[WORK IN PROGRESS] Acer S3 i5 Mountain Lion

[koala-77]

Yes the postage is outrageous. Try this one..it's £7 GBP to ship to France.
BUT before you pull the trigger and buy, open up your laptop and check that the board you have is NOT the same

Votre anglais est très bon

Obviously I have the same card in my laptop, it's not easy too find the good board

Merci votre Français est très bon aussi

 

[JSilva]

Hi,

I have chimera bootloader v1.11.0 and for some reason I can not understand, it seems this is the only bootloader my S3-951 will accept.
It is possible I've done something wrong, but every time I've tried (dozens) other versions of Chimera or Chameleon instead, I ALWAYS got Kernel panicks immediately after reboot or mainly those boot0 / GPT error kind of thing etc etc.
Never could find / understand why or fix it

However, miraculously, with this version of chimera bootloader it works (Still don't know why).
Now, there is something I've seen that I would like to implement and that is a countdown for the bootloader to assume a pre-determined partition to boot from.

I would really like to be able to boot into my ML partition automatically by default, but still be able to press a key to stop the countdown and boot into whatever partition I choose. Anyone knows how to do this?

I've tried writing the following into the org.chameleon.Boot.plist but it didn't work

<key>Default Partition</key>
<string>hd(0,2)</string>
<key>Timeout</key>
<string>4</string>

Ideas anyone?
Thanks in advance,
JS

 

[JSilva]

That's my fault. For ML, the command should be:

sudo kextcache --system-prelinked-kernel -arch x86_64

to avoid that warning message. This command updates prelinked kernel used for startup on the root volume, with all kexts in the /S/L/E folder that have been loaded. x86_64 is for 64 bits and if not specified, it will try to build a 32 bits.
I still think that you do not need the PS2Nub kext and I think there may be a clash with USB mouse and touchpad kext. Try removing it from /S/L/E. But you have it working now so upto you.

Well done

Hi,
Thanks for the suggestions.

Out of curiosity, what's the difference /advantage between writing these lines you've suggested and using the Kext Wizard's repair permissions function or Kext utility which also does repair on /Extra and S/L/E ?

sudo diskutil repairPermissions /
sudo kextcache -system-prelinked-kernel -arch x86_64
sudo kextcache -system-caches
sudo touch /System/Library/Extensions/

JS

 

[macnb]

Hi,
Thanks for the suggestions.

Out of curiosity, what's the difference /advantage between writing these lines you've suggested and using the Kext Wizard's repair permissions function or Kext utility which also does repair on /Extra and S/L/E ?

I sometimes found kext wizard to be inconsistent when it came to permissions. E.g. once you have run it and then fireup Disk Utility GUI App and get it to Repair Permissions, you will notice a whole bunch of "unexpected permissions" being flagged up and it will then put those right. Ergo...kext wizard is setting permissions that DU does not like.

Thus getting DU (either the App or the command line as I have shown), you repair permissions to what OS X really expects.

The other commands rebuild the kernel cache and the system cache. Kext wizard should do the same - no real difference.

The touch commands just before a reboot invalidates the caches to force each kext to be loaded individually on the next boot and rebuild the caches. This is ONLY required if you are having problems with kext not loading correctly or you are not sure if the caches are correct (as it was in your case). Normally, you would NOT run this after rebuilding the caches as it would effectively invalidate them immediately after rebuilding them.

I have chimera bootloader v1.11.0 and for some reason I can not understand, it seems this is the only bootloader my S3-951 will accept.

I suggest to search these forums for "boot0 error" as there are well documented fixes and that will lead to your root cause of the problem as to why you cannot use the latest chimera.

 

[koala-77]

Hi here, How are u ?

Ok, today, i received a notification from the Apple store to Thunderbolt 1.2
so I performed the update and restart, except that obviously it does not work because it keeps asking me to do the update and it constantly even after several attempts and several reboot, any idea?

Thank you for your help

 

[JSilva]

I suggest to search these forums for "boot0 error" as there are well documented fixes and that will lead to your root cause of the problem as to why you cannot use the latest chimera.

Hi macnb,

Thanks for the clear explanation on the KW repair vs. Terminal commands.

Regarding the "boot0 error" I did read a LOT about it and tried all sorts of things but nothing work. I spent literally hundreds of hours on that, and came very close to not having a hackintosh, since I couldn't get past that error.
Nothing I found on these forums fixed the error for me.

However, when I tried Chimera v1.11.0 it was miraculous, it just worked without a problem.
I haven't got a clue why, or what was causing the error, it just works. It makes me sad I couldn't fix the error or understand it (cause I like to understand everything and read tons of stuff to learn) but I am very happy that this version of Chimera worked.

Anyway, as I wrote in my previous post, I would really like to be able to boot into my ML partition automatically by default, but still be able to press a key to stop the countdown and boot into whatever partition I choose. do you know how to do this?

I've tried writing the following into the org.chameleon.Boot.plist but it didn't work

<key>Default Partition</key>
<string>hd(0,2)</string>
<key>Timeout</key>
<string>4</string>

Any Ideas?
Thanks in advance,
JS

 

[ellite]

Hi here, How are u ?

Ok, today, i received a notification from the Apple store to Thunderbolt 1.2
so I performed the update and restart, except that obviously it does not work because it keeps asking me to do the update and it constantly even after several attempts and several reboot, any idea?

Thank you for your help

Hi,
That's a firmware update. As you don't have thunderbolt on your Acer, it will not install. Just ignore it.

 

[koala-77]

Hi,
That's a firmware update. As you don't have thunderbolt on your Acer, it will not install. Just ignore it.

ok, thank you ellite.

 

[JSilva]

I still think that you do not need the PS2Nub kext and I think there may be a clash with USB mouse and touchpad kext. Try removing it from /S/L/E. But you have it working now so upto you.

Well done

Hi macnb,

Just to let you know that I decided to follow your suggestion and removed / deleted the AppleACPIPS2Nub.kext existing in S/L/E.

I then ran the repair permissions + update prelinked kernel + rebuild the kernel cache and the system cache, using "your" commands:
sudo diskutil repairPermissions /
sudo kextcache -system-prelinked-kernel -arch x86_64
sudo kextcache -system-caches

Rebooted, and everything continued to work fine so far. So I'm guessing you were right and that kext just wasn't necessary, since so far no apparent changes or problems occurred

Thanks,
JS

 

[macnb]

Rebooted, and everything continued to work fine so far. So I'm guessing you were right and that kext just wasn't necessary, since so far no apparent changes or problems occurred

Thanks,
JS

Most excellent dude !
Seems like things are cleaning up nicely for you.

May be it's time for a fresh install now that you know what pieces you need to get the S3 to work.
This may solve your Chimera issue. If at all possible, a second HDD would be best to try that with so that you can always go back to what you have just in case.