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Asus P5B-E Plus success!


accoleon
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Hi everyone, I usually just lurk here, but my most recent installation of Snow Leopard retail on my Asus P5B-E Plus has inspired me to put my process down in writing, at least to help others with similar boards to mine! I received my copy of Snow Leopard retail 2 days ago, (and immediately installed it on my MBP, and works perfectly), and seeing blackosx's guide, began to try and upgrade my existing Leopard hackintosh to SL.

 

Currently, it appears that all the major functions of my setup works:

9800 GT is detected with QE/CI enabled

Onboard Gigabit LAN is enabled/usable

Onboard sound is enabled/usable

9800 GT outputs to 2 monitors with resolution changes (My card has 3 outputs: HDMI, DVI, VGA. I bought a HDMI-to-DVI adapter and it powers the secondary Samsung LCD, which recognizes it as a digital connection)

Firewire 400 detected OOB, though untested

Have not tried sleep, I disabled sleeping, restarting works fine.

 

My specs:

Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600

8 GB Ram

Asus P5B-EPlus / ICH-8R / 0638 BIOS

MSI GeForce 9800 GT 1GB

3x WD Caviar 1TB SATA hard disk

1x WD Caviar 200GB SATA hard disk

1x LG DVD-RAM GH22LS30 SATA dvd writer

1x Samsung SyncMaster 2443BW 24" LCD

1x LG Flatron L1750HQ 17" LCD

 

Anything missing? Hmmm...

 

Prerequisites:

A working Leopard installation - to run IORegistryExplorer for patching dsdt with graphics.

 

A patched DSDT.aml file for the P5B-E Plus, follow blackosx's Using DSDT on the GA-EP45-DS3L for a general idea of how to generate/patch a dsdt file.

 

Lots of patience!

 

REQUIRED FILES: Mediafire link

 

Installation Guide

Step 1

Make sure you have a working Leopard installation. There are many well-written guides out there, you'll have to refer to them.

 

Step 2

Run fassl's DSDT patcher to get a dsdl.aml file for your P5B-E Plus motherboard. Copy it to a windows system for patching in step 4.

 

Step 3

Run IORegistryExplorer on your Leopard installation.

Type "graphics" into the search box at the top-right-corner and look for the closest P0P, PEG, or PCI device to your graphics device (refer to blackosx's guide for pictures on what to look out for. Mine was P0P2.

 

Step 4

Run Koalala's ACPIpatcher (Beta 5) on windows.

Select "DSDT Patch" tab in the top-left-hand corner of the ACPI Patcher window.

Right next to 'Select a "DSDT.aml to patch", browse for your dsdt.aml file generated in step 2.

Below that, browse for an output folder (I created "asus out" on my windows desktop).

On the right hand side, "General" tab, I had HPET Patch, RTC Patch, and Aliases Patch checked.

Click on "Fixes" button, select Local0 Fix, DGPT Fix, MUTE Fix.

Below "Fixes" button, select the radio button for AMI (my P5B-E Plus runs on an AMI BIOS).

Select "Graphics" tab on the top-right-hand side.

Under "Model", select your graphics card model (I chose 9800 GT), and memory size (mine was 1GB).

Under "nVCAP", select your graphics card's physical outputs. Since my card has 3 outputs, I chose "DUAL DVI+TV/HC1". I am not completedly sure if that was the correct choice, but it works fine now.

Check "Use DSDT GFX".

Under "Hardware location", enter the values you got from step 3.

To your left, under the "DSDT Patch" tab, click "Patch AML".

In your specified output folder, you should get a fixeddsdt.aml file.

I am aware that the above process can encounter errors - the settings I chose was the ones that worked for my board without errors, so your results may vary.

 

Step 5

Now follow Snow's USB Snow Leopard installation guide armed with your fixeddsdt.aml file.

Follow the steps in that guide closely, and use my files when it asks for it (my dsdt.aml is attached for reference)

Strangely, in Snow's guide, the first installation had to be done with "-v -x32" flags, but that actually caused a KP during installation for me. Booting up the install usb without any flags (therefore in x64 mode) worked instead.

 

Step 6

After following Snow's guide, you should be able to boot up into your new Snow Leopard installation successfully. Remember to repair your permissions and/or run KextUtility to ensure your permissions are valid!

Run "AboutThisMac.pkg" to help set your CPU/Memory strings under your Apple > About this Mac window properly. Just a cosmetic thing.

 

Technical Notes

 

BIOS settings

Make sure you enable AHCI, and disable JMicron's IDE controller.

 

Sound support

It appears that the P5B-E Plus uses a AD 1988A audio chipset, therefore I did not try to patch it into my DSDT.aml. Instead, I went the lazy way and used VoodooHDA.kext, which gave me audio - it sounds right to me, and even allows me to detect my front panel audio jacks! Strangely enough, even though the kext was in /Extra/Extensions, it wasn't loading on boot - turns out that its dependencies are IOAudioFamily.kext and OSvKernDSPLib.kext, which I copied (vanilla) from my Snow Leopard's /System/Library/Extensions and made some plist changes (basically added "<key>OSBundleRequired</key><string>Root</string>" to all 3 kexts' info.plist files).

 

LAN support

It appears that the P5B-E Plus uses a Marvell Yukon Gigabit Adapter 88E8056, which is actually supported OOB by Snow Leopard! The required kext is IONetworkingFamily.kext > AppleYukon2.kext, but the device-id/pci does not match. Following lancelotu's guide allowed me to edit the info.plist file from Apple's own kext to support P5B-E Plus's NIC. I have included it for convenience.

 

Included files

AboutThisMac.pkg - Fixes the CPU/Memory strings for Apple > About This Mac window.

boot - netkas' 10.1 pc-efi boot file

Building a DSDT for GA-EP45-DS3L v1.3.pdf - blackosx's excellent guide to building a dsdt file for the GA-P45-DS3R motherboard.

Chameleon-2.0-r431 (folder) - the binaries of chameleon, I used it because the installer just wasn't running properly for me.

Chameleon-2.0-r431.pkg - the installer for Chameleon 2.0 RC1.

com.apple.Boot.plist - the plist you have to change boot-uuid to your boot drive/usb installer.

DSDT_Patcher1.0.1e (folder) - fassl's DSDT Patcher, just run "DSDT Patcher" inside it to generate your dsdt.aml file.

dsdt.aml - my own dsdt.aml, patched with my 9800 GT 1GB graphics card location.

IORegistryExplorer.app - Run this to discover your hardware locations.

Kext Utility.app - A simple application to fix permissions on both your Snow Leopard/System/Library/Extensions and /Extra/Extensions folders. Just click to run.

MKextTool - Just in case you need to generate mkexts after you finalize your kexts.

New Required KEXTS (folder) - contains the kexts needed by chameleon to support the hardware features of the motherboard/system.

smbios.plist - used by Snow's guide.

 

Following this whole jumble of steps (sorry for the confusing text) should net you a working Snow Leopard installation on the P5B-E Plus motherboard, with all major functions working in x64 mode, stably!

 

I cannot guarantee 100% success with this, but I'll try to help out in whatever way I can on this.

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  • 5 months later...
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  • 5 months later...

Now I have 10.6 installed on my PC (C2D E4300 1.8GHz /Asus P5B-E Plus / 3Gb RAM / Asus GF 6600 GT 128Mb / etc.). But I have used iAtkos with 10.6.3. Somehow Sleep doesn't work. But it is not the biggest problem. My Asus GeForce 6600 GT doesn't work this is the real problem!

BTW on 10.5.6 all worked fine. There I used EFI Studio to make a strings for my GF 6600...

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  • 1 month later...

Since my last post I have purchased new GeForce GT 220 and bought a new CPU C2D 2.93GHz E7500.

Also I've made DSDT.aml. There are only necessary fixes (no graphic card no sound no USBfix). dsdt.aml.zip

 

But I get KP every time on my Retail Snow Leopard 10.6.3 installation. I went through 1-4 steps and got stuck on 5th. I have used flags -x -v -x32 cpus=1 in various combinations but there is no result except KP.

 

I have fakesmc / NullCPUPowerManagement / OpenHaltRestart / SleepEnabler / OAHCIBlockStorageInjector kexts in /Extra/Extensions and DSDT.aml in /Extra directory.

 

Maybe I missed something important?

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  • 7 months later...

Hi guys,

 

I've finally fixed this board's DSDT with SpeedStep (C2D E6600) & Sleep/Reboot works natively without any disabler.

 

Seems I need to add some extra lines in order to work (_PCT, _PPC).

And this board is strange that need to use CPU1 for the 1st CPU instead of other guide's mention of CPU0, otherwise it will KP when boot loading AppleIntelCPUPower.

 

I'll upload the source if anyone interested. :)

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