[Success] Asus P5E Professional (version 2)

The Asus P5E WS Professional is an older board with an X38 chipset, but it is still going strong, so I wanted to upgrade the OS.

I had a GeForce GTX 550 Ti and a 2.84 GHz Quad Core CPU, but the graphics card was subject to the issues described here. I dumped it and purchased a GT 640.

The fist step was to buy Mountain Lion via my 15" MacBook Pro (retina display no less - the best computer I have ever used).

The second step was to put a workhorse drive in my system (I have two hot swap bays so, I used one of them, regardless of what you use, do not do the install onto your working drive).

Once you own ML, use Unibeast to make a bootable install USB flash drive and follow the instructions (from your current 10.7 install or some other mac you have access to). To boot, I had to interrupt the boot process and instruct the system to boot with PCIRootUID=1.

After the system was installed, I was able to boot into it using the Unibeast flash drive then selecting the new install (still with PCIRootUID=1). I had downloaded everything else needed onto another flash drive and did the install as noted:

On first boot I used Carbon Copy cloner to clone the new system to another work drive so I could try different combinations of kexts without having to repair or reinstall if things went wrong.

The first task was to make a new DSDT. I downloaded the DSDT editor. I extracted a clean copy of my DSDT and applied the P5E patch, as well as the RTC patch, the DTGP patch and the ICH9 USB Sleep patch. I compiled it per instructions, fixing errors with the fix errors tool. The resulting DSDT is attached. I exported it as DSDT.aml to the desktop.

EDIT: I am on Bios 0803...if you are on the same Bios, then you can use this DSDT, but if you are on another version, then you need to compile one using the steps above. It really only takes three minutes and is a simple task. I suggest you read this.

After making a backup of the install, I used the new Multibeast and selected only User DSDT.

This installed the boot loader and the drive/partition could boot on its own, with the PCIRootUID argument.

Next I installed Kext Wizard, which I have found is a great tool.

Using Kext Wizard, I installed kexts for the Marvel Ukon Ethernet ports and ran Multibeast again, selecting only user DSDT audio for the legacy ALC888 codec.

Rebooted...Ethernet and Sound worked.

I then edited the boot loader file to include the PCIRoot flag for the boot loader. Note that this is a flag for the boot loader, not a kernel flag, so place it as a stand alone entry. A copy of the file is attached.

I then used migration assistant to move my applications and user accounts from my existing 10.7.2 drive to the new 10.8 drive. I was careful not to select system files, only users and applications.

The system works as expected (better than my 10.7.2 setup), has full access to iCloud and the App Store and sleeps for the first time since I turned it into a hack. I hope to get another year out of this rig!

Once finished, I used carbon copy cloaner to dump the system back to the main boot SSD, used Multibeast again and but a boot loader on the SSD and booted off of it.

Edit 20120929: I was not able to access the apple store as it did not see my ethernet interface as build in, to change this I used efistudio to extract the hex id of my ethernet card and edited /Extra/org.chameleon.Boot.plist as follows:

<key>EthernetBuiltIn</key>
<string>Yes</string>
<key>device-properties</key>
<string>4b00000001000000010000003f0000000100000002010c00d041030a0000000001010600021c0101060000007fff0400160000006200750069006c0074002d0069006e0000000500000001</string>

This is not included in the attached file as your hex string will be different. Instructions are on post 8 of this thread.

hi there,

I've just tried your guide on my P5E WS Pro + Q6600 OCed configuration and it didn't work. I get stuck on IOAPIC: Version 0x20 Vectors 64:87. I have 4Gigs of 1066 OCZ ReaperX RAM and Nvidia 8800GT.

Did you get similar error before?

Thanks

I did not get the same error. Perhaps the BIOS version is different? I am not at my home system and do not recall the version I am on, but will check tonight.

At what point do you get the error?

I got the error when I ran MultiBeast for the first time using your DSDT.aml file. It didn't want to boot anymore...

I did, however, follow your first tutorial and eventually managed to have the working system, w/ problematic sound(crackling). I don't know why's that. I used MultiBeast 5.0.2 and installed ALC888 legacy driver for Audio. With the newer version it won't work at all.

Do you have any pointers for me?

Thanks.

how did you generate your dsdt.aml configuration? Did you use any patches and if so which ones?

nevermind, i see you posted that

And here it is. Everything works as it should! Sleep, Sound, Network, App store.

I followed the guide to create my own dsdt and ran multibeast with it. After that I did what you did (installed sound and network) and it's now up and running! Great!

One note though. I have TPLink 802.11n adapter which originally was recognized by Mountain Lion and I was able to use it until i installed networking kext. Since then 802.11Family kext won't load as it's missing some dependencies from IONetworkingFamily kext, I'll try to figure out what the problem is and hopefully fix it. Until then, for all people that own this mobo, the above method is the way to go!

Thanks again.

I am on Bios 0803. By compiling your own DSDT with the tool mentioned you probably solved the issue that was preventing it from working the first time. What Bios are you on? If you post your Bios version and your DSDT, others my have use for it.

I believe your networking issue is the IOFamily kext is tailored to the yukon chip and leaves out the others. They could be combined with some effort.

I am glad you have a base system up and running. Mine is working better than ever with the tweaks. The only thing I have changed since the write up is to go with GE=No since I am using a GT 640 and a DSDT.

I applied the 10.8.2 update and the only issue I had was the need to re-install the ALC driver via multibeast just as originally described.

Really nice guide, I'm also on bios 0803, but it didn't work with your file, so I used the editor myself and now it works perfect. The Only problem for me is that I can't seem the dvd drive to work.
But all the rest is working, in the past I could only manage to make the sound work by using a usb plugin.

Apparently there are enough differences with addin cards that you should build the file directly rather than using the one linked to. As for your DVD drive, have you tried a different port and/or another drive? I suspect it is the controller in the drive.