Asus A54C Mostly Successful

[montdidier]

Asus A54C Success

I just thought I would post that I've been mostly successful with my Asus A54C Notebook. My machine specs are

Intel Pentium B950
Intel HD Graphics 2000
2 GB RAM
Seagate 500 GB HDD
AR9285 Wifi (replaced RT based mini pcie wifi that came with machine)
Aetheros Ethernet

Currently on Lion 10.7.5

Installed with Unibeast Laptop Support Option(Lion Version). No flags necessary.

After first install, needed to boot in safe mode to get past HD3000 drivers trying to load (they almost work with HD2000 but get ring bus timeout errors after initial desktop displays)

Finished inststall and region select. Ran Multibeast, easybeast option. Reboot.

A problem with AppleRTC turned out to be LegacyAppleRTC kext that easybeast installed. Removed and replaced with ElliotForceLegacyRTC.

Boots successfully. Updated initially to 10.7.2 but upon reboot fails to find HDD. Revert IOPCIFamily and AppleIOPCIFamily which fixes the problem.

Update to 10.7.5 went smoothly.

No QE/CI because HD2000 is not 100% compatible with HD3000 drivers. Removing AppleIntelHD3000* kexts allows loading of nice framebuffer though and full resolution.

Will be trying big brother of this notebook with i3 processor and suspect will get the whole thing working. Will post results.

 

[montdidier]

Ok. So I'm now partly through setting up the bigger brother of my earlier A54C. Also an A54C but with a i3-2330M processor.

It's actually been trickier that B950 version, largely, I've decided, it seems because the 2nd generation i3 isn't properly detected by anything earlier than 10.7.5? Can anybody confirm this hunch?

My 10.7 installer was horribly unstable on the i3 version of the A54C, I never managed to get it to complete. I noticed on the system profiler that 1st and 2nd level caches were completely the wrong size - which is what leads to me to suspect.

How I did get it working in the end was to pull the drive out of my i3 A54C and install OSX on my B950 A54C, apply the 10.7.5 update and voila it boots up first try when it goes back into my i3 version. Cache sizes are correctly detected.

Ok so thus far, now that I've finally got it running, my A54C with i3-2330M seems pretty damn good as a hackintosh. The QE/CI is working no problem. The AR9285 is running absolutely fine with just a simple tweak to the device ids in the Atheros driver kext.

Using BIOS 208 K54C. There really wasn't anything to configure. It doesn't have many options.

Currently looking into sound and then I'll try to get the USB3 working too. I'll probably upgrade to 10.8 too when I get around to buying it.


Intel i3-2330M
Intel HD Graphics 3000
4 GB RAM
Hitachi 500 GB HDD
AR9285 Wifi
Aetheros Ethernet
ALC269 (not working yet)
Touchpad and Keyboard working no problem

OSX Lion 10.7.5

 

[montdidier]

Upgrade to Mountain Lion 10.8.2 went smoothly. Did a simple Unibeast install (without formatting disk) for upgrade. No flags necessary. Suspect straight ML install would also be very straightforward.

Aetheros Wifi fixed with DSDT edit.

Still working on ALC269 but see it's been done before. Will try toledo's script for AppleHDA shortly.

 

[keeptruthfree]

what did you do about graphics?

I keep hearing about Intel 2000 HD graphics working
but nobody has clear information on what to do

 

[montdidier]

Completely re-installed this system (Asus A54C) with Yosemite from scratch. Just about everything works. ALC269VB was activated using HDAEnabled (layout 3) and AppleHDA-272.18-ALC269VB_v3.zip from this thread

http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/298663-applehda-for-yosemite/

Wifi works with a simple kext edit to add the device ID.

All very nice.

 

[RehabMan]

Completely re-installed this system (Asus A54C) with Yosemite from scratch. Just about everything works. ALC269VB was activated using HDAEnabled (layout 3) and AppleHDA-272.18-ALC269VB_v3.zip from this thread

http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/298663-applehda-for-yosemite/

Wifi works with a simple kext edit to add the device ID.

All very nice.

Kext edit for WiFi not recommended. You'll lose WiFi with any system update that updates the kext.

Better to use an injector kext (codeless kext).

 

[montdidier]

what did you do about graphics?

I keep hearing about Intel 2000 HD graphics working
but nobody has clear information on what to do

I never got the HD2000 working beyond simple 2D. It is just too different from the HD3000 for the drivers to support it with QE/QI. It will work as a simple frame buffer (i.e. basic 2D) but that is it.

 

[montdidier]

Kext edit for WiFi not recommended. You'll lose WiFi with any system update that updates the kext.

Better to use an injector kext (codeless kext).

Hi there Sir. I am afraid I am not up to date with the latest best practice. What kext am I looking for WifiEnabler?

Also I initially had a problem getting the HD3000 working from the kextcache. i.e. I always had to do UseKernelCache=No. However it now works, after rebuilding cache with kext-dev-mode=1. Does this disable the crypto signatures on the kexts? I'm not clear on what this flag does.

 

[RehabMan]

Hi there Sir. I am afraid I am not up to date with the latest best practice. What kext am I looking for WifiEnabler?

Depends on the WiFi chip you have...

Also I initially had a problem getting the HD3000 working from the kextcache. i.e. I always had to do UseKernelCache=No. However it now works, after rebuilding cache with kext-dev-mode=1. Does this disable the crypto signatures on the kexts? I'm not clear on what this flag does.

Are you using patched HD3000 kexts? If so, kext-dev-mode=1 is required.

 

[montdidier]

Depends on the WiFi chip you have...



Are you using patched HD3000 kexts? If so, kext-dev-mode=1 is required.

I have an AR9285

I never patched the HD3000 kexts, the enabler in chameleon/chimera seems to enable my HD3000 enough to work. Actually I don't know for sure it was the HD3000 causing problems - it was the common hang with Missing Bluetooth Controller Transport which is commonly attributed to a graphics driver failure. However is that the case - I do not know? Any light to be shed? In any case my system seems to be running well now.

Also I just wanted to thank you for the tireless good work you do here.