AHCI problems update

[Liam Proven]

Right, so I tried booting with -v and although it did list what was
wrong, the stack trace and so on overwrote it - it disappeared off the
top of the screen.

I tried the "documented" hack - using the P5KR BIOS. This worked
inasmuch as the machine booted and showed the drives and so on, but
again, OS X kernel-panicked almost immediately on trying to boot.

Being a bit uncomfortable with running incorrect BIOSes and such
manifest problems, I didn't bother trying to troubleshoot this any
further. I went back to the actual correct BIOS for my motherboard,
but the latest (beta) version; I was on v1104 before and replaced the
P5KR BIOS with the correect P5K-SE BIOS version 14.06.

Still no option of AHCI mode, so I hooked up an old spare 60GB EIDE
drive, reconnected my EIDE DVD-RW drive and booted off that.

The machine came up perfectly.

So clearly OS X really doesn't like the wrong BIOS on this
motherboard, for some reason. Well, nor do I.

So I tried to install onto the EIDE drive. First I stumbled by
formatting it as MBR. It took me a minute of digging to find out how
to make it a GUID partitioning scheme, but I reformatted with that.
Started the installation, it did about 5%...

And then failed with an error, saying that it could not copy required
extensions.

I am running out of patience with this and think I will stick with
Ubuntu, but before I give up, I am downloading iATKOS s3 v2. I will
give that I go before I give up altogether.

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[mosslack]

At least you have made progress. I was going to suggest you return to the correct BIOS, but you were way ahead of me. 

There seems to be some confusion, on my part, about your motherboard. Are there several versions of this particular unit as I see a lot of other folks are running some form of OS X on this system? I know with the Gigabyte boards, they can have several revisions with the same board number, but often a good deal of chance can occur between these revisions. I can see where Asus might be similar.

One of the successful installs on this board I read about was with Snow OS X, another distro. I don't remember the version number, but I assume the latest one would be fine. Just a thought if the iAtKOS doesn't work out for you.

From the main system of mosslack...

______________________________

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[mosslack]

In doing some further reading on this subject, I've seen the southbridge mentioned as ICH9, ICH9A ICH9 SATA and ICH9R. I would think this has something to do with why some can see the SATA drives from within OS X while other versions can't.

Peter knows a lot about the differences, perhaps he can shed some light on this.

[Liam Proven]

On 17 November 2012 16:11, mosslack <hackin...@gmail.com> wrote:
> In doing some further reading on this subject, I've seen the southbridge
> mentioned as ICH9, ICH9A ICH9 SATA and ICH9R. I would think this has
> something to do with why some can see the SATA drives from within OS X while
> other versions can't.
>
> Peter knows a lot about the differences, perhaps he can shed some light on
> this.

Yes, my reading suggests that different boards of the same model
number may have slightly different chipsets. It's a pain.

But this machine came from my local Freecycle group, for nothing -
case, PSU, motherboard, Core 2 Quad Extreme Q6350 & 8GB of DDR2 RAM.
Oh, and a SATA DVD-RW. Pretty good for a short train ride - that's all
it cost me!

[pete...@cruzio.com]

> There seems to be some confusion, on my part, about your motherboard. Are
> there several versions of this particular unit as I see a lot of other
> folks are running some form of OS X on this system? I know with the
> Gigabyte boards, they can have several revisions with the same board
> number, but often a good deal of chance can occur between these revisions.
> I can see where Asus might be similar.

The famous (infamous) Gigabyte GA-945GC?-?? mobo was made in 1.0, 2.0,
..., 6.0 versions, and something even thereafter. The last one, 6.6?,
added support for 1333 MHz FSBs; the earlier ones all supported 1067 MHz
FSBs. A good thing about that mobo was the ALC888 codec on such an
inexpensive product.

Alas, one can go WAY overboard on selecting a mobo with all the "right"
options, only to discover that it is unhackable.

Then it is back to a GA-EP45-DS3R for something which always seems to work.

Sent for my DC7900 CMT Q45/ICH10-D0 under 10.8.2 with only FakeSMC and
PXHDC in /E/E. D2D E8400. 8400GS 512MB DDR3.

[mosslack]

Certainly nothing wrong with that, I love a bargain. I tried to find that post about a successful install using your motherboard using Snow OSX, but I couldn't find it. 

[pete...@cruzio.com]

> In doing some further reading on this subject, I've seen the southbridge
> mentioned as ICH9, ICH9A ICH9 SATA and ICH9R. I would think this has
> something to do with why some can see the SATA drives from within OS X
> while other versions can't.
>
> Peter knows a lot about the differences, perhaps he can shed some light on
> this.

I once thought I did ... j/k.

The real wildcard is the ICH7, which comes in 2 port models, 4 port models
and RAID models.

The ICH9 is a really cool ICH, which basically comes in 4-port models
(ICH9) or 6 port models with RAID (ICH9R), but also comes in a special
4-port model (ICH9-D0) with 4 internal ports and no AHCI, and which is
used on the DC7800.

The ICH10 is a really cool ICH, which basically comes in 6-port models
(ICH10), but also comes in a special 5-port model (ICH10-D0) with 4
internal ports and 1 external port, and which is used on the DC7900.

Other than the ICHs which were intended for laptops, of which there were
several, an ICH7/9/10 should be about the same, as long as either: 1) the
BIOS supports ACHI, or 2) the AppleIntelPIIX2ATA kext plug-in to the
IOATAFamily kext is used to allow IDE-appearing SATA devices to be seen as
if they were ACHI.

I suspect this approach is useful for more than just the DC7800, for which
it is mandatory, as there is no ACHI option in the BIOS.

[Liam Proven]

On 17 November 2012 16:42, mosslack <hackin...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Certainly nothing wrong with that, I love a bargain. I tried to find that
> post about a successful install using your motherboard using Snow OSX, but I
> couldn't find it.
>

Well, I'm now downloading SnowOSX as well, just in case...

I must admit, not staying on top of the Hackintosh scene, I though
that custom distros went out with 10.6 and the SOP was a boot-enabler
followed by a driver disk. I guess I was wrong!

[mosslack]

Since retail installs have become easier, the distros are not used so much anymore, but are still around. About the only time I use one is when a retail install presents a problem and then I only use the distro to troubleshoot the retail install such as we did with the DC7800. It's lack of AHCI was very similar to the problem you are having.

[Liam Proven]

On 17 November 2012 17:17, mosslack <hackin...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> Since retail installs have become easier, the distros are not used so much
> anymore, but are still around. About the only time I use one is when a
> retail install presents a problem and then I only use the distro to
> troubleshoot the retail install such as we did with the DC7800. It's lack of
> AHCI was very similar to the problem you are having.

Well, I tried 'em both. No joy.

iAtkos installed fine, no problems, but on the 1st reboot, it came up
with the "no entry" symbol again.

SnowOSX also installed fine, but on the 1st reboot, kernel panicked
almost instantly - in under a second, before the spinner appeared.

I think I'll save up & buy a Mac mini. :¬(

[mosslack]

On Nov 18, 2012, at 4:42 PM, Liam Proven wrote:

On 17 November 2012 17:17, mosslack <hackin...@gmail.com> wrote:

Since retail installs have become easier, the distros are not used so much

anymore, but are still around. About the only time I use one is when a

retail install presents a problem and then I only use the distro to

troubleshoot the retail install such as we did with the DC7800. It's lack of

AHCI was very similar to the problem you are having.

Well, I tried 'em both. No joy.

iAtkos installed fine, no problems, but on the 1st reboot, it came up
with the "no entry" symbol again.

Just curious, did you have to boot via the iAtKOS DVD or did you boot via iBoot?

SnowOSX also installed fine, but on the 1st reboot, kernel panicked
almost instantly - in under a second, before the spinner appeared.

I think I'll save up & buy a Mac mini. :¬(

--
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Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 • Cell: +44 7939-087884

Never actually tried SnowOSX even though I downloaded it once. 

[Liam Proven]

On 18 November 2012 23:36, mosslack <hackin...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Just curious, did you have to boot via the iAtKOS DVD or did you boot via
> iBoot?

Directly off the iAtkos DVD.

> SnowOSX also installed fine, but on the 1st reboot, kernel panicked
> almost instantly - in under a second, before the spinner appeared.
>

> Never actually tried SnowOSX even though I downloaded it once.

It looked cleaner and less mucked-about-with than iAtkos, which has
custom graphics and bootscreens and wallpapers and so on.

But since neither worked, it's kinda academic...

[mosslack]

On Nov 18, 2012, at 7:12 PM, Liam Proven wrote:

On 18 November 2012 23:36, mosslack <hackin...@gmail.com> wrote:

Just curious, did you have to boot via the iAtKOS DVD or did you boot via

iBoot?

Directly off the iAtkos DVD.

What options did you choose when you did the install? You should have chosen at least this option:

Under Drivers>Main Hardware>SATA/IDE: Select Non-AHCI SATA

I should have mentioned this, but it's been awhile since I did the install on the DC7800

SnowOSX also installed fine, but on the 1st reboot, kernel panicked

almost instantly - in under a second, before the spinner appeared.

Never actually tried SnowOSX even though I downloaded it once.

It looked cleaner and less mucked-about-with than iAtkos, which has
custom graphics and bootscreens and wallpapers and so on.

But since neither worked, it's kinda academic...


--
Liam Proven • Profile: http://lproven.livejournal.com/profile
Email: lpr...@cix.co.uk • GMail/G+/Twitter/Flickr/Facebook: lproven
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[mosslack]

On Nov 18, 2012, at 7:12 PM, Liam Proven wrote:

On 18 November 2012 23:36, mosslack <hackin...@gmail.com> wrote:

Just curious, did you have to boot via the iAtKOS DVD or did you boot via

iBoot?

Directly off the iAtkos DVD.

It might be a good idea to read the DC7800 iAtKOS guide to get a general idea of how to do this install. It's not necessary to boot from the DVD after the initial install, the bootloader is installed when OS X is installed. You may need to select a different option for sound and network, but the Non-AHCI SATA option is the thing which is needed to keep from getting the Still waiting for root device error.

[hackintosh1x]

On Sunday, November 18, 2012 8:02:43 PM UTC-5, hackintosh1x wrote:

On Nov 18, 2012, at 7:12 PM, Liam Proven wrote:

On 18 November 2012 23:36, mosslack <hackin...@gmail.com> wrote:

Just curious, did you have to boot via the iAtKOS DVD or did you boot via

iBoot?

Directly off the iAtkos DVD.

It might be a good idea to read the DC7800 iAtKOS guide to get a general idea of how to do this install. It's not necessary to boot from the DVD after the initial install, the bootloader is installed when OS X is installed. You may need to select a different option for sound and network, but the Non-AHCI SATA option is the thing which is needed to keep from getting the Still waiting for root device error.

Sorry, my brain is mush today. I've been watching TV all day and that is not good. Here is the link to the guide:

 https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zt8ScR3_jyv4c9drbN1LN3NJsG7JKr7EpgdYXr_lXJM/edit

It's for the Lion version, but it should be similar for the Snow Leopard version of iAtKOS.

[Kris Tilford]

On Nov 18, 2012, at 5:36 PM, mosslack wrote:

>> iAtkos installed fine, no problems, but on the 1st reboot, it came up
>> with the "no entry" symbol again.

This is what I consider to be "normal" for most hacks I've done.

You need to be a little more persistent.

Few hacks install seamlessly and boot first time.

As I've already posted, the problem you're experiencing with iATKOS S3
is that the DVD boots into 10.5.6 and installs 10.6.3.

Normally a Snow Leopard installation will require extra tweaking
before it can boot without panic. For example, most Snow Leopard
installations require a patched DSDT file. This file normally isn't
created during the installation process, and must be added or created
later. You can often find patched DSDT files for download on the
internet, but these should match your BIOS version exactly, and you
should normally be using the most recent BIOS, or in your case, the
most recent patched BIOS.

You'd probably be better off trying to install a Leopard 10.5 System
first since 10.5 doesn't require much extra tweaking and often boots
first time. There's even an iPC 10.5.6 Live DVD similar to the Ubuntu
Live DVDs that will often boot a completely functional 10.5.6 System
from DVD. I'd suggest trying to install iATKOS V7 10.5.7 System first,
and once you get a bootable system, use this system to repair your
Snow Leopard installation until it's bootable.

The troubleshooting process always requires that you use verbose boot
flag so you can see what the problem is in order to fix it.

If you can't install OS X, it's also possible to repair an
installation from within WinXP if you have MacDrive installed.

For PCs that will boot the iPC 10.5.6 Live DVD, it can be invaluable
for repairing installations from within a working OS X System.

[pete...@cruzio.com]

Show Leopard on generally requires a custom DSDT.

If done properly the first time, this DSDT may be used again on Lion and
on Mountain Lion.

Around the time of SL, a lot of kexts came out which were supposed to get
around the problems inherent in certain DSDT device, such as RTC and HPET.

But, others generally require changes as well.