SiS 661FX Motherboard - Help Needed

[themacmeister]

As you may or may not know, SiS motherboards are notorious when installing OSX86. The processor is fine, but the included hardware onboard (SATA/IDE/USB) does not work out of the box.

 

I include below a short description of how I originally installed OSX (10.4.6).

 

0. Pre-prepare OSX partition on HDD

1. Disable USB entirely in BIOS

2. Unplug all internal drives (including SATA)

3. Disable SATA in the BIOS

4. Randomly try single HDD and DVD-burner in master/slave configurations in BOTH IDE ports, until disks are recognised.

5. Computer boots (without DMA) in about 20 minutes - install OSX - takes hours.

6. Restart into OSX using CHAIN0 method (10 min)

7. Remove OHCI (unsure? could be UHCI) from AppleUSBFamily.kext

8. Add device string for IDE to AppleATAFamily.kext (gets DMA and SATA working).

9. Do other extraneous stuff to get graphics working (NVidia etc.)

 

I have only ever tried this with an SSE2 OSX86, not the vanilla kernel, which should work with SSE3? correct?

 

If anyone has a working install on a 661FX with SSE3 & vanilla kernel, I would be more than interested in how you managed it, and how it works.

 

My SSE2 installs have been flawless on my old Dell, although OpenGL doesn't work correctly, and other programs display odd behaviour, or simply don't launch. I am hoping a vanilla kernel/SSE3 CPU will solve these problems.

 

I have, or can easily buy cheap USB PCI cards, that will add the correct format if internal ports refuse to work (OHCI/UHCI). I also have an internal SATA PCI Card that I am keen to try out. Shared production machine is the one I want to experiment on, but only get access overnight, and not always then.

 

Please let me know how you get on, and if you can help me.

 

PS. Sound (Realtek AC97) and Network (SiS 900) both work with patches/drivers

PPS. I have Leo4All V2 and iAtkos r3 among others.

[themacmeister]

I have since gotten Leopard working on this machine (Acer SA-80)

 

Used iAtkos v1.4i

 

Booted with -x

 

Everything ran very fast and smooth (no longer need USB off in BIOS, or VIAATA patch!)

 

All works wonderfully, except random kernel panics made it impossible for me to continue...

 

Was using PCI SATA (Si 5312RAID) and generic RTL8139D NIC (as SiS900 driver was buggy)

 

I wish I had time to do more experimentation, as it was running much sweeter than WinXP on the same machine. I now have the same iAtkos Leopard 10.5.4 running on my new personal machine.

 

grey-box Asus. P5KPL-CM with 2GB RAM, 500GB SATA, GeForce 8400GS.

 

I am using Toh/XNUstage 9.4.0 kernel and System.kext

 

All internal components accurately shown in System Profiler (SATA, ATA, Graphics, RAM etc.)

 

Everything working perfectly EXCEPT integrated ethernet (using RTL8139D PCI - works without drivers)

 

also Sleep/Hibernate and Mic-In not currently working. Sound out stereo only using AppleAzalia driver.

 

All software working EXCEPT Quake1 (FuhQuake, ProQuake etc.) and iMovie '08 ('06 works fine).

 

Cheers.

 

themacmeister

 

 

 

As you may or may not know, SiS motherboards are notorious when installing OSX86. The processor is fine, but the included hardware onboard (SATA/IDE/USB) does not work out of the box.

 

I include below a short description of how I originally installed OSX (10.4.6).

 

0. Pre-prepare OSX partition on HDD

1. Disable USB entirely in BIOS

2. Unplug all internal drives (including SATA)

3. Disable SATA in the BIOS

4. Randomly try single HDD and DVD-burner in master/slave configurations in BOTH IDE ports, until disks are recognised.

5. Computer boots (without DMA) in about 20 minutes - install OSX - takes hours.

6. Restart into OSX using CHAIN0 method (10 min)

7. Remove OHCI (unsure? could be UHCI) from AppleUSBFamily.kext

8. Add device string for IDE to AppleATAFamily.kext (gets DMA and SATA working).

9. Do other extraneous stuff to get graphics working (NVidia etc.)

 

I have only ever tried this with an SSE2 OSX86, not the vanilla kernel, which should work with SSE3? correct?

 

If anyone has a working install on a 661FX with SSE3 & vanilla kernel, I would be more than interested in how you managed it, and how it works.

 

My SSE2 installs have been flawless on my old Dell, although OpenGL doesn't work correctly, and other programs display odd behaviour, or simply don't launch. I am hoping a vanilla kernel/SSE3 CPU will solve these problems.

 

I have, or can easily buy cheap USB PCI cards, that will add the correct format if internal ports refuse to work (OHCI/UHCI). I also have an internal SATA PCI Card that I am keen to try out. Shared production machine is the one I want to experiment on, but only get access overnight, and not always then.

 

Please let me know how you get on, and if you can help me.

 

PS. Sound (Realtek AC97) and Network (SiS 900) both work with patches/drivers

PPS. I have Leo4All V2 and iAtkos r3 among others.

[Splinter_Head]

I have Leopard running on an SIS661FX chipset. only SSE2 though.

I used Leo4All v4.1 Worked perfectly once I had a physically clean disc (picky thing)

 

Could you PLEASE tell me how and where to get the SIS900, driver and any others, and how to install them. I have tried everything else.

 

Thanks

[themacmeister]

I have the Acer SA-80 rebuilt, and running iPC 10.5.6 ppf5. All is working except PS/2, and I have a working kext floating around somewhere. Unfortunately, I do not have a spare graphics card to put in, but I have had a 7600GT working in the same machine before. Will put RTL3189 NIC card in tonight.

 

I am having no kernel panics with this configuration so far, and have not tested thoroughly (although I do have a 500GB externel USB HDD, and it is working sweetly with NTFS-3G - installed by default). I therefore guess that USB 2.0 is working.