GA-Z68XP-UD3P owners

[rocco_77]

yes high sierra

the UEFI bios upgrade is from gigabyte, it's not a sketchy binary at all.

The whole legacy thing, at least for me is a non issue, and has been for a long time.

I'd update the bios, and get with the times, especially, since this motherboard is capable. I'd dabble into the legacy stuff if I had no choice.

If you're really after reviving the system, you could do the opencore method I shared. it's potentially worth it. (with no nvidia, you could even think of going to catalina)

Thanks again for your reply.

I'm not opposed to flashing the bios to UEFI. That would entail starting over. However, like I said before there are lots of threads where the boot drives don't show after apfs formatting... the majority with UEFI. So I'm just not convinced yet to update the bios, then redo reinstall Clover to end up with the same issue.

You seem pretty familiar with bootloaders... I don't think the issue has to do with legacy or UEFI. I think there is something to do with Clover just not finding my drive for some reason. When I hit f12 during post to select a boot drI've my SSD is an option there so bios sees it as a boot disk. Clover comes up from the SSD, it just simply won't show my drive in Clover. There is a missing link somewhere, and my thought is that it's simple. I just don't know he answer and can't seem to get any help. Still no replies on the other thread I post d about it.

I have a question if you don't mind. I'm trying to learn what the "boot" file is that's on the root directory of the EFI partition. There's the EFi folder that contains Clover no this boot file. I'm curious as to what it's purpose is.

 

[discreetlogic]

not sure flashing the bios means starting over, and I'm not comfortable giving advice on the "legacy procedures".

I'm an early adopter, and switched the bios to UEFI pretty early to hopefully get closer to the native way.

this is why I love opencore. once set up, it's just a folder to drop onto a drive, period.

That being said, did you run the clover installer on your drive ?

 

[rocco_77]

I'm not comfortable giving advice on the "legacy procedures".

Ok fair enough.

That being said, did you run the clover installer on your drive ?

I used MultiBeast to install Legacy boot mode Clover and some specific drivers and kexts. Also the SSDT i7 optional aml.

I just don't understand the difference between booting from the USB installer and booting directly from the SSD. The USB sees my SSD in its Clover menu and I can boot the OS. Select the SSD.. I get to Clover, no drive showing. Doesn't even show my USB in Clover menu.

This leads me to think it has something to do with the apsf format, or there is no boot entry detected for my SSD. Or something to do with NVRAM... both concepts here are beyond my knowledge currently.

If I boot from USB to the SSD , and look in system info under storage, my drive is there obviously, but it's list d as bootable - no.

??

 

[discreetlogic]

hmmm.... what partition map is the hard drive os volume formatted as ?

normally it 's guid partition map. it' feels like forever since I did that, but I'd check to make sure it's appropriate for the boot method.

 

[rocco_77]

hmmm.... what partition map is the hard drive os volume formatted as ?

normally it 's guid partition map. it' feels like forever since I did that, but I'd check to make sure it's appropriate for the boot method.

Yup it's GUID. I've always used that partition map.

It's very perplexing. Somehow the SSD is just not "seen" as bootable, at least in the system information when I select the drive under storage. Clover seems to load from the SSD, but I haven't tried booting with the USB removed from the computer.

I know you don't want to troubleshoot legacy, but there is an option in the bios for EFI boot which is enabled, but it doesn't really explain anything. I was reading this was a feature added to this motherboard to accept larger capacity drives up to 2tb. Could it be maybe it's causing Clover to think it's UEFI? Thereby maybe adding the UEFI folder to CLOVER/drivers and putting the apfsdriverloader.efi in there?

Sorry, I feel like I'm rambling.

 

[discreetlogic]

yes you need that driver in for clover.

you also need to make sure the drive is bootable and properly set in the boot order.

get clover configurator, mount the drive's efi partition and make sure that the drivers are present in the ;egacy section.

Personal opinion : I've done my fair share of trouble shooting in my day, and at this point, I tend to start over

UEFI mode should boot faster anyways, and no real reason NOT to go opencore.

read this : https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Desktop-Guide/installer-guide/mac-install.html

 

[rocco_77]

yes you need that driver in for clover.

you also need to make sure the drive is bootable and properly set in the boot order.

get clover configurator, mount the drive's efi partition and make sure that the drivers are present in the ;egacy section.

Personal opinion : I've done my fair share of trouble shooting in my day, and at this point, I tend to start over

UEFI mode should boot faster anyways, and no real reason NOT to go opencore.

read this : https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Desktop-Guide/installer-guide/mac-install.html

I will check out open core for my next build. Got an old G5 PPC I want to convert to a hack. Just gonna use the case PSU, fans and replace all the guts.

Anyway... here's the update! I got this thing working without starting over.

You're not going to believe this, but all I did was remove the USB installer, set SSD as primary boot drive and BINGO! All drives show up in clover boot screen. I really want to understand why this worked. The ONLY thing I can think of is a UUID conflict when USB is inserted during boot.

Not sure if you or someone else said this, but the system can get confused seeing two EFI partitions as the same and thereby assign the same UUID. That would, I think, confuse the boot process and maybe preventing Clovers entry scan from performing properly.

So there you have it. I want to thank you very much for your time and effort here. It's very appreciated.

So I also installed the new GFX card RX 580, set init display first to PCIe and boom... dual monitor, boots great and seems stable. AppleALC audio working as well. ICloud working also.

There's a couple things that still need tweaking. hD3000 iGPU not supported in Mojave, and with the System definition 14,2, apparently Mac OS leverages onboard GPU for some stuff like jpg preview (with space bar) and HD streaming from iTunes no name a couple things.

So gonna try and spoof my iGPU to a supported one and set it to run in headless mode like a native Mac. OR some have suggested changing Sys Definition to iMacPro 1,1 which only uses a dGPU and doesn't leverage an onboard GPU. But that definition is Xenon processor so it may present other problems. I added a boot argument that corrects the jpg preview, but it's a clumsy patch.

Anyway... that's the scoop... of thanks again man.

 

[discreetlogic]

Awesome, glad it works.

Your problem seems simple in hindsight. Your boot order wasn't set, had a hunch https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/ga-z68xp-ud3p-owners.21075/post-2108426

I never used the igpu on the cpu at all, but I am using iMac 14,2

 

[rocco_77]

Thing is though I'm almost positive at one point I did try setting the boot order to that drive first when I had the USB installed. I could be wrong in hindsight, but??

As for the iGPU, since you are running High Sierra, metal support is not required by OS for supported GPUs, but in Mojave it is. And the 14,2 system def in an actual Mac there is an iGPU and a dGPU whereas the dGPU leverages some functions to the processors iGPU. Technically the iGPU is run in headless mode or a version of that on an actual 14,2 Mac.

 

[discreetlogic]

@rocco_77 Haven't tried the onboard graphics ever, let us know if you know how to enable it.