Friday, March 19, 2010

Instructions for using Empire EFI 1.085 R2 AMD compatible Boot CD to Install Snow Leopard 10.6 (original retail) on an M68M-S2 motherboard with an AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000 with PATA (IDE) drives AKA Doctor Evil Builds his first AMD Hackintosh

System Specs for system that this guide was written for:
AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000 2.6 GHz
2 GB DDR2 Memory
IDE (PATA) DVD/CD-RW combo drive
IDE (PATA) 80 GB Maxtor Hard Drive

Software needed: Empire EFI 1.085 R2 AMD compatible Boot CD found here
Mac OSX Snow Leopard Retail 10.6 DVD disk
Nforce ATA Kext, Nforce Lan Kext and Kext Utility file found here
 
VoodooHDA Kext (found on the Empire EFI 1.085 Boot CD)
NVenabler kext found here or on the Empire EFI 1.085 R2 AMD boot CD link previously given above.
Instructions:
download the Empire EFI 1.085 R2 AMD  compatible Boot CD Iso images using the link I provided at the start of this guide. You may want to try both versions of the iso on a rewritable disk to determine which works better for you. On my particular M68M-S2 Motherboard I have to use the Legacy version as the regular version reboots my system and doesn't load properly.
Boot your system using the Empire EFI Boot CD, after it has booted eject it and insert your Snow Leopard install DVD and then wait until the drive stops flashing and then press F5, this should refresh the menu options so that you now see Mac OSX Install DVD instead of Empire EFI.
Press Enter to Boot your Mac OSX Install DVD and start the OSX Snow Leopard Operating System Installation.
make sure you partition your hard drive as a MacOS Journaled drive with GUID format, select the desired fonts,etc. and then install Snow Leopard.
If you get an error about the system not being able to bless the drive don't panic, this is common, you'll be using the empire efi boot cd to boot your system until you get the myhack bootloader software installed.
When the install finishes reboot your system, remove the Snow Leopard install DVD and reinsert your empire efi boot cd and allow the system to boot from it.
At the chooser screen select the hard drive (named to whatever you named it to during the install) and then hit enter to boot. If you want to watch a verbose boot to watch for errors press the down key after selecting this disk and choose the verbose option and then press enter to boot.
after the system has booted you'll want to go into the post-installation folder on the empire efi disk, and run the myhack installer.
Do a customized install and then select the chocolate kernel as you'll need this before you attempt to download and install any updates from apple for Snow Leopard.
If you are using a USB keyboard and Mouse, then all you'll need to do is select the chocolate kernel option and go with the other previously selected options, but if you are using a PS2 Keyboard or Mouse you need to also select PS2Controller in addition to the other selected options. This will add the needed Kext file to make your PS/2 Devices work.

Note: I don't advise using the sleep enabler kext, as you'll run into problems with updating your kernel if you use this kext, it's not really needed unless you absolutely want or need the ability to put your hackintosh to sleep.

After Myhack is done installing we need to get the nforce ata kext and the nforce lan , voodoohda sound and nvenabler nvidia video kexts installed.
1. copy AppleNforceATA.kext to /Extra/Extensions and copy nForceLAN.kext to /System/Extensions
2. copy the voodoohda.kext file from the Empire EFI boot CD that is found in the /post-installation/universal drivers(kexts) folder to /System/Extensions
3. extract the nvenabler_64-1.kext.zip file found in this same location or use the one I provided the link to and then copy the nvenabler 64.kext to /Extra/Extensions
Use the Kext Utility program I provided with the kexts to repair the file permissions for these files and then generate new cache files with these files added to the cache.
Remove the Empire EFI Boot CD and then restart your Hackintosh. If everything went ok you should now be able to boot into OSX from the myhack (chameleon) bootloader that you installed.
If everything went well you should now have the ability to change your video resolution and you should have a fully working network card and sound card.
Congratulations on your new fully working AMD Hackintosh system.
A Final Note regarding this guide, I’ve ran into some issues with my system that seem to be related to the built in sleep functions for Snow Leopard and how the AMD Cool and quiet bios functions work.
This would cause the system to go to sleep even though I didn’t install the sleep enabler kext, and the system would ignore all input from the USB keyboard and mouse. I was able to work around this issue by going into the Snow Leopard power management settings and setting the sleep setting to never. At this writing my M68M-S2 system has been running for 3 days and hasn’t had anymore problems with this happening. I wanted to advise everyone about this particular problem and how to work around it if you experience it.


If you run into any problems head over to the insanelymac forum to ask for help
The main thing to remember when asking for help.

1. Patience, it may take a couple of days before someone answers your question, don't get pushy and don't keep posting the same question over and over.

2. scan the forum and make sure that someone else hasn't posted a similar problem, if they have you may already have the answer to your question.

3. understand that running a hackintosh isn't for the average person, you have to be willing to work on problems by yourself if you can't get anyone to assist you. Being pushy or disrespectful of others on the forum will cause your questions to be ignored.
4. Remember you're on your own if you do decide to build your own hackintosh. If you want a smooth out of the box experience, you should probably save up the money and buy yourself a real Macintosh system from Apple. I'm too cheap to do this, and I'm the kind of person that I think it's fun when you have to work a little to get something to run the way you want it to.
Having warned you about these things, I hope those of you who do decide to continue with building a AMD M68M-S2 hackintosh have fun and learn a lot from the process.

I remain your obedient servant

Doctor Evil 30564

Sunday, March 14, 2010

Coming soon: Gigabyte M68M-S2 with PATA drives install guide

I've successfully used the AMD compatible 1.085 R2 Boot CD made by Prasys to install Snow Leopard on a Gigabyte M68M-S2 system with the following config

AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000 2.6 GHz
2 GB DDR2 Memory
IDE (PATA) DVD/CD-RW combo drive
IDE (PATA) 80 GB Maxtor Hard Drive

I'm in the middle of doing the write-up for the guide so it'll take me a few days to get it polished up and ready.

The only issue I've noticed so far is that even with the nullcpumanagement kext installed and not having the sleep enabler kext installed I still had to go into the power management settings to turn off the systems ability to sleep due to a problem with it not wanting to wake up.

Other than this I haven't had any issues with the performance, I've downloaded and installed all available updates on this system. I'm using the chocolate kernel that can be installed with the myhack boot loader install package.

Stay tuned for the complete guide.

 

UPDATE: The Guide has been written up and can be viewed here

I remain your obedient servant

Doctor Evil