MSI Neo2 FR - Running 10.5.4 Perfectly (Tutorial)

[knew know]

*UPDATE ... I had a bit of time this morning so I tried using the latest JaS OSx86 10.5.4 Client Server Intel SSE2 SSE3 installer and now, thanks to JaS, we MSI Neo2 users have the easiest and best installer yet!

 

Here's a quick rundown of what I did to get it working perfectly! I chose to use the StageXNU kernel hoping that our shutdown/restart/sleep problems would be fixed, but sadly it's still giving me issues. I'm not going into full detail right now as all information required will be in the Leo4All section of this tutorial. I'll just be giving you the main points, and packages that I used. Remember this is specific to my configuration, which in short means I'm running a Neo2-FR P35 board, I have all SATA drives including DVD reader, 2 GB 1066 RAM, and my videocard is an 8800GT with 512 vram. Anyway.... onto the quick tutorial......

 

1. Make sure that your BIOS is the modified one.

2. Boot the JaS dvd. (you do not need any switches at all)

3. Erase your OSX partition, and make sure its name is only one word. DO NOT INCLUDE SPACES or else you'll get an NVKush error at the end of the installation.

4. Continue through the menus until "customize". Here are the options I chose.

- StageXNU

- Intel-ICHx

- AppleAHCIPort

- NVKush by Diabolik (only choose if your videocard is Nvidia)

- ALC888

- Generic SATA Drive Icon Fix

- Intel ICH7 to ICH9 AHCI Controller

- SMBIOS-1066 (my ram is running at 1066. Change this accordingly)

- Cleanup

5. Your system should reboot and get into Leopard 10.5.4 without any problems. This has everything working as it should without any major changes!

 

The only thing I did have to do was use Diabolik's plist editor to get osx displaying my videocard as 512 ram. This can be found here.... diabolik1605.com/plister/

 

And that's it. If anyone has any information on the sleep/restart issues, please let us know in this thread. It's the only thing that's keeping me from running this system with osx exclusive and parallels.

 

Check below the "-----" line to see my Leo4allv3 tutorial...

 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I figured it was time to update this thread as I re-installed Leo4allv3 on my system last night, and found some helpful shortcuts/hints that make the installation process a bit easier for us MSI P35 users.

 

Alright ... so I'm now typing this from my osx86 10.5.4 stable with absolutely everything working as it should, besides some shutdown/restart/sleep issues which I'll go into more detail about later in the guide. I've decided to provide a writeup of everything that I've done to get my system up and running. Since I've learned a lot from others, I hope that others learn from my posts as well... Let's start with my system setup...

 

System:

Board: MSI Neo2 FR P35

CPU: 6600 Quad

RAM: 2 GB 1066mhz

Video Card: XFX 8800GT 512

NIC: Onboard

Audio: Onboard (unfortunately my delta66 will most likely never have intel drivers, only ppc)

DVD-ROM: Pioneer DVR-215D (sata)

Hard Drive 1: 250GB sata

Hard Drive 2: 320GB sata

 

BIOS Settings: (these were taken from another post and seem to work well)

MPS Table: 1.4

IOAPIC: Enabled

ACPI: S3

HPET: Enabled

EIST: Disabled

Execute Bit: Enabled

AHCI: Enabled

 

Pre-install setup:

I'm actually running Windows XP and Leopard from the same drive on separate partitions. WinXP is disk0s1 and Leopard is disk0s2, or for you PC users, xp on first partition and leopard on second partition.

 

Windows XP installed first (100gb) and I left the rest (150gb) for osx. You absolutely do not need this much space, but since I plan on using both operating systems intensively, this size serves my purpose quite well. I partitioned osx as primary (it will be a boot device after all), and left it unformatted.

 

Software:

Leo4allv3 (find this one on your own)

JaS 10.5.3 Combo Update (find this one on your own)

AppleHDA 1.20 w/ ALC888-D.txt (check the "Links" section of the guide)

NVinstaller v.41 (check the "Links" section of the guide)

Kabyl 7345v18 modified BIOS (check the "Links" section of the guide)

 

Procedure:

Install Kabyl's modified BIOS using the MSI tool included in the links below ONLY IF YOU HAVE A MULTICORE CPU, and make the proper BIOS adjustments as per the "BIOS Settings" section.

 

Place Leo4allv3 disk in your DVD-Drive and set it to bootable in the BIOS. Darwin will load and give you a few seconds to hit F8 to put in some switches/options. Go ahead and hit F8 and put "-v" (without the quotes) and hit enter. If you didn't want to install Kabyl's BIOS, then you'll need to put in "-v cpus=1". You should always keep the "-v" (verbose mode) to display any errors that you receive along the way.

 

OSX should boot into the installer after roughly 5-10 minutes, and you'll be presented with a bunch of options. Go into utility and diskutility, choose the space allocated to osx and erase/format it to journaled. Close diskutility and hit continue/next until you see the label "customize" in the bottom left corner. DO NOT MISS THE BUTTON! If you miss it, you can't cancel the installation and you'll have to start over from booting from the DVD etc.

 

Options:

Vanilla Kernel 9.2.2 - Enabled

ACPIPlatform - old (you'll need to check this to keep from getting the dreaded

"using 10485 buffer headers and 4096 cluster IO buffer headers" error)

ICH9 - Enabled

SMBios - 1066 (I don't think this matters as it's just reporting the ram speed to the OS)

About this mac - Enabled

 

Everything else was left off or turned off.

 

Procedure cont'd:

OSX will install (you can skip the DVD check), and you should receive the "success" notification and be asked to reboot.

 

The system should boot into the OSX profile setup screen. Go through the menus/setup and finally you should be in OSX.

 

The network should be working, as well as drive mounting through USB (something that doesn't work with all kernels).

 

The first thing I did was install the "JaS 10.5.3 Combo Update", and then install 10.5.4 from Apple update. I had problems with the Kalyway 10.5.3 update, and more problems going from 10.5.2 straight to 10.5.4 through Apple update, so unfortunately this is a two step process.

 

To install the sound driver, I used AppleHDA and ALC888-D.txt. Download the .txt file, drag it into the AppleHDA icon and you should immediately have sound. I had some reports of the ALC888 driver not working from the Leo4allv3 installer, so I use this method instead.

 

The only thing left to do is install NVinstaller v.41, re-boot and you're done (don't forget to choose your VRAM size in the installer... in my case 512MB). As a side note, I tried using NVinstaller v.52 and it didn't work with my card, so if you happen to have an 8800gt I would recommend you use v4.1.

 

Something odd that I noticed this time around when installing Leo4allv3 is that "-v" was already setup in com.boot.Apple.plist, so I just removed the switch from there once my system was stable so that I can see the nice apple splash on my PC . I also did not have to use the "-f" flag that was causing osx to fail on boot the first time around.

 

Links:

AppleHDA - http://www.mediafire.com/?xpijo2m4pxm

ALC888-D.txt - http://psykopat.free.fr/apple/AppleHDA/realtek/

NVinstaller v.41 - http://scottdangel.com/blog/?page_id=20

Kabyl 7345v18 modified BIOS - http://osrom.net/files/BIOS.mod/MB/MSI/734...od.by.Kabyl.zip

BIOS Updater - http://www.ami.com/support/downloadagreeme...amp;InpDrvID=90

 

I think that's it Neo2 users. Post some problems etc. in the thread and I'll try to help out as much as possible.

 

Thanks to everyone who's contributed ...

 

Good Luck,

 

kk

[Tristan]

Thanks a lot for your guide, kk! It's really helpful and I finally managed to get past the xxx buffer headers problem. However, now I get a "still waiting for root device" issue. Did you get it? If so, how did you fix it? My setup is virtually the same as yours except I have only 1 300GB SATA HDD and a Lite-On SATA DVD-RW.

 

---

Edit: OK, so I managed to finally boot OS X using not the ACPI kexts from Tiger but those from Leopard. Network and Audio are still not working but at least I'm in!

[knew know]

Hi Tristan,

 

Sorry, I've been a bit out of commission the last few days (wisdom teeth removal...), so I'm a little late on my response. I never received the "waiting for root device" but as far as I know that's caused by using unsupported IDE hardware instead of SATA (disabling IDE completely from your BIOS should correct this). Anyway, good to hear that you got in, but as far as the audio/network, that should be working if you chose the proper kext's from the Leo4all config. How about USB? Are USB drives mounting properly? (such as USB thumb drives, or HDD's).

 

Good Luck,

 

kk

[Edward Barber]

Hi,

 

Followed everything to the tee, I am now at this point "Once the files have been replaced, you can reboot the system and using "-v -f cpus=1" you should be able to get into the osx profile setup screen. Go through the menus and you should be in osx."

 

However on boot im getting "localhost /usr/sbin/ocspd[61]: starting" and it just sits there and does nothing.  With maxmem=2048 added it holds at "localhost mDNSResponder mDNSResponder-170 (Jan 4 2008 18:04:07)[32]: starting"

 

Setup:

C2D E6750

4GB DDR 2 PC-8000 RAM

150GB WD Raptor

MSI P35 Neo2-FR Mobo with 1.8 BIOS from MSI

7900GTX Nvidia GFX

NEC 7170?? SATA DVDRW

Netgear WG311T Wifi Card

[macgeek56]

Hey all,

 

Thanks for the guide, but it isn't working for me... here is my installation log book entry:

 

installed modded bios= success

 

selected bios settings according to guide on InsanelyMac=success

 

put Leo4all v3 install dvd in tray... selected F8 then entered "-v cpus=1" = success

 

erased and formatted "38.3 Maxtor 6E0r0L0" to 1 partition and option selected "GUID Partition Table" = success

 

selected customize...

selected components according to guide on InsanelyMac plus a little more= success

 

waiting for install to finish= FAILED!

 

 

Trying again...

 

 

put Leo4all v3 install dvd in tray... selected F8 then entered "-v cpus=1" = success

 

erased and reformatted "38.3 Maxtor 6E0r0L0" to 1 partition and option selected is "GUID Partition Table" = success

 

install= "Install Failed The Installer could not validate the contents of the 'Leopard-10.5.2' package. Contact the software manufacturer for assistance."

 

Any help would be appreciated.

 

MacGeek56

 

My specs:

Mobo: MSI P35 Neo2 Platinum

CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E6550

RAM: 1x 2gb 800mhz

Graphics: MSI Nvidia 7800 GT (HDMI edition)

HDD: 1 x IDE 20GB

DVD: HP dvd 940 IDE

Disk: Leo4Allv3

[macgeek56]

Hey,

 

Sorry for the trouble. I got the install to work! Yay! But now I'm getting the dreaded "still waiting for root device" error... Anybody know how to fix this? Thanks

 

MacGeek56

 

My specs:

Mobo: MSI P35 Neo2 Platinum

CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E6550

RAM: 1x 2gb 800mhz

Graphics: MSI Nvidia 7800 GT (HDMI edition)

HDD: 1 x IDE 20GB

DVD: HP dvd 940 IDE

Disk: Leo4Allv3

[knew know]

macgeek56

 

I left you a PM, but just in case anyone else is having problems with this same error I'll post. I'm fairly certain that this has to do with your IDE drives. I know that Leo4all has IDE support, but I'm not sure how well it works etc. I was having problems getting my system to boot with an IDE DVD-ROM, but once I plugged in my sata it booted without fail. Either try using different hardware, or search the forums for kexts related to the IDE drives. Remember ... intel macs do not come equipped with IDE support, so for the best compatibility it's recommended to emulate a mac as much as possible (all sata drives).

 

Good Luck,

 

kk

 

Hey,

 

Sorry for the trouble. I got the install to work! Yay! But now I'm getting the dreaded "still waiting for root device" error... Anybody know how to fix this? Thanks

 

MacGeek56

 

My specs:

Mobo: MSI P35 Neo2 Platinum

CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E6550

RAM: 1x 2gb 800mhz

Graphics: MSI Nvidia 7800 GT (HDMI edition)

HDD: 1 x IDE 20GB

DVD: HP dvd 940 IDE

Disk: Leo4Allv3

 

 

Edward,

 

From what I've read, you can use -x to get in, but you'll have reduced functionality. Make sure that the power options in your bios are setup just like mine. If all else fails, try disabling some of the onboard hardware (network adapters, soundcard etc..) to try and minimize any conflicts. You can always install them later. The goal is to try to get osx to boot without -x though as you'll have limited functionality in safe mode. I've also read of some users getting this error on a re-install after already successfully installing leopard once. That sounds to me like something wasn't checked off properly in the install phase though, but I'd still try another re-install. If you're still having problems, and you have the patience, try another distribution. Kalyway preferably. I've tried absolutely everything, and have only had success with kalyway and leo4all, but leo had all of the drivers right in the installer whereas kalyway I need to add my own kexts post install.

 

Anyway... good luck.

 

kk

 

Hi,

 

Followed everything to the tee, I am now at this point "Once the files have been replaced, you can reboot the system and using "-v -f cpus=1" you should be able to get into the osx profile setup screen. Go through the menus and you should be in osx."

 

However on boot im getting "localhost /usr/sbin/ocspd[61]: starting" and it just sits there and does nothing. With maxmem=2048 added it holds at "localhost mDNSResponder mDNSResponder-170 (Jan 4 2008 18:04:07)[32]: starting"

 

Setup:

C2D E6750

4GB DDR 2 PC-8000 RAM

150GB WD Raptor

MSI P35 Neo2-FR Mobo with 1.8 BIOS from MSI

7900GTX Nvidia GFX

NEC 7170?? SATA DVDRW

Netgear WG311T Wifi Card

[nadnerb]

I've just downloaded leo4allv3 and I can't even get the GUI to load up!

For a start it seems a lot slower to load up all the kexts at the start when compare to Kaly, is that normal?

Then I just get stuck at "CODE SIGNING: cs_invalid_page: p=147[lssave] clearing CS_VALID" and the dvd stops spinning

I left it for ages (10-20mins) and the CD starts spinning but it just shows the same error again but with a different number.

 

I followed exactly whats in the first post except I don't have an EIST option.

Also I presume AHCI = enabled means the sata raid mode or something? Well thats the only mention of AHCI I can find in the bios so I selected it.

 

I'm using a SATA DVD and SATA HDD btw.

 

Any ideas?

[nadnerb]

Update: I left Leo4allv3 "installing" for a hour and it doesn't move from that error message.

So I just wasted 3+ GB of my download limit and a DVD-R for nothing

 

Back to Kalyway I guess.

[knew know]

You are the first person that I've heard this happening to besides me! The first time I tried to load osx86, I used Leo4allv3 and I received that exact same error. I changed my DVD drive and I was able to get in with the same disc. Either there was something wrong with my dvd reader, or the image wasn't burned well enough for my old reader. In any case, my dvd drive was at fault. It's funny that you mention this though, because when I was having the same error I couldn't find a single person on this forum with the same problem.

 

I left it running for hours, and noticed that if you leave it long enough you'll probably hear the dvd drive spin up and spit out another CODE_SIGNING error but with a different error number. And yes, the kexts were loading much much slower. It would take on average 5-10 minutes just to get to the error msg.

 

Sorry to hear that you spent your credits and a bit of money, but unfortunately it sometimes comes with the territory when you're trying to do something that's unsupported and essentially illegal ;P.

 

Good Luck,

 

kk

 

 

Update: I left Leo4allv3 "installing" for a hour and it doesn't move from that error message.

So I just wasted 3+ GB of my download limit and a DVD-R for nothing

 

Back to Kalyway I guess.

[nadnerb]

Cheers for that.

I'll give it a try with my old IDE DVD drive.

It's weird, the only mention of that error was from people who have already successfully installed leo4all yet I was getting it right from the start.

 

Is Leo4all any better? Its just that I've finally got Kalyway working and updated to 10.5.2.

I suppose it wouldn't hurt to install it on a second partition for testing

 

Thanks, I'll let you know how it goes.

[nadnerb]

Cheers dude!

I'm now posting this from a Leo4allv3 install!

After trying the DVD in 3 different DVD drives and having the install fail at various points I figured my disk was bad.

I reburnt at 4x instead of max speed and the disk booted and installed first time on my SATA drive without any hiccups.

I now have everything working, even my hd3850 which seemed to be so much hassle with Kalyway.

 

One slight problem though - I installed the 9.2.2 kernel but I can't shutdown (haven't tried sleep as I never use that feature anyway)

I guess I just need to swap it for a different kernel?

I have a e2160 cpu if that means anything

 

Thanks again dude, I just presumed some other part of my setup was causing the issue (it seems every part of this PC is the worst part for installing OSX on :censored2: )

 

oh yeah, it seems I don't even need to boot with -f (or cpus=1 but I have the hacked BIOS)

[knew know]

Nerb,

 

That's good to hear ;P. So I assume that my Leo4allv3 disc should probably also get the reburn treatment to keep a backup (I think I deleted the original image). Anyway, how you liking leo? It seems that this distro has been the best/easiest for our board. I was able to shutdown/restart/sleep properly, but after installing 10.5.4 I've been having problems shuting down or restarting after my system recovered from sleep. Instead of testing out different kexts, I decided to give the latest iAtkos disc a try. Not necessarily because I thought it would be better, but because I was a bit curious about it. Would always be nice to find a fully updated version of osx86 that installs perfectly on our boards. Anyway... I can't even get the damn thing to boot into the configuration screen, receiving constant MBR errors. Seems that darwin didn't fully install.

 

I'm hoping to get some time this week to get Leo back on, and do some sleep/restart/shutdown testing on 10.5.4 and see if I can get it working. I'll keep everyone posted on my results as they happen, and make some slight guide changes concerning a few things (audio being one of them).

 

Let me know if you've made any progress on the sleep/shutdown issue. The best way to test is to shutdown/restart before and after putting the system to sleep. Sometimes restart will work but shutdown will not. It's a bit strange.

 

Oops, forgot to address the 9.2.2 issue. Yes, try using a different kernel. I updated to 9.4.0 when I started having the issues. Not sure what I was on when it was all working properly.

 

Good Luck,

 

kk

 

Cheers dude!

I'm now posting this from a Leo4allv3 install!

After trying the DVD in 3 different DVD drives and having the install fail at various points I figured my disk was bad.

I reburnt at 4x instead of max speed and the disk booted and installed first time on my SATA drive without any hiccups.

I now have everything working, even my hd3850 which seemed to be so much hassle with Kalyway.

 

One slight problem though - I installed the 9.2.2 kernel but I can't shutdown (haven't tried sleep as I never use that feature anyway)

I guess I just need to swap it for a different kernel?

I have a e2160 cpu if that means anything

 

Thanks again dude, I just presumed some other part of my setup was causing the issue (it seems every part of this PC is the worst part for installing OSX on )

 

oh yeah, it seems I don't even need to boot with -f (or cpus=1 but I have the hacked BIOS)

[nadnerb]

I was tempted by iAtkos 10.5.4 too, I guess I'll stick with leo4all.

Do you know what 10.5.4 adds? is it just bug fixes anyway?

 

I'll try out some kernels later on and let you know.

[nadnerb]

Shutdown is now working and I guess it always was!

It seems having a USB device plugged in stops it from shuting down properly.

Once I unplugged my iPod and USB stick it shut down without any problems.

 

I also tried sleep which works fine too but like you said it kernel panics when you shut it down after 'sleeping'

 

*edit*

 

Well that seemed to work for a while but now its not shutting down properly any more.

I guess it was a coincidence!

[knew know]

I haven't been home this week, but I will be heading back tonight. Not sure if I'll have any time/motivation to install osx though. Might have to wait until the weekend as my primary computer these days has been my laptop. Anyway, keep trying different options if possible, but from what I keep reading there is no 100% solution with most boards. Hopefully we'll stumble upon something though. More importantly I'd like to know if the HDD's are being locked before the system freezes up during shutdown. Last thing I'd want are my drives to crash.

 

Thanks nad,

 

kk

 

Shutdown is now working and I guess it always was!

It seems having a USB device plugged in stops it from shuting down properly.

Once I unplugged my iPod and USB stick it shut down without any problems.

 

I also tried sleep which works fine too but like you said it kernel panics when you shut it down after 'sleeping'

 

*edit*

 

Well that seemed to work for a while but now its not shutting down properly any more.

I guess it was a coincidence!

[notinthisworld]

hello, version 1.9 of bios is out. can i request a modified bios so that i can make leo4all work? thanks

[bhoover]

brendan - I haven't had any luck shutting down consistently either. Usually on my hacktop (dell latitude d620) AppleHDA kexts throw a kernel panic on shutdown, however it's not consistent as sometimes it powers itself off. Desktop (Dell Dimension 5150) will park the drives, halt the CPU, the screen goes blank but the system doesn't power itself off all the time. Seems to make no difference if I've unmounted all USB devices or not (or on the laptop ejected the PC Card - I have a Sierra wireless 595 aircard from verizon working). So I'm not too sure about external devices needing to be unmounted first as a permanent fix. I figure however that if I want to get every little detail working perfectly with Mac OS X then I'd probably be better off purchasing an honest Mac.

[notinthisworld]

any updates guys/gals? thanks

[DannyCNJ]

Alright this guide worked for me!!! I am running 99% There are a couple problems that im trying to work out but nothing major.

1.How do I install the combo update? I can get the file but I don't know how to use it.

2.Also I have an NVIDIA 9600GT can I install it? I have a 7600GS but i dont know how to install that either.

 

Any help would be great!

And thanks again for the great install guide!

[notinthisworld]

Alright this guide worked for me!!! I am running 99% There are a couple problems that im trying to work out but nothing major.

1.How do I install the combo update? I can get the file but I don't know how to use it.

2.Also I have an NVIDIA 9600GT can I install it? I have a 7600GS but i dont know how to install that either.

 

Any help would be great!

And thanks again for the great install guide!

 

what bios version are you using sir? thanks

[DannyCNJ]

I am using the custom bios provided in the guide. I also can not load my Vista OS. When I start it during the loading screen it BSOD's and will not continue. Could this be because of the bios changes?

[DannyCNJ]

Ok so my first question was a little silly! Duhh just run the installer! Ok, so anybody able to help me with the other 2 problems?

[notinthisworld]

hi, any updates on this one? thanks

[knew know]

I don't have too much experience with the vista bootloader. But from what I've seen/read/heard it's a bit of a pain to get to dual boot with osx. There are quite a few tutorials with dual booting vista though in the forums, so you should be able to find something. I doubt that you're having any issues due to the custom bios though.

 

I am using the custom bios provided in the guide. I also can not load my Vista OS. When I start it during the loading screen it BSOD's and will not continue. Could this be because of the bios changes?

 

Why are you so concerned with the 1.9 bios? I did a bit of reading in the MSI change log and the only updates I can see are for newer CPU support. Do you have one of these newer CPU's? If not, then I wouldn't worry about it in the slightest. Kabyl is the one who makes the firmware changes, and from what I remember he takes requests, so maybe if you ask him nicely he'll update that one for you.

 

hello, version 1.9 of bios is out. can i request a modified bios so that i can make leo4all work? thanks

 

Again, another piece of hardware that I'm unfamiliar with (9600GT). As time goes on, it'll be much more difficult to get newer hardware working under osx86. Did you try using a few of the newer NVInstaller releases? You'll have to dive into the forums to see what you can dig up, as I'm sure there are quite a few people in here with your card.

 

Alright this guide worked for me!!! I am running 99% There are a couple problems that im trying to work out but nothing major.

1.How do I install the combo update? I can get the file but I don't know how to use it.

2.Also I have an NVIDIA 9600GT can I install it? I have a 7600GS but i dont know how to install that either.

 

Any help would be great!

And thanks again for the great install guide!