dougaa

Once when I woke up from the screen saver, I saw something like that happen, but so far it's just been that one isolated incident. I think when the BIOS detects it was not rebooted in a normal way, it makes extra checks and takes longer to restart. I think if the BIOS detected a serious problem, it would revert its settings to safe defaults, or maybe previous settings that worked. That might happen for unstable overclocking. Your BIOS settings look ok to me. As far as I know, you could go back to BIOS F5 if you wanted to. I could never get El Capitan to work on my machine with Chameleon. I'm using Clover now with El Capitan, and except for that one incident it's been very stable. I'm still working on getting the best Clover configuration. It seems a little overwhelming compared to Chameleon. Right now I feel like I'm lucky that I found a configuration that works, rather than really understanding all the settings. But it definitely is working well.

I've been getting experience with Clover, and it's clearly a better choice than Chameleon. I'm about to start using Clover with the GA-Z97X-UD7 TH. When I have it working, I'll create a new topic for using El Capitan and Clover. I also now have information about iMac15,1 which I'll try to use. To use the SATA Info.plist that I posted, get a copy of AHCIPortInjector.kext, and replace Info.plist in it with the one that I posted. Although I haven't tested it, I'd expect that to work with Clover. It would be an alternative to having Clover do injection. I use a DOS-formatted USB stick, and copy the firmware file onto it, such as Z97XU7TH.F6. Q-Flash seems to only find USB drives that are connected to rear motherboard connectors. As long as I use those, I haven't had a problem. An alternative would be to create a DOS bootable USB drive, copy Efiflash.exe and the firmware onto it, and run Efiflash. I think I had to do that for a BIOS update that was incompatible with Q-Flash. I don't remember if it was this motherboard, or another Gigabyte one. I've never tried to do an update using Windows.

Yes, I've attached them. They were generated as I described in post #1. The DSDT is for the current BIOS version, F6. i7-4790K SSDT.zip Z97X-UD7 TH F6 DSDT.zip

In the BIOS, have you disabled VT-d? Have you tried booting in safe mode?

Did you build your computer, and did you do any tests to make sure the hardware is working properly? If a straightforward install of Ubuntu (or another linux) doesn't work, there's probably some hardware problem you'll have to solve first. With linux installed, you could run memtest86+ to test the memory, and that's also a pretty good test of the machine as a whole. I always run it for a while after building a new machine. You can also make a memtest86+ boot disk or USB stick, and run it standalone. For OS X, make sure VT-D is disabled in the BIOS, as I wrote above.

I've seen something similar happen with Firewire if an external drive overheats in it's enclosure. The drive stops responding rather than not work correctly. But a few gig is nothing at all. With Firewire, the Finder recovers if I unplug the cable. If you could reproduce the problem with a real Mac with Thunderbolt, you could get support from OWC.

I did some experimenting with Thunderbolt, and have it working after a fashion. In the BIOS, I set the Thunderbolt Security Level to "Legacy Mode", as many have recommended. I also disabled Wake from Thunderbolt Devices. Initially, Thunderbolt didn't work at all. Then I tried the "Windows" solution I'd read about. I installed Windows 7 on a second drive, and included the drivers from Gigabyte for the chipset and for Thunderbolt. I tested with this adapter: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00LOLBBQQ/, and installed the driver from Kanex for it. The adapter worked in Windows, and when I went back to Yosemite, it worked in Yosemite as well. It continued to work when I removed the Windows disk. Even with Thunderbolt working, System Profiler still shows no Thunderbolt drivers loaded. The functions of the adapter show up as if I had installed PCI cards for them. Also, hotplug doesn't work. The adapter must be connected at boot time. I noticed that Yosemite doesn't explicitly support the motherboard's 9 Series chipset (that's why AHCIPortInjector is needed for Intel AHCI.) That support may be added in the next version of OS X, and there's a chance it would make Thunderbolt work better.

Hi, for sound I sorted of cheated. For my builds, I've been using this USB sound device: http://www.amazon.com/Behringer-UCA202-Audio-Interface/dp/B000KW2YEI It's not overly expensive, and it's great, because you can plug it into any OS X machine and it just works. I'm sure it doesn't meet everyone's needs, but for me it's fine. I'll be experimenting with the built-in sound, and will use it if I can get it to work in a straightforward way. But with the USB device as an option, sound isn't a high priority for me. I also plan to try out Clover, I guess it's the way of the future. But I started with Chameleon because I'm very familiar with it. I've been reading that getting Thunderbolt to work requires running Windows with the Thunderbolt drivers installed one time. The speculation is that the Windows drivers do some kind of hardware configuration or setup that then allows Thunderbolt to work with OS X as well. But so far I have no idea whether that's correct or not. People are also saying that when Thunderbolt works, for a device to be recognized it must be connected and on at boot time.

I recently did a new install of Yosemite on a Gigabyte GA-Z97X TH motherboard, and with an i7-4790K CPU. I've been doing hackintosh installs for many years, and this was basically the same as previous installs. However there are few gotchas and things to be aware of. I found these on the internet in various places, and these notes put them all in one place. This is not a detailed guide, but notes for somewhat experienced people. BIOS Settings Before starting, I upgraded to the current BIOS, F5. I started with the optimized defaults, and found only one critical BIOS setting. Under BIOS Features, the VT-d setting must be disabled. When it was enabled, no matter what I did, Yosemite would only boot in safe mode. AppleThunderboltNHI.kext This kext is not necessary to use Thunderbolt. However, when it's present, it causes a 40-second or so pause during boot. Remove it from /System/Library/Extensions (I moved it to /disabled_extensions) and rebuild the kext cache. Chameleon I used Chameleon, but got frequent immediate boot errors with the latest release. This is fixed in a recent version, and the errors disappeared after I built and installed Chameleon r2670. DSDT No DSDT changes are necessary, however I like to have a DSDT I can modify. To decompile the DSDT to something I could compile, I found that I had to provide as input to iasl both DSDT.aml and SSDT5.aml. I obtained those from linux. After that there were only two changes to get the DSDT to compile. I removed all the "zero" lines starting around line 7304. Also, I removed the line "Arg0" around line 14823 in "Method (ADBG, 1, Serialized)". SSDT Creating an SSDT with ssdtPRGen worked well. I used version 15.6. Networking The open source AppleIntelE1000e kext works well for the built-in Intel ethernet. HD 4600 Graphics I'd never done an install before using the integrated graphics. All I had to do to get that working was to add these lines to org.chameleon.Boot.plist: <key>IntelAzulFB</key> <string>10</string> smbios and FakeSMC config I decided to configure my install as an iMac14,2. iMac15,1 would be closer, but there's very little information available so far for iMac15,1, and iMac14,2 is also a Haswell Mac. I found enough information to make an accurate smbios.plist for iMac14,2. These are the values I found: <key>SMbiosversion</key> <string>IM142.88Z.0118.B00.1309031249</string> <key>SMboardproduct</key> <string>Mac-27ADBB7B4CEE8E61</string> <key>SMfamily</key> <string>iMac</string> <key>SMproductname</key> <string>iMac14,2</string> (You'll also need to generate an appropriate serial number.) Also, in FakeSMC, I changed the SMC version to 2.15f2 and the SMC name to smc-huronriver in Info.plist: <key>REV </key> <array> <string>{rev</string> <data> AhUPAAAC </data> </array> <key>RVBF</key> <array> <string>{rev</string> <data> AhUPAAAC </data> </array> <key>RVUF</key> <array> <string>{rev</string> <data> AhUPAAAC </data> </array> and <key>smc-compatible</key> <string>smc-huronriver</string> SpeedStep I was pleasantly surprised to discover that at this point SpeedStep appeared to be working. MSRDumper showed me speeds of 8, 40, and 44. It's possible to get more speeds between 40 and 44 by changing the BIOS multipliers, but adding those reduced the GeekBench 3 score. With 8, 40, and 44, my 64-bit score is 17,694. Cosmetic Changes System Profiler was showing my CPU as a Xeon. That appears to be due to a bug in Chameleon r2670. A workaround is to hard-code the brand string in libsaio/cpu.c: p->CPU.BrandString[47] = '\0'; // DBG("Brandstring = %s\n", p->CPU.BrandString); } strlcpy(p->CPU.BrandString, "Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4790K CPU @ 4.00GHz", 48); //char *vendor = p->CPU.cpuid_vendor; switch (p->CPU.Vendor){ case CPUID_VENDOR_INTEL: where the strlcpy line is added as line 400. Also, both the Intel and Marvell SATA controllers were showing up as generic AHCI devices. That can be fixed with a modified version of AHCIPortInjector.kext. Here is the replacement Info.plist: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd"> <plist version="1.0"> <dict> <key>CFBundleDevelopmentRegion</key> <string>English</string> <key>CFBundleIdentifier</key> <string>org.chameleon.plist.AHCIPortInjector</string> <key>CFBundleInfoDictionaryVersion</key> <string>6.0</string> <key>CFBundleName</key> <string>AHCI Chipsets Injector</string> <key>CFBundlePackageType</key> <string>KEXT</string> <key>CFBundleSignature</key> <string>????</string> <key>CFBundleVersion</key> <string>1.0.0</string> <key>IOKitPersonalities</key> <dict> <key>Intel9SeriesAHCI</key> <dict> <key>CFBundleIdentifier</key> <string>com.apple.driver.AppleAHCIPort</string> <key>Chipset Name</key> <string>9 Series Chipset</string> <key>IOClass</key> <string>AppleIntelPchSeriesAHCI</string> <key>IONameMatch</key> <array> <string>pci8086,8c82</string> <string>pci8086,8c83</string> </array> <key>IOProbeScore</key> <integer>2000</integer> <key>IOProviderClass</key> <string>IOPCIDevice</string> <key>Vendor Name</key> <string>Intel</string> </dict> <key>MarvellAHCI</key> <dict> <key>CFBundleIdentifier</key> <string>com.apple.driver.AppleAHCIPort</string> <key>Chipset Name</key> <string>88SE9172</string> <key>IOClass</key> <string>AppleIntelPchSeriesAHCI</string> <key>IONameMatch</key> <array> <string>pci1b4b,9172</string> </array> <key>IOProbeScore</key> <integer>2000</integer> <key>IOProviderClass</key> <string>IOPCIDevice</string> <key>Vendor Name</key> <string>Marvell</string> </dict> </dict> <key>OSBundleRequired</key> <string>Local-Root</string> </dict> </plist> (This fixes both Intel and Marvell.) At this point I'm ready to try getting Thunderbolt to work, and I'll post an update if I get information about that. If anyone knows better solutions for the issues I encountered, please let me know. Update: see #5 below for my initial experience with Thunderbolt.

I had to do that (IOAHCIFamily.kext), and also had to patch IONetworkingFamily.kext again for my Intel network card. It was no problem though, the patching was the same as in the past.

I think there must be some problem with how you created the USB boot drive. I hadn't tried for the Mountain Lion GM before, but I tried it tonight. I did have to replace the Packages alias with the Packages directory, and I also had to copy mach_kernel. I don't have time now to do a complete installation, but I did run the installer until it got to the screen that says "Select the disk where you want to install OS X". I'm pretty sure it would continue on to do a normal installation. What happened when you booted sounds like what happens when you boot from a recovery partition.

When you say "the installer", do you mean running the "Install OS X Mountain Lion" app, or running a regular installer as in OS X before Lion? I don't know how to get the Install app to work on a hackintosh. However, the app contains a disk image which can be used to make a regular, old-style install disc or USB stick. The disc image is InstallESD.dmg in ".../Install OS X Mountain Lion.app/Contents/SharedSupport". I wrote these note to myself for making a bootable USB stick: Installer app has InstallESD.dmg in SharedSupport. Mount ESD image- has BaseSystem.dmg at root. USB installer volume starts with BaseSystem.dmg contents. In System/Installation replace Packages alias with packages from ESD image. Also, copy mach_kernel from ESD image to root. Then of course you have to add a minimal set of kexts so OS X can boot on your machine. You can tell Chameleon to not use the kernel cache, and it will read all the extensions at boot time, so you won't have to rebuild the cache until Mountain Lion can do it.

If you don't have a recovery partition on your hard drive, the installer attempts to create one. It does that by slightly shrinking the partition you're about to install OS X on, so it can create a small recovery partition. What the "some features are not supported" message really means is that the installer detected that you have a non-standard partition organization, and it's not willing to modify it in order to add a recovery partition. I'm not sure what the connection is with File Vault, but if you continue you should get an otherwise normal installation of 10.8. I don't think that message has anything to do with 10.8 not booting for you. Maybe you already know this, but booting from RAID is more complex than normal booting. Each RAID partition (even ones without OS X) has an adjacent 128MiB Apple_Boot partition associated with it, and the initial booting uses files on the boot partition. I believe the boot partition has enough of OS X to get RAID support loaded, so that the main partition can then be booted. I'm surprised the installer didn't just update everything correctly, but if that's new information for you, maybe it will help you figure it out.

I like this USB device as an alternative to getting built-in audio to work: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000KW2YEI/ It's USB codec is supported in OS X. It works well, although I discovered the optical output is mono, not stereo. The headphone output is stereo. For other hardware alternatives, if you want Firewire 800, or built-in Firewire doesn't work, this card works with OS X: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002S53IG8/ It has a Firewire header as well as the external connectors. Also, for network problems there's this card that d00d recommended: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833106033 It's supported by IONetworkFamily after a simple patch to add the device id in the Intel82574L plugin.

The current BIOS for this motherboard is now FH. The DSDT for FH is unchanged from FF, so if you want to update the BIOS from FF, you won't need a new DSDT.