Mac Pro 3,1 (Early 2008) with Radeon 5870 Eyefinity 6.
Just solved a similar issue, here. Updated to 10.9.2, tonight. After download and auto-restart, my machine would not display via MDP to DP. Tower sounded like it kept rebooting. Black screen. Didn't try DVI.
Rounded up the usual suspects: Booted from Backup of 10.8, and ran a full Disk and Permissions Verification of my 10.9.2 Drive. Permissions errors galore with iBooks, but that appears unrelated. After a Permissions Repair and second verification, Mac Pro still wouldn't boot into 10.9.2.
Next, I figured it had to do with something about the Video Card [No Display, right?]. The Radeon 5870 Eye 6 is a PC card. Mine is a reference model, but was supported natively in Mac OS from 10.7 Lion onward. Originally had to install Lion Kexts in 10.6 Snow Leopard to make it work.
Tonight's problem led me back to the System's Extensions folder. Compared the Kexts on my 10.9.2 Drive to those on my [operational] 10.8 Installation. AMD#### Kexts were there intact, but all ATI#### Kexts were missing. Perhaps the 10.9.2 update was interrupted or crashed and didn't install fully.
So, from a backup boot drive . . .
1 • I copied over the ATI5000Controller.kext, the ATIFramebuffer.kext, and the ATISupport.kext for my Radeon model from my 'operational' 10.8 Volume, to my 'outta-commission' 10.9.2 Volume.
2 • Punched into Terminal: http://osxdaily.com/2012/01/12/how-to-manually-install-kernel-extensions-in-mac- os-x/
Navigated to the Kext's folder . . .
cd ~/System/Library/Extensions/
Repeated these two for EACH of the three Kext's I'd copied onto my 'broken' Volume.
sudo chmod -R 755 kextfile.kext
sudo chown -R root:wheel kextfile.kext
But these two additional Terminal commands to 'clear' the Kext cache did not work when run from Terminal on an alternate [operational] Volume:
sudo rm -R Extensions.kextcache
sudo rm -R Extensions.mkext
So, I followed up with these three, to boot [a British term in this instance]: http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/275197-how-to-rebuild-kext-cache/
sudo chown -R root:wheel ~/System/Library/Extensions/
sudo chmod -R 755 ~/System/Library/Extensions/
sudo touch ~/System/Library/Extensions/
'~' Being the affected Volume
3 • Via Finder, I then backed up and cleared out my Extensions cache @ ~/System/Library/Caches/com.apple.kext.caches/
. . . And emptied the Trash, for good measure.
4 • Crossed my fingers and rebooted to 10.9.2. Now I'm typing to you from a fixed upgrade, and it looks like the full package of ATI drivers has now been installed in the background. Saves me a re-install of Mavericks. That was too close . . .
Voila,
5ix
P.S.
This solution may have been much less practical [and perhaps unnecessary] on a new Macylinder, or any of their Welded computerboxes. Long live the Right to Repair . . . Hope this helps.
