189 replies to this topic

[janitor]

Woohoo! Here it is, as i've been promising for weeks now...

Here's what we'll be doing today:
Installing Mac OS X Snow Leopard onto an AMD-based HP ProLiant MicroServer N36L ( http://h10010.www1.h...17-4248009.html ) using Nawcom's ModUSB install method, with an additional aftermarket Asus ATI Radeon 5450 Silent (Low Profile) discrete graphics card in the PCIe x16 slot (for full QE/CI graphics support); Updating the install to Max OS X 10.6.7 and getting as much of the hardware and software working as humanly possible.

Okay? Let's go...


PREAMBLE:
In essence, this machine comes shipped without an Optical Disk Drive (ODD), so this guide is going to initially assume that everyone is using the same setup without an Optical Disk Drive. This generally means you're going to have to use a fully operational & working Mac OS X to create your Mac OS X Installer Disk.
NOTE: For those of you without a working install of Mac OS X. Fear not! It IS possible to install from a Retail Snow Leopard DVD using an Optical Disk Drive. See 'PART 6: Tweaks' at the end of this Guide, where i discuss getting the Optical Disk Drive working in full SATA mode.

Sorry for the long Guide, but i've tried to keep it as detailed as possible so that even a total noob can get this up and running


PART 1: Pre-Install

WHAT YOU'LL NEED:
• A retail Mac OS X Snow Leopard (10.6.x) Install DVD or Disk Image.
• A working Mac OS X machine. Or possibly Ubuntu ? (See note under Step 1.)
• Nawcom's ModUSB app (available here: http://blog.nawcom.com/?p=569 )
• A spare USB Flash Disk (8GB or more) or any spare USB HDD, HDD, or HDD Partition of 8GB or more. (This is for the installer.)
• A HDD drive to install Mac OS X Snow Leopard too. The standard 250GB HDD that ships with your HP Microserver will work just fine.
NOTE: I actually Pre-Formatted mine via a USB connection into two Volumes, with the second Volume as a small 20GB partition to take my patched Mac OS X Installer. That way, i don't need to muck around with USB Flash Drives or any extra Disks and such. It also means that i have everything i need on one physical drive, should anything go wrong during the install or should i need to start again from scratch.


1. Restore your Mac OS X 10.6.x Install DVD (or Disk image) to a suitable USB Flash or HDD Partition. This will be your new Installer Disk from this point on.
NOTE: For this you're going to need an already working Mac OS X machine. There are probably ways to do this with Ubuntu or Windows, but that falls outside of my current knowledge base. Nawcom covers some of this at his awesome website here: http://blog.nawcom.com/?p=8

2. Download and run Nawcom's ModUSB installer app and choose the the Mac OS X Install disk you've just created on your USB Flash Disk (or HDD Partition).
NOTE: Here's the original page covering ModUSB at Nawcom's site should you need more info about ModUSB: http://blog.nawcom.com/?p=569

3. Your new Mac OS X 10.6 Installer Disk is now ready for action.



PART 2: The Install

WHAT YOU'LL NEED:
• Your new Installer Disk on a USB Flash Disk, a spare HDD or HDD Partition.
• Some patience

1. Insert the USB Flash Disk (or HDD with Install Partition) into your HP ProLiant MicroServer and boot it up.
NOTE: Now would also be a good time to make sure that you have the spare HDD or Partition in the machine that you can install Mac OS X on to.

2. You should shortly get to the standard ModBin boot prompt, with a number of booting options detailed on screen.

3. Depending on how much RAM you have installed (i have 8GB), you should now type in the following Kernel flag: maxmem=2048
NOTE: This will prevent a Kernel Panic for any machines with 4GB or more installed.

4. Press enter. Some text will appear and then stop with a prompt reading 'Press any key to continue…" Go for it!

5. After some more text and a couple of minutes to should be dropped into the standard Mac OS X Install GUI, which will ask to to select a main language. Wicked! You're ready to rock!

6. Continue to the following screen and go to the menu across the top of your screen and select Utilities -> Disk Utility.. from the drop-down menu.

7. Select your desired HDD in the panel on the left where you wish to install Mac OS X. If you're installing to a blank HDD, now is a good time to set your partition table and scheme.

8. Select the 'Partition' tab. Choose your desired 'Volume Scheme'. Select 'Mac OS Extended (Journaled)' as your format. Give your Volume/s a name. Click the 'Options' button and choose GUID as your Partition Table. Finally you can click 'Apply'. Once that is complete you can close the window and you'll be able to continue with the installation process.

9. Now you need to continue. Select the destination drive you wish to install Mac OS X to. Click the 'Customize'.

10. Here you can choose what to install and what not to install. Do yourself a favor select QuickTime 7. This will come in handy much later when we discuss some of the various short-comings of AMD-based installs.
Otherwise, I generally UnCheck all of the 'Language Translations' and 'Additional Printer' stuff. This keeps the final install size down and speeds up the install time considerably. They can also be installed again at the later stage should you need them.

11. Regular Mac users will notice a new set of options called 'CUSTOM OPTIONS', these are specific to the ModBin installer and were injected just before the GUI Installer loaded. Here you should make sure that 'Graphics Enabler' and 'SleepEnabler' are checked. The rest of the default options should work just fine as they are. ModBin does a fantastic job of auto detecting what is and isn't needed. You can now click 'OK'.

12. Make sure that you STILL have the correct Destination Disk Drive selected and click 'Install'.

13. Installation can take quite a while depending on your source drive. I've found that installing from an internal HDD takes just under 30mins.
NOTE: At times the installer seems to have frozen, but it generally isn't. A good thing to do during the installation process, is go to the menu at the top of your screen and select Window -> Installer Log, and then click on the 'Show All Logs' button. This will show you what is currently being installed and give  you great idea of your installation progress.

14. After about 30-40mins, the install should finish and you'll be prompted to restart your computer. Click 'Restart' and remove the USB Flash Disk or Drive you used to install from.

15. Once you have rebooted, you should be greeted with the standard 'green' Chameleon boot loader screen.
NOTE: Here's where you have to be quick and press any key before the progress bar runs out (±5 seconds)

16. If you have more than 4GB of RAM installed. You MUST enter the maxmem=2048 kernel flag again, or you'll probably get a Kernel Panic.
So go ahead and choose your freshly installed Mac OS X drive and type in the maxmem=2048 kernel flag and press enter.

17. And after a few minutes and a bit of luck you should be greeted with the standard Mac OS X welcome screen and the basic first-time-use configuration screen. Continue to follow the prompts and create your first user account...

18. Whew! Well done! You should have a working installation of Mac OS X Snow Leopard… now we need to fine-tune and customize this little sucker!



PART 3: Post Install - Updates.

WHAT YOU'LL NEED:
• Mac OS X 10.6.7 Combo Update (Downloadable from Apple)
• Nawcom's (Darwin 10.7.0) Legacy Kernel for OS X 10.6.8 (available here: http://blog.nawcom.com/?p=640 )


1. Download and install Mac OS X 10.6.7 Combo update from Apple's website.
NOTE: DO NOT RESTART when the update finishes!!!

2. Download and install Nawcom's Legacy Kernel for OS X 10.6.7
NOTE: You can find the Kernel and more info at Nawcom's site here: http://blog.nawcom.com/?p=640

3. You can now restart your computer.

4. Once you have rebooted, you should again be greeted with the standard 'green' Chameleon boot loader screen.
NOTE: Don't forget to quickly press any key before the progress bar runs out (±5 seconds).

5. Choose your Mac OS X drive and type in the following kernel flag and then press enter: maxmem=2048 GraphicsEnabler=No -f
NOTE: This continues to solve our 4GB and more of RAM issues, temporarily prevents GraphicsEnabler from loading and making our video go crazy, and then ignores any extension caching that might have occurred previously. We'll fix all of these in the Macintosh HD / Extra / com.apple.Boot.plist file a bit later...

6. You should be back on your desktop and working fine in Mac OS X.


PART 4: Post Install - Basics.

WHAT YOU'LL NEED:
• TonyMac's Multibeast (available after signing in here: http://www.tonymacx86.com/downloads )
• Chameleon 2 RC5 v747 (or higher) (available here: http://www.insanelym...p...st&id=87336 )

1. Download and run TonyMac's MultiBeast.
NOTE: While MultiBeast mostly caters for Intel-based installations and configurations, it does include a few useful Kexts, Tools and Goodies we can use for our AMD-based Microserver. Yay!

2. In MultiBeast select 'Custom Install' and make sure that the following options (and ONLY the following options) are selected for install:
• Under 'System Utilities' --> Rebuild Caches and Repair Permissions
• Under 'Drivers & Bootloaders' --> Kexts & Enablers --> Graphics --> ATI 1.6.34.13 (these Kexts will mostly get replaced later, but it's nice to have)
• Under 'Drivers & Bootloaders' --> Kexts & Enablers --> Miscellaneous --> IOUSBFamily Rollback (This also solves a few potential USB issues if i recall correctly)
* Under 'OSx86 Software' --> Kext Helper b7 + Kext Utility + MSR Tools + ShowAllFiles (These are great tools for later when we start adding Kext Files)

3. Download, mount and install Chameleon 2 RC5 v747 (or later).
NOTE: You can also choose to install the 'System Preferences' PrefPanel if you like. This will make manually editing your com.appleBoot.plist file a bit easier later (if you really want to that is).

4. Restart your HP ProLiant Microserver.
NOTE: Remember to boot with the same kernel flag you used earlier: maxmem=2048 GraphicsEnabler=No -f


PART 5: Post Install - Some Machine Specific Fixes

Okay now we get down to some of the the dirty stuff...

WHAT YOU'LL NEED:
• Kext Helper b7 (already installed with MultiBeast)
• OSX86 Tools (available here: http://code.google.com/p/osx86tools/ )
• The ATI Kexts pack from Max OS X Lion + The ATI 5000 injector Kext - For the aftermarket ATI Radeon 5450 Graphics Card & QE/CI support (available here:  ATI_Radeon_HD_5450_Kexts.zip   3.07MB   210 downloads
• The custom tweaked Ethernet LAN Kexts - For the Onboard Gigabit Ethernet LAN Port - with some limitations (available here:  Ethernet_LAN_Kexts.zip   1.45MB   274 downloads
• My basic bullet-proof com.apple.Boot.plist file - To keep your machine happy and booting without typing in those annoying kernel flags every time you restart! (available here:  com.apple.Boot.plist.zip   854bytes   204 downloads

1. Copy all of the ATI Lion Kexts (acquired from Mac OS X Lion) into your Macintosh HD / System / Library / Extensions folder
NOTE: I know that this isn't the generally accepted method of installing Kext files, but i've found that Kext Installer apps don't always install all of these specific Kexts, which then causes all kinds of trouble later!

2. Copy the ATI5000Injector.kext file into your Macintosh HD / Extra / Extensions folder

3. Install both the modified IONetworkingFamily.kext and AppleBCM5751Ethernet.kext files using Kext Helper b7

4. Copy and replace the pre-edited com.apple.Boot.plist file to your Macintosh HD / Extra folder

5. Install and run the OSx86 Tools Utility app & select the following options under 'System Maintenance':
• Repair Permissions
• Set Extensions permissions
• Touch Extensions Folder
• Click 'Run Selected Tasks' Button. (This should take a few minutes to complete all the selected tasks)

6. Cross your fingers & Restart!
Note: Chameleon Bootloader should now load at a much better resolution (which you can always change in your com.apple.Boot.plist file) & without the ±5 second countdown. With some luck, you should just be able to select the appropriate boot drive (as before) and press enter without manually entering ANY kernel flags. WIN!!!

7. Congratulations! You should now have a mostly (95%) functional installation of Mac OS X Snow Leopard.


PART 6: Tweaks

Not EVERYTHING is quite perfect yet!

1. Audio doesn't seem to work via the HDMI output on the discrete ATI 5450 graphics card quite as yet. There may be a solution out there, but i've yet to find one. Other video cards may prove successful, but that fall outside of the scope of my Guide.
However, as the Microserver comes standard with no Audio capabilities anyway, this should't be a massive issue for most of you. I am currently using a really cheap no-name-brand USB Audio Adapter that works perfectly without any Kext files or tweak at all.

2. The built in Ethernet NIC doesn't acquire its proper MAC address (it seems to default to 00:00:00:00:00:00 instead), and thus fails to work properly in automatic DHCP mode.
Various forums have suggested either manually setting your MAC address via the Terminal, or by simply rather choosing the DHCP (with manual address) setting and pre-assigning a static IP address in 'Network Settings'. I've tried both and i've found that the second method is MUCH more stable.

3. The Legacy Kernel current only boots happily in 32-bit mode. Full 64-bit mode is still too difficult to get working properly on this Chipset and almost always causes a Kernel Panic. Therefore you may find that some Apps just won't load properly or even at all. The best solution in most cases is to simply locate the App in question, do a 'Get Info' on the App and click the "Open in 32-bit mode" radio button. And then try opening the App again. This has worked for most Apps i've had trouble with.

4. I still haven't had much success running Snow Leopard stably with my full 8GB of RAM. This is due to the whole 64-bit issue mentioned above. When it occasionally does boot with  all 8GB of RAM installed, many of the Apps just quit on me or won't even load. Oh, well! 4GB is enough for most of what this machine needs to do anyway…

5. The Finder and Quicktime crash when trying to play or preview H.264 encoded video. This is a documented issue that comes down to the lack of SSSS3 (not to be confused with SSE3) support on the AMD CPU chipset range. The solution in Quicktime is to simply run it in 32-bit  mode (as described above). Unfortunately, the solution to the Finder crashing, basically requires digging into the Finder and Quicklook apps and striping out all of the 64-bit code. This isn't as hard as i might sound, but requires GREAT care and precision.
I have had some success, but the results still aren't perfect, so i'll add them at a later stage to forthcoming updates to this Guide.

6. My after-market LG Super-Multi Optical Disk Drive is not recognised once Snow Leopard starts to boot.
This, i discovered, is due to the fact that both the 5th SATA port (for the Optical Disk Bay) and the eSATA port run in SATA IDE Combined Mode as specified by the Microserver's BIOS. There is a BIOS hack available ( http://forum.wegotse...539#entry104539 ) which allows you to turn this setting off, thus running this port and the eSATA port separately and at full speed (3Gbps), which should fix this issue.
NOTE: This is the reason you're getting the dreaded "Waiting for Root Device" error when installing Snow Leopard using the ModCD install method from your DVD Drive… Strange! But true! I had the same problem months ago, when i first tried to install Snow Leopard...

UPDATE!
I have recently run this BIOS hack (which i recommend you run entirely at your own risk!) and am happy to report that not only does it allow the Optical Disk Drive to work as expected in  Mac OS X, but once applied ALSO allows would-be hackintosh installers to install Mac OS X Snow Leopard using a Retail Mac OS X Install DVD and Nawcom's ModCD method - without getting the dreaded "Waiting for Root Device" error. WIN!!!! Nawcom's ModCD and instructions can be found here: http://blog.nawcom.com/?p=446

Okay, i've gone on long enough now and i hope that i've got you all on the right track.
Now go and play and let me know how things work out for you….

Happy Hackintoshing!

Jason.

PS. My apologies for any potential mistakes in this Guide, i'll look at it again in the morning once i've had a bit more sleep

[auMouth]

janitor, on Jun 29 2011, 08:48 AM, said:

Woohoo! Here it is, as i've been promising for weeks now...

Here's what we'll be doing today:
Installing Mac OS X Snow Leopard onto an AMD-based HP ProLiant MicroServer N36L ( http://h10010.www1.h...17-4248009.html )

Awesome! Fantastic! Terrific! Thanks heaps.
Starting now, except I'm going to try it inside an ESXi VM on this machine first

[janitor]

auMouth, on Jun 30 2011, 03:11 PM, said:

Awesome! Fantastic! Terrific! Thanks heaps.
Starting now, except I'm going to try it inside an ESXi VM on this machine first

Excellent! Shout if you hit any snags...

I just totally destroyed my current install by mucking around with some HDMI Audio patching. What a rash
Good thing i made a clone of the drive before it started! Whew!

Good luck!

J.

[pinchies]

Thanks for this guide! Saves a lot of hunting for kexts etc...
I tried to follow it, except I used the 10.6.8 combo, and now am stuck at "[PCI configuration begin]". Any tips on what to do?

[janitor]

pinchies, on Jul 2 2011, 04:11 AM, said:

Thanks for this guide! Saves a lot of hunting for kexts etc...
I tried to follow it, except I used the 10.6.8 combo, and now am stuck at "[PCI configuration begin]". Any tips on what to do?

Hi Pinchies! No probs, dude!

I can only suggest installing the latest Legacy Kernel update for Snow Leopard 10.6.8 (Darwin 10.8.0) directly after running the 10.6.8 combo update and before Restarting you computer.
You can get it and some more information on exactly why you'll need it from Nawcom's site here: http://blog.nawcom.com/?p=791

Nawcom points out that there have been some big changes with the xnu source between SL 10.6.7 and SL 10.6.8. And it is assumed that these changes are mainly due in preparation for Lion 10.7 later this month.

I'm assuming that you can't get back onto your desktop, which means you're probably going to have to start from scratch. I know it sucks, but it certainly makes for great practice. I've had to reinstall so many times now i can do it in my sleep! Heck! most times i AM doing it in my sleep

Good luck and keep at it!

j.

[pinchies]

Well thanks for the tip - the new kernel worked! Except then I tried to use the kext installer b7 and it DELETED ALL MY KEXTS!! 3rd time lucky... thanks for your help

Edit: SUCCESS with 10.6.8! Graphics with CI/QE

[FKA]

Hi

I've managed to get Snow Leo installed as a VM on ESXi 4.1.

Frankly it couldn't have been easier with the help of nawcom's ModCD 0.3.1 ... nawcom - I think you're my new hero dude!

I've added a DVDRom to the Microserver but this is not necessary:

Retail Snow Leo disk in the DVDRom drive ModCD.iso on one of your datastores.
Create VM version 7 using FreeBSD(64) as guest OS.

Point the VM's CD/DVD to the ModCD.iso on your datastore and select 'connect at power on'
Power up the VM. at ModCD boot prompt 'Edit settings' of VM and point the CD/DVD to 'Host Device' and OK out.

Back to VM console and hit F5 (Fn F5 whatever.) once OS X install disk is read, boot and install .. Really was that simple ..
Update to 10.6.7 No problem .... leaving 10.6.8 well alone !!!

Also thanks to Adam Urban

Next stop SL Server ...

BTW - Transfer rates on an AFP share are already trashing that of FreeNAS AFP share and I've not started to tweek yet!

 Screen_shot_2011_07_11_at_14.18.jpg   72.69K   119 downloads

Have Fun
D

[FKA]

hmmm . not sure it's too stable!

[splonk]

Got one of these on the basis of this guide. Eventually got it working, but not without lots of reboots along the way.

The key problem turned out to be Chameleon RC5 build 747. This is a buggy release with regard to this platform and will give you hangs on the graphic card if you use an ATI5450 - in verbose mode you will see this:

Device in slot -- SLOT 1 **
Device in slot -- SLOT 1 **
Device in slot -- SLOT 1 **
Device in slot -- SLOT 1 **

up to four times and then nothing. The solution is to use a later build. Also make sure you use Kext Utility from the Tony Mac installation to rebuild the kext cache in the /Extra/Extensions folder after you add the ATI injector kext.

If you cannot boot up to a desktop after adding kexts at any of the stages, no need to reinstall from scratch. Just boot into single user mode and remove any offending kext before rebooting with the GraphicsEnabler =No -f string at the Chameleon prompt.

It does appear based on other users' experience that you can happily mix and match ECC and non-ECC ram in this machine for the budget conscious.

Thanks to janitor for doing the hard work to start with.

[EDIT] In part 5 step three there are two kexts to install for the embedded LAN card. However, the IONetworkingFamily.kext already contains the BCM5751.kext as a plug in. I noticed this when checking what Extensions were loaded when I had problems with getting an IP connection. The BCM5751 extension was showing twice. This caused problems for me when trying to install Snow Leopard Server as you cannot validate the serial if more than one network connection is active.

[splonk]

Now I have SL Server up and running. The simplest way I found to do this is in this order:
a) install Snow Leopard client onto the Microserver as per parts one and two.
b) Install Kext Helper b7 and Kext Utility from tonymacx86 or wherever and drop the BCM5751.kext into the plug ins folder within IONetworkingFamily.kext installed in /System/Library/Extensions. Do not add the modded IONetworkingFamily.kext also downloaded. You won't need it.
c) Run Kext Utility, install Chameleon RC5 build 828 or later. Reboot.
d) Set up your new network port in Sys Prefs. Connect a shared internet link via cable into your ethernet port and check for green lights. Fire up Safari. If you are getting the Apple web page you are good to go. Do not proceed without it. You must have a working internet connection before installing Server. Unlike janitor, I had no problem with DCHP set to auto.
e) Download SL Server 10.6.8 update combo. You will need it later.
f) Mount your SL Server 10.6.0 Installation Disk or image and hit Finder>Go>Go to Folder. Drag your mounted disk/image from the Desktop to the url bar in Finder that pops up. Add a forward slash and complete this path
/Volumes/Mac OS X Server Install Disc/System/Installation/Packages then hit the Go button.
g) Install these packages by double clicking and following the prompts
     (i)MacOSXServerInstall.pkg
     (ii) ServerEssentials.pkg
     (iii)ServerAdminTools.pkg
     (iv) ServerSetup.pkg
     (v) QuickTimeStreamingServer.pkg (optional)
h) One last check that you still have a working internet connection, then reboot.
i)  Set up your server. If your serial is rejected, check that your internet cable has not been knocked out of the ethernet port. If you are seeing flashing lights on next to your server's on/off switch, your serial should validate. Reboot after setup.
j) Once your server has been set up and is working, now you install the combo update. Do not restart. Drop the kexts for your ATI5450 and IOUSBFamilyRollback in the relevant places and run Kext Utility. Install the modded kernel for 10.6.8. Cross your fingers and reboot. Done.


Will try to get to get this running in 64bit mode. I think the key may be in the SMBIOS.plist, wherever it is. The system identifies as a Mac Mini with a Core Duo, which is a 32bit cpu and EFI. This model cannot run in 64bit mode, which might be causing the KPs.

[janitor]

Excellent work, dude!

Glad it's worked out for you in the end.

So sorry about the mess-up with the AppleBCM5751Ethernet.kext.
You are MORE than right! It DOES belong inside the IONetworkingFamily.kext.
I was so busy patching the files inside and testing it, that i forgot that it is ACTUALLY supposed to live inside that silly little plugins folder. By the time i starting putting the guide together, i just saw the two Kexts and thought that that was the way it worked so i never even questioned it. Ha ha ha!
That would at least explain some of my DHCP issues then. Still can't believe it carried on working, though.
A sloppy mistake like that in Windows and it would have been "Game Over". Thanks for spotting that!

Good call on the Chameleon build too, v747 was mostly the first one i got working so i kinda just stuck with it for this guide.
I've since migrated over to one of Kabyl's exotics, have chucked out the ATI5000Injector.kext and have instead injected the ATI 5450 Device ID directly into the ATI5000Controller.kext in the Info.plist file (which works brilliantly for most bootloaders BTW). I've also hex-edited the ATI5000Controller file and tweaked the Eulemur framebuffer to correctly assign the right Connector types, Sense IDs and Controller Ports, etc to my ATI 5450. Still no Audio via HDMI, but i think i'm getting REALLY close now.... DVD Player App has stopped crashing and ALL three connectors (VGA / HDMI / DVI) are working properly and are automatically assigning the right resolutions when connected too, which is certainly a step in the right direction. I will post some updates when i finally crack this little nut.

Also a MASSIVE thanks for the Snow Leopard Server guide! I had quickly tried the install before, but got caught out at the serial validation stage. I thought i was losing my mind when it kept refusing my license and I promptly gave up i favor of solving some other problems. Grrrr! It now makes perfect sense that i should have had my NIC working properly BEFORE validation. LOL!

I also REALLY like where you are going with the SMBIOS & 64-bit suggestion. I skipped making one for this setup in favor of fiddling with some DSDT hacks - which merely amounted to a most humbling embarrassment.
I never thought that it could be something like a small SMBIOS tweak. I had made a mental note to come back to the SMBIOS if i ran into some unsupported hardware error when installing Aperture or something, but i never got around to installing anything that threw me those kind of errors... I must DEFINITELY look into this again!

Thanks so much for the updates and all of your input! I think we're getting REALLY close to a nicely working little machine here...

All the best,

j.

[Chris-CDI]

Thanks for the guide Janitor.
I had bought 4 of these microservers as my brother recommended them, and am currently setting one up as a media server. The other though I thought i'd put to good use - and i've followed this guide to a tee, but i also seem to get stuck at the:

PostBootMounter : No ramdisk specified, exiting.
[ PCI configuration begin ]

and it just hangs from there...

i have the exact same graphics card and have 8GB of memory installed, using the boot instructions from the guide, and are using a 16gb USB to boot from. I have 3x 250GB disks and a LG Super multi-blu BH10 disc drive installed, but not currently plugged in (thought i'd leave this until later in the tutorial where you mentioned disc drives).

I'm still a recent convert / noob at mac stuff - and programming is not something i'm familiar with on this level, so its straight instructions for me only like in your guide... but now i'm stuck..

any assistance would be appreciated!

Thanks.

[janitor]

Hey, Chris-CDI.

Sounds pretty strange to me....
I assume that you're still at the pre-Mac OS X GUI installer stage?

I suspect that it may have something to do with the installer you created, as the error appears to make reference to not being able to access/mount the ramdisk. This (if i'm not mistaken) is the temporary install data created and loaded into RAM on the fly right after the boot stage by Nawcom's ModUSB installer. Which implies that something is missing or wonky with your installer.

What method did you use to create your 16GB USB install media?
It might be worth trying again, or using a different method.

Otherwise, it might be a PCI Config issue. Even though i highly doubt it ... it may be worth trying to adding one of the following kernel flags at boot (ie. when you enter maxmem=2048): PciRoot=0  or  PciRoot=1  or  PciRoot=2

The last thing i can suggest with the current info at hand is to possibly skip ahead in the guide and install your LG Optical Drive. Then use Nawcom's ModCD install method using a boot CD followed by a Vanilla Mac OS X Snow Leopard Install DVD.
Of course, this method will require you to run the BIOS patch i mentioned at the end of 'Part 6: Tweaks'.
This is to bypass the dreaded 'Waiting for Root Device" error that we all had when we first tried trying to Hackintosh these machines via the DVD install method.
NOTE: I have personally had great success so far with this BIOS patch, but as always, BIOS patching comes with an element of risk, so proceed with caution & at your own risk!

I hope this helps you to get up and running soon, so that you can begin to enjoy all of your hard work.

Good luck & chat soon...

j.

[Chris-CDI]

Hi J,
ok, this is basically what I did step by step;

got the HP unit out. mounted three x 250GB drives in it.
got my copy of osx 10.6.6 out (the one which came with my macbook pro) then proceeded to install it to a 16gb flash drive.
followed instructions on how to format it for booting (GUID partition) so got that sorted.
Then spent a good 2 hours installing osx to the flash drive.
once done installing (on my macbook) i go through the various bits and pieces to set it up and then shutdown the macbook.
Remove the USB and restart the macbook.
Now i'm back in existing system.
Download nawcom's USB installer zip file as per instructions.
Plug the flash drive into macbook.
run nawcom's MODusb installer and finish installation.
eject the drive.

place usb drive into HP server.
press power and wait for it to boot,
get to the modbin boot prompt. type 'maxmem=2048' seeing as i have 8gb. press enter.
then it does a bit of spinning and whatnot and then comes up with that error.

i've tried also updating the os when newly installed, then running the kernel update from nawcom, then ejecting and rebooting into normal system, and then running the MODusb installer. this way doesn't even get me to the modbin boot screen.

  
help?! lol...

Where could i be going wrong?
Thanks a million.
Cheers,
C

[splonk]

Chris-CDI, on Jul 21 2011, 03:16 PM, said:

Hi J,
ok, this is basically what I did step by step;

got the HP unit out. mounted three x 250GB drives in it.
got my copy of osx 10.6.6 out (the one which came with my macbook pro) then proceeded to install it to a 16gb flash drive.

Where could i be going wrong?
Thanks a million.
Cheers,
C

Chris, see above. The bolded part is where you are going wrong. You must use a RETAIL copy of Snow Leopard. The disks that come with Mac hardware are specifically tailored to those machines, sometimes using interim builds of OSX. They also contain hardware checks and will refuse to install on any machine different from the one that they were issued with. The only retail copies of Snow Leopard contain 10.6.0 and 10.6.3. No later version was released.

[Saf]

Chris-CDI, on Jul 21 2011, 03:16 PM, said:

Hi J,
got my copy of osx 10.6.6 out (the one which came with my macbook pro) then proceeded to install it to a 16gb flash drive.
followed instructions on how to format it for booting (GUID partition) so got that sorted.
Then spent a good 2 hours installing osx to the flash drive.
once done installing (on my macbook) i go through the various bits and pieces to set it up and then shutdown the macbook.

Hey,

To add to what splonk wrote, when you do get a retail copy of Snow Leopard, I think what you're doing is wrong.

I've bolded some things from your post and from what I understand, you're actually booting the dvd on the MacBook and choosing the 16GB Mem Stick as a destination to install the OS.

You're supposed to restore the DVD to the memory stick. Boot your MacBook up as normal into Mac. Then insert the DVD and USB Stick. Open Disk Utility and restore the DVD to the USB Stick. Follow this link for more info: How to make a Bootable SL USB Stick. Give it a go but you will need the Retail SL DVD.


TO JANITOR:

Thanks for the guide! I was about to buy the N36L, then two days later you posted the guide. GREAT TIMING! Not had mine delivered yet though so will be following your guide soon! I'll help and add what I can, not a newbie at Hackintosh's but I am when it comes to AMD Hackintosh's!


Saf

[tk007b]

Hey Janitor,

Thank you for an excellent guide !

As a Hackintosh novice (but not IT Novice) I carefully followed your instructions to the letter and purchased the 5450 Graphics card to make sure I stayed on the right page.

All goes well until I try to run the Multibeast section Part 4 Point 2.
I cannot see any an ATI 1.6.34.13 section, so I omit this and run the other parts but this locks up my installation
After a few retrys (I use CCC to restore the image from my previous working changes, as I have 2 partitions on my mad HD) I conceded it and only installed the Kext helpers from Multibeast and was able to proceed.

The weird thing is, after this stage I need to press the power button during boot up to complete the boot as the system appears to hang for some strange reason, part way through. On verbose mode it stops at 'Map Segment Failed' and then after the power button is pressed is gives 'Jnl:disk03:Journal replay done' and continues (this happens every time from this point on)

Anyway, I managed to get the ethernet working and installed all of the ATI kexts for the graphics card. However, even with the com.apple.Boot.plist file (replaced) I get an unusable screen when trying to boot without the GraphicsEnabler=No -f command at the boot loader.

So to sum up  ... everything looks cool except having the press the power button during the boot process and also not being able to fully utilise my graphics card.

I'm sure you are very busy working on many things but any advice, when you get a sec, would be much appreciated.

Thanks very much and well done

TK

[Chris-CDI]

Right, so i finally got it installing... (got about 20 minutes left) so i thought i'd post some questions here now -
i know the post install instructions say that you need to install the 10.6.7 combo update and the 10.6.8 legacy kernel from Nawcom, but what about the 10.6.8 combo update? is this supported as i see in the replies there is mention of updating to 10.6.8 version and the same kernel as above.

so which one is it?     

I'll see how this goes now, after all it is the first time i've managed to get it to boot / install this far... (i'll admit i did just press install and didn't configure the drive - as i had previously done so, and i didn't check if sleep enabler or graphics enabler are checked. or quicktime.   oops.... (i can see i'm going to probably be doing this over again...   )

Thanks again for the guidance and help!
Saf, Splonk - thanks for pointing this out.  I picked up a retail copy of Snow Leopard earlier today and this method has been much easier!

Cheers,
Chris [mac newbie and IT novice!]

and does anyone have a clue how to properly sort out the idiot extra icons in launchpad lion? arghhhh!  

[splonk]

Chris-CDI, on Jul 23 2011, 12:53 AM, said:

Right, so i finally got it installing... (got about 20 minutes left) so i thought i'd post some questions here now -
i know the post install instructions say that you need to install the 10.6.7 combo update and the 10.6.8 legacy kernel from Nawcom, but what about the 10.6.8 combo update? is this supported as i see in the replies there is mention of updating to 10.6.8 version and the same kernel as above.

so which one is it?     

I'll see how this goes now, after all it is the first time i've managed to get it to boot / install this far... (i'll admit i did just press install and didn't configure the drive - as i had previously done so, and i didn't check if sleep enabler or graphics enabler are checked. or quicktime.   oops.... (i can see i'm going to probably be doing this over again...   )

Thanks again for the guidance and help!
Saf, Splonk - thanks for pointing this out.  I picked up a retail copy of Snow Leopard earlier today and this method has been much easier!

Cheers,
Chris [mac newbie and IT novice!]

and does anyone have a clue how to properly sort out the idiot extra icons in launchpad lion? arghhhh!  

Forget 10.6.7 and take it straight to 10.6.8 and use the appropriate legacy kernel for that. Kernel numbers differ from OSX version numbers, confusingly enough. For 10.6.8 you need legacy kernel 10.8.0.

As for launchpad, I can't be bothered with it. You can drag icons over each other to create folders just like on your iPhone, so I suggest collecting the useless icons into dump folders, so they are easier to ignore.

tk007b, on Jul 23 2011, 12:02 AM, said:

Hey Janitor,


Anyway, I managed to get the ethernet working and installed all of the ATI kexts for the graphics card. However, even with the com.apple.Boot.plist file (replaced) I get an unusable screen when trying to boot without the GraphicsEnabler=No -f command at the boot loader.

So to sum up  ... everything looks cool except having the press the power button during the boot process and also not being able to fully utilise my graphics card.

I'm sure you are very busy working on many things but any advice, when you get a sec, would be much appreciated.

Thanks very much and well done

TK

I took fewer steps to get mine to work for what it is worth. After installing 10.6.0 and getting the network up and running I ran the 10.6.8 combo update until it finished and then before restarting I added the injector kext to the /Extra/Extensions folder and only the ATI5000Controller.kext, the ATIFramebuffer.kext and the ATISupport.kext to the /S/L/E folder.  The rest are surplus to requirements. Next I ran Kext Utility. Use only this to repair permissions and rebuild the caches. OSX86Tools is obsolete and should not be used. Next I installed the legacy kernel. Reboot without strings or use -v -f if you have problems to see what is going on.

[Chris-CDI]

hi J,
got the basics going - managed to get past the first section of the installation, and it was up and running fine. Installed the 10.6.8 updates and 10.8.0 kernel, still working fine.

followed instructions and rebooted and then downloaded and installed the necessaries for part 4 of the guide - and all was going well until it started up and whilst the screen came on and showed the osx desktop, the mouse and keyboard just didn't work at all? had no clue as to how to proceed from there...

i was using the Chameleon 2 RC5 v747, and before doing that i installed Multibeast and the various options as mentioned in the post - but i couldn't find the ATi stuff as per the post - there were earlier versions and a later version, which i opted for, and the main version (first in the list under graphics, ATI). installed then also installed chameleon, then that asked me to log out / log back in again? which i did - assume this is part of the installation or chameleon?

and then once i rebooted with maxmem=2048 GraphicsEnabler=No -f, i got as described above - no keyboard and no mouse... (I'm using a ms usb mouse keyboard combo - but have a bluetooth dongle for my existing mac keyboard and magic- trackpad and mouse.

any advice will be appreciated.
thanks again - i was super chuffed when i managed to get it to boot the first time!

cheers,
CB