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OS X 10.7 - Gigabyte GA-P55-USB3 Rev2 F9 - MSI N580GTX TF2


aphax

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Just wanted to share my experiences of successfully installing my first hackintosh, sorry if this is a bit wall-of-texty, I like to be thorough :D This should provide all the hints you need to get going with this board. I've attached a zip with at least the DSDT.aml file and Audio kexts I used - the other things (lnx2mac, NVIDIA drivers) can be found at their respective websites. So anyway, here goes:

 

Specs:

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-P55-USB3 REV2.0 (F9 BIOS)
On-board HDA codec: Realtek ALC892
On-board LAN: Realtek RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller (rev 06) (pci-id: 10ec:8168)
Processor: Intel Core i7 870
Graphics: MSI N580GTX Twin Frozr II (pci-id: 10de:1080)
OS X Source Media: "Install OS X Lion.app" (10.7.3)

 

(NOTE: I actually used an ASUS EN9500GT TOP videocard during the installation process, after which I swapped it with the card listed above)

 

I think I'll forego writing a super-detailed step-by-step guide, because although I did write down everything I did to get my current hackintosh running, I went about it a bit backwards, so instead I'll just give an overview of what I did and the problems I encountered (don't follow this bit step by step), followed by a quick summary of the things actually needed to get everything working nicely.

 

Overview

First, since before this hackintosh I didn't actually had anything running OS X, so I had to get my hands a little 'dirty' by getting a pre-made VMWare player OS X image to bootstrap myself and create an Apple ID and buy Lion in the App Store. After that I just followed the rest of myHack guide and created the installer media using the default/provided Extra folder.

 

The first problem I encountered after booting the installer media was that neither my keyboard or mouse worked. After asking about this on IRC I found out I could fix this by using rolled back USB kexts that someone was nice enough to send to me. Later I found out I just needed to have a customized DSDT.aml loaded to solve this particular problem.

 

The second problem was that since I felt the GeForce 9500GT (which worked fine out of the box) wasn't powerful enough for OS X since some of the animations were a little sluggish, I decided to swap in my GeForce 580GTX. With this GPU, OS X refused to boot and would hang after printing "begin pci config", I fixed this by passing "npci=0x2000" to the kernel, but ultimately this was also fixed by the customized DSDT.aml file.

 

The 580GTX was the most problematic.. it wasn't recognized by the NVIDIA driver included with 10.7.3, so I had to add the pci id ("0x108010de&0xffffffff") to the /S/L/E/NVDAGF100Hal.kext/Contents/Info.plist file (in a copy under /Extra/Extensions and running myfix afterwards), at this point the card was recognized but terribly unstable (lots of graphical corruption and system lockups immediately after boot - lots of timeout errors in the kernel log).

 

I then attempted to use the official drivers NVIDIA released in back february, but those only allowed itself to be installed after adding the appropriate string ("MacPro3,1") for the SMproductname property in /Extra/smbios.plist (which I later on changed to "MacPro5,1" since that seemed like a better match for my HW). Sadly this didn't improve things, then by chance I discovered that the stability issue went away completely after plugging in a VGA display on my second DVI port (using an adapter) before booting up (NOTE TO SELF: see if this problem went away now that I'm using custom DSDT, since that solved everything else).

 

Then, for the onboard LAN/audio I used the kexts provided by the lnx2mac project, and some kexts (AppleHDA Rollback and ALC8xxHDA). The HDA kexts depend on the custom DSDT for my board being loaded, as well as the removal of the stock AppleHDA.kext that comes with 10.7.3 (turns out that removing this may not be neccesary). Other than than figuring out which kexts to use, I had no further problem with LAN/audio.

 

Lastly, CPU power management can be made to work by deleting/moving NullCPUPowerManagement.kext from /Extra/Extensions, it seems (haven't tested this with 100% certainty yet) to work fine, my Geekbench scores were consistently higher by about 200 points after removing this, so I suspect maybe turbo mode wasn't working before.

 

 

Summary of things needed

 

- A customized /Extra/DSDT.aml (see attachment) for my board that matches revision and BIOS version, this is needed for at least the following things:

-- Working USB devices (alternative solution: use rolled back USB kexts)

-- Detection of the onboard HDA audio (you'll need additional kexts for audio, see below)

 

- To prevent a hang on "PCI configuration begin", which seems to be caused by my GPU, you can pass "npci=0x2000" on the boot prompt (or via the boot.plist "Kernel Flags" setting) - be sure to remove this after installing proper NVIDIA drivers.

 

- Use the kext provided by the lnx2mac project to make the Realtek NIC work

 

- Specify the string "MacPro3,1" (or "MacPro5,1" might work just as well) for the SMproductname property in /Extra/smbios.plist, as this allows the official NVIDIA drivers to be installed without complaining about an unsupported device, and maybe other things need this.

 

- Either add the PCI-ID ("0x108010de&0xffffffff") for my GPU to the stock NVDAGF100Hal.kext/Contents/Info.plist file, or install the official NVIDIA drivers. (10.7.4 update notes: After added my PCI-ID, the drivers bundled with 10.7.4 refuse to detect my displays. The solution was to install the drivers NVIDIA released for 10.7.4, found at http://www.geforce.com/drivers/results/44848)

 

- If you experience instability and graphics corruption directly after booting up, try plugging a VGA screen into the second DVI port (maybe a DVI screen works as well, didn't test). This is probably very particular to my GPU brand/model.

 

- Optionally, specify EthernetBuiltIn="Yes" in /Extra/org.chameleon.Boot.plist so that the App Store works

 

- Place the ALC8xxHDA and "ApplHDA RollBack" modules under /System/Library/Extensions (see attached zip) (You might want to backup the old AppleHDA, just in-case. Also, I had suggested putting these under /Extra/Extensions earlier, but it seems these particular kexts really need to be under /S/L/E to work - I think there are better methods and/or kexts out there to get audio to work and that can work under /E/E, will have to investigate)

 

- Optionally, ensure the NullCPUPowerManagement.kext is not loaded by moving it out of /Extra/Extensions, this should make CPU power management work (not 100% verified)

 

So yeah... I think that should sum up what's needed. Again, sorry for the wall of text :D

 

(UPDATED with some corrections and notes for 10.7.4 update)

hackintosh-stuff.zip

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