Yet Another Snow Leopard Hackintosh Thread

[Tyranicus]

I realize the LanParty boards are old news on the Hackintosh scene, but when I built my Hack back in March '08, they were still considered one of the best choices. I have had no luck at all finding a guide for Snow Leopard. Surely someone out there has done it or at the very least attempted it. I would very much like to upgrade. Any help would be appreciated.

 

[Tyranicus]

I realize that I am doing some serious necromancy with this post, but I was finally able to get Snow Leopard working on my hack using the latest version of Empire EFI. I had tried an earlier version in the past with no luck at all, but now it works just fine.

 

[KeypoX]

thanks for the update, gonna try it again on laptop.

 

[suklee]

I was gonna ask if it will work on the EP35-DS3L's P35 chipset, then I noticed your signature indicates your mobo is also a P35.

I might give this Empire EFI thing a whirl... was it a (fairly) smooth process?

Which of these should I download?

Download Empire EFI v.1085 for Intel P55 Chipset and Intel Core i5 and i7 8xx series , Intel Core 2 series , Intel Core series (Contains both EmpireEFI v1.085 and LegacyEmpireEFI v1.085)

Download Empire EFI v1.085 for Intel Atom , Intel Core i7 9xx series , Intel Core 2 series , Intel Core series (contains both Empire EFI v1.085 and LegacyEmpireEFI v1.085)

 

[Tyranicus]

It was reasonably smooth. I had to go find a kext for my video card after the install, but the Empire EFI disc provided a link to where I could download one. With your system, you want the second download. You'll want to try the regular Empire EFI disc and use the legacy disc if that does not work.

 

[QueBert]

good info Tyranicus! I installed 10.5 on my Hackintosh last week and have been tempted to buy SL since it's $30. I have almost the same MB as you, mine's the T2RS plus, which I believe has all the same specs. Are you using the on board sound? and did it work out of the box? I had a bitch of a time getting 10.5 to install on mine with video/sound/network all working. The guides I'm seeing are all saying I'll need to install SL on a clean HD, but I don't have one. I have plenty of space on my current OSX drive. If you have any info for me on other devices I'm all ears.

 

[Tyranicus]

I was not able to get the onboard audio working. The audio patch I used in Leopard was not compatible. I am currently using USB speakers. If you have other speakers you would like to use, USB sound cards are pretty cheap. Everything else, including gigabit ethernet, works just fine. I used NVenabler for my graphics card.

 

[Kmax82]

Thanks Tyranicus.

Do you use Netflix? Do you have issues with it with this installation method? If not, I'm going to have to try this out.

 

[Tyranicus]

I cannot get Netflix to work, and I was unable to get it working Leopard since 10.5.8 came out either. it's not a big deal to me, as I have a PS3 hooked up to the same monitor.

 

[Kmax82]

I cannot get Netflix to work, and I was unable to get it working Leopard since 10.5.8 came out either. it's not a big deal to me, as I have a PS3 hooked up to the same monitor.

Yea.. I use it there as well, just would be nice to have it all on one box. Oh well... I'll leave my setup alone for now.

 

[Sy[N]tH]

Tyranicus, after seeing this thread I decided to try and install MacOSX.

I purchased OSX10.6 (SL), downloaded Empire EFI...

Long story short, I got my install to work almost flawlessly with very little effort. I have only one issue, and it just started: upon reboots, my CMOS resets! It didn<t do that at first, and I can't remember what I changed that could of caused this issue.

I wanted to ask you: have you ever experienced this problem?

Also, have you edited your DSDT.aml?

Cheers!

EDIT
Here are my specs (will be sigged):
DFI P35-T2RS
Q9550
4gb Mushkin Ascents 8500
GTX 275

 

[KeypoX]

Tyranicus, after seeing this thread I decided to try and install MacOSX.

I purchased OSX10.6 (SL), downloaded Empire EFI...

Long story short, I got my install to work almost flawlessly with very little effort. I have only one issue, and it just started: upon reboots, my CMOS resets! It didn<t do that at first, and I can't remember what I changed that could of caused this issue.

I wanted to ask you: have you ever experienced this problem?

Also, have you edited your DSDT.aml?

Cheers!

EDIT
Here are my specs (will be sigged):
DFI P35-T2RS
Q9550
4gb Mushkin Ascents 8500
GTX 275

easy fix http://www.infinitemac.com/f84/snow-leopard-cmos-reset-fix-t3478/
http://netkas.org/?p=114
http://www.google.com/search?q=dsdt...s=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

 

[Sy[N]tH]

easy fix http://www.infinitemac.com/f84/snow-leopard-cmos-reset-fix-t3478/
http://netkas.org/?p=114
http://www.google.com/search?q=dsdt...s=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

I didn't have a dsdt.aml file in my install, so I created one with the DSDT patcher from one of the links you provided.

I then proceeded to decompile it (using iasl) to a .dsl file, modified the Device(RTC) string and... well it was late, so I'll recompile it tonight, and give it a go.

I'll keep you posted!

Cheers!

 

[Sy[N]tH]

Alright: creating, editing and putting the dsdt.aml in /extra did not work.

Is there something else I need to do after doing the above, like "activating", lets say, the dsdt file, making sure chameleon sees it?

I will also post these questions on Insanely Mac.

 

[QueBert]

SL question, I feel like a huge retard here, the only way I can get my SL to boot is using my USB bootloader. I installed Chameleon RC4 on my SL partition, but when I reboot I get a non system disk error. I checked and the com.apple.boot.list is there and exactly the same as the one on my USB stick. I am stumped why I cannot get SL to boot off my HD.

ideas? lol thanks.

 

[KeypoX]

Alright: creating, editing and putting the dsdt.aml in /extra did not work.

Is there something else I need to do after doing the above, like "activating", lets say, the dsdt file, making sure chameleon sees it?

I will also post these questions on Insanely Mac.

Are you using chameleon? Putting it into extra should do it. You changed the 4 to a 2 right? You gotta check that part of the dst and make sure its correct.

 

[KeypoX]

SL question, I feel like a huge retard here, the only way I can get my SL to boot is using my USB bootloader. I installed Chameleon RC4 on my SL partition, but when I reboot I get a non system disk error. I checked and the com.apple.boot.list is there and exactly the same as the one on my USB stick. I am stumped why I cannot get SL to boot off my HD.

ideas? lol thanks.

did you use the terminal to install it? Sounds like you did something wrong when installing chameleon. Directions are in the readme of chameleon.

Chameleon installers never worked for me, so i always do it with the terminal.

 

[QueBert]

did you use the terminal to install it? Sounds like you did something wrong when installing chameleon. Directions are in the readme of chameleon.

Chameleon installers never worked for me, so i always do it with the terminal.

I followed the directions, installed rc2 with the installer and upgraded it to RC4 using terminal. I will look for other directions though, with all the crap Hackintosh info I've read off Google I don't know what to believe lol. I just did a fdisk and looks like I have a 200mb EFI partition, which I didn't realize I had. The bootloader I used had EFI built in I guess, so it's possible installing Chameleon in my SL partition is the problem. I'll read up on it before I do anything though.

 

[KeypoX]

Here is the directions from the read me. And the link to download from official source http://chameleon.osx86.hu/

Installation
============

Normal Install (non-RAID):
--------------------------

Suppose that your installation is on /dev/disk0s2

- Install boot0 to the MBR:
sudo fdisk -f boot0 -u -y /dev/rdisk0

- Install boot1h to the partition's bootsector:
sudo dd if=boot1h of=/dev/rdisk0s2

- Install boot to the partition's root directory:
sudo cp boot /

No need to use startupfiletool anymore!
------------------------

Also you need to run these commands from the i386 folder from the extracted chameleon file. There are so many installers and modified chameleons now, its getting crazy. But i still have the best luck with RC4 directly from the chameleon team.

 

[Sy[N]tH]

Are you using chameleon? Putting it into extra should do it. You changed the 4 to a 2 right? You gotta check that part of the dst and make sure its correct.

I actually got it working - the tool I was using to generate my DSDT file was either buggy or I kept using it wrong...

Anyways, I switched over to another app, re-created the DSDT.dsl, recompiled it to a .aml, copied it to /Extra and voil&#224;, working great!

Funny thing: this new tool's generated DSDT.dsl had already fixed the "Device RTC" code (ie. switch 04 to 02)... funny!

I updated to 10.6.2 flawlessly.

Now I just need to get my TP-Link wireless card working. On OSX86's HCL, it says native 32bit support, but my system just doesn't see it. I'll try swapping pci slots and see if it gets detected...

 

[KeypoX]

I actually got it working - the tool I was using to generate my DSDT file was either buggy or I kept using it wrong...

Anyways, I switched over to another app, re-created the DSDT.dsl, recompiled it to a .aml, copied it to /Extra and voilà, working great!

Funny thing: this new tool's generated DSDT.dsl had already fixed the "Device RTC" code (ie. switch 04 to 02)... funny!

I updated to 10.6.2 flawlessly.

Now I just need to get my TP-Link wireless card working. On OSX86's HCL, it says native 32bit support, but my system just doesn't see it. I'll try swapping pci slots and see if it gets detected...

what did you use?

 

[Sy[N]tH]

what did you use?

The first time, I used a (?) DSDT patcher (problably downloaded from the mess of links I have on hackintoshes).

Recently, I used the DSDT patcher included on the Empire EFI disk. That one worked.

--------------

Now, I still can't get my TP-Link ethernet card (TL-WN851N) to work, or even get recognized by OSX.

I tried the suggestions from this link, to no avail. To recap:
- Installed and tried the card in all of the PCI slots
- Installed the Atherosfix.kext and the other Generic ethernet kext (mentioned in the link above) using the latest kext utility
- switched between 32 & 64bit

I wonder if having used Empire EFI (based on Chameleon RC4) left some conflicting kexts that prevent the card from being recognized.

I'm really at a loss on this issue...

 

[suklee]

I was not able to get the onboard audio working. The audio patch I used in Leopard was not compatible. I am currently using USB speakers. If you have other speakers you would like to use, USB sound cards are pretty cheap. Everything else, including gigabit ethernet, works just fine. I used NVenabler for my graphics card.

Tyranicus, after another month of Snow Leopard using Empire EFI, how stable would you say it is?

Any other problems besides the on board audio not working? Does sleep/wake/restart work properly?

 

[suklee]

<noob alert>

I can't seem to get the Empire EFI install going.

I downloaded and burned EmpireEFI_1085.iso to a CDRW, booted off of it and used my Snow Leopard DVD to install... it installs all the way but at the end the installer says it can't bless the drive which I've read is normal and the message can be safely ignored.

How do I make the drive I installed SL to 'bootable'?

edit - I can boot using the EFI CD and select the hard disk, but it boots and then says CPU Halted and shuts down immediately...

 

[QueBert]

<noob alert>

I can't seem to get the Empire EFI install going.

I downloaded and burned EmpireEFI_1085.iso to a CDRW, booted off of it and used my Snow Leopard DVD to install... it installs all the way but at the end the installer says it can't bless the drive which I've read is normal and the message can be safely ignored.

How do I make the drive I installed SL to 'bootable'?

edit - I can boot using the EFI CD and select the hard disk, but it boots and then says CPU Halted and shuts down immediately...

boot with -x to get verbose mode to see exactly which kext is causing the kernel panic. Since the install almost finished I don't know if this would help. But, EFI install didn't work for me (tried both) so I downloaded myhack, SL installed flawlessly and has been working great ever since.