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Foxconn p45a-s Works perfectly

trlla

By trlla,
in OSx86 10.5 (Leopard)

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trlla
trlla
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**UPDATE**

 

Looks like I have found some interest on trying to get Snow Leopard to work. Here is what works as of now.

 

  • Same bios settings as below.
  • Download EMPIRE legacy bootloader and burn with IMG BURN
  • Buy Snow Leopard retail from Some Big Box store.
  • Load Empire Boot disk with -v arch=i386

I will update my progress later. Please feel free to send my your suggestions.

 

 

 

 

 

I thought I would contribute what works perfectly for me

 

 

I have a fully working hackintosh with the 10.5.6 updates.

 

Foxconn P45a-s ( ethernet works right out of box. sound needs alc888 kext))

Quad core q6600 (overclocked to 3.13 )

Sapphire 3870 (qeci works perfectly both monitors)

8 gigs of gskill (voltage upped to 1.9v)

1 500gb maxtor hd ( for operating system)

2 500gb western digatal (Raid 0)

1 500gb western digital MY BOOK (for time machine backup)

Hp dvd1070 sata

Tuniq tower for cooling

Cooler master ( cant remeber the model name)

Apple keyboard and mouse

 

 

The most important thing to do is get the bios setting right.

Make sure that C1E is disabled

Virtualization is turned off

AHCI is enabled

CPUID max is disabled

*edit*

Also make sure disabled bit is enabled

 

Next use the boot 132 loader and install the retail DVD. In safe mode install the 3800 series kext for video. Once installed go ahead an install all of the updates since the ethernet works. Next install chameleon. The the next thing to do is battle the drivers. install the EP43_ds3l_sound driver, Install legacy kexts for ich10 support. And there you have it . Time machine works, Sleep works great, video is fully supported, FCP works great also. Audio works, Front row. I have had no problem thus far.

 

Here are my scores from geekbench

 

http://browse.geekbench.ca/geekbench2/view/104295

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geekusmaximus
geekusmaximus
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Awesome! Thank you so, so much! ^_^ Strange, I was aware of that thread but I missed that link somehow (?).

 

I just finished doing the mod of the BIOS myself using some references that I found here. Burned to a CD and was about to hit the enter key to flash it. I was nervous about bricking my motherboard, so I made one last check here and there was your post! LOL.

 

I'm going to pay around with it over the next couple of nights and let you know the outcome. I planning on doing a "retail Leopard install". I had great success doing one using a Gigabyte P35 board following the instructions that I found here:

 

http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.as...p;enterthread=y

 

I might take you up on getting the other kexts if I run into trouble. Thanks again!

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trlla
trlla
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My retail install worked great.. I forgot which boot132 loader i used.... all I remeber is that it had the leaops skin design on the boot page. I also flashed mine with the foxconn utility program. Good luck. :)

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geekusmaximus
geekusmaximus
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I was able to get installed and to boot up. Flashing the BIOS ended up being a major PITA. Since I was running Vista x64, I couldn't use the Foxconn utility. Bart's Bootable CDROM method won't work either (?). Finally, I was able to flash the BIOS using a USB Thumb Stick. Once I got past flashing the BIOS, OS X installed easily. I didn't have a chance to do much more than boot it up and make sure the internet is working. But I did notice that I have no sound and no sound devices were recognized. What kexts did you use to get your audio to work? Thanks!

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trlla
trlla
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I could give you the kext for the 10.5.4-10.5.5......However when you update to 10.5.6 it does not work.

 

Try this one http://forum.insanelymac.com/lofiversion/i...hp/t141389.html. This is the one that worked for me.

 

Personally I would first update to 10.5.6 first before you do anything

 

Also make sure you don't install nothing else but the ALC888 driver.

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geekusmaximus
geekusmaximus
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Just to give a heads up to anyone reading this. I ran into problems last night with my install. The initial install went smoothly, as did the update to 10.5.6. Internet seemed to be working fine. I tested it by going to speakeasy.net and running the speed test.

 

Then I continued by following the post install instructions from here:

 

http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.as...p;enterthread=y

 

Sometime later, I tried copying files from another one of my local servers. It would start copying, but after a few meg, it would stop and hang on the copy. The system wouldn't lock up, just the copy. It would time out after a while. This was consistent.

 

I assumed there must be some problem with the lan kexts or perhaps the sound or ICH10 kexts that I had installed had screwed something up. Frustrated, I did a complete re-install using iDeneb 10.5.5 to see if I'd have the same problem. I did.

 

To make a long story short, running the "aboutthismac.pkg" in Tools folder of the BOOT123.zip was screwing up my lan somehow. Apparently, iDeneb uses this same package or does something similar. After installing just the vanilla retail 10.5 and the 10.5.6 updates everything worked great. Ran the "abouthismac" installer and it broke my lan.

 

trlla, did you do anything to get your "About this Mac" to show up correctly? I wouldn't really care, but I don't think Netflix streaming will work correctly without this being set to an INTEL cpu (ErrorCode: 8151). At least, that's what I concluded from a previous install that I had done.

 

Strangely, after re-installing only the 10.5 and the 10.5.6 update, I noticed that my sound was working (?). I could have sworn that no output devices were showing up in the preferences the first time I installed w/o running the installer that you suggested. I completely wiped the partition and re-installed. Don't understand it, but I'm happy about it. :)

 

However, I really want digital out (via coax) to work and although, I can select it in the preferences, it doesn't seem to work. Anyone have any suggestions? trlla, do you know if digital out works for you?

 

Thanks!

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geekusmaximus
geekusmaximus
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OK. I was mistaken. The aboutthismac is not causing issues my lan. Even with just the base 10.5 install this is happening. This is a real drag and a show stopper if I can't come up with a work around :blowup: Have you tried copying any large files to your hackintosh? I hate to keep asking for your help... but do you remember where you got your BOOT123 from? Maybe it has different kexts in it than mine. Other possibilites might be that my LG Blu-ray drive or my IDE drive (that has Vista on it) is somehow causing this issue.

 

A note on the sound. The sound devices didn't show up after the initial 10.5 install, but did show up after the update to 10.5.6. So it might be unnecessary to add the legacy kexts for motherboard. Although like I said, I'm still having trouble with getting anything from digital out. Doing the command "system_profiler" in the terminal window reveals that it expects the digital out to be optical, instead of coax. Perhaps, there is some way to change this and get it to work (?).

 

As always thanks for your help!

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geekusmaximus
geekusmaximus
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Wow. I did some testing with the previous two hackintoshes that I built. All three of my hackintoshes have major LAN/ethernet issues. One was built around the Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L, considered to be highly compatible with OS X. I followed the retail guide (I've posted the link previously in this thread) practically to the letter and used a retail version of OS X (10.5). The other is AMD box that uses an ABIT KN8 board and I installed iDeneb 10.5.5 on it. Both of these have similar dismal transfer rates. I tried copying a 1 GIG file between 2 Windows machines on my network. It copied in about 2 mins. Copying the same file from the same machine to one of my hackintoshes took about a hour! What is going on here?!

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geekusmaximus
geekusmaximus
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This network problem is just bizarre. On the "retail install" thread, I read about another poster experiencing the same problem of slow LAN speeds with the GA-P35-DS3L. He picked up a $9 RTL8169 PCI card and that resolved his problem. I tried the same approach even using the identical card (Trendnet 1G) and I still have the exact same problem.

 

I rebuilt my BOOT123 CD using SlimBuild, deleting the IONetworkingFamily and RealtekR1000 kexts. Rebooted using the new BOOT123 CD and installed the RealTek 8169 driver using RealTek installer. I think that I was successful in using the new driver, but the result was the same.

 

Now, here's a really odd thing. On my AMD box, with the ABIT KN8 board and iDeneb, I have the same problem: copying a 1G file takes a hour. On this box, I have VMWare Fusion setup using a "bridged" network connection. Copying that same file within XP running in Fusion, only takes 8 minutes! Somebody please help! I am so frustrated! :(

 

Might be time to start a new thread on this issue. BTW, trlla, did you have a chance to try out your digital out?

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trlla
trlla
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Im not sure if this helps. Did you try to raise the MTU size for larger packets? By default on my setup it was at like 1500. I set mine to 4500.

 

Also, the coax on mine is not working either. I will do some more reasearch to see if there is a solution to the problem.

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geekusmaximus
geekusmaximus
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I haven't tried changing the MTU size, however, I did make some interesting discoveries. One, my hackintosh has a 1G ethernet while the Windows box I was testing with only has a 100mbit port. When talking to a Windows box with a 1G ethernet, the problem is not nearly as pronounced. I should mention that my testing discussed below was with my gigabyte board, not my foxconn board, and using a new RTL8169 card instead of the onboard RTL8111. That said, I suspect that results with the foxconn will at least be similar.

 

Here's some approx stats from memory (transferring a 1G file). When copying the file from a 100mbit box, using Windows it took about 2 minutes, using OS X an hour (!). When copying the file from a 1G box, using Windows, it took less than 1 minute, using OS X about 4 minutes.

 

So I started messing around with different kexts, trying to find one that doesn't show these slows downs. As I mentioned in my last post, none of this made any difference when talking with the 100mbit box. However, when talking with a 1G Windows box, the difference was noticable when using the official RealTek driver. Using this driver, copying the 1G file took less than 1 minute, the same amount of time it took under Windows, a 4 fold speed increase.

 

I'm messing around with SlimBuild to create a new BOOT123 CD and need to do some testing on my Foxconn board. If I'm successful, I will post my BOOT123 CD somewhere for you to use if you want to try it out.

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geekusmaximus
geekusmaximus
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EUREKA! :) All of my problems with the Foxconn using the onboard ethernet are fixed (well other than transfers with a 100 mbit box)! Here's a link to my custom BOOT123 disk:

 

http://rapidshare.com/files/192199468/SlimBuild-Preboot.iso

 

This has a special version of the IONetworkingFamily.kext (which has a plugin with the official RealTek drivers). The other RealTek kexts have been deleted. This also includes the memory fix (AppleSMBIOSEFI.text). I didn't include the ICH10 kexts or the legacy sound kexrts since I don't think they are needed for 10.5.6. Basically, install and update to 10.5.6. Boot up with this CD. Run the abouthismac package and that's it! You are fully functional and good to go! (At least, until I find another issue - knock on wood! :D ). Special thanks to trlla for all his help!

 

My only issue is digital out at this point, but I've come a l-o-n-g way.

 

If you have a Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L (or similar), this BOOT123 CD should work better than the others floating around as well. Cheers.

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geekusmaximus
geekusmaximus
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Bummer. My BOOT123 might fix my sound issues, but it screws up the System Profiler (the current CPU in reported in About This Mac, but an error is returned when you click on Hardware in the System Profiler). I need this to be correct, so I stream Netflix's Watch Instantly movies. Back to the drawing board ;)

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geekusmaximus
geekusmaximus
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No big deal. Apparently, deleting all of AppleRTL*Ethernet.kexts was causing the problem. Deleting just the RealtekR1000.kext and replacing the IONetworkingFamily.kext (with the official Realtek plugin) did the trick (ethernet works as it should and the system profile info shows up OK). I loaded the correct BOOT123 and corrected the link in my previous post.

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designlord
designlord
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Hey Guys!

 

Nice work with this board!! Maybe you can offer some insight?

 

Initially I was unable to even install using Kalyway_10.5.2_DVD_Intel_Amd and I would get the PANIC (CPU0 caller 0x5a248b4): "ACPI_SMC_PlatformPlugin::buildCPUSPSSArray - got - PSS - data... etc". After playing around I disabled all CPU configuration settings except Execute Disable Bit which was set to enabled. From here I installed just fine and I tried a few different kernels and options but I still halt on boot at this:

 

MAC Framework successfully initialized

using 10485 buffer headers and 4096 cluster IO buffer headers

 

I have read this is from not modding your BIOS, but before I do this I have found the posts below. I also plan to get retail copy of the new 10.5.6 once I confirm I can run it on this system.

 

This appears to be BIOS related from all the posts on the Forum. So I have read through nearly all the OSX86 on Intel P45 chipset posts and near the end I came across these post by BitRip:

 

Nov 27 2008, 01:07 PM

 

"Hey Folks,

 

I'm not doing so much with bios modding anymore because of the great solution from Mackerintel, Chameleon and Fassl to have a bootloader with DSDT override, so the biosmod is not needed anymore. Great work!

 

Because some people are still doing it "the old" way and I was in a good mood I modded the latest bios for P5Q3. ;-)

 

I don't have time to do all your requests. Sorry.

 

Good luck with this one!"

 

Jan 4 2009, 10:02 AM

 

"Allthough it's not needed anymore to have modded BIOS with 10.5.6 and/or Chameleon Bootloader with DSDT override (or Netkas EFI v9), people are still asking for BIOS mods.

So ok, for those people here is my modded BIOS 1702 for the P5Q3 Deluxe/WiFi.

 

Good luck again."

 

Have either of you had any luck running w/o modding your BIOS using a bootloader with DSDT override, and what about running 10.5.6? Also, I'm running a Radeon 4850 which I know is not supported and I'll buy a supported video card once I know I can run the system. Given it installed, and I expect should run in VESA 3 mode at least, could my issue be the video card?

 

Thanks guys!

 

Foxconn P45A-S LGA 775 Intel P45 ATX

-Chipset: Intel® P45 + ICH10R

-Realtek RTL8168/8111 Family PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet NIC (NDIS 6.0)

-Realtek ALC888GR 7.1 channel HDA

Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Kentsfield 2.4GHz LGA 775

Mushkin 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400

Radeon 4850

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geekusmaximus
geekusmaximus
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The problem that you are having is indeed from not having a modded BIOS. I'm not familiar with these newer bootloaders with DSDT override. It might be interesting to try one of these newer bootloaders, but frankly, I getting exhausted trying to get everything to work (I'm having bluetooth problems currently), so I'm probably not going to re-install the original BIOS and experiment with this.

 

I don't see a downside of flashing the modded BIOS and going down our proven path. You can always re-flash it with the original once you get things working (but like me, you probably won't want to). After modding my BIOS, I was able to get iDeneb 10.5.5 to load successfully. I didn't do any extensive testing with it, but it will install and is at least, partially, if not fully functional. You can try that first, if you want, before laying down cash for the retail version.

 

Your video card should work fine. I initially installed with a 4870. You just won't get Quartz Extreme or Core Image. The implications of this are you won't be able to play DVDs, VMWare Fusion won't work and others, but for most things, it will probably work fine. Good luck!

 

trlla,

 

Have you tried Bluetooth? I've run into issues with this on both my Foxconn and my Gigabyte Hackintoshes. Both have similar problems. They will detect the Bluetooth device, but after entering the passcode, the pairing fails. It work fine on my AMD box with iDeneb 10.5.5.

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