Gigabyte GA-H55M-UD2H F11 Success

[sporkman]

Thought I'd go ahead and post a success thread here. Hardware details, then my MultiBeast settings, then my additional kexts, then my caveats/problems.

Hardware

Mainboard: Gigabyte GA-H55M-UD2H BIOS F11, board revision 1.3

http://www.amazon.com/Gigabyte-Micro-AT ... cx86com-20

CPU: Intel i3-530

http://www.amazon.com/Intel-Processor-3 ... cx86com-20

Video Card: "Sparkle" brand NVidia 9500GT (SFPX95GT512U2HP) 512MB

http://www.amazon.com/SPARKLE-SFPX95GT5 ... cx86com-20

RAM: Crucial DDR3 2GB x2

http://www.amazon.com/Crucial-CT2KIT256 ... cx86com-20

Optical Drive: Pioneer DVR-111D PATA, from a long-dead dual G5 tower

Hard Drives: Various - WD and Seagate SATA

Audio + Network: onboard

Software

I did my install twice - once on a test drive just to see what worked, then when I had a working system I needed to shuffle drives around and recover data from my old iMac. I'm detailing my second try, since I'd figured more things out, so more things were correct on the first boot after MultiBeast was run.

iBoot 2.5.1 (is it a .1? Whatever was up around Thanksgiving weekend) - nothing special here, downloaded and burned. It supported everything out of the box (even audio looked supported, and networking worked).

MultiBeast 2.5.1 Exact settings:

• UserDSDT - used the appropriate DSDT for the F11 BIOS from the DSDT database on this site, saved to the Desktop as DSDT.aml.[/*:m:3qn389yc]
• Advanced Options - Kexts - Disk - "IOAHCIBlockStorageInjector" (to enable "normal" internal drive icons, did NOT select during first MultiBeast run, added later)[/*:m:3qn389yc]
• Advanced Options - Chameleon - Chose "Chameleon 2.0 RC5 - Prerelease" (see explanation below)[/*:m:3qn389yc]
• Advanced Options - smbios.plis - Chose "iMac" then "Core i3"[/*:m:3qn389yc]

Install Process

• Booted with iBoot, no issues here. System Profiler indicated that graphics, network and audio were all detected, and the RAM speed correctly showed 1333MHz. I believe iBoot was using the 2.0 RC5 version of Chameleon, so perhaps that's why this worked properly. I used a 10.6.0 Developer (ADC) self-burned disk from my now-defunct ADC membership. [/*:m:3qn389yc]
• Selected "Disk Utility", partitioned my drive with two partitions, chose HFS+, Journaled, Quit Disk Utility. Also looked at System Profiler, just to see what it saw.[/*:m:3qn389yc]
• Chose the "Customize" option on the installer (watch for it, it's easy to plow past it in your excitement), started the install. It took perhaps 20 minutes.[/*:m:3qn389yc]
• Booted with iBoot again, copied over my Combo Update for 10.6.5, my Multi Beast zipfile, my DSDT.aml, and the lnx2mac Realtek driver package. I ran the updater, ran MultiBeast with the options noted above. I did encounter a few MultiBeast crashes when I had both MB and the Combo update open at the same time.[/*:m:3qn389yc]
• Rebooted with iBoot CD removed, system booted normally. Core i3 and 4GB RAM @1333MHz both appeared in "About this mac" and System Profiler. Sound and network were not functioning. Hard drives were all appearing as external.[/*:m:3qn389yc]
• Ran MultiBeast again, selected the "IOAHCIBlockStorageInjector" kext, selected "Repair Permissions" and "Rebuild Kexts" under "System Utilities". Rebooted. Drives were now showing as internal.[/*:m:3qn389yc]
• Ran the lnx2mac Realtek installer, also ran MultiBeast again and again chose "Repair Permissions" and "Rebuild Kexts" under "System Utilities". Rebooted and network was working properly.[/*:m:3qn389yc]
• There is no step 8![/*:m:3qn389yc]

Notes

• Audio - Currently I have no speakers, so I haven't even looked at this. I used the built-ins on the iMac, so never bothered. I assume I'll have no issues when I find the proper kext and load it. It does look like this might be a DSDT thing though - when I look in System Profiler and the Audio section of System Preferences when booted from the iBoot CD and the 10.6.0 install disk, I see audio enabled.[/*:m:3qn389yc]
• Video - Seems to just work, no complaints. The "ripple effect" works in Dashboard, GL screensavers work, so I'm assuming all the acceleration is happening. I have no idea to test if OpenCL or any of the more advanced stuff works.[/*:m:3qn389yc]
• Network - This is generally solid, but has issues. I may look for a natively supported card to avoid a 3rd-party kext. Speed is good, but every few days network browsing to or from this box disappears. Plugging and unplugging the ethernet cable fixes it. Likely a driver issue. Open to recommendations on a supported and cheap GigE card.[/*:m:3qn389yc]
• Miscellaneous - On my first install, the processor was seen as a xeon and the memory was showing as half speed. I believe this was due to not selecting iMac/i3 in smbios.plist settings of MultiBeast as I have not seen this on my second try. The PATA drive works, but I've had a panic at the beginning of the burn. The box has also had one panic on mounting a DMG file. I've seen some suggestions that this may be related to PATA being "flakey". I also got bold and ran the "Migration Assistant" to bring my iMac data over. Surprisingly, it worked well. I had a KP issue, but I tracked that down to a Core2Duo temperature monitoring application that was loading it's own kext from a non-standard location. When I removed that app and it's kexts, all was well. My only "extra" kexts are the fakesmc and the ioahciblockinjector. My only extra kext in the system kexts directory is the Realtek driver. The migration also brought over kexts for my scanner (Canon 8400F), Little Snitch, VMWare Fusion, and VirtualBox.[/*:m:3qn389yc]

If anyone with some smarts on this wants to help, my only real outstanding issue is the network thing. I'd be particularly interested in figuring out why the network works with no extra kexts when booting iBoot and 10.6.0 (ditto for audio). What's the secret sauce there?

 

[Lnx2Mac]

If anyone with some smarts on this wants to help, my only real outstanding issue is the network thing. I'd be particularly interested in figuring out why the network works with no extra kexts when booting iBoot and 10.6.0 (ditto for audio). What's the secret sauce there?

The secret sauce is my RealtekRTL81xx driver...
Same as the one you installed.

Would you mind installing the Debug version and try to reproduce the "every few days network browsing to or from this box disappears" ?

Thanks,
Lnx2Mac

 

[Burninator]

As someone with two of this motherboard (rev 1.0 and 1.3), I'm qualified to answer!

First off, Install Lnx2Mac's ethernet driver like he says. It is the best driver you'll find out there and everything just works.

Secondly, you ask why the audio works when you boot from iBoot? I believe it's because iBoot slipstreams one of the VoodooHDA kexts before you boot. You'll want to install the 889 HDA audio kext, and your audio should then work fine (assuming you have speakers or headphones plugged in! )

I have a PATA hard disk in one of my machines and it's not "flaky" at all. It was my boot drive for a few months and is now my Time Machine backup disk.

 

[Lnx2Mac]

As someone with two of this motherboard (rev 1.0 and 1.3), I'm qualified to answer!

First off, Install Lnx2Mac's ethernet driver like he says. It is the best driver you'll find out there and everything just works.

Thx... [Blushing]

 

[sporkman]

Hi all,

So is it confirmed basically that iBoot IS in fact loading a bunch of extra kexts? At this point it's just me wanting to understand how the damn thing works.

As for the ethernet issue, I'll re-install with the debug log enabled. I should have info before the end of the week if the same pattern continues. All other network connectivity is fine, it just seems like bonjour stuff goes bye-bye. I've got the "e" chip, BTW. Also curious why you went with the Linux rather than the FreeBSD driver for this one? (ie: http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?quer ... +9-current) I noticed one of the HDA audio kexts is a FBSD port. Is one or the other easier to port to OS-X?

On the PATA thing, I kept turning up forum posts that noted that JMicron PATA + 4GB RAM = eventual panic. I have no idea how reliable this info is, but I got another panic last night with the box idle, but nearing using all RAM (mutliple vbox and fusion sessions idling).

I should probably pop a memtest cd in for good measure.

 

[Burninator]

Hi all,

So is it confirmed basically that iBoot IS in fact loading a bunch of extra kexts? At this point it's just me wanting to understand how the damn thing works.

Yes, this is what iBoot does.

 

[Lnx2Mac]

Also curious why you went with the Linux rather than the FreeBSD driver for this one? (ie: http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?quer ... +9-current)

Because I took Realtek's official Linux driver...
Also, using FreeBSD's wouldn't help much, as on OSX Ethernet Drivers integrate in IOKit.

I noticed one of the HDA audio kexts is a FBSD port. Is one or the other easier to port to OS-X?

Don't know what their reasons were... I haven't checked the sources to comment.

On the PATA thing, I kept turning up forum posts that noted that JMicron PATA + 4GB RAM = eventual panic. I have no idea how reliable this info is, but I got another panic last night with the box idle, but nearing using all RAM (mutliple vbox and fusion sessions idling).

Hmmm... I have a PATA as my cold-spare, last-resort rescue disk...
Please keep booting verbose, so at least you can get the panic log...

I should probably pop a memtest cd in for good measure.

Always recommended !
See NotShy's guide to CPU/RAM testing...

Good Luck !
Lnx2Mac

 

[ejdme]

Can someone share the audio kexts they're using? I have an H55M-UD2H and I can't seem to get the onboard audio working.

 

[ejdme]

I'm using the HDA 889, works great.

Yeah.. I've found a zillion kexts claiming to be HDA 889; I've tried a bunch but none of them worked. Any chance you could upload the ones you're using?

EDIT - Nevermind. I got it working using the 889 package in MultiBeast.

 

[josjev]

@Sporkman

I am also using a PATA optical drive (Plextor) which works perfectly fine OOB in 32-bit mode (I also have 4GB RAM) but is not recognised in 64-bit mode. Is your rig working in 64-bit mode?

In my experience no need to install the i3 smbios.plist: the machine is recognised correctly (as iMac 11,1) solely on the basis of the Chameleon RC5 pre-release you used.

Reading about your issue with the network made me realise I am experiencing similar issues (fixed with cable un-plug/replug) in.... Windows 7 x64!!! I wonder if the OS X install (on a different drive) has got anything to do with it when re-booting from OS X to Win7. I will try cold-starting Win7 to see if the network problem disappears.
[edit: indeed cold starting does not make a difference so this is a Win7 issue only]

Do you use a particular set of fakesmc & plugins to enable all HW sensors? If so, which one and how to install?

@Felix
Why you are not using your HD4870? I have got the 4850 (reference design with 2xDVI) and I installed as follows: remove HD4850, use onboard GPU all the way until after 10.6.5. combo update. Then install ATI injector, shut down, install HD4850 and reboot: voila all perfect!

So, the only thing that still nags me is the absence of my Plextor IDE drive in 64-bit mode...
[EDIT] I solved this by replacing Apple's JmicronATA kext with a 64-bit capable version found here: http://cid-8b65993ef55cf014.office.live ... llers%20==