G73SW - 10.9 Install

[tatsuchan]

Need more tweaking..  

 

Got it Working, will test for few day before update package...

Did you upload the updated files to get this at such low temps?  I used the first post files with tutorial posted.  I don't know if there are updates since then as I didn't see anything else actually posted.  Maybe I'm just a bit lost.

[tatsuchan]

I fear no one checks this forum anymore

 

Anyway, I solved (at least somewhat solved) one of the problems.  The backlit keyboard doesn't come back on randomly, maybe 1 in every 3 times, after sleep.  I found that if I put the computer back in sleep and reopen it will turn the light back on.  A bit of a pain, but much better then a full restart.

[asusg73]

Been very busy, i see you guys have most things taken care of. 10.9.2 should fix a number of problems...ill test it as soon as it comes out. By the way, I am using kernel cache with ireddybattery and i don't boot with -f. I guess y'all have that figured out though

[asusg73]

I would like to test out that unlocked bios ellnic but the link is dead...could you re-upload or PM it to me? And is it PM-patched?

[ellnic]

Sorry for the late reply. Been really busy. I've had a look and for some reason I can't seem to find the completely unlocked one. I have the one that is unlocked with the throttle fix - but it's not patched for PM.

 

Here is the throttle fix BIOS: http://www.sendspace.com/file/8ayexf

 

It also enables some AES features.

 

To patch for PM, use this: http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/285444-pmpatch-uefi-patching-utility/

 

Use the Windows version.

 

Make sure you flash from a FAT32 FS with EZ-Flash... DO NOT flash from NTFS. There is a known and yet still unfixed bug that will likely brick your BIOS (thanks Asus).

 

I'll have another look for the completely unlocked one in the next few days... in the middle of moving house so not that easy to find stuff at the moment.

[asusg73]

Sorry for the late reply. Been really busy. I've had a look and for some reason I can't seem to find the completely unlocked one. I have the one that is unlocked with the throttle fix - but it's not patched for PM.

 

Here is the throttle fix BIOS: http://www.sendspace.com/file/8ayexf

 

It also enables some AES features.

 

To patch for PM, use this: http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/285444-pmpatch-uefi-patching-utility/

 

Use the Windows version.

 

Make sure you flash from a FAT32 FS with EZ-Flash... DO NOT flash from NTFS. There is a known and yet still unfixed bug that will likely brick your BIOS (thanks Asus).

 

I'll have another look for the completely unlocked one in the next few days... in the middle of moving house so not that easy to find stuff at the moment.

Oh ok no problem take your time. I have the throttle fix bios already with AES features but that bios with the unhidden options caught my eye big time. Its amazing how Asus calls these laptops "enthusiast" models but it comes with an entry level bios...

And yes i believe manmal had a first-hand experience with the unfortunate results

[asusg73]

10.9.2 Update. I would recommend everyone to stay on 10.9.1 for the time being. I am having trouble with sound refusing to load and it broke iMessage. It's saying the kext is not authentic. That is the main issue for now...sencondary is iMessage but i haven't looked into yet as sound is higher priority. Everything else seems to be working fine.

***IMPORTANT UPDATE: It seems 10.9.2 has fixed the pixalated camera on the g73sw. It is now working OOB for me so far but ill keep testing

[asusg73]

Well i've fixed my sound but my boot times have increased but otherwise it is still stable. Upon installing 10.9.2 since Feb. 27, I have not had a Fermi freeze ever again and i am not using FreezeFix. As a result, I get almost 5 hours battery life with light usage and my GPU idles at 40c but where on 10.9.1 i was lucky to get 2 hours and the you idled at 43c. CPU idles at 31c. My battery is at 37% and i have over an hour of battery life remaining. FaceTime and Photo Booth are working perfectly. Also found a new three finger gesture that activates mission control. Other than the boot time increase, I am fairly impressed with this update.

[ellnic]

I'd replace your paste with something decent like MX4. Asus did a nice hash job on mine. 

 

Btw, I cannot for the life of me find that unlocked BIOS - but it was easy to do. Just grab a copy of AMIBCP (http://www.bios-mods.com/forum/Thread-CLEVO-BIOS-Mods-Ami-Modding-Tools) and you can load your BIOS image into it and unlock what you need. I sat there for 20 mins and did the lot. Use at your own risk though. 

 

Are you going to share your 10.9.2 files with the rest of that class?

[asusg73]

I'd replace your paste with something decent like MX4. Asus did a nice hash job on mine. 

 

Btw, I cannot for the life of me find that unlocked BIOS - but it was easy to do. Just grab a copy of AMIBCP (http://www.bios-mods.com/forum/Thread-CLEVO-BIOS-Mods-Ami-Modding-Tools) and you can load your BIOS image into it and unlock what you need. I sat there for 20 mins and did the lot. Use at your own risk though. 

 

Are you going to share your 10.9.2 files with the rest of that class?

I used arctic silver 5 on mine but i'll repaste when i upgrade my cpu. I was going to put in an Ivy Bridge Cpu but the gains would be very marginal compared to Sandy bridge. The 2820qm looks like a good choice though. What 10.9.2 files do you need? I'm going to reinstall this week because i miss my fast boot times. When booting, there is a 30 second pause where no I/O transfers go on then it resumes like normal. Thanks for the program! I'll go see what i can do with it.

[asusg73]

It looks like i'll have to hold on the cpu upgrade...no sense in upgrading a brick. The flash was successful and i was able to boot using the intel hd 3000 intergrated. But when i set another bios option...i think i turned off AMT, the computer shut down and now the power led stays on for a second then turns off and it does this over and over. Anybody know of a way to force the system into thinking there is no bios installed before i purchase a new motherboard for it? On the upside, if i hadnt touched that setting, i would have had close to 8 hrs of battery life using intel hd 3000. That is pretty impressive for a laptop of this size. I would have posted a screenshot but, you know the rest...

[oldnapalm]

Hi, thanks for this topic, the files and information was very useful.

 

I installed Mavericks 10.9.2 on this laptop using Clover UEFI, I'm attaching the files I used.

 

Asus G73Sw OS X Mavericks 10.9.2.zip

 

Cheers.

 

[ellnic]

@asusg73 - that's the 2nd time now that this board has been bricked by a member on this forum because of Asus and their poor design :-/ I was informed by members on another forum and Asus themselves, that booting from the Intel 3000 was not possible? Also, I don't understand why the AMT option would have bricked your machine? Before you go down the route of a new Mobo, have you considered removing the BIOS chip and just replacing it? Some basic soldering skills will be required. Another user on this forum fell victim to Asus and their poor design (flashing from NTFS bricks the board - but Asus won't fix it!), but was able to replace the BIOS chip and all was well. Also, with regards to the AS5 paste, it is good, but not designed for quad core systems. You will probably get better results with MX4 or something like Icy Diamond.

 

@oldnapalm - that's awesome What do you have working? I don't have my Asus to hand at the moment as it's still boxed up from the move.. will definitely have a go with these as soon as I can though!

[oldnapalm]

Same as jeffc2009 reported in opening post, plus battery icon (using ACPIBatteryManager and DSDT patches by RehabMan).

 

I'm not sure about AGPM but looks like it's working fine using threshold values from jeffc2009 in LegacyAGPM. Here are the test results

 

[ellnic]

Certainly looks like it- nice!

[manmal]

Very interesting news on g73sw! Thanks guys! Is the new "unlocked" bios fix such annoying fermi freeze? It's getting me mad... I would also like to try oldnapalm files. Is it fully working, including battery, wifi etc ?

And Yes i was one of the victims of poor ASUS BIOS design. I was able to remove the old unusable chip and to solder a new bios chip and everything is working again, but it was not so easy (expecially soldering smd stuff without damaging anything). Be very careful about the keyboard too, if you remove it.

[asusg73]

@asusg73 - that's the 2nd time now that this board has been bricked by a member on this forum because of Asus and their poor design :-/ I was informed by members on another forum and Asus themselves, that booting from the Intel 3000 was not possible? Also, I don't understand why the AMT option would have bricked your machine? Before you go down the route of a new Mobo, have you considered removing the BIOS chip and just replacing it? Some basic soldering skills will be required. Another user on this forum fell victim to Asus and their poor design (flashing from NTFS bricks the board - but Asus won't fix it!), but was able to replace the BIOS chip and all was well. Also, with regards to the AS5 paste, it is good, but not designed for quad core systems. You will probably get better results with MX4 or something like Icy Diamond.

 

@oldnapalm - that's awesome What do you have working? I don't have my Asus to hand at the moment as it's still boxed up from the move.. will definitely have a go with these as soon as I can though!

I'm back...new mobo came in and i'm ready to go! Took me about less than 25mins to tear it apart and put it together and time left over to repaste GPU and CPU. Also did a light mod on the exhaust vents while i was in there...looks great! I'll fix the other mobo and keep as a spare to experiment with or maybe build me another g73SW. Only problem is iMessage and FaceTime don't work anymore but a call to apple should hopefully solve that. My AGPM is working here as well. Manmal, what type of soldering iron did you use and did you use 15watts or 30watts?

[ellnic]

what type of soldering iron did you use and did you use 15watts or 30watts?

Glad to hear that you are up and running!

 

Don't use a soldering iron that just quotes wattage. You'll have no control over temperature and you'll end up kicking yourself when you damage something. Irons that are cheap and just go by wattage could be out by a variance of up to 40c! Pick up a cheap iron that has temperature control like the Hakko 936 or it's Chinese clone the Yihua 936 (you can see how they compare here:

if you want a newer Hakko get the FX-888) and set to 370-380c, use a spade tip (to get heat on the chip and the board) and plenty of flux - try a no clean flux pen or you will need to use flux off to prevent board corrosion. Also, get solder with rosin core, at a width of .4mm. Success every time. :-)

 

Edit: forgot to mention above (although the guy does mention it in the vid) that if you get the Yihua, it will need initial calibration.

[manmal]

hello, i am using a semi-professional soldering station , like the one ellnic mentioned(with temperature control). I have had bad experiences soldering stuff with cheap soldering irons. Avoid them. I am using a "pump"-manual-tool for removing existing stuff(it was the most difficult part and you will end damaging some tracks if you are not expert in that or doing it for the first time). Hope this helps...

but talking back about g73sw : are there updated kexts somewhere (like applehda / ioaudiofamily for latest 10.9.2) or are we using the same stuff at the beginning of the thread? Are the oldnapalm ones updated ones or still the same? Thanks!

[asusg73]

hello, i am using a semi-professional soldering station , like the one ellnic mentioned(with temperature control). I have had bad experiences soldering stuff with cheap soldering irons. Avoid them. I am using a "pump"-manual-tool for removing existing stuff(it was the most difficult part and you will end damaging some tracks if you are not expert in that or doing it for the first time). Hope this helps...

but talking back about g73sw : are there updated kexts somewhere (like applehda / ioaudiofamily for latest 10.9.2) or are we using the same stuff at the beginning of the thread? Are the oldnapalm ones updated ones or still the same? Thanks!

I do quite a bit of soldering with a cheap radio shack soldering iron with a horrible tip but that station would help me a lot. I'm using all of my existing kexts for 10.9.2. Did anyone have audio problems updating to 10.9.2 even after installing your previous audio kexts? I have the solution if anybody is going through that frustrating process. Has anyone tested the camera on photobooth and FaceTime? Mine now works like a real isight. I also got FaceTime and iMessage fixed from applecare. Ive noticed apple has done a lot of work with nvidia on tackling this channel timeout {censored}. Sometimes after a few days, the dock and finder would just relaunch instead of freezing from a channel timeout, but its been pretty rare for me unless if I plug in hdmi or unplug it...then it goes stupid. I have a good feeling apple will take care of this fermi freeze for good and they are a few steps closer.

[manmal]

hello asusg73,

yes, if you are able to use your solder you can do the work. Be very careful that the tip must be very thin because the components are smd.

And yes i will be very much interested in your solution for applehda and isight !! May you share such infos/files with us? Thanks! 

[oldnapalm]

are there updated kexts somewhere (like applehda / ioaudiofamily for latest 10.9.2) or are we using the same stuff at the beginning of the thread? Are the oldnapalm ones updated ones or still the same?

 

Hi,

 

AppleHDA and IOAudioFamily in my package are the same. I updated AppleHDA but it does't work after sleep using old IOAudioFamily.

 

I tried to compile an updated IOAudioFamily based on this, but it causes KP when playing any sound after sleep.

 

I also got one from Mirone (compiled by Andy Vandijck) but it causes KP too.

 

The kext EAPDFix plays a volume notification sound when the laptop wakes, but audio stops working after a few seconds. If I kextunload/kextload it, audio starts working again.

 

Edit: EAPDFix.kext actually works, I just had configured it improperly.

 

Updated package with EAPDFix.kext and AppleHDAALC269.kext (requires original AppleHDA.kext and binpatch in Clover config.plist)

Asus G73Sw OS X Mavericks 10.9.2.zip

[asusg73]

Just a word of thought for anybody thinking about modding their G-series bios is to STAY AWAY FROM "CPU Flex Ratio Override" this setting bricks ALL Asus G-series laptops. It does not affect the bios chip as I thought before and after the third motherboard, I am pretty sure I have learned my lesson. Also, has anyone modified their AGPM yet? I think it is kind of hard to get good gaming performance and save power at the same time. I set mine for everyday usage where it utilizes 50mhz and 202mhz for most scrolling and desktop animations and the 675mhz for anything else but it still requires a bit of fine tuning as a lot of games don't really place a load on the gpu and cause it to stay at lower or mid clocks. However, battery life is awesome considering the size and power of a desktop replacing laptop. Now I can watch movies for over 2 hours instead of the measly 1 hour I had if I was lucky. Here is a picture from all day usage today as well.

save power.tiff

 

save power.tiff

[oldnapalm]

Anybody else had black screen problem after 10.9.3 update?

 

Here system boots with a black screen. If I put it to sleep (lid close) and wake, screen works good.

[asusg73]

Anybody else had black screen problem after 10.9.3 update?

 

Here system boots with a black screen. If I put it to sleep (lid close) and wake, screen works good.

I'll install the update now and see if mine does that.

My screen also turns black as well...i'll have to do some digging. I remember reading in a post claiming that apple changed something regarding display output or something...for now I will advise everybody NOT to upgrade to 10.9.3 for the meantime.