906 replies to this topic

[iRobie]

This board is a great Hackintosh board. I'm running 64-bit with 2 kexts, and only a video & firewire addon card. Everything else is in the board.

This is a mini guide. Meaning it doesn't go into the step by step that other guides do.

Having said that, installing OSX on this board is incredibly easy. It's almost as easy as installing Windows - there are just a few other steps.

Ridgeline did an amazing job at making an installer that simplifies the installation greatly! Thank you Ridgeline!

Ok, to the guide:
First, and this is important: all guides are basically the same! They use different methods to do the same stuff. Meaning - if you find a guide that you understand better - for example it's in your native language, or it's written in an easier to understand method - use that guide! Come back for the final step. Otherwise, all guides are basically the same!

I like Tonymacx86's guide. It's clear, well written, and has nice screenshots. Just replace iBoot with EmpireEFI, and replace Multibeast with Ridgeline's Installer:  Gigabyte_G41M_ES2L_Post_Installer_v2.3.mpkg.zip   7.65MB   1030 downloads

Guide 3: From May 2010

Ok, the steps to install Snow Leopard on this board:

• Boot into the SL installer
  
• Use a bootloader to boot into SL the first time
  
• My method: install 10.6.4 update
  
• My method: boot into SL again
  
• Install bootloader & kexts

Step 1: Boot into the SL installer
There are many ways to do this. Here's two popular methods:

• CD Installation (Download the top CD, burn the regular EmpireEFI boot disc. Boot to that disc & follow the instructions).
  
• [Must have a mac already] USB, 8gig or larger

After booting into the Snow Leopard Installer, format your drive using Disk Utility. The best bet is to repartition your drive at this step to make sure your drive is ready for use. Use GUID partitioning. Want to dual boot? Partition your drive in 2 partitions and follow this guide. Then install as normal.


Step 2: Boot into Snow Leopard
Use your boot CD/boot USB from Step 1, and boot that again. This time, select your Mac drive. Go through the pretty graphics & user generation.


My Method: Install 10.6.4 Update
I don't know if you should really install this before or after your kexts, but I did it before and it worked great. Download it ahead of time here.


My Method: Boot into Snow Leopard again
Once again use your Boot CD/Boot USB from Step 1 to boot into Snow Leopard.


Final Step: Install bootloader and kexts

If you're following another guide, come back for this step!

Download Ridgeline's installer. Latest version (v2.3 as of this guide) can be found here:  Gigabyte_G41M_ES2L_Post_Installer_v2.3.mpkg.zip   7.65MB   1030 downloads

Run the installer. As long as you have a standard setup with SATA drives & Nvidia card, just select the defaults. Look over the DSDT list for your CPU. If it's listed, select your CPU & you're done!

If your CPU isn't listed, select the generic DSDT. You might have sleep & speedstep problems using the default. Ridgeline is compiling a list of CPU specific DSDT files & generously making them! Follow his instructions to get him the info he needs.


Tweaks
Bios settings

• Load optimized defaults
  
• Change HPET mode to 64-bit
  
• Disable any un-used components - parallel port, serial port, floppy drive, etc.

Get Audio working: Change LineOut preferences

• Download the 10.6.2 AppleHDA file from here
  
• Go into your System Preferences
  
• Go into Sound
  
• For the green plug on the back of your motherboard, change "Play sound effects through" to "Line Out"
  
• Go to the "Output" tab
  
• Select "Line Out"
  
• Test audio. If this doesn't work, try other output devices

Gigabit speeds

• Go into your System Preferences
  
• Go into Network
  
• Edit your Ethernet connection (click advanced)
  
• Go to the "Ethernet" tab
  
• Select "Manually" configure, and change the settings to 1000baseT & full-duplex

Automatic Sleep

• Real macs have this problem too
  
• Go into Preferences, Energy Settings. Check all three boxes (check "Start up automatically after a power failure")
  
• Some DVD drives cause problems with automatic sleep. Try placing a disc in your drive if sleep isn't occurring automatically.
  
• The Sony Optiarc Drive is known to work well with OSX sleep. I have an ASUS DRW-2014L1T and sleep works automatically w/o a disc and w/o Pleasesleep.
  
• If you're still having insomnia check out PleaseSleep to enforce automatic sleeping

Video Card errors

• Use a supported nVidia card. It'll save you headaches. I've personally tested an 9600GSO and GTS 250. Both work great with just Ridgeline's installer (using GraphicsEnabler=Yes)
  
• hawaii50 tested an 8400 GS and 9500 GT
  
• If you want 64bit, use at least an 8400 GFX card.
  
• More errors? Gatzs wrote up a guide on getting more cards working. Check it out here.

Edit: Replaced Ridgel1ne's links with an attachment

Attachments are for the old guides. Use the links in the post instead.

Attached Files

•  G41M_ES2l_Snow_Leopard_Files.zip   1.11MB   2888 downloads
•  Old_Guides.pdf   167.57K   842 downloads

[tamudude]

Thanks for the guide.
I had Leopard installed and working on my G41M-ES2L. I have only one hard disk. I created another partition and installed Snow on that.
Now whenever I get to step 8 I get a kernel panic. I have not had success in booting even in safe mode, -x32 or anything. Any advice?

[cj95]

can we use the same audio kext from, leopard (azillia) because azzillia works right out of the box for me on leopard .
also i only have a IDE dvd burner/player and sata hdd. will it work?

spec:
q9550
9600 gt
4gb 800 mhz ram
ga-g41m-es2l

[threesongs]

I havnt had any luck

G41M-ES2L
9400 GT

[ruy.benton]

iRobie, on Aug 29 2009, 07:02 PM, said:

Other guides for Gigabyte motherboards have been very helpful, but they didn't stop all the Kernel Panics in Snow Leopard on the G41M-ES2L motherboard. It is now working 100% reliably in 32-bit mode. For the 3 people that have this motherboard   , here's what I did.

My setup:

• G41M-ES2L motherboard
  
• Asus Nvidia 9600 GSO 512mb
  
• Syba USB sound card (link)
  
• Rosewell NIC (link)

Hi iRobie,

I don't understand why you use Rosewell NIC (RTL8110SC) instead internal NIC and Syba USB instead internal ALC888B?

Regards,
Ruy

[iRobie]

tamudude, on Aug 30 2009, 12:06 PM, said:

Thanks for the guide.
I had Leopard installed and working on my G41M-ES2L. I have only one hard disk. I created another partition and installed Snow on that.
Now whenever I get to step 8 I get a kernel panic. I have not had success in booting even in safe mode, -x32 or anything. Any advice?

I had the KPs at that stage too. I don't know what solved it - sorry! It took me 4 or 5 tries to get things working. That's the reason I wrote this guide.

Are you using the boot file from the attachment? And you're sure you installed the boot file correctly - via sudo & terminal? Also, are you on Chameleon 2 RC1? I've heard that RC2 doesn't work. I've also heard that RC3 does work, but I haven't tested it myself.

cj95, on Sep 3 2009, 07:02 AM, said:

can we use the same audio kext from, leopard (azillia) because azzillia works right out of the box for me on leopard .
also i only have a IDE dvd burner/player and sata hdd. will it work?

My guess is you can, but I never had success on Leopard. I'll try it - thanks for the tip! Any link?
For IDE drives, if you had success with Leopard you'll probably have success with SL. But no promises Just make sure you have the correct extension for your architecture - I'm sticking with 32 bit for now.

ruy.benton, on Sep 12 2009, 12:45 PM, said:

I don't understand why you use Rosewell NIC (RTL8110SC) instead internal NIC and Syba USB instead internal ALC888B?

The internal sound card never worked for me, but I'll try the azillia codec again. Last I checked there was plenty of support for ALC888, but not 888B. The $8 or whatever was worth the "just works" of the Syba card.

The LAN card was a bit more snobby. I use my mac as an alarm clock. My music (and photos) are stored on a windows network share. My (legit) iMac works flawlessly, but the drivers I had for the LAN on the G41M took about 8 seconds to reset. This was enough time to drop the network shares, stop the alarm clock from working, and give me an error message. The extra card uses the same driver as Apple native cards, which fixed these problems.

[ruy.benton]

iRobie, on Sep 15 2009, 03:38 AM, said:

The  internal sound card never worked for me, but I'll try the azillia codec  again. Last I checked there was plenty of support for ALC888, but not  888B. The $8 or whatever was worth the "just works" of the Syba card.

The  LAN card was a bit more snobby. I use my mac as an alarm clock. My  music (and photos) are stored on a windows network share. My (legit)  iMac works flawlessly, but the drivers I had for the LAN on the G41M  took about 8 seconds to reset. This was enough time to drop the network  shares, stop the alarm clock from working, and give me an error  message. The extra card uses the same driver as Apple native cards,  which fixed these problems.

  
  Ok,
  
  Please read:
  
  http://www.insanelym...howtopic=176069

Regards,
  
  Ruy

[daverolo77]

How the hell the g31m-es2l  can boot on 64 bit and this one doesn't , any ideas???? check the hcl 10.6.0.

[iRobie]

daverolo77, on Sep 21 2009, 05:59 PM, said:

How the hell the g31m-es2l  can boot on 64 bit and this one doesn't , any ideas???? check the hcl 10.6.0.

This probably boots into 64bit with the right kexts. I haven't tried. I have no interest in getting 64bit working. 64bit apps (like Safari) work just fine, and since booting in 32-bit is the way Apple does it on their machines, I figure 32-bit works for me too  

[daverolo77]

iRobie, on Sep 23 2009, 02:19 PM, said:

This probably boots into 64bit with the right kexts. I haven't tried. I have no interest in getting 64bit working. 64bit apps (like Safari) work just fine, and since booting in 32-bit is the way Apple does it on their machines, I figure 32-bit works for me too  

I'm gonna keep trying, i just need to fix the dsdt. although, i may wait for ideneb or iatkos release their 10.6 dvd . there are some rumors about it.

[amantonas]

Yeah, that would be great. And thanks to the OP, I'm planning on buying this motherboard, and I wanted some proof that it would work with snow leopard.

[VCH888]

Gigabyte ALC888B = ALC887

I made LegacyHDA.kext for someone ( I forgot where I posted it).  It can be in /Extra/Extensions.mkext or /S/L/E.  

Try #1; layout-id = 887  ; 0x77, 0x03, 0x00, 0x00
LegacyHDA_ALC888B.zip

Try #2; layout-id = 12  for someone's using HDAEnabler.kext (for SL or L) since layout-default is 12.
LegacyHDA_ALC888B_v2.zip

I hope it will work for you.  They are the same but layout-id.

[unix_fan]

tmongkol, on Sep 24 2009, 06:05 AM, said:

Gigabyte ALC888B = ALC887

I made LegacyHDA.kext for someone ( I forgot where I posted it).  It can be in /Extra/Extensions.mkext or /S/L/E.  

Try #1; layout-id = 887  ; 0x77, 0x03, 0x00, 0x00
LegacyHDA_ALC888B.zip

Try #2; layout-id = 12  for someone's using HDAEnabler.kext (for SL or L) since layout-default is 12.
LegacyHDA_ALC888B_v2.zip

I hope it will work for you.  They are the same but layout-id.

tmongkol, thank you. JAMMIN' with iTunes.
FYI, the rear green plug comes out with Line Out; the front green plug works with headphone.

As soon as I changed *just* the layout-id lines in DSDT, The sound was enabled on reboot.
i.e.:
"layout-id",
                            Buffer (0x04)
                            {
                                0x77, 0x03, 0x00, 0x00
                            },

Other items of interest:
ls -1 /Extra/Extensions
LegacyAppleHDAHardwareConfigDriver.kext
LegacyHDAPlatformDriver.kext
LegacyHDA_ALC888B.kext
NullCPUPowerManagement.kext
OpenHaltRestart.kext
PlatformUUID.kext
SleepEnabler.kext
VoodooPowerMini.kext
fakesmc.kext

uname -p
i386

I consider this major progress.

I'm not on 10.6.1 yet but will post when I get there.
I'll be trying to go to 64 bit at some point, as well as bump up from F3 to F4 BIOS.

For DSDT editing, I'm using the spanish team's awesome DSDT editor:
http://www.osx86.es/?p=610
DSDTSE V1.2.4 (EN)

Most of the editor has been translated to English, so fear not English speakers.

G41M-ES2L ; E8400 cpu ; Nvidia 540 FX, Snow Leopard Family Pack ; Two Seagate 500GB Sata drives (one for Snow Leopard; backup for Leopard); Chameleon RC3 manually installed

unix_fan, on Sep 25 2009, 11:24 PM, said:

tmongkol, thank you. JAMMIN' with iTunes.
[snip]
I'm not on 10.6.1 yet but will post when I get there.
I'll be trying to go to 64 bit at some point, as well as bump up from F3 to F4 BIOS.

FYI, now listening to the Rolling Stones - appropriately,  "I'm Just Waiting for a Friend" - through headphones on front green port with 10.6.1 on and iTunes 9.x.

iRobie, I also thank you very much for your guide. Its appearance on this board was the catalyst for me to buy the Family Pack and bump up to Snow Leopard.

Ha! There are more than 3 of us using this G41M-ES2L board.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
G41M-ES2L ; E8400 cpu ; Nvidia 540 FX, Snow Leopard Family Pack ;  Two Seagate 500GB Sata drives (one for Snow Leopard; backup for  Leopard); Chameleon RC3 manually installed

[jeffrey1790]

I cant get this to work at all. My dsdt does not have the layout-id section, and I am stuck. If anyone could upload their dsdt.aml with the proper layout-id and their working LegacyHDA.kext. Thanks.

[unix_fan]

jeffrey1790, on Sep 30 2009, 07:33 AM, said:

I cant get this to work at all. My dsdt does not have the layout-id section, and I am stuck. If anyone could upload their dsdt.aml with the proper layout-id and their working LegacyHDA.kext. Thanks.

Look for HDEF, then:

			   Device (HDEF)
			   {
				   Name (_ADR, 0x001B0000)
				   Method (_DSM, 4, NotSerialized)
				   {
					   Store (Package (0x04)
						   {
							   "layout-id", 
							   Buffer (0x04)
							   {
								   0x77, 0x03, 0x00, 0x00
							   }, 
   
							   "PinConfigurations", 
							   Buffer (Zero) {}
						   }, Local0)
					   DTGP (Arg0, Arg1, Arg2, Arg3, RefOf (Local0))
					   Return (Local0)
				   }
			   }

Hope that helps

[iRobie]

jeffrey1790, on Sep 30 2009, 08:33 AM, said:

I cant get this to work at all. My dsdt does not have the layout-id section, and I am stuck. If anyone could upload their dsdt.aml with the proper layout-id and their working LegacyHDA.kext. Thanks.

You need to replace the AZAL device section with HDEF:
Find Device (AZAL)
Select your entire AZAL device section (end selection at the line before:
Name (BUFA, ResourceTemplate()

Then replace it with the code from unix_fan

I've attached my dsdt.dsl file - this does not contain any ethernet fix, so I don't recommend using it! But it does contain the audio fix & the RTC (cmos) fix.

After doing this, I had to go Preferences, Sound. Choose Line Out for sound effects, then Output tab & select Line Out. (I'm using green tab on back).

If you still can't get it working, the $8 USB sound card from Newegg works flawlessly. OOB, nothing else needed.

Thank you unix_fan & tmongkol!

Attached Files

•  dsdt.dsl.zip   12.89K   137 downloads

[jeffrey1790]

Not sure why it wont exactly...
I tried both your suggestions, but my audio device still doesnt show. Guess Ill just stick with VoodooHDA, or get a usb audio device.

Thanks for your help.

EDIT: I just ran dmesg and noticed this...

Thats with the legacyhda_alc888b.zip

Not loading kext com.apple.driver.AppleHDAController - not found and kextd not available in early boot

would that have anything to with this problem?

if i remove that. it gives me a sound assertion on applehda.kext

[unix_fan]

FYI: I have BIOS version F4 working on my 64 Bit 10.6.1 box


Yes, it's a faster bootup. I did not do anything special ahead of time. My sequence:
1. Load optimized defaults, Note my changes.
2. Reboot, make sure that's OK as is.
3. Reboot, save existing BIOS F3 version
4. Load F4 BIOS, reboot
5. Stop boot screen, load optimized defaults
6. Reboot, make normal changes (disable floppy, serial, parallel, PEG display init, etc)

[cj95]

i can't do this it's very hard and confusing

can I just follow the sk1nhd33t guide  or this tut   ?

the prob is that  how will drivers install/work... :\


any idea?

[daverolo77]

unix_fan, on Oct 3 2009, 04:51 PM, said:

FYI: I have BIOS version F4 working on my 64 Bit 10.6.1 box


Yes, it's a faster bootup. I did not do anything special ahead of time. My sequence:
1. Load optimized defaults, Note my changes.
2. Reboot, make sure that's OK as is.
3. Reboot, save existing BIOS F3 version
4. Load F4 BIOS, reboot
5. Stop boot screen, load optimized defaults
6. Reboot, make normal changes (disable floppy, serial, parallel, PEG display init, etc)

U ARE THE KING,,,CAN U UPLOAD THE PATCHES YOU ARE USING, I'M STUCK WITH 32BIT...THANKS!