Asus P8C WS build, the whole adventure

[Thinkcat]

Hi

My intention is to document here my progress with my first hackintosh build, an Asus P8C WS with an Ivy Bridge Xeon and ECC RAM.

First things first.

1. You can flash a modified BIOS into this motherboard using FTK. Just follow the tutorial, use the supplied batch files, do not try to do things step by step yourself, like I did and just ended up doing nothing. Also, do not Google for patched BIOS and hit upon some Windows piracy thing and be pleasantly surprised when suddenly Asus' tools accept it. It will do you no good. The patch you need for this makes it unacceptable to Asus utilities.

2. Remember that Xeon integrated graphics are not supported in Mac OS. This could save you some 40 dollars or euros. Go for E3-1230 or E3-1240 instead of E3-1245, E3-1220 instead of E3-1225. The HD Graphics P4000 is not the same as plain HD Graphics 4000.

3. Once you have the system installed, do a "UserDSDT or DSDT-Free Installation". For now I have not gone into matters DSDT.
- Pick "Intel - hnak's AppleIntelE1000e" from Drivers/Network to get Ethernet connectivity.
- Pick "ALC892" from Drivers/Audio/Realtek ALC8xx/Without DSDT to get sound. At least you will have working SPDIF out and front panel headphone connector. Haven't tested anything else yet.
- FakeSMC.kext is included in the UserDSDT installation. I picked "Plugins" and "HWMonitor Application" from Drivers/Miscellaneous and now I have a nice speedstep indicator in my menubar.

4. If the machine refuses to shut down, and keeps rebooting instead, go to BIOS advanced mode, tab called Advanced. Choose APM and see that "Power On By PCIE" is disabled (thanks to Bomma72).

5. Edit /Extra/org.chameleon.Boot.plist to disable GraphicsEnabler if you have a Geforce 6xx card.

6. I upgraded from 10.8.3 to 10.8.4 using the all-in-one download from Apple. After that, just reinstall everything you already did from MultiBeast, using the newest available version (5.4.0). By chance Ethernet did not stop working, but I saw fit to upgrade HWMonitor, Sound, Ethernet and do a "DSDT-Free Installation" just to be sure.

7. Removing GenerateCStates and GeneratePStates from org.chameleon.Boot.plist changed nothing. I have 16 17 18 19 20 33 34 36 with them and without them. I assume I need to muck around with DSDTs to get something else.

8. The machine will not sleep. It will go to sleep for a literal second and then wake up immediately, display and all, with no unintended side effects.

 

[Thinkcat]

Next. Installing another self-supporting system. Problem is, I do not know what works where.

I have two hard disks, a smaller one and a bigger one. The smaller is set as the boot disk in BIOS. Chimera is installed onto the smaller disk, as is the main ML system. The bigger disk holds a big data partition. In the beginning it has two smaller partitions. Onto the first one of these I will install the 2nd ML system.

Since the BIOS boots from the smaller disk, I assume that the /Extra/org.chameleon.Boot.plist on that disk will be effective, even if I select from Chimera to boot into the 2nd system on the bigger disk. But all kext stuff needs to be separately installed onto the 2nd system. Well. Sounds reasonable.

My idea is to test different system definitions on the 2nd system. I assume that the change is totally reversible. But this may not be the last thing I will test to get sleep working, and it is better to have a separate system for that and only apply proven changes to the main system.

 

[Thinkcat]

Installed the 2nd system and booted into it. I installed all FakeSMC-related items and the Realtek audio driver, but nothing else.

Now. Ethernet works even if I haven't done anything to it in MultiBeast. Sound works because I did install drivers for it.

But I did nothing else. Now, when the machine sleeps, it does wake up immedately, but display stays asleep. Rummaging through my LED-lit keyboard I see I can cause repeated "wakeups" now and then (the lights quickly flash on and then go off again).

Question is...
- Is there a default system definition that exists always and no matter what? My machine is called Thinkcat's Mac Pro, but I haven't knowingly installed any system definition files.
- Will the display start coming back when waking from sleep if I 1) install a system definition, 2) install the RTC patch, 3) install a hibernate mode from Customization/Boot Options or something else?

Results are...
- After adding only the hibernate mode into the current mix, the keyboard lights stay on but the display stays dark. Pressing the power button does nothing.
- A silly effect is that my optical mouse stays unlit except when I click a mouse button. That makes the tracking light flash once.
- System Information showed me that I have MacPro3,1 so I decided that next up was the RTC patch. I don't get what is the "CMOS reset" people talk about. Does it mean I lose date and time or does it mean it resets my BIOS to optimized defaults? Or does it mean that I see no other effects than that sleep just simply won't work?
- No. The RTC patch did not make display come back. Only thing left to go is the system definition.
- A note. I installed the patched gigabit Ethernet driver just in case that would have something to do with the problem. No, it did not. The problem remains.
- Funny. If I click a mouse button before I press any key, the mouse will turn on but the keyboard will then stay dark even if I press some keys.
- Rewriting the MacPro3,1 system definition using MultiBeast changed nothing.

An important question. Is the org.chameleon.Boot.plist inside /Extra 1) the o.c.B.plist that is used every time this one system is booted into, or 2) the oc.B.plist that is used every time that any system is booted using the Chimera that resides on the boot sector of this disk?

Or is there a combination of the two? If there is no o.c.B.plist on the drive being booted, then the o.c.B.plist on the HD hosting the current Chimera instance is used? But if the system being booted has its own o.c.B.plist, then that one is used.

I finally did "DSDT-free Installation" on the 2nd system. And it did not boot into login screen anymore, but stood stuck in the grey apple and spinner screen instead. I fixed the fresh o.c.B.plist but that did not help. Must get back to this later.