Snow Leopard Retail Install on Asus P6T Deluxe V2

Intro: This guide is basically pulling together bits and pieces from a hundred different things I read in the process of figuring this out, but I do believe I now have a good, clean method of installing Snow Leopard a432 (retail edition) on my hardware. This should work with most similar hardware configurations, just be aware that I've written the audio/ethernet/graphics section specifically for the P6T Deluxe V2 and my graphics card. My setup:

Asus P6T Deluxe V2
Intel Core i7 920 @ 3.3ghz
nVidia GTS 250
1gb WD SATA drive

*note before beginning: I use the terms "copy" and "move" interchangeably; I'm not being specific.
**other note: Since you will be doing all of the setup from a drive/OS other than the 10.6 installation you're installing, keep in mind that "/System/Library/Extensions" is on your current system, while "/Volumes/Snow/System/Library/Extensions" is the Snow Leopard drive. Just make sure you're not accidentally doing anything to your own system throughout the guide.


I. Installing Snow Leopard

This can be done a variety of ways, all we're trying to do is get a clean retail installation of SL onto a fresh disk/partition. Since I have a MacBook Pro and an external SATA enclosure, I just attached my drive to the laptop and installed straight from the disc, so that is what I will describe. If you have multiple internal drives you could copy the retail DVD to a drive and run the installer from there, or run it straight from the disc onto the drive you'll be installing on, whatever. All you need to end up with is a hard drive with a clean 10.6 install on it.

a. Connect USB SATA drive to Mac

b. Open Disk Utility. Select the USB drive in the sidebar and erase/reformat it, I used Mac OS X Extended (Journaled). In this guide I will assume the name of the drive is "Snow." Ensure that the Partition Map Scheme is GUID. If it's not, click the "Partition" tab and setup a single partition (or more, if you desire, one is easiest though) with GUID.

c. IMPORTANT: Once the reformat/partitioning is complete, go to "Get Info" on the drive and look toward the bottom. Unlock the "Sharing & Permissions" section and uncheck "Ignore Ownership."

d. To run the installer, open Terminal and enter the following:


* This assumes you're running it straight from the disc. If this is not the case (for instance if you made a .dmg of the disc and then restored it to a separate drive/partition), amend the file path appropriately.

e. Click through the install dialogue, click "Customize" and deselect printer driver, additional fonts, additional languages that you don't want. Let the install go, should take around 15-20 minutes.


II. Installing Bootloader and DSDT patch

a. Download this pack of useful materials that I have generously put together: click

b. Run the Chameleon installer (Chameleon-2-1.0-r431.pkg) and be sure to change the install location to the drive you just put 10.6 on.

c. Run this in terminal:


* Remember to change the above path if your 10.6 drive is not called "Snow"

d. From the download pack, move "boot" to the root directory of your Snow drive. (The last step was deleting the old one, you're just replacing it with one that will work.)

e. Copy "dsdt.aml" from the download pack to the root directory of your Snow drive, but only if you have the same motherboard/cpu setup as me. If not, or if you encounter weird problems later, use the DSDT patcher GUI (also in download pack). To use that, just open the app, choose "Darwin/Mac OS X," check "Apple DSDT Patch to:", select your 10.6 drive from the drop-down, and hit "Run DSDT Patcher."


III. Kexts and smbios

a. Open the folder "Kexts" in the download pack and copy them all to /Snow/Extra/Extensions. You can also throw in any kexts I didn't include that you know you will need, if you're using different hardware.

b. Put "Kext Utility" (from the download pack) in Applications, your dock, wherever, and drag the folder /Snow/Extra/Extensions onto it. This will repair the kext permissions and create a new Extensions.mkext file.

c. Move "smbios.plist" from the download pack into /Snow/Extra.


IV. Ethernet fix (only for Asus P6T's Yukon 88E8056)

a. Open up Terminal, enter the following:



Find <key>Yukon-88E8053</key> and make it <key>Yukon-88E8056</key> (change 53 to 56)
Find <string>0x436211AB</string> and make it <string>0x436411AB</string></key> (change 62 to 64)
Find <string>Yukon Gigabit Adapter 88E8053 Singleport Copper SA</string> and make it <string>Yukon Gigabit Adapter 88E8056 Singleport Copper SA</string> (change 53 to 56)

Hit ctrl + o and then enter to save the file, then ctrl + x to exit nano.


AT THIS POINT YOU SHOULD BE ABLE TO RESTART, SEE THE LOVELY CHAMELEON BOOTLOADER SCREEN, SELECT YOUR LEOPARD DRIVE, AND BOOT TO IT. If you don't see the lovely Chameleon bootloader screen make sure you're booting to the proper drive/partition, etc. If you encounter strange error(s) while booting, enter "-v" on the chameleon screen (just type it and it will show up on the bottom, then hit enter to boot) and see what it reports.

Edit: at this point you should be doing the last couple steps from your new Snow Leopard system, not from the remote system. Cleverly, we fixed ethernet before the first boot, so that should work.

V. Graphics fix

Props to Aquamac for his work on this. I'm just reposting his instructions here for convenience.

a. Download the necessary files for your nVidia graphics card (I'm not sure what to do for ATI cards, look around) from this page (the one in the download pack is for GTS 250): click

b. Copy the two files you downloaded (gfxutil and in.plist) to your desktop.
c. Enter this in Terminal:



You'll get something like this returned: PciRoot(0x1)/Pci(0xe,0x0)/Pci(0x0,0x0)

d. Copy that string, open "in.plist", and replace the provided string with the one you copied. Save in.plist.

e. Back in the same Terminal window, do this:



f. A file called "out.plist" has appeared, magically, it seems, on your Desktop. Open it in a text editor and copy the string (or memorize it).

g. Open "/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.Boot.plist" in a text editor, and add some lines at the bottom before </dict></plist>:


*Stick your own screen resolution in there so system startup looks nice.

h. Save that file, or if it won't let you, save it under a different name somewhere else, delete the original, and copy the new one over (with the same name as the original, com.apple.Boot.plist).

i. Also put the new com.apple.Boot.plist in /Volumes/Snow/Extra/.


VI. Sound Fix

a. Terminal:



b. From the downloaded package, drag "VoodooHDA.kext" to Kext Utility, it will install it.

That's all.

Run Kext Utility again to make sure all permissions are set right, restart, and you should have working graphics and sound. Only the line-out works and not my front headphone jack, but this is the best I could do. If anyone gets it fully working let us know. Also I can't get IDE devices to show up even with the AppleIntelPIIXATA.kext, if someone figures that out I'd love to know.


Good luck.


- wziard