Asus P7H55-M Success

[corona]

Hi All,
Firstly I'd like to give my thanks for iBoot, it's been so easy. Last time I was installing hackintosh's was on AMD and leo was new, so much has changed - for the better!

Righto, I built myself a budget box:
Asus P7H55-M
Intel G6950
2GB Adata ddr3 ram (they were out of stock of anything better)
2nd hand nvidia 9400 gt (512mb)
WD 1.5T EARS drive (formatted just fine on osx, watch out in linux/ old windows)
Pioneer DVD burner (sata)

Don't try to use the pata to install from, it's a separate via chip that's not easily supported for native install. It also has its own screen at boot time, so I've disabled it in bios to speed up boots.

iBoot Supported 2.0 and a legit snow leopard (10.6.0) dvd.

Install procedure went smoothly, I used guid partitioning and made plenty of extra partitions to play with, not that that's any concern here.

Multibeast used to install cham aserebln and fakesmc. The realtek ethernet driver here doesn't work. I had issues with kernels (vanilla gives black screen and no boot) and ended up copying the kernel and smbios.plist directly from the iBoot preload image, although I'm guessing it's actually the 10.3.0 patched kernel and the imac11.1 smbios.plist in multibeast now that i'm looking back.

Nvidia graphics just worked, I didn't touch anything, dvi to acer flatscreen came up all resolutions straight away. Haven't tried onboard video yet, doubt it'll work though.

Ethernet: http://www.realtek.com.tw/downloads...d=5&Level=5&Conn=4&DownTypeID=3&GetDown=false
32 bit only, no 64 bit boot for me, care factor = 0.

Audio: VoodooHDA, currently using 0.2.1, still not sure if I'll be able to get applehda working instead, I think not. Appears to be no hda or azalia in dsdt.

Updated to SL 10.6.4 yesterday, no hickups. had to reinstall realtek driver for ethernet, but now I'm not sure about the kernel. I thought I reinstalled the older one, but uname -n is telling me I'm on 10.4.0

Darwin Kernel Version 10.4.0: Fri Apr 23 18:28:53 PDT 2010; root:xnu-1504.7.4~1/RELEASE_I386 i386

So maybe I am running on vanilla kernel, awesome!

Significant dsdt changes, initially based on the changes from FatShenanigans P7H55D-M-EVO.aml ported to this mobo (different addresses of some devices) LPC fixed and some other stuff which I don't remember fully and now I have AppleIntelPowerManagement not crashing - nullntelPowerManagement is NOT used (still unsure if I've got speedstep though) and more importantly sleep works!!!
I'm pretty sure
http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=211705&mode=threaded&pid=1439271
helped a lot with sleep working, amongst other things. It has sorta suddenly worked after a long time of not working, so I'm not sure exactly what was the final straw to fix it.

Total contents of /E/E
fakesmc
LegacyP7H55 (custom imac identifier, some sleep stuff)
OrangeIconFix
VoodooHDA

The realtek ethernet installer replaces AppleRTL8169Ethernet.kext as far as I can tell, other than that I think my /S/L/E is native.

Anyway, if I think of anything I've forgotten I'll add it, but in the mean time I hope this helps others with a really cheap mac of decent desktop performance!

Andrew



edit: Oh yeah, in sleep the darn power light blinks annoyingly, if anyone has ideas of how to get rid of it i'd be very interested, maybe more dsdt playing? Otherwise I might have to unplug the led.

 

[corona]

Hi,
The box has been working quite well for me. My previous machine was a macbook pro early 08, it getting stolen was the prompt for me to build this. On a day to day usage, this box doesn't really feel any slower at all than the above macbook, which is a quite an achievement for the price difference.

In terms of htpc use, I've got a separate myth box for my tv room. But I do have frontend software on this box and it has no problem streaming live high def content from the backend so it seems to handle this workload just fine.

In hindsight I probably would have preferred a better cpu, it does chug a bit if I'm trying to play games with a ubuntu virtual machine running in the background, but I'd say for a htpc it'd be awesome. It is very quiet, I've got a good brand power supply that's pretty much silent, the graphics card was 2nd hand as mentioned and is the loudest hing in there but I can barely hear it in a otherwise dead quiet room, so it's pretty good.

Andrew

 

[elemental]

Hi Corona and ANYONE else who reads this post,

I'm a new Hackintosh user and recently got ALMOST everything working.

I'm running the following:
ASUS p7h55d-m EVO
Intel core i5
4GB G-skill ram DDR3 1600
XFX ATI 5770
Crucial SSD 64GB
Coolermaster PS 700W


all in a small Thermaltake Lanbox overclocked to 3.6Ghz.

as well as Windows 7 Pro on a secondary HD for gaming =P Although, I have been playing Starcraft 2 in OS X and it runs BEAUTIFULLY. Max settings, all ultra, on a 24" monitor 1920x1200 and barely, barely any noticeable slowdowns. Makes me wonder if I'll ever even boot into windows ever again. Haha!

With all that said and done I'm actually having a few problems. I'm trying to get or find a DSDT. This is probably the next step in my learning as I've been reading about editing DSDT, a somewhat daunting task =P I noticed though you edited a fatshenanigans aml for my motherboard. I've scoured all over the internet and have been unable to find it. Could I get it from you by chance?

Also if anyone else is reading this can you let me know how to get my eSATA working. I was thinking maybe the eSATA ports are not setup in AHCI in the BIOS but I was unable to find anything to change in the BIOS settings. =\ Any help with both the DSDT or eSATA would be VERY MUCH appreciated.

Thank you so much to tony and this forum and everyone who's ever posted. I was able to do everything because of the iBoot supported disc as well as Multibeast and the ATI 5XXX from kexts.com! If you have any questions with my setup feel free to ask.

 

[corona]

Hi,
Here's the post with the original file, should work great.

viewtopic.php?p=7698#p7698

The eSATA I've got no idea about, my bios does have a line for enabling/disabling the chip the esata port is on, but I don't have any esata devices/cables so have no idea whether mine's working or not.

Andrew

 

[elemental]

HAH! AWESOME! Thanks for responding so quickly. Now I'm scared to even install this DSDT..lol Did you install yours with multibeast? This dsdt won't be old correct? I noticed the forum post had [old] within it. I'm so happy that I got everything to work, so I'm VERY scared to break something, which would force me to start all over. I'm also secretly hoping this DSDT will fix my eSATA which is honestly the last thing I think I need to do. AHHH what to do!?

 

[corona]

You don't need to use multibeast to install it, if you're already booting with chameleon fine, and you've got an Extra folder in your root directory just stick the dsdt.aml file in the Extra folder and it'll load at the next boot. Worst case scenario is it wont boot right, in which case you stick in the iBoot cd and use it to boot your computer and take dsdt out again and so on with debugging. Otherwise try to find a decent dsdt tutorial, I can't really help you much with that at this stage, I don't seem to have bookmarked anything when I did it... whoops. All I remember is there was a bit of a learning curve with it all. You should have a decent dsdt to work with though, so should be ok.

One way to check whether the dsdt is loaded and working would be to try removing nulllntelPowerManagement with dsdt installed and reboot, if it boots up fine (with AppleIntelPowerManagement still in main Extensions folder) then the dsdt must be working, and your sleep should be working. That is of course, if sleep has been fixed in FatShenanigans file...I'm not certain whether it is or not, probably is though.

Andrew

Andrew

 

[elemental]

okay I installed it...sleep doesn't work. Everything still boots and works the same as before. So I feel like that got me no where. Not even sure if it's in place or not...haha


I couldn't find that file nullintelpowermanagement. In my Extra/extensions folder I do have a nullcpupowermanagement. I'm thinking its the same thing, but in fear once again haven't deleted it. I also don't have that appleintelpowermanagement (maybe the reason I'm not sleeping correctly). haha Well it's sitting there and btw eSATA still doesn't work so still kinda sad about that, but I put a post on the board in hopes someone reads it and fixes it! Fingers crossed and ready to restart =P

 

[Ownaginatious]

Hello everyone,

I have this same motherboard (Asus P7H55-M Pro) with an i3 processor (Intel Core i3 530 Dual Core Processor), and I've been having trouble. I decided to post here since this is one of the very few threads I've found in regards to this specific motherboard.

Right after updating to 10.6.4 and restarting, I see Chameleon show up for about 0.1 seconds, and then the computer restarts. This is a never ending cycle unless I restart manually.

If I try to use the iBoot+Supported disk to restart, I get stuck hanging at the Apple logo to the rest of time.

Has anyone else encountered this?

In multibeast I'm only installing the EasyBeast thing and doing the update/verify permissions.

Isn't that enough for it to start?

Thanks!

 

[corona]

Ok, so I was trying to get some new ram to work, turns out the mobo really doesn't like unmatched pairs - it boots just fine but wont sleep. In the process though I found MSR Tools, and it told me my cpu was only running at 1.2GHZ!!! It's supposed to be 2.8GHz
With a lot of stuffing around I found bios settings were to blame, on the advanced / CPU settings page I had C-states disabled for some reason, not sure if this is the default or not, but here's my page now:
http://flic.kr/p/8GrQXS

Secondly, I found that my cpu speed wasn't being detected properly by chameleon/os-x, neither was the fsb. This was giving a fsb of only 100 so explains why the computer was feeling a tad slow.
I replaced my bootloader with the newer chameleon mod called AnVAL http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index. ... pic=216726
which runs great! Now it boots up at the same speed as set in bios.

While doing this I found the overclocking settings work great too. My new ram is 1333 but this cpu wanted a default fsb of 133 which would only give 1066 on the ram. You use the overclocking in bios to put the fsb up to 167 and then you get full speed ram, and faster cpu to boot! now my cpu boots at 3.5GHz and seems to run just fine.

And lastly in the process I stumbled upon an extended version of FakeSMC:
http://www.projectosx.com/forum/index.p ... topic=1206
While the post is a little confusing, just grab the most current copy at the bottom of the first post (atow its FakeSMC_rev405_Snow.zip) and the newer plugin under it ( FakeSMCIntelMonitor.kext_Snow_b2.zip). put the plugin kext in the plugins folder of the fakesmc kext and delete the cpui and intelthermal plugins from the fakesmc kext. Then replace your old fakesmc in /extra/Extensions and rebuild chameleon kext cache.
This gives many more temperatures and also fan speeds (use iStat to see them). I now get temps from HD, both cores, cpu heatsink, gpu and northbridge. Also 2 mb fans and gpu (but gpu one is wrong).

Hope this update helps!
Andrew

edit: I don't think speedstep is working still, the cpu never seems to ramp down in msr tools, but I'd personally prefer it stuck on full speed than minimum! probably something really wrong in my dsdt

 

[corona]

Another update, it turns out my previous bootloader update didn't actually fix the speed properly, it'd boot at full speed no worries, but as soon as load dropped the speed dropped and stayed there. nothing would raise it again.
After ages of stuffing around with the dsdt I found there was a bios update, a number of them in fact - one of which includes cpu updates.
Updated bios, ported my dsdt fixes across to new dsdt (it did change somewhat) and all of a sudden it all works great.
About my mac now shows cpu speed correctly, and msrtools shows it switching up and down, but mostly sitting near max speed, which works well for me.
And most importantly sleep still works fine. (C3 only).

Current bios 1101

Andrew