GA-945GCM-S2C Snow Leopard Installation Guide

[Aikinai]

Required

• Two hard drives
  
• Snow Leopard Image or DVD
  
• Extra files attached to this post
  
• Chameleon Installer Package
  
• Kalyway 10.5.2 Disk
  (anything working install disk is fine, but this is what I used)
  

1. Boot from Kalyway disk and install OS X 10.5.2

In order to install Snow Leopard, we first need a working Leopard installation on a separate hard drive. This is biggest downside to this installation method, but I had two hard drives and a Kalyway disk, so this is what I went for and it worked great. Don't worry about getting everything perfect for the Leopard install; It doesn't really matter how well this runs is as long as it works and you can see the screen. After the installation is done, you won't need this extra hard drive anymore, so you can use it for anything else; I recommend making a mirror of your Snow Leopard installation to have as a backup for repairing after a botched upgrade or something.

2. Format the target hard drive

Once your Leopard installation is up and running, open disk utility and click on the disk where you will be installing Snow Leopard. Divide the disk into at least two partitions, one should be a 1GB HFS+ partition named Chameleon. Use the rest of the disk for whatever you want (you can make FAT partitions to later install Windows if you like), but make sure to have at least one large HFS+ partition for Snow Leopard. I'll call it "MacOSX." Before you apply, click the "Options" button and choose "GUID Partition Table." Now click "Apply" to partition the drive.

3. Install Snow Leopard

1. First, right click on the new MacOSX partition in the finder and click "Get Info." Ensure that the "Ignore ownership on this volume" checkbox at the bottom of the window is not checked and close the window.
   
2. Insert your Snow Leopard DVD or mount your Snow Leopard disk image.
   
3. Open a Terminal and type

   open "/Volumes/Mac OS X Install DVD/System/Installation/Packages/OSInstall.mpkg"

   
   

4. Install Snow Leopard to MacOSX (the drive we just partitioned) with whatever options you would like. When the installation is finished, you can close the window and eject the disk, but we still can't boot into that partition yet.
   

4. Install and Configure Chameleon

1. Run the Chameleon installer package that you can download from here to the 1GB Chameleon partition we created earlier.
   
2. From the files attached to this post, copy com.apple.Boot.plist and DSDT.aml to /Extra/ in the Chameleon partition
   
3. Except for SleepEnabler10.6.2ONLY.zip, copy all of the kexts from the attached files into /Extra/Extensions/ in the Chameleon partition
   (The included SleepEnabler.kext is zipped for your protection since it's only for 10.6.2 and it will cause a kernel panic if you use it in 10.6.0)
   

5. Restart and boot into Snow Leopard!

Restart and change your BIOS settings to boot from the hard drive where you installed Snow Leopard and Chameleon. If everything went well, your Snow Leopard installation should boot up fine, but it's best to clean up the installation before updating, so do the following:

1. Insert your DVD or mount your Snow Leopard image
   
2. Open a Terminal and type

   open "/Volumes/Mac OS X Install DVD/System/Installation/Packages/BSD.pkg"

   
   

3. Install this package. It will repair some permissions that might have gotten mixed up by installing from a separate disk.
   
4. Open Disk Utility and Repair Permissions on your Snow Leopard disk.
   
5. Restart
   

6. Update to 10.6.2

Run Software Update and upgrade to 10.6.2 along with any other updates you want.

7. Finishing touches

1. Sound should be working fine, but the wrong device was selected when my system first came up, so if no sound is coming out, go to Sound in System Preferences and change to Internal Speakers (this might depend on your setup)
   
2. Unzip SleepEnabler.kext from SleepEnabler10.6.2ONLY.zip and copy it to /Extra/Extensions/ in your Chameleon partition along with the the other kexts. It's safe now that you're in 10.6.2 and it will help with sleeping.
   
3. Restart again and if everything comes up okay, then the installation is finished. Just in case SleepEnabler.kext caused a crash on boot, you can always boot back into Kalyway and delete the kext from the Chameleon folder.
   

Big Thanks To

Dr. Hurt for the DSDT, and also for the Chameleon installer package

Good luck!

 

P.S. If you are trying to use this guide and run into any problems, I can try to help, but I can't really check on or try different things since I built this machine for a friend and don't have it around anymore.

GA_945GCM_S2C.zip

[LanceMish]

Thanks for the great work. Works flawlessly for 10.6.2.

 

SleepEnabler cause kernel panic for 10.6.3

 

Anyone got 10.6.3 compatible SleepEnabler?

[eli1981]

does everythings except the sleep enabled works fine after u updated to 10.6.3?

[ANtrah]

SleepEnabler working to 10.6.3

SleepEnabler.kext10.6.3.zip

[kimooo]

i have the same hardware config and i use nvidia 8400 gs 256 with HDD ATA not SATA

when iam trying to load snow leobard it restart after loading extension exacatly before start darwin

 

here is the last message before restarting

efi_inject_get_devprop_string null

NoSMBIOS Replacement Found

Patched DMI Table

Patched ACPI version 1 dsdt

starting Darwin X86

then nothing but restart

 

anyhelp???

[Wendel]

I have this mobo and including Atheros wifi 5005g and Nvidia Geforce 8400 GS 512mb... I'm running Snow Leopard totally Vanilla in 32/64bit mode using a DSDT.aml and Chameleon RC5 with this kexts in /Extra only:

 

FakeSMC.Kext

AtherosFix.kext

GigabyteALC6626CH.kext

 

Everything is running like a charm!!!

 

PS: I'm including my DSDT and the Chemeleon pkg if someone needs.

Chameleon_RC5_and_DSDT.zip

[LanceMish]

Antrah

Thanks for the 10.6.3 SleepEnabler.

Nice Sleep now.

[br492]

i have the same mobo with nvidia 8600gt 512MB.Everything works perfect with 10.6.2,when it comes to .3 one time i got kernel panics (didn't remove sleepenabler)then i couldnt login and when i made it i have lost sound (found in system profiler,nothing from system preferences)thank god i have backup from time machine and i am relatively fast in the previous situation.i believe that something happens with efi partition

[rtomek]

Tried this out, and it worked pretty good. I suggest NOT using chameleon RC5 because it is a debug version and you will have to hit a key to start every time and it's really annoying. Just use RC4. I tried this because the hazard version didn't work AT ALL on this mobo, just a kernel panic every time. I prefer vanilla anyway.

 

My biggest issue was getting my video card to work, but with the Nvidia 7x00 cards it turns out you need to boot into 32-bit mode. That is actually what is set in the boot.plist file that was included with the files but I wanted 64-bit I guess I have to upgrade my video card to get 64-bit.

[crazyJAT]

I recently acquired this board and am unable to get the ALC662 audio or the GMA 950 video working. I have tried several DSDT fixes and nothing works. Any help please?