Official OSx86 10.4.1 FAQ

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This is our official FAQ for 10.4.1, pulled mostly from the Wiki. It answers most of the questions we see too often. If there is something missing here, let us know. If you have a better answer, post it here!

Very Important!

 

If you have a question, you need to give:

1. Hardware Specs:

Motherboard: intel, amb, etc.

Video: nV, ATI, etc.

Data storage: sata, pata, ata, usb, etc.

2. Detailed Error Messages

Hit F8 at boot and type -v to boot in verbose mode in order to identify the problem.

 

Index of Questions:

1. I want Wi-Fi, OpenGL, and Quartz Extreme with my ATI video card and a nice widescreen resolution.

2. When I try to install OSx86, I get the message "Still waiting for root device."

3. What are the solutions to the "Still waiting for root device" message?

4. How do I enable sound with an AC 97 codec or SB Live! ?

5. Which SATA controllers work?

6. I get a blue background with mouse and boot screen (only with -F) but nothing load?

7. When I boot, I get a "HFS+ partition error." I have booted many times before.

8. Is there any way to network OSX in VMware?

9. Could Linux or BSD drivers work under OSX86? If not, would it be difficult to tweak them?

10. Instead of a blue screen and the multicolored "busy" spiral, I get a grey screen and all the graphics look grabled. Why?

11. Why don't Flash and Java work?

 

Q: I want Wi-Fi, OpenGL, and Quartz Extreme with my ATI video card and a nice widescreen resolution.

 

A: Apple didn't intend on OS X Tiger x86 being installed on varying hardware configurations. Because of this, a significant amount of hardware is not supported (doesn't have a fully working driver). There are a few supported WiFi Cards by AirPort2.kext (mostly Broadcom). Here (http://forum.osx86project.org/index.php?showtopic=1263) is a forum topic that helped me get my WiFi working. And there are efforts to get NVIDIA (http://macvidia.plusmediamusic.com/index.php?title=Main_Page) and ATIdriver (http://wiki.osx86project.org/wiki/index.php/ATI_Drivers) kexts to load.

 

Q: When I try to install OSx86, I get the message "Still waiting for root device."

 

A: OSx86 is not seeing your optical drive. If the drive is IDE, make SURE it is on the IDE port that goes to your southbridge (usually the blue one, but it varies), NOT on any supplementary IDE controllers. If it is SATA, set your bios settings to emulate or compatibility or something like that, NOT native or RAID or AHCI. Note: After changing the sata mode, if you also run windows off of the same/another HD on this controller, you may notice degraded performance and/or faliure to boot windows IF you change the sata settings.

If you mean boot instead of install, just replace the phrase "optical drive" with hard drive, the rest still applies. It is a detection issue with your IDE/SATA controller.

Edit: Try deleting the ApplePS2controller.kext - I get rid of that and it boots up for me no problem then!

 

Q: What are the solutions to the "Still waiting for root device" message?

 

A: The most common solution is making your OSX drive the primary IDE. Try disconnecting all the other hard drives, make the OSX drive IDE0, using either cable-select or Master jumper settings. In my particular case, Darwin only sees the "root device" if it's in the primary IDE slot.

 

A2: Try many boot option:

platform=X86PC -v

-x -v

rd=disk0s* -v (replace the * with your OS X partition number)

-f -v

 

A3: Try other bootloaders:

* Windows 2000/XP/2003 BOOT.INI is one of the easiest and best options. Many people use this method.

* LILO

 

Q: How do I enable sound with an AC 97 codec or SB Live! ?

 

Apple system profiler nor dmesg show that a sound card has been detected. A: But it works, doesn't it? In the TipsnTricks there is stuff about getting AC97 sound to work. For me AC97-Sound worked without any changes when i deleted the ATI-Drivers and so was able to boot up without safe-mode enabled. Try http://wiki.osx86project.org/wiki/index.php/Audio.

 

Q: Which SATA controllers work?

 

A: Working extensions for SATA are:

 

AppleIntelPIIXATA.kext

ICH5 Serial ATA Controller

ICH6 Serial ATA Controller

ICH6-M Serial ATA Controller

AppleVIAATA.kext

VIA SATA Controller

8237 SATA

 

Q: I get a blue background with mouse and boot screen (only with -F) but nothing load?

 

A: The partition table is not edit when you install darwin or osx, there is no real reason for darwin but the parititon stay NTFS FAT32 or EXT3 (it depend of what os you was using). For fix this problem, you need to use AF partition format and use UBUNTU live-cd for edit the parition table. It is not in the list but dont worry. After, the windows bootloader and GRUB will be able to work. For the first time, reboot FROM WINDOWS and when the bootloader will apear, choose tiger-x86 (OS X) and in the advenced part, write: platform=X86PC -v Good luck!

 

Q: When I boot, I get a "HFS+ partition error." I have booted many times before.

 

A: You did something under "Startup Disk" in System Preferences. To fix this, boot into the ubuntu live cd and write cfdisk in Terminal, which should list every partition on the hard disk. OSX will have a boot tag. Remove it by pressing enter, then press enter on your grub\boot.ini partition.

 

Q: Is there any way to network OSX in VMware?

 

Install Maxxus' patch to make network work in VMware.

 

Q: Could Linux or BSD drivers work under OSX86? If not, would it be difficult to tweak them?

 

1) Drivers are very different in Darwin/OSX. While Darwin looks like just another BSD variant to normal applications, it has little in common with BSD (or Linux) regarding drivers.

 

2) Due to (1), it's not possible to use an open source driver and just tweak a bit. Open source drivers are useful, but mostly as guidelines for writing a new driver from scratch. Actually, Darwin contains quite a few drivers that were originally written for Linux, but porting them is a lot of work. Often it's easier to just write a new driver from scratch.

Q. Instead of a blue screen and the multicolored "busy" spiral, I get a grey screen and all the graphics look grabled. Why?

 

A. There are alot of reasons for this. Some of the most common are low video memory or unsupported video chipset. Please see the WiKi for the current list of known working hardware.

http://wiki.osx86project.org/wiki/index.php/HCLPart

 

Q. Why don't Flash and Java work?

 

A. They are not Universal Binaries in this release. Apple released a unibin of Flash in 10.4.3 and is still tweaking Java.