OS X boots to garbled screen - ASUS PQ5 & ATI 4670

So last time I tried this stuff was back when 10.5 was a bit mature. Since 10.6 came out I decided to try this again...

I did a fresh install of OS X onto an external SATA firewire drive using my iMac and a retail OS X 10.6.0 Snow Leopard disc.

Right after the successful install I put the drive in my PC, I use the iBoot CD and select the drive. Darwin text flies by and I eventually end up at a garbled screen. Black screen with white blocks everywhere... I can't see anything.

My MacBook or iMac won't boot from the external drive - but it is a GUID drive and is OS X Journaled. The User account is not setup on the drive since when it boots I can't see anything (on the PC side)

Setup:
I have an Asus P5Q Pro motherboard, 4GB of RAM. Intel Quad2Core
ATI Radeon 4670 PCI-E card (I have dual cards but have removed one for the install). Using DVI to VGA adapter makes no difference in either DVI port.
I'm using an iBoot-ATI CD via an SATA DVD-RW drive.
My internal drive is a 320GB SATA WD drive. SATA is set to AHCI.

Am I missing something? Are the steps above impossible? The BIOS is retail, I will try an updated BIOS but I think this may be a Graphics card issue? If I have a compatible .ktext Graphics Drive I can put it in or install it Manually using my iMac maybe?

Any help at all would be thankful. I know my graphics card isn't really supported but I remember last year I got 10.5.3 to run with the card, I don't need fancy features, I just need to see the screen.

I have an intel iMac for help if need be.

Thanks, :)
-Steve

hi there,
this problem seems to happens alot on ati card, although it happened once to my nvidia when trying iatkos..
anyway, there are some you can try but...:
1. try boot with -x32 as some kexts load only in 32 mode.
2. Try ATY_init.kext for your ati card. It is a good injector.
3. In chameleon boot screen , type this in boot prompt:"GraphicsEnabler"="yes" (if this works you can add this line in your boot.plist later)
4.Boot with -s and run some command to skip Welcome clip and user account setup, but you can login as root and setup a new user account there.
command:

Code:

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/sbin/fsck -fy
/sbin/mount -uw /
passwd root 
touch /var/db/.AppleSetupDone
reboot

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5. This is bit wild but.., try remove/unload all ATi kexts that has older version number than your card. So all ATI1xxx,2xxx or 3xxx put it aside (move to a folder)

try it one by one..good luck:)

Thanks for the reply, here's what I tried.

1. -x32 didn't seem to help.
2. I downloaded a ATY_init.kext and installed it via plugging in the HD to my iMac and copying the file to the extensions folder and overwriting the existing one.
3. I am using iBoot CD instead of Chameleon, I couldn't understand how to get Chameleon working. (You install it on your USB flash drive right?)
4. It gave me an error when I tried to type in a new root password, but I continued and I didn't get anywhere else.

Thanks for all of your help however!

Any other ideas? :)

Thanks,
-Steve

Quote:

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Originally Posted by LimeiBook86

3. I am using iBoot CD instead of Chameleon, I couldn't understand how to get Chameleon working. (You install it on your USB flash drive right?)

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When it show the os /disk selection, just press space bar, the "boot:" prompt will show up, just like you type -x32 -f...etc

EDIT:
I think that is might the problem, boot file on your osx ! Try use the latest pciefi (v10.6) or latest chameleon. Just replace boot file on your root.

Quote:

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4. It gave me an error when I tried to type in a new root password, but I continued and I didn't get anywhere else.

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sorry for that,but mine works with that command..but this command will solve it, i guess:

Code:

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initialize directoryservices and try passwd again, so enter in single user mode and:
$ /sbin/fsck -fy
$ /sbin/mount -uw /
$ launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.DirectoryServices.plist
$ touch /var/db/.AppleSetupDone
$ passwd root
$ reboot

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when you login, user: root, passwd: (the one you just enter)
best of luck for you,too

Thanks for all the info!! :)

I actually tried another hard drive. Long story short Apple re-installed 10.6.2 on my MacBook after they replaced the hard drive. I haven't touched the drive since I replaced it with a larger drive.

Out of curiosity I put the drive in the PC... used the iBoot ATI CD...

It worked! :fail It even has full graphics and sound support! All I needed was to install an ethernet driver! I'm shocked. I then copied the HD to a larger desktop one using Carbon Copy Cloner on the MacBook. Repaired the permissions on the copied drive via the OS X DVD and it worked great. I couldn't be happier.

Thanks for your help. :D

It is a pleasure and glad to hear it works :)