Gigabyte's Nvidia 9400 powered M-ATX MOBO

[stan78]

-an integrated irda hack to take advantage of plex's new Harmony remote integration

 

If you have an Iphone/Touch then you can solve this problem by using xmote (which i prefer) or

one of the similar remote apps. Works beautifully for me.

 

-stability with the SATA bus - I have crashed this thing more than a few times copying large amounts of data from one drive to another. Besides, I can't get the damned icons to shows the drives as internal.

 

Haven't crashed it yet. Wasn't there a kext to show external as internal somewhere?

 

-Better display recognition (EDID) and retention. I would love to hear other peoples experiences with this so that I might know weather or not it is just my system causing this.

 

No problems at all. Recognized HD Beamer and HDTV with all possible resolutions. Haven't testet 24p

though but I doubt it will work without Displayxconfigx.

 

st

[netcastle]

Recognized HD Beamer and HDTV with all possible resolutions. Haven't testet 24p

though but I doubt it will work without Displayxconfigx.

 

 

That's good to know. I have been wondering if it was my receiver or the computer. The TV seems to recognize my mini okay, but when I go through the receiver I have EDID problems. The weird thing is that I did not have these problems with windows installed on my mini, so I am holding out that it is an OS X unique problem. It was the same experience with the GA board, though I haven't tried it with windows yet. I would love to hear other peoples experience and configurations with EDID related to this board.

 

As far as remote goes it is all about WAF for me and so one remote is all I get. I actually prefer it this way as well. Plex now has native Harmony integration but there is no external ir solution that doesn't require third party software (which negates the "native" aspect). I am working on it, but all that means is that someone else will find the solution and I will simply apply it here.

[stan78]

One more thing about AHCI...

I don't know if I was the only one having this problem cause i was playing around a bit, but system-profiler showed "Unknown AHCI Controller" or something...

So I changed AppleAHCIPort.kext/contents/info.plist "<key>MCP79AHCI..... <key>IOPrimaryMatch...." to "0x0ab810de"

and now my sata controller gets recognized as Nvidia MCP79.

 

Thought it should be MCP7A, but BIOS says 79. Don't care as long as it works :-)

Haven't gotten the drives to show up as internal yet though.

 

st

[raffitaffy]

I hadn't thought about the SATA drives (not IDE) showing with orange stripe and an eject icon, This makes it external, eh?

Found some air kexts (called "10.5.6 kexts pack") on insanleymac , loaded JMicron,IOAHCIFamily and AppleSMBIOS and now they look internal. Wonder if it will effect stability?

[stan78]

I hadn't thought about the SATA drives (not IDE) showing with orange stripe and an eject icon, This makes it external, eh?

Found some air kexts (called "10.5.6 kexts pack") on insanleymac , loaded JMicron,IOAHCIFamily and AppleSMBIOS and now they look internal. Wonder if it will effect stability?

 

The icons showing as internal does not affect stability.

btw, I just got it it working.

 

You have to edit IOAHCIFamily.kext/Contents/Plugins/IOAHCIBlockStorage.kext/contents/info.plist

 

Make the one section look like this:

 

 <dict>
	 <key>AppleAHCIDiskDriver</key>
	 <dict>
		 <key>CFBundleIdentifier</key>
		 <string>com.apple.iokit.IOAHCIBlockStorage</string>
		 <key>IOClass</key>
		 <string>AppleAHCIDiskDriver</string>
		 <key>IOProviderClass</key>
		 <string>IOAHCIDevice</string>
		 <key>Physical Interconnect</key>
		 <string>SATA</string>
		 <key>Physical Interconnect Location</key>
		 <string>Internal</string>
		 <key>Protocol Characteristics</key>
		 <dict>
			 <key>Physical Interconnect</key>
			 <string>SATA</string>
			 <key>Physical Interconnect Location</key>
			 <string>Internal</string>
		 </dict>
	 </dict>
 </dict>

 

st

[stan78]

Gbit network is also working.... ;-)

 

Install the latest nforce kext http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?sho...125569&st=0

and delete or move nvethernet.kext (Edit:real name is nvenet.kext)

 

st

 

 

 

EDIT: This also solves the connectivity problem after waking up from sleep.

[Signal64]

Gbit network is also working.... ;-)

 

Install the latest nforce kext and delete or move nvethernet.kext

 

st

 

EDIT: This also solves the connectivity problem after waking up from sleep.

 

Can you guys clarify if your using the Unibody MacBook restore disk or not?

Ethernet works (aside from sleep on the Gigabyte, but works fine on the ASUS).

No instability with the native apple one at all so I'm unclear on the reason to replace it.

 

BTW - The kext used on the unibody macbooks is nvenet.kext, not nvethernet.kext.

 

Also, you can use this for the AHCI instead of modifying the native kexts:

730i_AHCI.zip

[chrilled]

Gbit network is also working.... ;-)

 

Install the latest nforce kext http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?sho...125569&st=0

and delete or move nvethernet.kext

 

st

 

 

 

EDIT: This also solves the connectivity problem after waking up from sleep.

 

 

Thanks a million for the tip! It solved some of my issues..

 

Signal64: Im using 10.5.5 clone install from unibody mbp (but you already know that)

 

 

AND!.. Signal64: Thanks for the id wrapper and the internal drive displaying as external -fix.

 

Three more things checked on my list.. Thanks guys!

[stan78]

Can you guys clarify if your using the Unibody MacBook restore disk or not?

Ethernet works (aside from sleep on the Gigabyte, but works fine on the ASUS).

No instability with the native apple one at all so I'm unclear on the reason to replace it.

 

BTW - The kext used on the unibody macbooks is nvenet.kext, not nvethernet.kext.

 

Also, you can use this for the AHCI instead of modifying the native kexts:

 

Unibody macbook restore disk, yes.

I didn't have Gbit Ethernet and you know about the sleeps issues.

Using nforcelan.kext and deleting nvenet.kext (you are correct...) I finally

have fully working onboard lan.

 

st

[Signal64]

Unibody macbook restore disk, yes.

I didn't have Gbit Ethernet and you know about the sleeps issues.

 

That's weird.. I don't think DiaboliK has had any issues and I know I haven't.

It is one thing that has worked since day one.

 

Only thing I can think of is the aml I provided has the GIGE change but I know it was working before that.

 

The Sleep issue happens in Windows XP and Linux (Vista seems ok), but WOL doesn't on all.

 

I've been looking at other award bios's from other motherboard manufactures and there is a newer acpi table / dsdt being used.

They all come from the same source and depending on board maker is what changes are made. XFX and EVGA or notorious for not making any changes and tend to stick to a reference design so is a good baseline on what nvida/foxconn provide to begin with.

 

Looks like I may be getting out of level 1 support hell at gigabyte so hopeful a bios fix will solve it.

Like I've said, it isn't an issue at all on the ASUS P5N7A-VM.

[pvutop]

Did you install those two files with with kexthelper ?

Make sure ACLinject or AppleAzaliaAudio aren't in the folder any more.

Boot with "-f" option...

 

Maybe that will work.

 

 

Appreciate all help, not able to get it working this year :-) maybe next.. checked everything, removed all audio drivers so osx reports no audio device installed. Then install the two files again with kext helper. Looks fine in about, device id 12 + some code. But nothing in System preferences under audio output...

 

Happy new year!

[netcastle]

Who is lurking around here that has this board going on 10.5.6 and who is at 10.5.5.

 

I have sound working with 10.5.6 but not 10.5.5.

 

Also, I snowed the system again copying large amounts of data over the SATA bus. Finally broke down and followed mrosxn00b's advise and pulled a stick off the board. I am sorry to see it go because what is a hackintosh if you can only have 3.5 gig max RAM in it. At least it is stable now (in 10.5.5 anyway - haven't tried 10.5.6 yet). I think mrosxn00b posted a link to memtest somewhere on page 4 or 5. It would be cool if those of you with 4 gig on this board could run that test and see what happens and then we need to start comparing setups here.

 

The 4 gig problem is issue number one right now.

[Bob Ajob]

Keep up the hard work guys! This could well be my target platform for moving my midi tower hacks into smaller HTPC cases. Here in the UK at £115 for an integrated graphics solution looks very promising indeed...

[chrilled]

Who is lurking around here that has this board going on 10.5.6 and who is at 10.5.5.

 

I have sound working with 10.5.6 but not 10.5.5.

 

Also, I snowed the system again copying large amounts of data over the SATA bus. Finally broke down and followed mrosxn00b's advise and pulled a stick off the board. I am sorry to see it go because what is a hackintosh if you can only have 3.5 gig max RAM in it. At least it is stable now (in 10.5.5 anyway - haven't tried 10.5.6 yet). I think mrosxn00b posted a link to memtest somewhere on page 4 or 5. It would be cool if those of you with 4 gig on this board could run that test and see what happens and then we need to start comparing setups here.

 

The 4 gig problem is issue number one right now.

 

I just got a beautiful screen a la 80's football game when running the memtest. I havn't experienced that much trouble prior to reading your post. I have copied 7gig files from hackintosh partition to a macfuse mounted ntfs partition without any problems ( in 50+ gig total session size) except for once when it crashed ( copied alot of files but none above 1gig (session total about 70 gig). Now I ran the memtest the whole thing whent down. I booted up and tried to extract a 8 gig file from a split zip file (froom and to the hackintosh partition) and it didn't take long before the system snowed in beutiful green colors. I however noticed that despite being garbled, the system seemed to be alive in the background since I could move a garbled square around with the mouse...I dont know if the memtest can cause problems or I already had it before. I dont possess that kind of knowledge. Is it related to 4 gig or to the fact that the memory is shared with IGP?..

 

Anyway, what kind of info do you need from me? (e7aum with 2x2 gig in slot 1 and 3.. corsair 1066 mems running at 800..)

[netcastle]

chrilled,

 

Read your sig. QT does the same thing to me on my other hack. I did not have this issue on 10.5.4 so I wonder if it has anything to do with the OS X updates and is not specific to this board. Have you tried using plex with h264? Have you hooked up your HDMI to an HDTV? Have you yanked 2 gigs off the board and checked to see if memtest will snow the thing? mrosxn00b has posted that the garbled video is related to shared memory addressing issues with the OS and the video processor. This seems to make sense because we can get ci/qe on this thing which makes it the only Nvidia shared memory video processor that I know of that reliably supports these advanced video functions (please correct me if I am wrong especially if it relates to a 7300gs), so it is uncharted waters for the hack community.

 

As far as the system still being alive in the background after the video snows, I have always been to impatient to see if a large file transfer (or other process - Handbrake anyone?) actually completes before shutting the computer off, so I cannot say if this is true or not. Have you had a different experience?

[Signal64]

I've been running 4Gig on the giga for some time now with NO issues.

 

Generic Kingston KVR667D2K2/4GR DDR2 2x2G 667 sticks 5-5-5-15 @ 1.8v

 

Have also tried Patriot PDC24G8500K 2x2G 800 @ 5-5-5-15 @ 2.0v

 

Note: As I said in an earlier post, this board hates memory being overclocked.

Although these Patriots are rated for 1066 (and have used them for sometime on another system at that rate or greater), the giga croaked at anything above 950.

It was an experiment to test out graphics performance with higher mem speed (which didn't make a difference).

 

Use memtest86 or memtest86+ for up to 5 passes, don't test memory from the OS X!!

You can't test the memory the OS or device drivers are using and not expect problems.

 

Only other thing I can think of is to lock in the video memory to 256MB in BIOS and not auto or other value.

 

If you get problems in memtest86 then yea, of course your going to get problems in OS X.

 

I already said that the sound you provided caused instability, especially with QT.

Remove it and your stability issues are gone.

 

grep -i hda /var/log/system.log

If you got any errors there then your going to have instability even if "sounds" like it is working.

chrilled - you already confirmed that.

 

Can you confirm you installed the way I posted here?

http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?s=&...t&p=1014074

 

Use straight chameleon with dsdt patch added after and forgo the EFI method.

 

Also confirmed that there are no sata issues here and yea, have even used handbrake to convert some hd mkv files on both asus and the giga.

[DiaboliK]

ive got 4Gb kicking fine in my p5n7-vm also works wonderous with 8Gb.

 

make sure your ram is _compatible_. check the qvl's below for the board you use.

 

asus ram qvl : QVL_DDR2_667_and_800.pdf

 

gigabyte ram qvl : motherboard_memory_ga_e7aum_ds2h.pdf

 

if your ram is not on those lists, get new compatible ram.

 

-D-

 

@ netcastle :

 

the onboard video works fine, better than fine actually, it runs perfectly.

i dont know what the hell ur doing, but i sure as hell know its not the proper way

[stan78]

Probably not that interesting but I have only 2GB and no freezes or crashes at all. Very stable system and already

the htpc I wanted.

I selected 256MB shared ram in BIOS right at the beginning cause it seemed like a "safe" option to me.

 

Guess I'll try to borrow some bigger ram modules the next days for testing cause a friend wants to put

16GB on the gigabyte. Would be a shame if I told him to buy it before making sure it's supported....

 

st

[netcastle]

@ netcastle :

 

the onboard video works fine, better than fine actually, it runs perfectly.

i dont know what the hell ur doing, but i sure as hell know its not the proper way

 

Maybe I should have gotten the Asus board. Do you even have a GA board? I have been very clear about what I have been doing. If you have the answers please list them, otherwise comments like this aren't constructive.

 

BTW my ram is compatible and others have had this same issue.

 

Stan78,

 

I am down to 2 gigs and also am running stable. That's probably enough for HTPC requirements but I want to multitask the hell out of this thing and want to get all 16 gigs in their at some point. Also tried the vram lock in the bios. Either way, memtest snows the system with 4 gigs.

 

Use memtest86 or memtest86+ for up to 5 passes, don't test memory from the OS X!!

You can't test the memory the OS or device drivers are using and not expect problems.

 

If you get problems in memtest86 then yea, of course your going to get problems in OS X.

 

I already said that the sound you provided caused instability, especially with QT.

Remove it and your stability issues are gone.

 

grep -i hda /var/log/system.log

If you got any errors there then your going to have instability even if "sounds" like it is working.

chrilled - you already confirmed that.

http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?s=&...t&p=1014074

 

Like I said, stability is there with 2 gigs of RAM. Whether I boot this thing to .5.6 with sound or .5.5 without sound (haven't installed sound drivers on my .5.5 install), the reseults are the same. 4 gigs causes the system to crash.

 

I haven't tried memtest86, only the one that was posted a couple of pages back. I think the purpose of that memtest is to check for shared vram addressing conflicts. The system doesn't KP when this happens. It just sort of snows the graphics. Maybe I just have a bad board. Who knows?

 

Just to be clear, I am not in disagreement with you about sound causing instability. Just keep in mind that these are not my solutions. I just found them by lurking around these boards and literally tried every one of them on my .5.6 install until one of them worked (how well I don't know because I have not extensively tested them). The one I shared with Stan78 via PM was the one that seemed to have the greatest effect. Strangely, I have not been able to repeat that on my .5.5 install and restore to the original config after each attempt, so now I am just sort of waiting for a more definitive answer.

 

grep -i hda /var/log/system.log

If you got any errors there then your going to have instability even if "sounds" like it is working.

chrilled - you already confirmed that.

 

I'll try this on my .5.6 install and see what I get. Also, I am going to verify my install to see if I missed anything here (I hope so). I did use your DSDT and essentially followed the steps outlined by diabolik a couple of pages back.

[zchef2k]

I am watching this thread very closely as I have the following configuration on the way for an HTPC....

 

Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 Processor BX80570E8400 - 3.0GHz, 6MB Cache, 1333MHz FSB

GIGABYTE GA-E7AUM-DS2H

Crucial 4GB 2x2GB DDR2-800 PC2-6400

HD, DVD, etc, etc....

 

Looks like some good work is being done. I would like to offer my assistance with further developing a set of parameters for getting this and similar platforms working in OS X.Shall we start a wiki to collect kexts and tutorials and keep it updated?Let me know what you guys think and hopefully you guys will welcome me in my latest challenge.

 

-Z

[okubo-show]

As Raffitaffy posted earlier,

iPC distro 10.5.6 can install on GA-E7AUM-DS2h. Now, I can boot it in safe mode.

But It stops starup process at NVEternet section says " NVEthernet: MediaChanged; Link down...

ntpdate [73] can't find host asia.apple.com

ntpdate [73] no server can't be used. exiting..."

 

I'm not sure iPC distro install customization, I want to know proper kext to run.

 

Okubo-show

[Burzel]

Hi all,

I want to build an OSx386 based HTPC-System. I followed this thread right from the beginning and decided to get this Gigabyte-Board - GA-E7AUM-DS2H.

 

I still have some questions:

Happliy I have access to an 10.5.5 MacBook Restore DVD that I need to setup my system. Do I need something else, e.g. second/exterbal HD?

 

What is the best strategy to setup my system? Do you recommend this guideline to get a full working system?

 

If Yes:

- Point 2/3: Can I use my Restore DVD to install MacOS directly on the giga-board?

- Point 5: How I can install Chameleon? Do I need an parallel OS like Win or Linux?

 

Thanks and happy new year!

Burzel

[stan78]

If Yes:

- Point 2/3: Can I use my Restore DVD to install MacOS directly on the giga-board?

- Point 5: How I can install Chameleon? Do I need an parallel OS like Win or Linux?

 

1) I think at the moment there is no way of using the restore disk in your hackintosh (boot132...)

2) You install chameleon from osx with an easy-to-use installer

[Burzel]

1) I think at the moment there is no way of using the restore disk in your hackintosh (boot132...)

2) You install chameleon from osx with an easy-to-use installer

...mmmmhh what does that mean?

Should I use an other distro or it works only with a retail Mac OS DVD? Or I have to use boot132 together with my restore DVD?

 

...sorry for the maybe stupid questions.. I am quite new in the "business"...

 

Thanks... Burzel

[stan78]

It means that you need another mac to install 10.5.5 on the harddisk that you plan on putting in your hackintosh