sheeplover Posted July 11, 2008 Share Posted July 11, 2008 (edited) ============================================================ -->LS8 v14 compilation<-- ============================================================ After my pc just stopped working this morning with a complete power-loss I found that the mainboard stopped working. Everything else seemed okay. So I called gigabyte for support and information on replacement or repair. They told me that the estimated time for a replacement would be 8-12 weeks and I have to ship it on my own costs. I did that and for the time without my beloved mobo I ordered the new Gigabyte GA-EP45-DQ6. My new toy will arrive in just a few hours via DHL Express. Hopefully, I will get it to work with OSX - as soon as I get my old one back it would make a great platform for my planned OSX-Server with its 2 raid controllers and 4Gigabit NICs onboard. But - we will see. Nevertheless I will give a short overview here and I'll try to describe my efforts. See you in a couple of hours! <-- Edit --> The best in first: IT WORKS! I received the mainboard this morning at 7.45am (GMT+1 ) via dhl express. The package contained the new mainboard, a new PSU from bequiet! type "dark power pro 550W" with cable & fan management and some other parts. I took my time to mount the mainboard and the PSU carefully and properly into the case. Took some photos as well - will post some later on. The I hooked up the hard drive with my installation from the previous used GA-P35-DS4, powered up, enabled AHCI & native-mode in BIOS and voilà: it booted straight through. The existing installation was done using ChameleonEFI, a stock Leopard 10.5.2 DVD, 10.5.3+10.5.4 combo updates (using netkas method) and the well known LS8-package v11 for Gigabyte mainboards. (Thanks so much LS8!) I can tell so far that all 4 ethernet ports work like a charm with DHCP, sleep, restart & shutdown work also without any hazzle. However: The ICH10 bridge isn't recognized properly - osx sees an unknown ahci-device. But this was also with my P35-DS4. I will update this post later with more details and some pictures of the mainboard. <-- Edit --> Some pictures of the mainboard... fresh out of the box with PCIe2.0, ICH10, ... the bank of 4 seperate RTL 8111C GigabitNICs 3 relatively useless but nice looking buttons on the bottom end of the mainboard. The GA-EP45-DQ6 has many led indicators for several board functions & resources as AHCI-state, percentual CPU-load, etc. Useless to me but surely nice for anyone in casemodding or under-table-disco ;-) <-- Edit --> just a short info that "teaming", means combining the 4 ethernet-ports to an array works. Pictures to come... Edited October 14, 2008 by sheeplover Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Koplimi Posted July 11, 2008 Share Posted July 11, 2008 Wow i really appreciate that you posted all this info. My board AND cpu died (or is dying right now,, think they got a flood infection) and i have been searching for a good and solid new motherboard. GA-EP45-DQ6 seems like a good investment, together with another q6600. Please post any other patches and etc. in this post, will help me and many other users gettings stated with the board. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Young Dev Posted July 12, 2008 Share Posted July 12, 2008 Yes please can u point me to a complete tutorial, cuz i am getting the Ep45-DS4P, and i have been lookin everywhere for the rtl8111c drivers but u seem to have gotten everything working perfectly so i would really appreciate it if u could help me out Thanks YD Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
3vj3 Posted July 12, 2008 Share Posted July 12, 2008 Remember to update the wiki Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sheeplover Posted July 13, 2008 Author Share Posted July 13, 2008 i have been lookin everywhere for the rtl8111c drivers but u seem to have gotten everything working perfectly so i would really appreciate it if u could help me out The NICs workes out the box for me. However, AFP-Services & Bonjour only work using the RTL1000.kext. You find the latest version of it (1.04 atm) in the LS8_install_pack for the GA-P35-DS4. If you need step-by-step instructions use this guide provided by LS8 - it is simple & perfect, works fot the GA-EP45-DQ6 as well and without any hazzle. It also works for many other Boards that are comparable to these two. You could also try the new method using boot-132. This method gives you a bootloader that is able to boot of an unpatched stock Apple-DVD and install without replacing anything. The needed kext then go into a disk image that the bootloader uses to replace the originals during boot - but the installation itself remains unmodified. This gives the opportunity to install future updates without any fear of busting the sytem. So far I'm not brojen into the boot-132-issue but this is the next for me to come. Information here and here. Remember to update the wiki I already did that ;-) Generally I like to say again that you should have a spare HDD or a partition on an unused/backup HDD with a running installation on it. It is not important that this spare-install runs with QE/CI or has sound working ... it is also enough to have 10.5.1 on it. But it helps alot when installing you main OSX version. I use a 10GB partition on an external USB-Disk. If I do any maintenance on the OSX version I work with I hook up the USB disk, boot into its OSX partition and then do my updates etc. Also the installation of Leopard on an empty disk from there is much easier and much faster. I use an ISO of an stock 10.5.2 disc and I install leo in about 10 minutes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kroeger Posted July 13, 2008 Share Posted July 13, 2008 Hi, I am thinking of buying this board and building my own (it was a toss up between build my own or buy an imac!!!!!) is everything working fine i.e. restart, sleep, shutdown, DVD playback and so forth? is it rock solid stable and everything appearing normal? thanks and sorry for the many questions. Additionally why is the DQ6 so much more expensive than the P45-DS4? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sheeplover Posted July 13, 2008 Author Share Posted July 13, 2008 Hi, I am thinking of buying this board and building my own (it was a toss up between build my own or buy an imac!!!!!) is everything working fine i.e. restart, sleep, shutdown, DVD playback and so forth? is it rock solid stable and everything appearing normal? thanks and sorry for the many questions. I used to work with the P35-DS4 for nearly a year. Since it was possible to use the vanilla-kernel it worked very well. The only issues I had were homemade - I should've kept the sentence "never change a running system" in mind ;-) I use the new mainboard just for a few days now but it is exactly as stable as the one before. Shutdown & restart work 100% (I have CHUD installed, don't know if it does matter) and sleep works as well - there is only an issue with my graphics card since the update to 10.5.4: after sleep the screen looks like it has only half the resolution, it is totally pixeled. I think I could change it by installing the 10.5.1 opengGL.framework again and use the old NVinstaller with it. But I'm very happy that graphics runs with vanilla 10.5.4 and just an efi-string, so I keep it that way. I can switch the DVI-port on the graphiccard to solve the problem. Like I said, I haven't trief boot-132 yet, but I believe that using it will make the GA-P35 & P45 mainboards a mac-ootb Additionally why is the DQ6 so much more expensive than the P45-DS4? I don't really know There are some features that can only be used with windows, like the extended energy-management (the E in EP45). It has the additional ethernetports, it has already the ICH10-bridge, internal fsb of 1200 with more headroom to oc or upgrade and it has this weird light-show onboard. Besides that the DQ6 brings a second bios-chip and a TPM-chip with it. (you can disable it using bios). Normally I've taken the DS4 because it has everything I need. But I needed it real quick and the DS4 was not in stock, so I decided to go for the DQ6. I'm now planning to build a server using the DQ6 when my P35-DS4 is back from service. Then the 4xEthernet will come handy and I can give Apple Qmaster a try. But ... let's see I already own a G5, a Mini G4 and a Powerbook ... I decided to build a hack because you can fill the gap between iMac & MacPro for a reasonable price. My setup costs as much as real iMac but it has more power and it is extendable. If there was a MacPro with a non-xeon-setup and a Q6600 i.e. I would definately go for it. But an iMac down't give me enough power and the MacPro has power I don't need and costs money I don't have. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kroeger Posted July 13, 2008 Share Posted July 13, 2008 Thanks for the info, I will go for the DQ6 with an Intel Quad 9450. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
madmax123 Posted July 14, 2008 Share Posted July 14, 2008 I have the GA-EP45-DS3P. Everything works well except Audio. Can´t get it to work. I have tried all sorts of Kexts I could find. But had no luck with it. Tarugas Patcher 1.20 and codec dump ran successfully and wrote the Kext files but after booting no sound. Please can someone help me or send functioning Kext files !! The network seems best with the original Realtek v2.00 drivers to work. RTGMac_v2.0.0.zip Sorry for my English. It is not my main language. My configuration: Mainboard : Gigabyte GA-EP-45-DS3P CPU : Intel Q9450 QuadCore 2.66 GHZ RAM : 2 GB Kingston DDR2 667 RAM DVD : SATA Samsung SH-S223F DISK : Samsung F1 640 GB Graka : ATI Radeon X1900XTX 512 MB Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sheeplover Posted July 14, 2008 Author Share Posted July 14, 2008 GAEP45_Audio.zip These are the kext I use at the moment. It is the newest AppleHDA.kext. However, this produces some ugly noises, especially when playing sound after a period of silence. Using the older .kext shall solve the problem but I didn't felt like trying it yet Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
danaurel Posted July 15, 2008 Share Posted July 15, 2008 Hi i'm using an EP45-DS3L mobo and i'm also having problems with my audio. i tried installing the kexts but i must have done something wrong because now it is stuck on booting...PLEASE HELP. Config: Motherboard: GA-EP45-DS3L CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4 GHZ RAM: 8 GB Corsair 800 MHZ HD: WD CAVIAR 640 GB GRAPHICS: Gigabyte ATI x3650 HD Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sheeplover Posted July 15, 2008 Author Share Posted July 15, 2008 because now it is stuck on booting use F8 on boot and go into SingleUser-Mode with the flag -s. Then delete the new kext you installed. After that, boot with the -f -v flag - it should do fine, if not it will show the failure. Hi i'm using an EP45-DS3L mobo You shouldn't have installed the kext I provided here. Not every board from gigabyte uses the same components. Your mainboard has a Realtek ALC888 chipset for audio, the DQ6 uses ALC889a. For more info on your mainboard and Sound take a look at the AppleHDA section in the xlabs-forum here. You should be somewhat more careful Get yourself used to the basic technics like setting rights and permissions after replacing kext. You can find it everywhere around here ... "chmod" and "chown" in a searchbox will do the trick ;-) And you could use the program "kext helper" ... just search for it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
danaurel Posted July 15, 2008 Share Posted July 15, 2008 Thank you! this is my 3rd machine that i have run Leopard on and also the only one that i have had audio problems with. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sheeplover Posted July 16, 2008 Author Share Posted July 16, 2008 ups - I'm sorry ... because it was your first post here I assumed that you are a newbie. didn't ment to bother you Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dnjmarlboro Posted July 16, 2008 Share Posted July 16, 2008 @sheeplover Can you wake up your machine by USB Keyboard or Mouse? Or do you have to press the Power Button? THX Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sheeplover Posted July 16, 2008 Author Share Posted July 16, 2008 hmm .. didn't try - I disabled the wake-on-usb in bios since it made the old board restart over and over again when putting to sleep. I will give it a try again ... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
danaurel Posted July 18, 2008 Share Posted July 18, 2008 ups - I'm sorry ... because it was your first post here I assumed that you are a newbie. didn't ment to bother you It's alright hehe....well still no luck on the audio. i've tried every alc888 kext out right now and nothing seems to work. Even Taruga's Patcher was no good and that was the method that gave me results on my other hackintosh systems. For now i'll just wait and hope that other Gigabyte P45 mobo users out there have a solution to this problem. And also hope that any new distro of kalyway will have a fix for this. Thanx for the help tho... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sheeplover Posted July 23, 2008 Author Share Posted July 23, 2008 @Danaurel have you already tried these with your ALC888: http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=32859 http://psykopat.free.fr/apple/AppleHDA/ Might work for you also ... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
danaurel Posted July 24, 2008 Share Posted July 24, 2008 have you already tried these with your ALC888: http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=32859 http://psykopat.free.fr/apple/AppleHDA/ Might work for you also ... yeap i've tried them. still no luck...i'm guessing that since my mobo is fairly new there's not much support for it. either that or it's due to something on my kalyway install is preventing the audio kext from working. Thank you for helping anyway Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hollip3020 Posted July 24, 2008 Share Posted July 24, 2008 i just got this board today, its ridiculous how much they fit on it. anyway, ive tried installing 10.5.2 using the kalyway dvd a few times to no avail. the dvd boots fine and it gets through the installation but when it reboots the darwin bootloader can only see the dvd. the only real difference is i set up a raid array using the disk utility and installed to that. basically im asking if anyone has been able to install/boot successfully from a raid array on this board. is there something im missing? specs: gigabyte ga-ep45-dq6 core 2 quad q9450 4gb ddr2-1066 ram 3x 750gb hd 8800gts 320mb im going to try deleting the array and installing to a single drive but id really like to have the raid working. edit: no dice with the single drive, it detects the installation but says boot.plist is missing. edit 2: tried installing to a single drive again and it worked. dont know why it didnt work before. i settled on raiding the 2 non-boot drives. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
genzai Posted July 26, 2008 Share Posted July 26, 2008 ok, so i have built 2 systems around this mobo and all works very well. i used the boot 132 method with only the basic kext image and i have a perfect vanilla install of os x server to 10.5.4 Here is the question: Has anyone gotten the PURPLE Sata ports to work? apperently they are an SIL5723 chipset. I would really like to get these working for eSata so if anyone can provide assistance that would be great. also... @hollip3020 There are ways to get a raid bootable in Chameleon EFI. Search the forums and you will find a tutorial. I will look for the link myself when i have time and post it here, but should not be hard to find. **edit** here is the link for RAID boot - http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=76404 **edit2** i read on the wiki that purple sata is working with vanilla appleahci.kext? but no drive i install on them shows up in OS X. can anyone shed light? Thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
prsnlcrcl Posted August 2, 2008 Share Posted August 2, 2008 Sheeplover, I was excited to find this post as I recently purchased an EP45 D6Q motherboard (in part due to this posting). I have followed you install (as far as I can tell) multiple times in hopes of getting the success that you have. Unfortunately, when I reboot after installing the Retail OS, it gets to the gray screen with the spinning "disc" at the bottom of the screen, but never goes anyway. After getting to the gray screen, I am not seeing any disk activity. I was wondering if you could give me some assistance. I have also tried the boot 132 method, but am getting the same results. I am guessing that I am just overlooking something as I am somewhat of a NOOB (apologize in advance). I know that it will work on this board as I am able to boot my previous install when I had an ABIT IP35 Pro board installed. The problem with that install is I can not get the sleep and shutdown features to work...restart does work. Anyway, I would love to get to the point that you are at, but feel I am at a dead end. Any assistance would be greatly appreciated! Thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
irontony Posted August 9, 2008 Share Posted August 9, 2008 Hi thanks madmax123 Awesome to hear that the GA-EP45-DS3P works for you. As you know I have sold my iMac 2.8 to fund the money for my Hackintosh Tower. I'm not a Windows user at all, so I have everything to lose here if I cant get it to work. Edit: Thanks madmax123 for your bios settings and instructions - seems very straight forward My setup is Mainboard : Gigabyte GA-EP-45-DS3P CPU : Intel Q9550 QuadCore 2.83 GHz RAM : 8 GB GSkill DDR2 1066 RAM DVD : SATA ASUS and LG DISK : WD SE16 640 GB x3 VGA : ATI Radeon HD3870 512 MB - Modded with Passive Cooled AC-S1 rev2 Case: Antec P182 PSU: Silverstone Decathlon DA650Watt I'll be doing a straight forward install with Leopard Retail DVD via Boot-132 Method No dual Boot or anything - Pure OSX86 Will post and update WIKI when successful Hears hoping my CS3 and Final Cut Studio 1 applications work - Edit They do I have the GA-EP45-DS3P. My configuration: Mainboard : Gigabyte GA-EP-45-DS3P CPU : Intel Q9450 QuadCore 2.66 GHZ RAM : 2 GB Kingston DDR2 667 RAM DVD : SATA Samsung SH-S223F DISK : Samsung F1 640 GB Graka : ATI Radeon X1900XTX 512 MB Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
magare Posted August 10, 2008 Share Posted August 10, 2008 Hey guys, I got GA EP45-DS4P, which is similar to GA EP45-DQ6. I installed Kalyway 10.5.2, applied Kalyway 10.5.3 patch and than did a vanila upgrade to 10.5.4. Most of the things work OK, except NO sound and shutdown/sleep/restart don't work. I believe the sound is ALC8889A (the same as DQ6). I have tried several kext found on the forum but still no sound listed. Also the network loses the DHCP server from time to time. Any clues, please? Thanks!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kpitstupidsimple Posted August 10, 2008 Share Posted August 10, 2008 Hi there. I've got an EP45-DQ6 and I seem to be having problems. Has anyone else noticed problems with the secondary SATA controller? I've got two drives on the ICH10R controller for vista, and two on the secondary controller for OSX and linux... and it doesn't seem to recognize my drives. I've checked the cables, the PSU, the ports, and to no avail. Has anyone else seen this? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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