We still will need hacked kernels and also hacked drivers.
As far as I understand we could get rid of those ACPI-Kernels.
Using the native power management of those kernels would be a huge step especially for notebooks.
I think the most problems come from those ACPI-hacks. They are not working correct together with the closed-source development past 10.4.4.
I guess with a "near native" kernel we would have the hole features of the new mobile intel processors (dual core, dynamic speed step, e.c.t.).
Hopefully also brightness-control from displays.

re-book

This gets into gray areas of my knowledge on the subject.

If EFI was made to work, then Apple's boot.efi could be made to run, perhaps without patching. Once into that environment, a retail copy of OS X would boot. It is possible that Apple has hardware detection in the kernel that looks beyond EFI, so that would need to be patched, but ACPI and the current hacky-configuration wouldn't be needed. With EFI, hardware support would be much more reliable (eg. nvidia), and more features would be supported properly (eg. speedstep).

I don't know much about the current hack, but OSX86 probably uses software from the original intel development kit (a P4 IIRC), and a number of patches from people who became famous in the community long ago. The current state of things is irrelevant to this thread, other than that an EFI-booting OSX86 wouldn't be a sketchy hack and would be reliable to boot OS X versions in the future.

boot.efi boots fine, just remove the header (which is basically deleteing a couple of bytes). and the only thing to bypass in the kernel is the efi crc. thats all you need to boot efi on DUET (also a modified efildr16 with vesa init hardcoded)

There we are, thanks. So it requires a simple hex edit to boot.efi, and a relatively simple bypassing of a CRC check in the kernel (patch in the new CRC, or remove the check). These are much smaller patches than hacking additional functionality into the kernel as OSX86 has been doing.

If DUET is working, the Developer's UEFI Emulation T, then presumably it'll boot boot.efi with the small patch? Then progress must be stalled at removing the kernel's CRC check? Or the "apple EFI environment", something about decrypting files within their firmware? I don't know enough to help, so explaining these things to me is just for education, don't worry too much about it.


Not sure what "efildr16" is, google doesn't know either.

efildr16 = efi loader
progress is stalled with the fact that duet sort of sucks , and its much easier to hack a kernel for bios atm than it is to hack it for efi (well, for efi you have to first boot duet, then boot boot.efi, bios is just one load, much simpler imo)

what do you think about setting up a wiki and documenting everything in here?i just read trough the archive thread and there really were some interesting findings.look at the iphone dev wiki.they were able to do some heavy lifting because they were able to colaborate in a very effective way using a wiki.maybe we could even attract some of theme working on macefix86.

update:
i just had an idea, dont know if it's stupid. probably you guys already tried that, but i'll tell it anyway.maybe it's that simple/stupid, that noone tried it so far :-)what about taking a mainboard which is very close to the original mac pro mainboard,flashing a somewhat broken and half assed hacked apple-efi-version (extracted from a real macpro board)and than trying to use the apple mac pro firmware restoration cd in order to let it do the job and get a working apple efi on the chip?bad idea? probably... :-)

There's also a drm chip on every Apple board so this is not going to work. Since some parts of code for all kind of drivers are moved to EFI you will also need to flash the rom of your video card for example. For example the driver for a very complicated onboard ide (raid)chip could be moved to EFI. The complicated onboard ide (raid)chip will talk to EFI and EFI will present the chip to the operating systeem like a standard ide chip. That's the way EFI works and that's the reason why we need a lot of drivers for all kind of chipsets (ICH7, ICH8 and so on).

The current Intel boards use EFI and emulates a bios, so you pretty close with that kind of motherboard. The only way would be to hack EFI, extract indeed the EFI from a hacked Apple and combine things together. The more a motherboards differs from a Apple motherboard the more drivers we need to program for EFI.

there is no drm/tpm on apple motherboards, it is a common myth. EFI can be flashed to a motherboard and it will work, sort of. Some parts will not be mapped properly (i.e: USB wont work, or audio ports will be switched)

why if much easier to hack a kernel for bios than for efi, because the kernel patches doesn't have a full hardware support and many other issues and the efi hack that made netkas has full hardware support?

netkas never had full hardware support lol. the kernel doesnt support any hardware, thats all done with kexts. efi will give you many more issues than the way we have it at the moment, now maybe a firmware based solution would be good. But that isnt going to happen as far as i can see.

Ive been reading these posts about efi etc, and my bad axe 2 turned up today.
Apparently, It supports Efi.

So is it likely that something is going to materialise that will enable those of us with efi support (such as badaxe2) to do some sort of flashing or whatever that will let us masquerade as a "real" apple spackintosh?

I think I also read that you can't actually enable efi on these boards so I might be talking complete codswallop.
However, naturally it interests me.

so whats the score?

The boards are running a CSM (like bootcamp) that is constantly turned on, giving us access only to the BIOS environment, when (if) Intel enables UEFI booting on these boards we will be able to utilise the full efi environment on our boards (i have a badaxe, which "supports" EFI as well). My bets on the time intel will release a firmware update is around vista SP1 or whichever vista supports UEFI

"Microsoft is planning to release SP1 alongside Windows Server 2008 in the first quarter of 2008.", with Win2k8 due on Feb.27th (announcement? paper launch? shipping?).

I have been disappointed with MacEFIx86. I have an intel motherboard with 4gb of RAM that supports 3.2gb, and no support for newer processors, when I could have gone with a better non-intel board. I didn't spend as much on it as I would have a BadAxe2 or comparable, so I can't complain, but I had hoped for a breakthrough. My hope now is that it does work, yet is being kept secret for the release of 10.5. Long shot hope perhaps ;-)

I still believe that if EFI is made to work, then there would be less work after that to ensure driver compatibility -- things Apple supports would be supported without patching them for BIOS. I don't understand the technical details, but it seems I'm wrong?

Apple is using efi more and more. the 8xxx series of nVidia cards are initialed entirely by eif so it is impossible to get them to work. Also some of apples essentail kexts are having efi only routines in them, which means more binary patching for us to make them bios compatible. But seeing as i own a couple of macs, and barely/ if ever use hackos any more, macefix86 isnt as big a priority for me as it was. heck, i dont even have mod control over this section anymore.

Kiko... please don't say like this.. Not many of us can afford to have a real Mac. If you chose to wash your hands of the project, that might be disheartening for many of us

Has there been any progress on this project lately? I'm willing to join the dev team, but don't know where to start?

I only found this page useful: http://wiki.osx86project.org/wiki/index.php/EFI

Nothing visible from the outside. Godspeed! The current method is working, but untenable in the future.

What about using LinuxBIOS as init of mobo, and rewrite him to use EFI specification rathen than BIOS with ACPI and other legacy stuff.
So we can flash the mobo completely to use EFI rathen than BIOS.
The big trouble that LinuxBIOS at now have small compatiblity with new Intel-based mobos.
http://www.linuxbios.org/index.php/Supported_Motherboards

http://www.linuxbios.org/index.php/Support...ets_and_Devices
The EFI implementation can be found on https://www.tianocore.org/

So what ideas?

http://www.uefi.org - Additional info

So I have found that LinuxBIOS already can boot to GNUFI, and it have the 16-bit legacy BIOS emulator for booting Windoz and OpenBSD (BootCamp will work????!!!!!).

But now LinuxBIOS haven't ported to new ICHs

Nice, i hope that Kiko or someone else read this.

Netkas is working on this again. Check his blog:

http://netkas.freeflux.net/blog/archive/2007/11/05/w00t.html

This is the same thing that has been done before. It is using the tianocore efi emulation which in my opinion is not an adequate solution, but might be better as they improve that. The difference is this:

legacy bios -> bios booter -> modified kernel
legacy bios -> efi for bios emulation -> efi booter -> original kernel

as you see you get one extra boot step and altough the kernel is made for the efi booter it is still buggy and limited in the efi emulation.

It would be of more interest if there was proper efi on the motherboards, but only a chosen few has this options.

So, since netkas has made all the job, i dont think we do not need this project, anyway it never made a true results.

Is there

MacEFIx86 project members. go back to school

follow netkas's efi works and learn something.

Be nice, gramshi.

I'm not sure about the reasons why this method isn't the best, though booting from EFI would be ideal. Microsoft releases Windows Server 2008 in Feb, which supports EFI booting, so Intel may enable it on old boards.

lol, gramshi. Are you {censored} retarded? All netkas has done is copy dfe's work, then add some more data from the dumps, he has done nothing in reality. Without dfe we wouldnt have pc-efi. I dont see why everyone is so excited about it.

I mean, your still using BIOS, still using the same old darwin bootloader, you need a special boot for every configuration i.e: gma or x1600. It only works on Core Duo and Core 2 Duo, not AMD. You still need dsmos. Sure you might be able to update without any major worries, but anyone who had any issues while updating shouldnt be using a computer considering how dead simple it was. You cant use Startup Disk (which is a big plus being able to use it).

Also, Why would you even come here? You have nothing nice / useful to say, except to spew out some useless propaganda, which is worded poorly and incorrectly. You're just a sheep following the crowd of noobs that is osx86.

As for MacEFIx86, well it never became anything, why? Well the simple fact is that, We have jobs, we dont have all the free time in the world to work out something that in the end isnt even needed. If you want to be such a cheapass and steal an OS, then go ahead. But i would much rather run Mac OS on real Mac hardware. It's like these people spending thousands of dollars on a new rig, to match the Mac Pro's hardware. They end up spending even more than a Mac Pro costs to be able to run a Operating System that will be plagued with issues.

For those who really, really, really want to get EFI working native. Go buy a Mac-Mini, go spend a couple of hundred on a SPI flash reader/writer, then open your brand new mac mini up most likely {censored} it up in the process and desolder the SPI Flash on it. Once you have the SPI Flash you can use the SPI reader to dump the contents of the chip into a raw binary file on your PC. Go buy a Intel motherboard that closely matches the hardware of the mac-mini, read its SPI flash (just incase you dont like a mac-mini clone), then program the mac-mini's flash onto it. Boot up and voila. You have yourself one working mac-mini clone (hopefully working assuming you are a master solderer and desolder). And for only a couple of grand.

You may now go and spread the love.

P.S: frizbot, hopefully they will release an update, cause i dont feel like pulling apart my hardware

frizbot,

If you have an Intel 965 based board maybe you have noticed an interesting bit of software included in the version 1712 of the BIOS, is called the "Integrated System Recovery Technology", this is a graphic based utility to backup the HD partition running in the pre-boot environment, meaning that it runs in top of UEFI !!!, so the intel motherboards have a full UEFI implementation ready to work, I already test it, is nothing wonderful but shows that U/EFI is alive within the board, an only an update is required to enabled it. As you said windows server 2008 is around the corner, but also vista sp1 which is supposed to support U/EFI. An update to enable U/EFI boot in the Intel boards is well with in the realms of possibilities given that Intel does not need to add anything and is using it already.

If anyone doing EFI or OSX kext disassembly has seen code that is playing with the PCI root hub express control registers specifically with link control and NVidia chips set, a pastbin of the code would be nice. Or just point me to the kext in question.

Also any code/kext that might by playing with a clock generation chip that might control pci-e bus speed. The clockgen chip would be off an SPI bus.

This is to figure out why the AppleTV runs the pci-e bus at X16 under it's native OSX but only X2 under a Tiger/Linux install.

Thanks
Scott

I have 945 chipset, but I'd be happy to switch the motherboard out for something newer. The board supposedly has EFI, with a BIOS emulator. If Windows supports EFI, then Intel can release an update to enable it. Right now, EFI is just a semi-failed copyprotection for OS X, and if Intel wants EFI to go anywhere then they'll be releasing boards that support it. That should mean they'll release an update to enable EFI on boards that use it (IIRC some 3rd party motherboard manufacturers also use it). It's why I bought a crappy-but-supported Intel motherboard.

Sorry davilla, I know what most those words mean, but I can't help you.

ok guys i have a questing for ya. i have an hp pavilion dv9207us. is it possible to get EFI for it. i think it would totally kick ass to be able to run osx without all the hacks. and yes before you say it i already own a mac pro i just want to tinker with my laptop cause i cant afford to drop another 2g's. the misses would strangle me alive(believe me im still recovering from when i bought the mac pro and that was nearly a year ago) ill happily provide any system information if asked. please get back to me when you can. my email is coopmeister123@mac.com. or you can IM me @ zacwhite15@msn.com. thx

no more search for EFI based motherboard ?
this topic is dead , definitively ?

I don't have much time for this.

Anyway here is the BIOS from the new EFI BIOS board from MSI.

Click to view attachment

http://www.msi-korea.co.kr/?this_in=mainboard&seq=291

This is the last time I will beat what looks like the skeletal, fossilized remains of a horse, but Vista SP1's release has come and gone, alone with UEFI support finally. QEMU has also implemented UEFI support, if that's any good news. So, question is, have we come to a point where work on this project can be continued?

If not, I'm thinking we should close down this subforum as a part of our yearly housekeeping.

Have any x86 (-64) motherboards enabled EFI booting? That's why Windows' new EFI boot feature was exciting.

The Intel boards DX38BT and DX48BT2 support EFI boot with the newest firmware. The MSI Efinity - only available in asia - also support EFI but I'm not sure about its boot capabilities, maybe someone living in korea, japan, etc. could verify, is very difficult to get one of these out of asia and is by far the cheapest option of the three.

{censored} intel to hell, they said they would release updates for all boards sold as EFI enabled once SP1 was released that would allow efi booting. Nothing yet......

lol

The standards makers backtrack for manufacturers relying on borked and antiquated standards, you lose.

The project isn't completely dead. Some are still working on it in our off time. I currently have windows server 2008 x64 booting from UEFI with DUET. I also compiled an x64 version of rEFIt although I haven't got the graphics mode to work as of yet, but the text mode works just dandy. I need to find an x64 compatable HFSplus efi driver before I can continue on with OS X. A dump of all the EFI files from an x64 EFI Mac would probably be benificail as well.

Hi all.

I have an idea. What if we take TPM chip from dead Mac-motherboard and resolder it to real PC-motherboard (that has TPM-chip)
Will this PC works like trivial Mac ?

first of all, DEAD means no more development.

Then, there are no TPM chips on real Mac (biggest myth), The DTK is not out there anymore and there is no support in Leopard for it, so even if you get one DTK there is no use if you get the chip.

As for the EFI "chip" you should read that there is an alternative called EFi-X on Front Page & Rumors.

About two days ago my EFINITY Mainboard has arrived, from Japan ...... www.shoppingmalljapan.com made it possible, but be prepared that they DO charge for their service!
I quickly ripped apart my other Hackintosh and put in an E4500 C2D, 2GB RAM, SATA HDD + DVD/RW .... the system boots and works very well, as expected. The efi shell is crippled, does not have the bcfg command ...... of course no inbuilt support for HFS ....... impossible to boot with the original DVD at the moment,
This board for sure deserves further investigation ...... I'll keep you informed on the proceedings!

I've tried on my P45D3 Platinum with EFI.

On the shell i load the hfsplus.efi and also ApplePartition-Driver (both x64 Versions, i've extracted them from the Mac Pro Firmware *.fd).

So far so good....

I can browse my HDDs (HFS+ Format), and only the HDDs.

No CD/DVD, no matter what i try. Even USB-DVD will not work. Not tried an FireWire Device.

Someone got an idea what can i try now?

You have dvd on SATA or ATA bus? You need drivers for efi for it.

Hi Superhai!

I have tried both

I just loaded the IDE and ATA/ATAPI and also the SATA (Mac)EFI drivers.


Weird thing is, i cant even see files on any other CD/DVD (ISO9660) Format. Anyway i think the drivers get connected to the devices, since the 'drivers' cmd from shell says the Partition-Driver is connected to 6 devices...

Hi,

i wrote an little Tool to extract those files from an EFI-Firmware-Device (*.fd).

If you still need those x64-EFI Images just notify here, i will upload them then.

It is a long time (over a year ago) since i looked at it, so maybe there were more files required to load for the dvd. For graphics mode to work you need the correct gfx card efi drivers.

I want to point out that BuildSmart is apparently still working on this too.

He has posted what seem to be some custom BIOS's (EFI) for Bad Axe 2 here:
http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=134515

So, I guess the quest of the "holy grail" of OSx86 is not only alive, but may be about to be solved. It actually is pretty cool to witness this two and a half years after I first tried to get EFI development moving. Of course with all the other advances in OSx86 technology, the need is certainly not as pressing now.

Almost all modern Intel Motherboards, not only Bad Axe 2 has EFI support and not only in custom bioses:). Here is the pic of my Intel DP35DP's boot options screen:
Click to view attachment
And it works!