[Guide] Vanilla Retail 10.6.x with Chameleon v2 for Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS3L

[blackosx]

What i was saing is that if i have the motherboard in group 1, i can use the original BIOS and the DSDT supplied from BLACKOSX for all them.

I believe that to be the case. Though I haven't actually used this DSDT on each motherboard to guarantee it.

[giuseppe001]

I believe that to be the case. Though I haven't actually used this DSDT on each motherboard to guarantee it.

 

 

The only different ( i can see ) between EP45-DS3L and EP45-UD3L is the PCI EXPRESS X16 location on the motherboard:

 

on the DS3L is after the first PCIEX 1_1

 

on the UD3L is after the second PCIEX1_2

 

BlackOSX, do you think will work your dsdt considering that pci express location ?

[blackosx]

I don't think it will matter as going by Cartri's list, the EP45-UD3L is in Group 1, as is the EP45-DS3L so the original Gigabyte DSDT is the same for both boards. So have you got the EP45-UD3L?

[giuseppe001]

I don't think it will matter as going by Cartri's list, the EP45-UD3L is in Group 1, as is the EP45-DS3L so the original Gigabyte DSDT is the same for both boards. So have you got the EP45-UD3L?

 

I have the EP45-DS3L and i would buy another one, but now is discontinued.

 

Is available the EP45-UD3LR so my point is to know if your DSDT work with it.

 

Tks

[blackosx]

Is available the EP45-UD3LR so my point is to know if your DSDT work with it.

From reading Cartri's table then I think the EP45-UD3LR should work fine with the DSDT from here.

But if you are looking to buy a new mobo then maybe you could choose one with the ALC889a audio codec? I think that will mean you won't have to patch the AppleHDA.kext in /S/L/E unlike me with ALC888 which Apple dropped support for in 10.6.3.

[Johnny V]

It's great giuseppe001 that you want to build your own DSDT from scratch. At first I tried to build my own DSDT but just didn't have time to learn everything. So I just installed a DSDT that was close to my motherboard specs and tweaked the items that didn't work which in itself can take some time. If I remember correctly the only thing I had to change was the ALC888 audio codec to ALC889a.

Best of Luck! John

[giuseppe001]

But if you are looking to buy a new mobo then maybe you could choose one with the ALC889a audio codec? I think that will mean you won't have to patch the AppleHDA.kext in /S/L/E unlike me with ALC888 which Apple dropped support for in 10.6.3.

 

Could you pls suggest me a mobo with ALC889a.

 

What about the dsdt ?

 

Tks

[blackosx]

You can see at glance all Gigabyte P43/P45 boards and X58 with ALC889a in Cartri's motherboard list.

The DSDT will be different from the one here, but don't let that stop you. If you're prepared to learn about DSDT then I'm sure it won't be a problem

[bigpoppa206]

You can see at glance all Gigabyte P43/P45 boards and X58 with ALC889a in Cartri's motherboard list.

The DSDT will be different from the one here, but don't let that stop you. If you're prepared to learn about DSDT then I'm sure it won't be a problem

 

Wow, according to that list, my GA-EP45C-UD3R is almost a perfect match with other P45 Gigabyte boards. Explains why Stellarolla's installer works so well too.

[landmark]

QUOTE (I'm experiencing some weird networking issues with my Intel 82574L card since the update to 10.6.4 - anyone having similar problems?

 

I checked against both Chameleon RC5 r193 and r257 @ Speedstep enabled and disabled - same issue everytime.)

Hi landmark

 

I don't know, but I doubt it's the bootloader causing the problem but you can easily rule that out by going back to maybe RC4 for a test?. I know 10.6.3/4 changed things with audio and video with certain hardware.. Maybe something's changed with regard to the chipset on your NIC?

Well, I ruled out some possible reasons in the meantime and as you predicted, the bootloader isn't accountable at all. This is what has no influence on the error:

 

1) The bootloader. I checked RC4 r684, RC5 r193, r257 and r300. Regarding the ethernet issue, all behave exactly the same.

 

2) Having the Realtek onboard LAN enabled or disabled at BIOS setup - this surely results in en1 being present or not, but en0 (the i82574L one) remains unstable. The Realtek onboard LAN works fine, however.

 

3) dsdt.aml: Even renaming /E/dsdt.aml (and thus falling back to the dsdt embedded in the cartri BIOS) makes no difference.

 

Pressing the Power button to enable sleep and waking up the system restores the power-on condition: Network works for pinging, but fails even under the slightest load.

 

Very dissatisfactory...

[blackosx]

Hi landmark

 

Good work with your tests and you now know it's not the boot loader, DSDT, Cartri BIOS or BIOS settings so it points to 10.6.4.

 

Do you have you a secondary installation of OS X (maybe 10.6.3, just not 10.6.4) on the same system to be able to compare between the two? It might help you to try and isolate what's changed in the OS to make your card fail?

 

Other than that, I'm out of suggestions.. Sorry

[landmark]

Yes, I have 10.6.3 installed on my two internal HDDs using a software RAID0. This installation works flawlessly. The 10.6.4 one is on an external 2.5" USB drive, so I can easily try out different approaches.

 

What doesn't go in my head is that the Intel 82574L is the LAN adapter that Apple itself uses in the Mac Pro - hence the Intel82574L.kext in the IONetworkingFamily.kext. My feeling is that it might have something to do with the release of the new unibody Mac Mini - it utilizes the 82574L, got released on the very same day as 10.6.4 and there are known compatibility issues. Apple even released, for the first time ever, a 10.6.4 update tailor-made for those devices which includes an Intel82574L.kext! However, both read version 2.1.0b1 (haven't compared them binary-wise) and overwriting the 10.6.4 standard kext with the one from the Mac Mini upgrade doesn't help either - both behave exactly the same. Moreover, tweaks specific to the Mac Mini shouldn't matter at all since my system's defined as a MacPro3,1 in SMBIOS.plist.

 

I've attached those three Intel82574L.kexts - the one from 10.6.3 perfectly working, the 10.6.4 ones not. Maybe there's a smart mind out there to bring them to work...

 

EDIT: The Driver Parameters section in the kexts Info.plist differs from 10.6.3 to 10.6.4. I've pasted those 10.6.3 settings into the 10.6.4 plist with no effort - misbehavior's exactly the same.

Intel_82574L.kexts_from_10.6.3_and_10.6.4.7z.txt

[giuseppe001]

I haven't done this for a while now, but the way I did it was using Zhell's instructions to boot from a Ubuntu Linux live CD and using acpidump to extract all the ACPI tables. You can then dump them on to a USB stick, upload them or email them to yourself for further examination.

 

 

Hi BlackOSX

 

what is the usage for the dsdt extracted from the real mac ?

 

How can it help us for our mb

 

Tks

 

 

 

PS i have now a second board EP45-EXTREME with alc889a

[blackosx]

@landmark - well done with your further research on this.. I have sent you a PM although I don't know if it will offer much wisdom

 

what is the usage for the dsdt extracted from the real mac ?

@giuseppe001 - Are you asking how to extract the DSDT from a real mac?

If so, the answer is in Zhells post which I link to back here.. Download the dsdt.sh.zip file and run that in Terminal on the Mac.

 

And well done with coming to a decision for a different mobo with the EP45-EXTREME.

[giuseppe001]

@giuseppe001 - Are you asking how to extract the DSDT from a real mac?

If so, the answer is in Zhells post which I link to back here.. Download the dsdt.sh.zip file and run that in Terminal on the Mac.

 

 

Hi Blackosx,

 

no how to extract the dsdt, but in the previous post you said that have you done your DSDT following the istruction of Zhells.

 

I am asking you, after obtained the dsdt from a real mac, what do you make ? what is the utilization of the original mac dsdt ?

 

tks

[blackosx]

no how to extract the dsdt, but in the previous post you said that have you done your DSDT following the istruction of Zhells.

I used Zhells instructions for extracting the DSDT from my Gigabyte BIOS using Linux.

The DSDT used in this thread is based on the hard work mm67 put in to slimming down the DSDT from his Gigabyte motherboard.

 

I am asking you, after obtained the dsdt from a real mac, what do you make ? what is the utilization of the original mac dsdt ?

I haven't extracted a DSDT from a real Intel Mac as I don't have access to one but if you do then you'll have a file which you can try to read and understand. If you want to try and use a DSDT from a real Mac then you will need to have a thorough understanding of all the hardware in that Mac and how it compares to your hardware, along with probably all the datasheets for each chipset, a copy of the ACPIspec, plenty of time and patience, and know what to remove and change etc.. I don't have the knowledge for that to even contemplate doing such a thing.

 

You're best route is to probably look towards using Cartri's modified Gigabyte BIOS as he is very clever with this type of detail and is making his modified BIOS as close to a real mac as possible.

[lensboard]

Hi guys, just re installed snow leopard the other day, and I am seeing unable to determine UUID for host. Error: 35 in my console.

 

I see the fix that is a year old, just wanted to check what the current fix is. I searched this topic, and saw nothing recent. My setup is nearly identical to blackosx's

 

I remember fixing this last year somehting about adding an adapter or sumthin....

 

thanks in advance

[blackosx]

Hi lensboard

 

The UUID error should no longer appear when booting with one of the newer versions of Chameleon.

Here's the latest RC5 pre-release build r342.

 

This will also give you full automatic memory detection, as opposed to manually adding it in the SMBIOS.plist, and can enable vanilla speedstep too without having to manually edit your DSDT file (I posted about that here).

 

You can install it by following part 3 of the PDF guide in this thread.

 

Regards

Chameleon_Build_r342.zip

[giuseppe001]

Hi Blackosx,

 

a question about the mac model.

 

In your file you have inserted the MAC MODEL 3,1

 

I have this 3 CPU:

 

Q6600

 

E7300

 

Q9550

 

 

What is the best mac model for these 3 cpu ?

 

Tks

Giuseppe

[blackosx]

@Giuseppe

 

The overall idea is to match your hardware as closely as possible to a real Mac and opt to use that's Mac's name. For my machine, the hardware matches best to an iMac so I always used to use a mac model of iMac 8,1.

 

This was perfect for me, but with this motherboard, I would experience an audio pop/click when first playing sound after a period of no sound. The workaround for this was to the a MacPro mac model, so I started to use MacPro1,1.

 

However for vanilla power management, I think only a couple of mac models can be used, and that gave me the choice of either iMac10,1 or MacPro3,1. So with that in mind and the audio issue, I naturally went with MacPro3,1 and have never looked back

 

So for you I can recommend either the iMac10,1 or MacPro3,1 depending on your motherboard's issue with audio.

You can find more about the hardware in specific real Macs by their mac model by going to EveryMac.com and searching my model.

 

Also, one thing to bear in mind is that the OS may load different drivers depending on what hardware it thinks it has, identified by the model name, so that's why it's important to get as close as possible. You might even want to run some Geekbench tests when using your system with either mac model to see if there's any difference to your system performance using them.

 

If you search around on InsanelyMac and Google, you'll find plenty of discussions about this subject.

[giuseppe001]

Tks Blackosx,

 

you are always collaborative

 

Giuseppe

[geithals]

I have been trying with some regular effort to update from 10.6.0 to 10.6.4 on a back up disk, but still without success. And wondering what I could try next.

Often enough I wipe the Cham partition and start afresh.

 

I can update from 10.6.0 to 10.6.1, but come a cropper at 10.6.2. (Have tried to go straight to 10.6.4)

Always the same, dark screen after extensions load, exactly as if the graphics card is not being recognised.

I am working from support files 1.4 and only using the bare minimum in Cham when trying to get into the 10.6.2 upgrade.

Cham/Extra - Boot.plist, dsdt.aml SMBIOS.plist

Cham/Extra/Extenstion - fakesmc

 

My working 10.6.1 Cham/Extra/Ext contains Disabler, fakesmc,LegacyHDA,NullCPUPowerManagement, OrangeIconFix, SleepEnabler.

 

working boot Plist for 10.6.1

<key>Graphics Mode</key>

<string>1680x1050x32</string>

<key>Kernel</key>

<string>mach_kernel</string>

<key>Kernel Flags</key>

<string>None</string>

<key>Timeout</key>

<string>3</string>

<key>Default Partition</key>

<string>hd(0,3)</string>

<key>Instant Menu</key>

<string>No</string>

<key>device-properties</key>

<string>ab020000010000000 etc

 

Tried this boot.plist for 10.6.2 with and w/out a device properties string added.

 

<key>Graphics Mode</key>

<string>1680x1050x32</string>

<key>GraphicsEnabler</key>

<string>Yes</string>

<key>Kernel</key>

<string>mach_kernel</string>

<key>Kernel Flags</key>

<string></string>

<key>Theme</key>

<string>Default</string>

<key>Timeout</key>

<string>3</string>

<key>arch</key>

<string>i386</string>

 

Purely for educational purposes, I tried the iatkos s3 10.6.3. Again my card was very finicky as compared to others whoose graphic card can apparantly perform handstands without too much trouble, by just selecting one of 3 possible install options for graphics.

I could only get to the desktop at 1024/768 res by selecting the graphics enabler at boot option. Presumably I could have upgraded to 10.6.4 and presumably I could have gotten the card to be fully recognised if I knew how

But I am not going to bother more with it as this retail install is what I am interested in and 10.6.1 Vanilla retail is perfect.

 

Since the graphics enabler/yes has been added as a string to the boot.plist does that mean you don't need a device properties string?

Did Apple drop something in the 10.6.2 upgrade that I was depending upon? And why me? I don't mind being left behind, if it is my choice not to upgrade.

[lensboard]

Hi lensboard

 

The UUID error should no longer appear when booting with one of the newer versions of Chameleon.

Here's the latest RC5 pre-release build r342.

 

This will also give you full automatic memory detection, as opposed to manually adding it in the SMBIOS.plist, and can enable vanilla speedstep too without having to manually edit your DSDT file (I posted about that here).

 

You can install it by following part 3 of the PDF guide in this thread.

 

Regards

 

I am running 2.0 RC5-r193, kinda odd, have two identical boxes, and one box doesnt have this error. I will upgrade the boot loader, and report back

 

One more thing that is problematic, they dont go to sleep on their own. I have to choose sleep manually, any ideas?

[blackosx]

@geithals

 

It looks like you have everything set right... hmmmm

Have you tried adding PciRoot=1 to the com.apple.Boot.plist ? With the latest Chameleon, this should be detected automatically, but it's worth a try just to see if it makes a difference, but then if it works for 10.6.1 then it can't be the solution.

 

Maybe it's your SleepEnabler.kext? have you changed the version accordingly? SleepEnabler.kext is one of the main causes of problems when updating as it's kernel specific. Try removing NullCPUPowermanagement.kext and SleepEnabler.kext from Cham/Extra/Extensions as you don't need them to run your system. Especially now with the new RC5 versions since Mozodojo added automatic p-state / c-state generation for vanilla power management. If you want, upgrade to r193 or later of Chameleon RC5 (I posted r342 above) and do the following:

 

• Make sure NullCPUPowerManagement.kext and SleepEnabler.kext have been removed from /E/E

• Have the DSDT.aml from the Support Files in your /Extra folder.

• Add the following to your /Extra/com.apple.Boot.plist

 

<key>GeneratePStates</key>

<string>Yes</string>

<key>GenerateCStates</key>

<string>Yes</string>

<key>DropSSDT</key>

<string>Yes</string>

 

And reboot..

 

And yes, you only want to use one enabler for your video, so if you have the GraphicsEnabler=Yes boot option, then you don't need to use a device property EFI string.

 

 

@lensboard

 

Double check you don't have any UUID entries in your com.apple.Boot.plist.

Auto sleep just works for me, as to why it doesn't for you is one of those trial and error things.. Sorry I can't be more specific. Has anybody else got any ideas to help here?

[lensboard]

@lensboard

 

Double check you don't have any UUID entries in your com.apple.Boot.plist.

Auto sleep just works for me, as to why it doesn't for you is one of those trial and error things.. Sorry I can't be more specific. Has anybody else got any ideas to help here?

 

No uuid entries in com.apple.boot.plist; no worries, it was an upgrade, I will reinstall soon, my other box doesnt have this error

 

I have the identical setup as you, no auto sleep, do I need the speed step setup for auto sleep? vanilla power management/