lechner Posted January 27, 2008 Share Posted January 27, 2008 Greetings! First of all, I want to express my profound thanks to this community for providing the means to install OSX on commodity hardware. While OSX is a terrific operating system, not everyone is fortunate enough to be able to purchase a prefabricated system from Apple. As a former UNIX systems admin, I have experience putting together x86 desktops/rackmount servers and I did not feel terribly daunted by mucking around with OSx86. So this weekend I began constructing my very first "hackintosh" from brand new hardware based on the specifications and directions included in the Life Hacker articles (first post, second post.) Unfortunately, I've run into some problems that I've been unable to diagnose after searching the wonderfuly detailed Insanely Mac forums. Parts List Antec Sonata III mid-tower ATX 500w case ASUS P5W DH Deluxe Intel Core2Duo E4500 2.2 GHz NVidia GeForce 7300 GT PCI Express Kingston HyperX Dual Channel 800mhz 1gb RAM modules (x2) Seagate SATA 320gb harddrive Emprex 20x IDE dvdrom +R/RW Installation Steps Downloaded KALYWAY archive using bittorrent and burned the ISO to DVD Mounted motherboard to case and installed CPU/peripherals, verified all components were detected Changed BIOS settings as per Adam Pash's specifications, rebooted with DVD Booted into the Leopard installer without problem Used Disk Utility to create a Mac Journaled partition in GUID format Customized my installation as per Adam Pash's specifications (Vanilla kernel, NVidia desktop drivers, GUID EFI, etc.) Proceeded with installation and observed no errors or warnings. Restarted system when prompted by the installer. Removed DVD from drive and allowed Darwin/x86 to boot from harddrive without flags or modifiers Problem When booting, I see the normal startup screen (gray background, Apple logo, and a spinny thing) for approximately 15 seconds. The screen then turns black and shows two cursors in the upper lefthand corner of the monitor. Both cursors are the standard black pointer with a white outline, except the first one doesn't respond to the mouse. The second cursor does respond to the mouse and will sometimes change into a pinwheel if the first or second mouse buttons are clicked. No reboots or dialog boxes occur and I seem to be stuck at this screen indefinitely. Booting with the -v flag, I find no obvious error or warning messages. The root device, video card, and network adapater are detected just as expected. Using the vanilla bootup option does not change matters either. Miscellaneous After the BIOS posts, I receive a warning message: "Intel uCode error. Press F1 to continue." According to what I've gathered online, this can be resolved by updating the motherboard's firmware but is otherwise not important. Going over Kaly's readme again, I noticed that IDE dvdrom drives are not supported by the JMicron controllers. Believing this could be related to the issue I'm experienced, I've disconnected the dvdrom drive completely and attempted to boot into Leopard. Unfortunately, the same behavior continues. Has anyone experienced this before or able to lend suggestions for diagnosing/fixing it? If so, any advice you could give me would be invaluable. Sincere regards, Chris Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lechner Posted January 28, 2008 Author Share Posted January 28, 2008 Update 1 Following the advice given in other threads, I tried removing NVInject.kext using the terminal started from the installer DVD. Upon rebooting, I reached the same black screen but was unable to move the cursor. I then went back to the installer, wiped my partition, and re-installed Leopard -- only this time I deselected the video, audio, and network drivers. Once installed, I removed the DVD, booted off of the disk and was delighted to discover the Leopard welcome screen! Yay! I am now going to try installing the audio and network drivers recommended for my mother board. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lechner Posted January 28, 2008 Author Share Posted January 28, 2008 Update 2 If you have an ASUS P5W mother board, these directions will help you get the onboard wifi working. After installing the NVInject drivers, the black screen problem occurred again. Fortunately, a partial solution to the problem is detailed in this thread. I say this is a partial solution because it appears to restore the default video drivers for OSX, which are not optimal. Just off hand, does anyone know which drivers should be used for an NVidia GeForce 7300 GT? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flamm Posted February 27, 2008 Share Posted February 27, 2008 Hi! I have the exact same problem as you. Only way I can get it to work is to start with -x (safe mode). Then I can use resolution at 1680x1050. I'll do more tests later today. Please post in this thread if you find a solution. Bjorn Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lechner Posted February 27, 2008 Author Share Posted February 27, 2008 Resolving this issue definitely fell into the "sonofabitch" category. Basically, the NVidia 7300 GT's firmware needed to be patched by hand (ie.. by hex editor) for the NVInject drivers to work properly with it. From what I have gathered, this is only an issue for 512mb cards. More detailed instructions can be found elsewhere, but the short version of this story is that I ended up burning an MSDOS boot image to a CD, copying the NVFlash utility to a removable USB drive which allowed me to dump the firmware. I could then edit the firmware in a hex editor as directed by this guide. Really the hardest part of the process was finding a version of NVFlash that supported my video card *and* MSDOS. I assume this issue would go away if you have a spare Windows desktop that you can install the NVidia card onto. Good luck! -c Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts