This is up to date and to my knowledge the (only) most complete entry for a ASRock Z97E-ITX/ac main board. So I am adding my experience with this board here too.
The board fits fairly much my requirements and WonkeyDonkeys's Steambox report for a ASRock Z87E-ITX mainboard made me hopeful. So I felt like giving this a go.
My configuration:
ASRock Z97E-ITX/ac mainboard, BIOS Version 1.30.
16GB (2*8GB) Mushkin DDR3-2133 CL9 RAM .
i5-4670K CPU (runnig on standard clocks, except for a a changed divider to match the RAM-speed), Noctua NH-U12S Cooler.
MSI N760-TF-2GD5/OC GTX 760 - 2 GB GDDR5 graphics card.
Mushkin Chronos Deluxe 480GB SSD as system drive plus two SATA HD which I use for bulky user files (photos, movies, music) and backup.
All in a BitFenix Prodigy Mini-ITX case.
That is I have NOT used the M2 slot on the board and can't give any comments on it's hackintosh usability.
Software Installation:
As this is a EFI based mainboard, I decided touse Clover as a boot loader (and configuring a EFI based boot). There is a lovely guide here in this forum (
http://www.tonymacx86.com/mavericks...-how-install-os-x-mavericks-using-clover.html) which you simply have to follow to get OSX Mavericks booting. My boot image is using 10.9.3, the installed system I have upgraded to 10.9.4 since.
Well one caveat: I too got stuck with a frozen boot as described in the beginning of this forum thread. I can confirm that this is due to a older AppleIntelE1000e kext. Simply replace that with an up to date version, I picked mine from (
https://code.google.com/p/intel-e1000e-kext/). For the installation however I chose to temporarily disable the network interface in the EFI-settings (BIOS) of the mainboard.
This is all I had to tweak for the installation to give me a bootable system. All those who have had little exposure to EFI-booting, please note that you will have to save "Clover" as a EFI boot option, before the mainboard will automatically detect your installation. This can be done easily from one of the Clover boot-menu options. Simply don't forget to do so ;-). Also be aware that the ASRock Z97E-ITX will reset to defaults after three bad booting attempts, in which case your will have to re-register your Clover installation in the mainboards EFI settings again. So it is a good idea to keep your USB-boot stick handy for later.
What's working, what's not working:
- I gave using the CPU's internal HD4600 graphics one(!) try and failed. I am not saying this is not working, but this seems to need some more investigation. Maybe I'll try later again.
- As could be expected the NVidia GTX 760 card is working fully without any further activity.
- Wired ethernet is working without any issue, once you are using an up to date E1000e kernel extension.
- WLAN: My board has been shipped with a BCM94352HMB card (combined WLAN & Bluetooth) in the Mini-PCI slot. I assume this will stay for a while, but ASRock is not making any explicit reference to the card being used, so maybe have a look in case nothing is working.
This will not be automatically recognised! You only need to enter the correct PCIid (14e4:43b1) in the respective kernel extension. That is in
/System/Library/Extensions/IO80211Family.kext/Contents/PlugIns/AirPortBrcm4360.kext/Contents/Info.plist
change in the "array" section to <string>pci14e4,43b1</string>.
If you are new to mods like this, please remember to refresh your kernel caches afterwards or nothing will happen (usually a "touch /System/Library/Extensions" will do, you could also run "sudo kextcache -system-prelinked-kernel" and "sudo kextcache -system-caches"). You also will have to reboot.
This will give you 802.11 a/b/g WLAN (i.e. 2.4 GHz bands) but strangely not 802.11 n/ac (i.e. 5GHz bands). If you need the latter have a look at (
http://www.tonymacx86.com/network/104850-guide-airport-pcie-half-mini-v2-25.html) post 249, and you will eventuall have fixed WLAN fully!
- Bluetooth: Bluetooth is a bit weird and not fully understood for me still. You can get Bluetooth activated (i.e. the OSX Bluetooth panels come to life) if you patch the correct vendor id and device id into the corresponding kernel extension: This time open
/System/Library/Extensions/IOBluetoothFamily.kext/Contents/PlugIns/BroadcomBluetoothHostControllerUSBTransport.kext/Contents/Info.plist
duplicate i.e. the first block in the IOKitPersonalities section, give it another "key" and most importantly change the key for idProduct to <integer>13316</integer> and the key for idVendor to <integer>5075</integer>. The vlaues are just the decimal values for the hexadecimal USB IDs 0x3404 and 0x13d3 which you can find through "About This Mac -> More Info -> System Report -> Hardware -> USB".
However I have not yet been able to associate a bluetooth device! My mouse and trackpad are being found but association then fails. The BCM20702A0 on the mainboards module may need a different/patched kernel extension. Elsewhere it has been suggested to disable USB3.0 (and use USB2.0) for the association. That did not work for me though.
I am using a USB-bluetooth dongle for now.
UPDATE: The problem has been fixed! New firmware is required to make this work. See (
http://forum.osxlatitude.com/index.php?/topic/2925-bluetooth-firmware-uploader/?hl=bcm94352) for details.
- Sound: Sound I so far haven't been able to get going directly. VoodooHDA (
http://sourceforge.net/projects/voodoohda/) is however doing it's charm flawlessly, so currently my motivation to work on this is low.
A word on DSDT:
It seems to me I don't need one. But I still have to check on sleep modes. I think I have disabled any helpful Clover option that simply work in the background.
I nevertheless for testing generated a DSDT.aml using Clover, i.e.: pressing F4 while the Clover menu is visible will save a DSDT.aml to /EFI/CLOVER/ACPI/origin. You could/should edit that using for instance MaciASL. You need to remove some extra "Zero" which will pop up as errors. The (re-)compiled DSDT needs to go into /EFI/CLOVER/ACPI/patched afterwards. You possibly can also copy the original DSDT.aml in there? I have NOT noticed any side-effects of all this yet. So maybe you shouldn't bother with a DSDT at all ;-)
