Macbook Pro Unibody 2009 LCD Display

This is the next piece of my MBP Unibody to receive my attention.  I am dismayed at the support for the LCD under Windows.  No driver is provided for the monitor so it using the Generic PnP Display driver.  As i have previously posted, it seems the ACPI support is almost missing.  Because of this, Windows is unable to adjust the brightness of the screen as is apparent from its absence in the Mobility Centre:

This also means that some of the cool new power management features of Windows 7 like the idle screen dimming feature are unavailable.  I really like this feature in OSX and would love to see it working under Windows.  I decided tonight to investigate this further and the first step was to find out some useful information about the panel.  Running the following command in an OSX terminal window gives you the model of your display:

ioreg -lw0 | grep IODisplayEDID | sed "/[^<]*</s///" | xxd -p -r | strings –6

Finding the model information under Windows is even easier:

1. Open device manager
2. Expand the Monitors node and double-click the display to bring up its properties dialog
3. Change to the Details tab and select Hardware Ids from the drop down list

The model can be seen in the last 4 digits of the hardware ID.  For example mine is MONITOR\APP9CA4 which means i have the 9CA4 screen.  A quick Google search reveals that this means i have the Samsung LTN154BT08 LCD panel.  You can also use the trial version of the excellent Everest application to get even more detailed information:

Now that i know the panel specifications i can continue my hunt for a driver that will hopefully provide better control of the screen.  In the meantime, i highly recommend running the Calibrate display colour wizard included with Windows 7 as a minimum.  When i ran the wizard, i found the gamma to be WAY too high, which was leading to a washed out image.  I ended up following the fantastic guide and lowering the as low as it would let me.  Admittedly, up to that point i had not noticed the high gamma since the screen is so damned nice, but after making the adjustment, i can honestly say the colours are much richer.  It seems a lot of other people have come to the same conclusion even compared to the standard OSX colour profile.

Oh by the way, if you are thinking of purchasing the matte display option, read this article first.  While it does reduce glare to a certain extent, you do sacrifice quite a lot of colour richness.  I personally dont find the glare distracting at all, but i guess its personal opinion.

Using BlueSoleil With Macbook Pro Unibody

In my last post i showed how to use the Toshiba BT stack with the 15" Macbook Pro Unibody (and probably any other BT device you would like). I wasnt too happy with the outcome though - i find the Toshiba BT stack to be quite clunky in the way it integrates with my BT hardware and has a very dated feel to the software. On the plus side it was nice and configurable which i do like. The BIGGER downside though, is that there seems to be no option to license the software on non-Toshiba hardware, rendering it useless after 30 days, unless you crack it. As a software developer myself i try to avoid the latter option and support the industry :)

With that in mind i set my sights back on the other two options - Broadcom and BlueSoleil. My first choice was Broadcom, only because the MBP Unibody uses a Broadcom manufactured module. However Broadcom plainly refuses to install itself on any device that has not paid them royalties for the BT stack, which Apple obviously has little incentive to do at this time. So i turned my attention back to BlueSoleil. This was always my first choice to begin with, since it is intended as an all-purpose stack that you CAN buy a license for if you like it. Well i was successful this time around and i can tell you, the effort was definitely worth it.

Installing BlueSoleil On An Unsupported Device

1. Download the latest BlueSoleil release from here (version 6.4.275.0 was used for this writeup)
2. Extract the contents of the zip file and browse to the install directory
3. Open setup.ini for editing using notepad or similar and replace the contents with the following (simplified for ease of reading). Note that while some of these changes may not strictly be necessary, they streamline some parts of the install process and avoid problems later:

   [bsconfig]
   BluetoothPlaceSite=1
   ShutDownBluetoothHardwarePower=1
   DefaultLocalDeviceClass=1
   
   [Install]
   CmdLine=""%SetupExeLocation%%PROCESSOR_ARCHITECTURE%\setup.exe"
   [SPDPhoneNumber]
   NumberCount=1
   SPNumber1=#777

4. Save the file and close it
5. Run setup.exe as administrator (this is probably not necessary, but its what i did to achieve a successful installation so vary and post your results below)
6. The installation should succeed with no errors. You should notice the default MS BT stack icon in the system tray has disappeared. Do NOT restart your system when prompted - we want to make a few changes first
7. Open file explorer and browse to where you installed the BlueSoleil BT stack (default is C:\Program Files\IVT Corporation\BlueSoleil)
8. Open the bttl.ini file for editing in notepad or similar. Search for the text 8203. The line that is found should be in a section titled [HW356]. If you are using a different version of the drivers then it is unimportant if this title is different. What is important is that you take note of the title. Change the text 8203 to 8213 - what we are doing here is changing the hardware ID specified in this section to match the hardware ID of the BT module. If your hardware ID is slightly different, then simply change the hardware ID here to match yours (and in all subsequent steps). See my previous post on how to locate your hardware ID if you are unsure
9. At the top of the file, in the [DEFAULT] section, change the setting NUM=363 (number may differ depending on your version of the drivers) to NUM=356
10. Save the file and close it. Depending on your security settings in Windows 7, you may not be able to save the file directly. Instead - you may have to save the file to your desktop or some other location, close the file and then manually move it back into the directory
11. Go to the driver\usb subdirectory and open the file btcusb.inf for editing.
12. Search for the text 8203 and replace all instances (there should be two) with 8213 (again substitute for your hardware ID if it is different from mine)
13. Save the file (again you may need to indirectly save it using the method explained above) and close it
14. Restart your computer and once it has restarted, you should see the new BlueSoleil icon in the taskbar. At this point BlueSoleil is installed successfully, but the BT module is not yet setup. We need to do that manually through the device manager
15. Go to the start menu, type "device manager" and press enter to open the device manager
16. Browse to the BT module under Bluetooth - it will likely be called Generic Bluetooth Device (if not you may have some other BT software installed that should be removed before any of these steps are performed, but you can probably just install it at this point and proceed)
17. Right-click the BT device and select Update Driver Software
18. Select the bottom option Browse my computer for driver software
19. Select Let me pick from a list of device drivers on my computer and browse to the location of the USB BT driver modified above (default is C:\Program Files\IVT Corporation\BlueSoleil\driver\usb) and click Next
20. Select the only option in the list, which will be Apple Built-in Bluetooth
21. A warning will pop up saying the driver is unsigned - click Install this driver anyway
22. The device should now change its description in Device Manager to Apple Built-in Bluetooth and is successfully installed!
23. Right-click the BlueSoleil icon in the taskbar and select Turn on bluetooth. You should now successfully be able to pair your bluetooth devices (eg headphones) with your MBP Unibody!

My Experience With BlueSoleil

• A2DP connectivity is ABSOLUTELY seamless - I made my headphones discoverable - BAM they were connected and appeared as connected on the computer. No redundant password prompt or connection dialog. Music instantly started playing through them. Turn them off and sound changes back to the speakers. Turn them back on they start playing again. Absolutely seamless - i dont even have to stop/start the program using the audio device at the time, which i had to do with the Toshiba drivers
• Beautiful icon set - the icons used are all vector graphics and fit very nicely with the slick look of Windows 7
• Minimal set of services - only 3 which is not as good as the MS stack, but way better than the Toshiba drivers which had around half a dozen! They seem to be well designed, making efficient use of resources too which is important - BT should be very transparent to the system in my opinion

As requested, here are the modified INF files (generated from version 6.4.286.0 on 2/12/2009)

Windows 7, BootCamp and Trackpad Scrolling

A lot of people seem to be having issues with the trackpad driver when running Windows 7 on a Macbook Pro using BootCamp. My experience is that if you use the BootCamp 2.1 drivers the touchpad works pretty well - 2 finger scrolling, 2 finger right click - all that works great. The only issue is that 2 finger scrolling is way to fast.

What a lot of people dont seem to realise is that once the trackpad driver is setup, you can use the standard mouse control panel to change the properties of the 2 finger scrolling. It seems that the driver is incredibly basic - simply generating linear scroll-wheel events when 2 fingers are dragged up or down. By default, Windows scrolls 3 lines for each mouse-wheel 'click'. Since the 2 finger scrolling generates quite a lot of scroll-wheel events, i recommend reducing this to 1 line for each 'click'. You can do this by pressing the windows key, typing mouse and pressing enter to go into the mouse control panel. On the Scroll tab you can change the setting under the Vertical Scrolling section.



The result is a nice experience overall - a very smooth scrolling action when using 2 fingers. If you need to move more quickly up and down, page-up/page-down (Fn+Up/Down) will do that.

Windows 7 on Macbook Pro Unibody - Sound Driver Issue Resolved

Turns out that Apple did some strange things in the driver INF file that caused the speakers to be dampened and the headphones to be amplified, as well as forgetting to enable 1/3 speakers.

To resolve this issue, download the fixed drivers here

Thats one issue ticked off the list.

Windows 7 on Macbook Pro Unibody - Driver Issues

Ill be writing a lot about this combination of OS and laptop - considering i just bought myself a nice new 15" Macbook Pro Unibody with the intention of using Windows 7 as my primary OS. Im running the RC version at the moment and its running pretty nice. Damn nice in fact - but there are a few driver issues, which is totally due to the sad state of BootCamp at the moment. Out of the box i have these issues:

- Bluetooth driver 'isntalled' but device manager reports it is still using the MS driver
- iSight driver is the same issue
- Nvidia driver did not install
- ACPI support is abissmal
- Speaker sound volume is very low
- Sound does not switch to headphones when plugged in

Ill be addressing these issues as i fix them or try to fix them. If anyone has any tips let me know