified ROM?

[Lateralus]

Originally Posted by Eug 

NVIDIA
GeForce 6800 GT OEM, rev 2120 and 2130

My card has 2121, which Graphiccellerator doesn't support. Even the modified ROM I flashed with this morning is still 2121.

I'd sent an e-mail to the creator of Graphiccellerator to ask about 2121 support and he said he's had problems working in compatibility for it. So, we'll see.

[yikes600]

big thanks to Eug... my 6200 is working great now under Leopard!

[Eug]

There is now a software fix for this. No flashing required.

Remove* AppleHWSensor.kext from /System/Library/Extensions/

*Removal of Apple's extensions can potentially muck up other stuff, including system updates. Thus, I think the flash method is better, if you can do it.

[reader50]

Eug, my first guess is that kext is used for other sensors too. Later G4s and the G5s need hardware temp sensors to keep the fans turned down. Has anyone tested this to make sure their later box doesn't burn up, or lift off?

[Eug]

Originally Posted by reader50 

Eug, my first guess is that kext is used for other sensors too. Later G4s and the G5s need hardware temp sensors to keep the fans turned down. Has anyone tested this to make sure their later box doesn't burn up, or lift off?

It's irrelevant for the G5s, because they don't suffer from this boot delay problem in the first place AFAIK.

It could be an issue for the later G4s though. I wonder if removing this extension turns the fans onto vacuum cleaner mode.

[CarlosLopes]

I followed Eug's solution and removed the kernel extension. Then I reloaded it after startup. This gave me back the Graphics Card temp sensor. Using a G4 with Geforce 6200.

I then decided to load it during startup with a StartupItem and it worked! Now I have no boot delay and the kernel extension is loaded automatically.
I cannot really tell if the system routines related to the sensors are restored but the services are available for all applications after system boot. Temperature monitoring Apps will work! (Video temp readings available a few minutes after startup )

The way I did it:
1) move the kernel extension from /System/Library/Extensions to /Library/Extensions
2) make sure that owner is root and group is wheel
3) put a StartupItem in /Library/Startupitems that loads the extension with kextload

You can find my startupitem as well as a script to install it and move the extension here.

It would be great to know how this works for later G4 Macs that need the sensors to control fans, etc.

Note: you may need to clear KEXT caches after moving the extension. Try this in Terminal:
sudo rm /System/Library/Extensions.*