New(ish) to hackintosh - problems with hardware

[Macintyre]

I unsuccessfully tried hackingtosh a couple of years or so ago. Having purchased a Snow Leopard retail disk, I eventually got it working on my old laptop (Core duo 5450, Intel 965 display chipset) but without sound, WiFi or correct graphics resolution. My objective is to give the Mac OS working properly to see whether I can use it for all my daily tasks and replace Windows.

Recently, I was not particularly happy with the new Windows 10 release so I decided to give OSX another go. However, try as I might, I cannot get it working on my desktop PC or my new laptop. The desktop has a P8H61-M Pro motherboard (socket 1155 - Sandy Bridge?) with an i3 processor and 8Gb RAM. The laptop is a HP Pavillion DM4 with an i5 processor an 3Gb RAM.

On the laptop, I can get to the install screen but the keyboard and mouse don't work.

On the desktop I set the SATA to AHCI and I also got to the install screen, but again not response from the keyboard or mouse. I did find a setting 'EHCI Hand-off' and setting this to enabled allowed me to proceed. No such setting on the laptop though.

On the desktop, using iBoot, I can install the original Snow Leapard and this will boot fine from iBoot, but again, no sound, and graphics is only at 1024 x 768. My monitor is capable of much higher resolution.

My understanding is that if I can upgrade this to 10.6.8 then I will be able to get the Yosemite download. Well, I can get as far as installing the 10.6.8 update - UpdateHelper - reboot - install update - MultiBeast - reboot. However on reboot, I get the apple screen then then display turns off and it crashes. Using -v and GraphicsEnabler=No, I appear to get a bit further, but the top half of the screen corrupts. From this I presume the problem is the graphics driver. The crash occurs just after NullCPUPowerManagement which reports a status of timed out.

I have now spent a couple of days messing around to no avail. Without UpdateHelper, the system crashes before the installer is finished.

Using just -x it will allow it to boot into safe mode however I'm not sure where to do from there? I am wondering whether I should persevere or whether I should get a different motherboard? If I replace the motherboard, then what socket 1155 motherboard is fully compatible?

 

[Macintyre]

Ok, this is probably now talking to myself, but I think I have sussed the problem. My setup has HD2000 graphics which AFAIKT is not supported so i guess i will need a graphics card. I have an old Gigabyte GV-R925128T which is not listed on the Graphic Database, so I guess I am out of luck here as well. Furthermore, it looks like any socket LGA1155 (Sandy Bridge) intel processor has HD2000 graphics so looks like I will need either a new graphics card or complete new motherboard/CPU setup.

 

[Going Bald]

Ok, this is probably now talking to myself, but I think I have sussed the problem. My setup has HD2000 graphics which AFAIKT is not supported so i guess i will need a graphics card. I have an old Gigabyte GV-R925128T which is not listed on the Graphic Database, so I guess I am out of luck here as well.

You are correct, the problem is the gfx and the GPU will not work - you need DVI or HDMI or DisplayPort and your card has only VGA and s-video. Also you will probably need to install NullCPUPowerManagement kext as well.

Look at your local e-tailer for an nVidia 8400GS / 8800GS/GT /9500GT / 9800GT.
Any of these will work although you may need GraphicsEnabler=Yes boot-arg.

For the laptop, post in the laptop forum for help - http://www.tonymacx86.com/laptops/

 

[Macintyre]

Thanks for the reply and graphics card suggestions. The laptop has an i5-560 so pre HD2000 I think so even worse! I already did the NullCPUPowerManagement thing as well. Fortunately my monitor does have a DVI input. My motherboard is an Asus P8H61-M Pro and has both a HDMI and DVI connector and Asus claims 'integrated graphics' but since i can only see Intel HD2000 graphics in Windows, I presume that this is the GPU that is driving them?

 

[Going Bald]

Thanks for the reply and graphics card suggestions. The laptop has an i5-560 so pre HD2000 I think so even worse! I already did the NullCPUPowerManagement thing as well. Fortunately my monitor does have a DVI input. My motherboard is an Asus P8H61-M Pro and has both a HDMI and DVI connector and Asus claims 'integrated graphics' but since i can only see Intel HD2000 graphics in Windows, I presume that this is the GPU that is driving them?

Yes, this is the gfx on-board the CPU - http://ark.intel.com/products/49653/Intel-Core-i5-560M-Processor-3M-Cache-2_66-GHz shows just HD graphics, so HD2000 is a step up, but still not a high enough step to get OS X support.

 

[Macintyre]

Well my local store didn't have an nVidia 8400GS although I dod see one or two on Amazon. However, I dod find an Asus nVidia GeForce 210 which appears to be similar and is commented on in the Graphics Card Database as woring out of the box without any additional kexts. I don't require gaming graphics so this card was sufficient. Well, I'm glad to report that after a bit of experimentation I found that I can boot into 10.6.8. using PCIRootUID=1. For some reason -x (safe mode) doesn't work, but at least I'm not up and running and hopefully can go on to access the Yosemite download.

Incidentally, I have noticed the benefit already even in Windows as the text is sharper and the colours appear more vivid compared to the Intel graphics. Perhaps its the difference VGA and DVI.

Whatever the case, thanks for your input. I'm just going over into the guides to get more info on installing Yosemite, but will report back as to how I get on.

 

[Macintyre]

Well the good news is that the graphics card works for Yosemite as well, but required PCIRootUID=0 and GraphicsEnabler=Yes to display on a monitor connected to the DVI port.