If you experienced a problem patching your DSDT/SSDT to enable Mac OS X native power management, or you don't know how to do this - the new bootloader is for you! Should work on most modern systems/processors.

Bootloader based on latest Chameleon RC5 rev184. Mem detection is enabled and slightly modified: fixed system profiler returns error while reading memory info in some cases. P-States & C-States are exported to the system via additional SSDTs, so if you have native SSDTs with _CST methods you should use "DropSSDT" = "Yes" option in boot.plist. If you have modded DSDT with _CST methods you should remove them or it'll be kernel panic on system start. The bootloader also supports multiple SSDT loading (names should be SSDT.aml, SSDT-1.aml ... SSDT-29.aml). Bootloader also supports latest graphic cards (code was obtained from here)

To enable native power management you should use proper mac model + HPET enabled. To enable C-States you must have LPC working on your system. It could be enabled via DSDT mod or injector.

To activate P-States generation add "GeneratePStates"="Yes" option into boot.plist. To activate C-States generation add "GenerateCStates"="Yes" option into boot.plist. Those features are not activated by default!

Sources available here. The name of the project is Chameleon-Mozodojo.

P-States generation algo based on original superhai's algo from VoodooPower project.

 cham_rev218.zip ( 600.51K ) Number of downloads: 235



This post has been edited by Mojodojo: Jul 24 2010, 02:32 PM

Nice work, I would like to see more of this, using SSDTs is a better way than patching the original DSDT in such cases, you probably already have seen this one, but I'll post the link anyway: ACPI Generator from the coreboot project.

One thing I would really like to see is patching-on-the-fly a few things in the DSDT like the GNVS/BIOS starting address, this seems to change when you add/remove DIMMs.

Excerpts:
from my laptop:

from a MBP6,2:

The simple solution: parse those values from the original dsdt before any patching or/and ovverride. After this, patch new dsdt with parsed values?

+1

After numerous patching of my DSDT I increased RAM and encounter non-working function. I had to find these values in DSDT.
But I have no idea how to correct it automatically... Compare BIOS DSDT with loaded from file? What names to check?

We can parse and patch OperationRegions with well known names like: BIOS, GNVS, OSTY, SMI1. Make an array of these names, and patch differences automatically.

All OperationRegions with SystemMemory and patch all differencies.

Besides GNVS/BIOS/<whatever> everything else can be read from registers, so one needs to make a good DSDT with these OperationRegions set dynamically, or what do you think?

I think it wouldn't be a big difference from parsing and patching some or whole OperationRegions found. We don't know where is the next OperationRegion appears so we need to check a whole DSDT, original one and a custom. Make an array with OperationRegion names and offsets. Compare differences and patch custom DSDT.

If I understand you correctly, you want to read values for some of OperationRegions from the specific registers? If it so, I tnink it's difficult, and I love simple solutions

it's need some optimization. In this algo you parse custom DSDT every time you found OperationRegion in original DSDT

No, what I meant is, if someone is going to edit his DSDT, he could make it so that the OperationRegions are set by reading registers; RCBA addr, SMBus I/O port.. etc. Not to be done by the booter, but in the DSDT itself.

I hope it's clear now (?)

It is not a problem for real programmers as we are, isn't it?
First scan byte by byte to find all regions. Second scan by table entries. Faster 10 times.
But I think my double cycle 20000x20000 will perform in L2 cache during 1sec.


It's very hard task for almost all users except roots.
We are making an automatic solution for lamers.

I understand, I hope ^)

It's like a sections for SuperIO registers on some mobos.

Ooops! Impossible! We need to know Names before search.

Quickly looking I see C1-C3 support, does this build support C4? I know most boards don't support four C-states but what about C1, C2 and C4.

Revision 346 doesn't give me CStates with DropSSDT either yes or no with a GA-EX58 MB's DSDT with a standard PR scope.
However, when clocked over a certain point (148x20 or 2.96 GHz for a i7 920 or Xeon W3520 CPU), the OS doesn't see the CStates available to it anyways.
Memory detection didn't work either, but does work with AsereBLN's version.

I have not played around with compiling sources in OSX yet only Linux. Is it kinda the same?


Anyhow does anyone have a link to the i386 binary?

This post has been edited by osxfr33k: Jul 21 2010, 04:46 AM

it' not required to know a name. We can search for OperationalRegionOp (0x830b) and parse the name.

The way I see it could be done is, parsing both the original and modified DSDT and building 2 arrays of a type with 2 pointers; each pointing to the OperationRegion's name and address, then we go over the 2 arrays, compare and patch...

Yes, something like this. Is it really necessary? It may increase system startup time.