My first Hackintosh! Intel Core i7-3770K / GA-Z77X-UP5-TH

[ggeorge]

BTW, I will probably get blasted for this, but I'm using Time Machine for backups, instead of CCC or SuperDuper. I like the idea of having more than one point to restore from, and it seems more efficient than the other two (and free to get the features that let me backup from a previous backup point). I've had pretty good success with Time Machine in the past. Is this a terrible idea?

More backups are NEVER a bad idea. Ideally you should do both. Time Machine is great for day to day changes or retrieving deleted/changed files, but , what you are missing through not using something like CCC, is having a bootable backup or a disk you can install updates/modifications to in order to test them out.

I have a second disk that I clone my primary to and when an update comes out or there's a new DSDT or Multibeast version out I want to test. I can boot off of that driv, do what ever it is and if it screws things up. I just reboot into my primary, wipe the secondary HD clean and re-clone my primary so I can try it again and see what will work.

 

[thelostswede]

BIOS/UEFI - more or less the same thing, or at least they have the same purpose.

 

[geekomancer]

More backups are NEVER a bad idea. Ideally you should do both. Time Machine is great for day to day changes or retrieving deleted/changed files, but , what you are missing through not using something like CCC, is having a bootable backup or a disk you can install updates/modifications to in order to test them out.

I have a second disk that I clone my primary to and when an update comes out or there's a new DSDT or Multibeast version out I want to test. I can boot off of that driv, do what ever it is and if it screws things up. I just reboot into my primary, wipe the secondary HD clean and re-clone my primary so I can try it again and see what will work.

Good to know. I will use my secondary internal drive as a SuperDuper backup for now, and will add Time Machine on a USB drive, once I get the peripherals situation sorted out.

BIOS/UEFI - more or less the same thing, or at least they have the same purpose.

Thanks for clarifying. Unfortunately, as I suspected, my OOB BIOS revision, F4, is the latest version.

As for the disks, should I MultiBeast any of the disk kexts? It looks like those are all for SATA, which shouldn't affect USB/FW....

Now that I have a system clone, I will experiment with one of the iMac definitions, and see if that clears anything up. I will also post my BIOS/UEFI settings....

Question: Also, just realized maybe I should have installed one of the MutliBeast graphics drivers. Mine is 560Ti (EVGA 01G-P3-1561-AR) : According to specs, it is Fermi, has 1GB RAM, and only 384 cores. Thus, neither patch is quite right. Should I use NVIDIA Fermi >2GB OpenCL Patch, or NVIDIA GTX 470 / 480 / 560Ti 448 Cores / 570 / 580 Support, or neither?

Update: I switched over to iMac system definitions 11,1, and then tried all the iMac definitions. They all worked (booted and showed various types of iMacs in System Profiler), so I'm gonna stay with iMac 12,2 (the newest and biggest one). Not sure what to look for other than that, in terms of iMac vs MacPro (or versions), or in terms of whether one works better than another. Since restarting, I tried USB and FW drives, and they seem to be working as expected. I guess there's my answer....

Next I'll try putting that 560Ti back into the mix. Or maybe I'll send it back and just use the internal 4000 graphics. :/

 

[thelostswede]

I really don't understand how it's possible to have so many issues. That board is by for the easiest one I've ever installed OS X on and MacMan just mentioned it as the best hack board he'd ever used in terms of ease of install.

Yes, you need to install the appropriate drivers for the graphics card, that's why they're included.

I'm giving up here though, as clearly you're unable to follow the guide I linked to.
IMHO if I were you, I'd cut my losses and get a Mac, as clearly this isn't for you.

 

[geekomancer]

I really don't understand how it's possible to have so many issues. That board is by for the easiest one I've ever installed OS X on and MacMan just mentioned it as the best hack board he'd ever used in terms of ease of install.

Yes, you need to install the appropriate drivers for the graphics card, that's why they're included.

I'm giving up here though, as clearly you're unable to follow the guide I linked to.
IMHO if I were you, I'd cut my losses and get a Mac, as clearly this isn't for you.

No need to be rude. This is the first time I've installed OS X on a non-Mac, and clearly you and MacMan have done it many, many times.

As for the graphics, there are two drivers, both of which have specs that are close, but do not exactly correspond to my card. That's why I asked -- because I wasn't sure which was the appropriate one. If it's so tedious for you to answer, I can try one and then the other.

I realize I'm asking a lot of questions -- because I want to LEARN (and hopefully help other people who are doing the same). This is also the reason I made what I'm guessing was an above-average donation to your site -- because I appreciated your feedback and help, both to me and others. I thought you would also appreciate having someone participate on your site, by asking questions, trying things, and posting their results. Clearly I was wrong.

If you get so frustrated watching a newb make mistakes, you may be in the wrong business. I have apparently misunderstood the intent of your forums, so I will bow out. Many thanks to you, and to everyone who wrote guides & replied to questions, for helping me build a great computer.

 

[thelostswede]

No, that's not what it's about, but you've shown a tremendous inability to follow our very simply guides.
We're more than happy to help, but it gets to a point where you give up on people and you've managed to post five pages of problems, most of which no-one else have ever run into.

It's nigh on impossible to help when you're doing things your way instead of following our instructions.
Yes, I've set this up before, I even dabbled with various other ways before this website started with an old Asus LGA-775 board.
Yet I follow the same instructions as I sent you when it comes to setting things up, as I'm not an expert on OS X, my expertise is in hardware.
I've made my fair share of mistakes and that's why we've made the guides, to make it as simple as possible for people to install.
If you can't follow a step by step guide and got to a manufacturers website to read up what the specs of your components are, then simply put, a Hackintosh isn't for you.

I'm not being rude, I'm just stating the obvious. You clearly didn't bother to look up your motherboard specs at one point and installed the wrong drivers. As far as your graphics card is concerned, the drivers in the latest MultiBeast enables OpenCL and the only thing that matters is if your graphics card has 2GB memory or not, as then you have to select a different driver, all of which is clearly noted in MultiBeast itself.

And if you can't take an honest reply, I suggest you shy away from any and all forums in the future, as there are far worse people than me out there.

 

[geekomancer]

Ok, I will be the first to admit that I'm an artist and not a scientist, from a family up of artists (and no scientists). As such, I'm not the best at following letter-by-letter instructions. However, I looked back at this thread from the beginning, because I wanted to find out if it was true that I had "five pages of problems, most of which no-one else [has] ever run into". True that there were maybe two or three instances where I effed up because of not following instructions -- but in my defense, it was mostly just asking simple questions (that were not covered in the guide) and dealing with issues that were fairly common:

• Page 1. A few preliminary questions & answers, including the one about the DSDT for the GA-Z77 boards. As you pointed out (and as I've seen in other areas of the forums), I'm not the only one who overlooked this. This info was not in the guide, nor on the DSDT page. So maybe, or maybe not.

• Page 2. Snow Leopard fiasco, asked question about unable to buy Mountain Lion, as per this guide. The guide, by the way, did not mention that it was useless to Ivy bridge users. I found out the hard way -- and I know I'm not the only one, because I saw other posts from other people having the same problem. I would argue that this issue had nothing to do with following instructions, and even that maybe the guide should have included this information it in big red letters.

• Page 3 was my notes, and over-posting in "-v" mode because I was excited to be finally putting my OS together (and because I thought it might be helpful to other people reading the thread). Questions that I asked were based on the Lion guide, and the not-yet-complete ML guide. There was a problem with my ML USB install disk not working, which doesn't really have anything to do with following instructions. In fact I've seen other people on the forums have the same problem, reinstall ML to the USB, and it works -- which is what I did, and it worked. This page actually should count toward my ability to follow instructions and solve problems.

The ethernet problem was definitely my fault. I misread my motherboard specs and relied on memory, instead of writing down, as I should have done.​

• Page 4 I asked some (I think) reasonable questions and posted my steps (in the hopes that someone else in my shoes might benefit). If this was annoying, or if you read it as having problems, it was not my intent. As far as I know, there was no instruction in any of the guides` that iMac system definitions were better than MacPro for this setup, other than in this thread. I tried all of the MacPro and iMac definitions, because I wanted to find out what would happen -- but I don't think of this as an "issue" -- just experimentation. I also asked about the wifi guide, which is not listed under the web site's "guides" nav. The iMac system definitions seems to have cleared up the external drives issue -- and this had nothing to do with following instructions because it wasn't in the instructions. (Still not getting FireWire 800's to read, but I'm afraid to ask. Not a big deal anyway.) I don't think any of this should count against me.

• Page 5, mostly my fault. Again, in my defense, I held off on installing drivers because I'd read that you can install -- but not uninstall -- stuff from MultiBeast, so I wanted to do things one at a time. However, to prove your point, I later forgot to install the graphics driver.

I asked a few (again, I think) reasonable questions about backups and BIOS vs UEFI. Not issues, just education.
Overall, I made a few mistakes and had a few issues. Yes, I forgot to install the graphics driver, and yes I installed the wrong ethernet driver, and yes this strongly supports your point that I suck at following instructions. That said, to say that I had five pages of problems that no-one else had is a huge exaggeration. I'd say I had maybe 1 or max 2 pages of problems, one of which was unique, and the rest of which other people have had. I can handle honesty and bluntness, and I don't mind your blunt honesty. I just thought your reaction was a bit overheated, considering. Anyway, if I annoyed you I apologize.
And again, more than anything in this entire thread, thanks to you and all the admins for your guides and for your help!

 

[thelostswede]

1. We've mentioned this in countless threads, but we will be adding a notice on the DSDT page, it's just one of a million things we have on our to do list.

2. Not my fault and nothing to do with me, as I never suggested that.

3. **** happens...

4. And I think I replied to most of your questions too

5. Well, it's not a graphics "driver" it's an OpenCL enabler, not the same thing, but yeah.

I'm sorry if you thought I was being a prick, but you have had a lot of issues that related to the fact that you didn't read up enough before you started doing what you did. You don't need to be a scientist to follow the instructions and although we had three different parts instead of a solid single list like we do now, we did get that done while you were still installing OS X on your system.

You have to understand that it gets to a point where you can only help so much and the key to making your system work is 1. follow the instructions we have and 2. read up on your hardware specs. That's the most important thing and if you don't do these two steps, well, then you're going to run into problems. Admittedly you got some extra problems thanks to someone suggesting you install SL, but that had nothing to do with me.

So the question now is, did you get it all working?

 

[geekomancer]

Of course, I never dreamed that any of the issues were your fault (they weren't), or that you were unhelpful (you have been beyond helpful), and hope I didn't imply this in any of my posts.

OpenCL enabler vs driver -- understood, and used the wrong term carelessly.

System: running like a champ!
WiFi: also running like a champ! (with Atheros AR 9280 from ebay, UP5-TH-included wifi adapter, a small screwdriver, and Toleda's guide)
Geekbench score: 14010

I had an issue after installing the wifi card, where I started getting the Bad display config block signature (0x55555555) Error: Nvidia ROM patching failed. (This happened on both my main and backup boots, even after I removed the wifi card.) Solution: I plugged the monitor into the second DVI port on my 560ti (so that I could see what I was doing), rebuilt Kext caches, and it started working fine again, without the error! [Pats self on back.] Update: The error came back. Seems to be intermittent. I can still get into OS though. Just found this guide, so still optimistic.

Thanks!

 

[thelostswede]

Good to know about the graphics card issue, as I'm getting an AR9287 card locally for $10...