Sierra Success
Thanks to you
Pilgrim my Hackintosh is back and running I feel I should provide some feed back that may be of help to other contributors.
Background:
I am a novice building Hackintosh I have a MacPro laptop as well as the desk top originally both using Maverick (My one and only Hackintosh build) worked well for a number of years in fact its been my best experience with PC's .
Recently Safari developed an annoying pop up that appears on certain sites, as far as I could find no real good solution other than concede defeat and update my machines.
The MacPro was done over the web it had its file system changed to that of APFS along with High Sierra, its made some Apps slow to react and the machine feels a little flakey as well that the battery has shorter life.
My desk top is a bit of a Hybrid in as much as I have dual boot isolated by a manual switch on the front panel, Zorin a version of Ubuntu being a secondary choice, this also has proved superior to Microsofts s---.
Updating the desk top was I must admit somewhat of a challenge which after multiple installation attempts of both Sierra & High version I developed the following procedure.
I favoured that of Sierra to avoid the APFS file issue as this held no big advantage for me.
BIOS
Originally this had been flashed by me some years ago version F5. I found after all these attempts I had a number of entries for drives at “Save & Exit” clearing the BIOS did nothing to remove the drive entries.
In an effort to make sure the PC maintained performance I built in a GeForce GT 730 Graphic Card, this was not acknowledged by the later BIOS burnt from the Gigabyte Beta (11a) version, latest from the Gig site threatened to address this issue .
This resolved the multiple drive entries as well.
Gigabyte GA77-Z DS3 motherboard Version 1.0
4X4 Ballistic memory sticks (16Mb) 1333 Mhz DDR3
1155 i7 Intel processor 3.4 Ghz
GeForce GT 730 2048 Mb Nvida Graphics PCI card
Samsung SSD 256 Gb
StartechST1000BT32PCI LAN card introduced as the on board LAN would not play ball.
Bios version F11a (Beta) was F5
MIT
CPU fan control by PWM
Peg 3 left at Auto
SYSTEM
ATA Port 0 = Samsung SSD 840 (265Gb)
BIOS Features
Boot option 1 = UEFI Samsung SSD 840 Pro
Boot option 2 = Mac OS x
VTd = disabled
LAN Pxe = Disabled
Network stack = Disabled
PERIPHERALS
SATA mode = AHCI
Init display first = PEG
ECHI Hands off = Enabled
Super IO Configuration = Serial port disabled
OnBoard LAN Controller = Disabled
Clover boot loader Version 2.4k rev 4173 shows up and the machine boots reasonably quickly.
Recognised by Bios
Realtek PCI GBE Family controller (Mac :00:0A:C0:31:F0:15)
The Statech LAN card was also recognised by the BIOS however the OS X. would not connect hence removed.
Noteall remaining drives disconnected during OS x installation.
The CD drive gave some issues until this to was disconnected.
Clearing the Bios according to normal procedure however clearing extra drive entries requires the Bios burning.
The settings were saved using the “Load Profile” on the “Save and Exit” page.
Sierra 10.12.6 Installation
Tried several attempts of High Sierra without any result failed to even begin installation, burnt several USB drives using
UNIBEASTboth UEFI & Legacy.
Experience tells me the host disk must be clean of all partitions to allow a clean install.
Sierra install using Unibeast to prep the 32Gb USB, the drive I used (Lexar) USB with LEDI found this an advantage to be able to have confirmation of activity.
Choose UEFI installation with the Nvidia as the graphic choice.
This went reasonably well however I missed the point of when you reboot select the UEFI hard drive option, I must confess as a novice it was a point to be avoided during the Maverick installation.
Note
During the attempts to get Sierra up and running I found that rebuilding the Bios proved a necessity along with formatting the host drive using the DOS file system to remove all partitions.
After using the disk utility formatting - Partitioning using the Mac OS Extended Journal.
Two issues remain at this point.
1/ The LAN refuse to cooperate
2/ The sound card malfunction.
3/ Get the printer to connect Cannon Inject.
1/ Removed the Startech PCI LAN card ( ST1000BT32) the diode lights but as yet no luck although the claim was that this was Mac friendly
Used EasyKext Pro to install the Kext into the Library/Extension and checking it is there - Checking the “System Report” it did not show up.
Pilgrimpitched in and during the night I realised that my on board Lan was still disabled, enabling the LAN resulted in panic screen back to the Bios disabled the LAN booted did the “sudo rm –-----kext.caches” shut down – Bios enabled LAN rebooted all was well.
Printer turned up without a problem and Audio installed with MultiBeast.
For this I can not explain one day after following
Pilgrimsinstruction I booted up the desk top to try and resolve this last issue, the Atheros LAN diode was alight the machine booted normally, I tried the web it was normal > tried again shut down > rebooted > normal start up web was good ????.
Ok I will not worry if it works why bother its good look forward to a few years trouble free once again for this Silver surfer.
Without delay hook on Time machine and save.
There is a lot of undocumented events during this process which I do not want to bore you with needless to say tonymac and contributors kept up my resolve thanks to you all.
