Booting like an Apple Mac #1: Apple Splash Screen

Booting like an Apple Mac #1: Apple Splash Screen

1. Change the BIOS Boot Logo/Splash screen

Some ASUS boards support it. For Gigabyte Boards install Face Wizard. You will need Windows for this. You will find it on the Gigabyte Driver CD shipped with your Motherboard under X:\Utility\Gigabyte\FaceWizard. Further hints use Face Wizard, use Google for non-Gigabyte (e.g. Asus etc.) procedures:

• Install Face Wizard[/*:m:2i88cvt7]
• Run Faze Wizard. It should look like this:
  
  
  
  [/*:m:2i88cvt7]
• Load BIOS by clicking SELECT BIOS -> ON BOARD[/*:m:2i88cvt7]
• Then click LOAD IMAGE. Unzip and select the 640x480 8Bit BMP image file attached to this below.[/*:m:2i88cvt7]
• The Image will be shown scaled down and the ticker will say if its a valid image or not[/*:m:2i88cvt7]
• If everything is fine hit AUTO to flash the BIOS. Be aware: do this only on a stable windows system with no other applications running.[/*:m:2i88cvt7]
• Then reboot and enter the BIOS[/*:m:2i88cvt7]
• BIOS: Advanced BIOS Features -> Quick Boot: Enabled[/*:m:2i88cvt7]
• BIOS: Advanced BIOS Features -> Full Screen Logo LOGO Show: Enabled[/*:m:2i88cvt7]
• BIOS: Init Display First: PCIE x16-1[/*:m:2i88cvt7]
• BIOS: Save & Exit Setup. Reboots[/*:m:2i88cvt7]
• You should now see the Apple Boot Screen when starting your PC[/*:m:2i88cvt7]
• To enter the BIOS in future just hit DEL while its booting up[/*:m:2i88cvt7]
• For reference, original Source for the image: http://img25.imageshack.us/img25/9435/macosx10211.png[/*:m:2i88cvt7]

2. Configure Chameleon to boot directly in to OS X

In Mac OS X add these into /Extra/com.Boot.plist at the end before </dict>:
You might already have Timeout 1 and Legacy Logo Yes in there so, then you may skip those.
Make sure you do not have "-v" in your Kernel Flags. For instance I have:
Just make sure it does not say arch=x86_64 -v or something similar. -v means Verbose and pushes Mac OS X into displaying all the boot information instead of the regular boot logo.

This should auto boot your first Mac OS X partition directly without showing the Chameleon boot screen where you might select for instance Windows.
If you still want to boot different OS/partitions start hitting F8 while it is saying Verifying DMI Pool Data.

For reference my complete com.apple.Boot.plist looks like this:

Result of this is the BIOS instantly going for your PCI Express 1 graphics card displaying the Apple Splash Screen, shortly displaying AHCI detection and Verifying DMI Pool Data. After that it will again show the Apple Splash Screen an the spinning loading wheel will be visible soon after finally you enter Mac OS X.

If you liked this you might also like Booting like an Apple Mac #2: Apple Startup Sound: http://www.tonymacx86.com/viewtopic.php?f=76&t=18043 .

Thanks for posting this!

Also, will following this tutorial disrupt updating the bios in the future?

Between leaving the POST screen, and getting to Chameleon, there's a delay while discovering SATA drives and "Verifying DMI Pool Data". I've disabled the GSATA and ESATA ports, pressed "clr cmos" and reduced a couple of seconds, but is there a way to speed up this boot on a Gigabyte board with Award bios?

There's a newer firmware (FF) for my bios right now. I'm not going to update to it unless it might speed my POST.

Hi,

I have the same delay. I cannot tell you if it will speed up things. I have also GSATA and ESATA disabled. Still I have 3 SATA ports and esp one of my hard drives is slow so the detection of that (old) hard drive takes longer. Nothing that can be done against it.

I do not know if this will survive a BIOS update, my guess is NO. When adding a new BIOS it will just overwrite the old BIOS. E.g. no problem with updating (my guess) but you will have to reapply this patch after BIOS patching.

did this last night to my asus board using the asus updater util.
only thing i did differently was alter the bmp image so that it is completely grey, no apple logo. looks more like a real mac imo.

thanks for the tip and the bmp damndoe

Just share that image as well please

thx !

Quick question, does anyone happen to know how the boot splash looks on a monitor displaying at 1920x1080? Does any stretching occur?

Thanks for the great tutorial BTW!
-John

It is stretched for me at 1920x1080. But the original boot logo was also stretched, so it has nothing to do with the image. It's a matter of your BIOS and your monitor getting into the right mode. For example, your BIOS screens are in a text mode, and the boot logo is in a 640x480 graphics mode. On today's widescreen monitors both will usually be stretched.

I was able to Unstretch the Chameleon Boot Screen, but only for nvida cards.