Guide to installing OSX Snow Leopard version 10.6 (original Retail Disk) on a Gigabyte GA-965P-S3 with PATA drives

This is a general guide to installing OSX Snow Leopard Version 10.6 (original retail Disk) on a Gigabyte GA-965P-S3 that has PATA (Parallel ATA AKA IDE) drives instead of SATA drives.

This guide should also work for Systems using this motherboard with SATA drives with a few minor changes.

I'll try to do a guide a little later on for installing OSX Snow Leopard on this same motherboard using SATA drives.

Please note: my guide is written for my particular system config, if your system doesn't have similar components you may or may not have success with installing Snow Leopard.  Also this guide is written for those who are familiar with computers and technology, I'm not going to go into a step by step breakdown of how to burn a ISO for the boot CD,etc. You're on your own there.

My system's current configuration is as follows:

Thermaltake 430 Watt 24 Pin ATX Power Supply

Gigabyte GA-965P-S3 with Bios revision F14

2 Gigabytes of Patriot DDR2-800 Memory

Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 2.13 GHz CPU, stock setting, not overclocked.

Onboard Network card (Marvel Yukon 88E8056)

Onboard Sound card

ASUS EN8800GT 512 megabyte NVIDIA PCI Express Video card

Sony Dual Layer DVD +/- RW Burner (IDE / PATA configured as Slave)

Western Digital WD2000JB-00DUA0 200 Gigabyte (IDE / PATA configured as Master)

Generic Texas Instruments Chipset PCI Firewire card

List of Software, boot disks,etc. that I used to install OSX Snow Leopard on my GA-965P-S3 based computer.

1. Empire EFI Version 1.085 Boot CD found here

2. MyHack bootloader (found on Empire EFI Version 1.085 Boot CD )

3. Snow Leopard compatible Kext for Marvel Yukon 88E8056, VoodooHDA Kext for Sound and the DSDT file from here

4. A Retail Copy of Snow Leopard, (copies that come with mac systems are specific for that system and normally will not work when trying to install them on a hackintosh.

Some folks advise that Google is your friend for the copy of Snow Leopard, but my advice is to spend the money and buy a Legal retail copy of Snow Leopard, It's only 29 American dollars and is well worth the money.

For your Empire EFI Boot CD, you may want to burn a copy of the regular disk ISO and a disk for the legacy disk iso, I ran into a problem with the current version 1.085 where I would get a memory error for the regular disk, I was able to successfully use the legacy disk to boot my system and then start the Snow Leopard installation

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 select the following items in addition to the items that are already checked.

1. graphics enabler

2. ahciportinjector

3. AppleIntelPIIXATA.kext and IOATAFAMILY.kext

4.IOAHCIBlockStorageInjector.kext

5. JmicronATA.kext

If you want to be able to download updates directly from Apple, I suggest that you don't install the sleepenabler.kext file I did this and then updated to 10.6.2 and then I had to boot the OSX installer disk to be able to get into a working terminal so I could remove this KEXT file, it was causing an immediate kernel panic because it didn't match the version of the kernel. so I advise to stay away from this one, it's only needed if you want your hackintosh to be able to go to sleep, not a big deal in my book.

Ok back to the instructions.

After you get done making your selections, click install, after the install finishes eject the Empire EFI disk.

Copy the DSDT.aml file I provided a link to earlier in this guide to the /Extra folder in your hard drive in the finder

Reboot your Computer and verify that you are able to successfully boot into OSX Snow Leopard.

You should now have the ability to change your display resolution, as the graphics enabler and the DSDT file should now give you full functionality for your Nvidia video card.

The next thing you will need to do it get your network and sound card working

Unzip the Stuff for GA-965P-S3 SL Hackintosh install zip file I provided the link to earlier and then open the folder. You're going to need the Kext Helper program in this folder to install the network kext you need for the Marvel Yukon 99E8056 network card, as it's not recognized by the default network drivers for Snow Leopard. run the Kext Helper program and then open the marvel Yukon folder that's in this folder and drag the Kext file contained there into the Kext Helper Program.  Next drag the voodooHDA.kext file into the Kext Helper and then click the easy install button, this takes care of rebuilding the system cache files,etc. so your network and audio will now work.

Reboot your hackintosh and if everything went well you should now have a fully working Hackintosh system running Snow Leopard OSX 10.6

If you see any problems or mistakes in my guide please leave me a comment and let me know.

If you run into any problems I highly recommend going over to the insanelymac.com web forum to ask for assistance.

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 your hackintosh have fun and learn a lot from the process.

Thanks

Doctor Evil

New Project Gigabyte GA-965P-S3 Hackintosh

I found a deal on a MSI DKA790GX Platinum Motherboard Combo that came with a AMD Phenom II X4 940 3.0 GHz Black Edition processor and bought it. I rebuilt my gaming system that had a Gigabyte GA-965P-S3 Motherboard and a Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 2.13 GHz chip in it.
I’m still working on getting the best parts to do the build on the cheap. I may switch my D945GCLF Atom hackintosh system back over to PATA drives and use the SATA drives from it in the system.
I found a post over on insanelymac that had a link to download a kext set for a Gigabyte GA-965P-S3
I used the current legacy version Boot CD from Prasys for EMPIRE EFI and was able to get the system I used the GA-965P-S3 motherboard in to boot and install snow leopard but It keeps having the waiting for root device error when I try to boot it using chameleon instead of using the boot CD to boot the system. I’ve read that this means that I need to use different kexts or something to that effect. I’m fixing to head to bed, but I’ll post my results for this system tomorrow.

EDIT: New Post with guide for installing Snow Leopard on a Gigabyte GA-965P-S3 system with PATA / IDE Drives


Sorry It’s taken me so long to post. I’ve been depressed due to being unemployed and I haven’t felt like messing with my Hackintosh systems. I’ll try to post more often, whenever I run across any interesting news to share and discuss.

patched 10.6.2 kernel for Snow Leopard is out

I just saw this over on Prasys' blog

http://prasys.co.cc/2009/11/patched-10-6-2-kernel-is-out/

Nawcom has patched the new 10.6.2 “qoopz” kernel for legacy processors and as well as for AMD processors. on top of that he has made an installer to get it all up and working. Before you install the Snow Leopard 10.6.2 update , be sure to run this . There is nothing much changes which have been done to XNU. The package includes the 10.6.2 kernel for AMD processors and Intel SSE2/SSE3 such as Pentium 4 and patched SleepEnabler.kext
Thanks nawcom !


UPDATE: 11-26-09 9:33 PM


I have successfully upgraded my D945GCLF to 10.6.2


I used the Nawcom kernel patch software package installer, then ran the apple updater and updated to 10.6.2


system rebooted with no issues. I noticed that the software package edited the /extra/com.apple.boot file and changed the kernel option to use the new kernel called legacy_kernel


first boot I did have to tell chameleon to ignore caches and I'm using onyx to rebuilt all of my cached kexts,etc.

Warning: Snow Leopard update 10.6.2 disables Intel Atom based Hackintosh systems

 

saw this one today over on the wired website.

Mac OS X Leopard 10.6.2 will break your hackintosh. The forthcoming OS update will not run on the Intel Atom processor, a rather petty move from Apple which, if true, will break many netbooks which have been hacked to run as more than passable Macs.

This news comes from Stellarola, the hacker who helped us out extensively with the original (and still the best) Gadget Lab hackintosh. Here’s what he has to say:

In the current developer build of 10.6.2, Apple appears to have changed around a lot of CPU related information. One of the effects of this is Apple killing off Intel’s Atom chip.

The important word there is “current”. The latest seed could change before being released as an actual update. But Stella knows what he’s talking about (he’s one of the guys behind the OSx86 method for easily installing the Mac OS on non-Apple machines), and recommends keeping your frankenmacs loaded with 10.6.1 for now.

This wouldn’t surprise us, especially as Apple seems to have gotten a taste for locking out unauthorized hardware with the Palm Pre cat and mouse game.

UPDATE: It’s official the Snow Leopard 10.6.2 update has been released and this update drops support for Intel Atom Processors. Do not install the 10.6.2 update directly from the Apple on your Intel Atom Hackintosh, keep an eye on insanelymac and other hackintosh sites for a modifed version of the 10.6.2 update.

Link to the updated Blog entry for Stell’s Blog where I saw this info here

method for using USB Flash Drive or USB hard drive to install Snow Leopard on a D945GCLF 100% working

EDIT: I've finally been able to find a boot cd that works for installing Snow Leopard on my D945GCLF the new article can be found here

OK I’ve gotten Snow Leopard to install successfully on my D945GCLF Intel Atom hackintosh.
This method requires the following things.
1. A working Leopard install that you can use to prepare the USB device
2. a Retail Snow Leopard DVD
(yes you should actually buy Snow Leopard, dude it’s only $29 dollars unless you buy the family pack or the version that comes bundled with all the other software), and yes the $29 dollar disk is a honest to god full version install, not a upgrade or cpu drop-in disk)
3. a USB Flash drive that is at least 8 GB in size, or a USB Hard drive that you can dedicate to using as a installer
4. You’ll need the SL Macloader 0.4 software from here and the kext_4_D945GCLF_USB_install.zip file from here
follow the instructions found in this insanelymac forum post by MACinized
replace the kexts in the SL macboot kext folder with the ones from the kext_4_D945GCLF_USB_install.zip file from the first link.
use the DSDT.AML file that I have a link to in this post to get full video resolution and ability to have system go into full sleep mode.

using these instructions and files I was able to get snow leopard installed on my D945GCLF.
you will need these kexts to get the network card and sound working in Snow Leopard on the D945GCLF motherboard

The psystar Realtek R1000 kext file,The voodoohda sound driver kexts are in the kext_4_D945GCLF_USB_install.zip file these need to be installed using the included kext utility

you’ll need to copy any kexts that I have referenced to use after you have installed into /system/library/extensions then run kext utility which can be downloaded from here
After you have updated your kext files follow the instructions in the SL macboot folder for installing the boot loader but before you reboot replace the com.apple.boot.plist file in the /extras folder on your hard drive with the one from the /extras folder that is on your usb boot device that you used to install snow leopard. the file that the sl_macboot software creates is missing the kernel flag arch=i386 and this will cause a kernel panic for you when you reboot if you haven't done this.

You'll need to edit the com.apple.boot.plist file to set your screen resolution, as it will be stuck at 1024x768 otherwise.

You can fix the graphics issue by editing the com.apple.boot.plist file and adding the following into the file

key>Graphics Mode</key>

<string>widthxheightxdepth</string>
replace width, and height, and depth with your preferred settings, just make sure your screen supports these settings.
for my system I’m running 1280x1024x32
I added these setting just before the timeout settings.
You’ll probably need to copy the file out of the extras folder to another location like your desktop, edit it with textedit then save the file then copy it back into the extras folder, the system will prompt you for your password as it needs root authentication to replace the file.
UPDATE:
using the DSDT.aml file that ugokind had uploaded in the file found in this post that is for a D945GCLF2 (has same bios as a D945GCLF board) I am now able to change my resolution under display settings in Snow Leopard. I didn’t need any of the other files so I am uploading just the DSDT.aml file here
just replace the DSDT.aml file in your Extras folder with this file after you have installed your boot loader from the SL macboot software before you reboot. After you reboot you should no longer be stuck at 1024x768 resolution and you should be able to change your resolution to higher settings. I am currently running my system at 1920x1080 which is the native resolution for my 24” LCD monitor
Thanks for the comments and feedback Tester, you helped steer me towards the missing pieces for the puzzle and I appreciate your feedback.
Sorry it took me so long to finally get these instructions up. I am finally finished up with my College Algebra Class (and I am proud of myself for passing and making a 83 in this class as I suck at math) so now I should have more time to devote to my hackintosh and getting Snow Leopard working 100 percent.
I hope these instructions help you with your quest to get Snow Leopard up and running. Good luck and most importantly have fun.
until my next post,
I remain your obedient servant,
Dr. Evil

Success! I've made a working usb boot device that I can install snow leopard from

I'll post the necessary files and instructions tomorrow.

one final step remains to be finished though so be advised.

I need to find a snow leopard compatible R1000 Kext file.

I'm holding off on actually doing my install on my hackintosh until I locate this last file.

if you know where I can get a Snow Leopard compatible (32 bit and 64 bit) version of the R1000.kext Psystar Realtek network driver or another specific kext that works with the onboard network card in a D945GCLF please leave a comment for me and I'll add it to the files and instructions that I am working on. I'll be sure to give credit where credit is due. I'm a rank amateur compared to all the other guys in the osx86 hackintosh scene, and I don't want to step on anyone's toes.

Update on progress on getting Snow Leopard installation method working for D945GCLF motherboard

Guys I wanted to apologize for my lengthy silence on this subject. I have been swamped with work related tasks after being off from work for over a week on an unpaid furlough. I also got behind on my College Algebra Homework and I’ve been struggling to get caught up. (God I hate Parabola, Ellipse, and Hyperbola algebra problems!!!!!).

I am close to having a working method for installation of Snow Leopard on a D945GCLF intel atom motherboard. I haven’t been able to come up with a working Boot-132 CD method, none of my Boot-132 disks will work. I keep getting the ISOLINUX Image is corrupt error, even though I followed the instructions of others who have made good working snow leopard boot-132 disks for other motherboards. The method I am working on involves backing up your snow leopard install dvd to a disk image then restoring it onto an 8 GB removable flash drive. After following instructions from the insanelymac website (credit to those who posted these instructions, I don’t have the post handy or I would give you credit) I was able to get my flash drive to boot my system. However I need to work on which kext files I am using to boot, because as soon as it begins to boot I get the graphical error message that instructs me to to reboot my system…..

So I’m headed back to the drawing board for a little more research and development. As soon as I get it figured out I’ll post links to the needed files and the instructions on how to do it.

 

Until then, I remain your obedient servant.

Dr. Evil