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GA-EP35-DS3P & NVIDIA 8500 Silent magic


jazzyjoepass
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Hi all, just a recent switcher to MACs (bought a used IBook) and found this OSX86 culture a whole new exciting experience, so decided to jump into it.

 

I was fortunate to have chosen the Gigabyte mobo and realised that it is one of the more compatible boards. Only just needed some advice to overcome some minor issues.

 

1. First, my installation still doesn't shutdown/restart properly. When I shutdown or restart the system prepares to go down but somehow after the screen goes blank, it hangs there and refuses to turn off the fans and hdd. Anybody got a solution to this. I'm on 10.5.4 and 9.4.0 kernel.

 

2. Second when I try to change my display resolutions, I get a blue screen and nothing, but somehow the system is running normal - just a blue display. Does using the DVI-VGA adapter make a difference?

 

3. Third, the digital audio input in the preference pane under Sound indicates specifically an optical input whereas digital audio output is just generic digital output. Anything wrong with it.

 

 

Thanks for the help in advance.

 

Jazzy

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  • 4 weeks later...

Hi there!

 

I have EXACTLY the same combo and problems. I installed from Jas 10.5.4 on this system. Is your system profiler complete? Mine is missing lots of data.

 

1. YEP, same thing! But S3 Sleep won't even work for me yet. With S1, the power to the fans keeps running, but it does seem like the Drive spins down and the CPU powers down. Maybe there are BIOS settings involved? From what I've found so far, one solution keeps referencing something called "CHUD"... more reading...

 

2. YEP! But I tried running the analog from the DVI through the adapter and that solved the problem! Good idea. BTW, which driver are you using? I used NVKush which came with Jas but my card is reported as 256 megs instead of 512.

 

3. I can't see any digital input yet. I don't think it'll make a difference; if the codec can read the SPDIF signal the software should see it. Which driver did you use for the ALC889A? The 889 driver included with JAS may be older. There are in fact 8 analog outs on this board: does your driver see them all?

 

Nice to have someone else to "share the experience" with. I'll keep reporting to this thread. Hopefully others will chime in.

 

Update>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

 

OK here's a link to a shutdown fix... not an ideal solution though.

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Try doing a install using vanilla kernel with EFIv8 or Chameleon EFI. Seems to be cleaner. I have another installation with that on another partition.

 

My BIOS is on S3 sleep. CHUD comes with XCODE tools which is downloadable if I am not wrong ... I also assume you want that because of power shutdown fix.

 

EFIStudio seems to be a better solution than NVInject and NVKush. And going DVI all the way seems to solve most of the resolution detection problems. My display wasn't changing resolutions properly when it was all on analog RGB.

 

I'm only having problems with the audio. I'm mainly using the Digital Out for my audio, but whatever 3rd party application that use audio seem to have stutters or audio sync/click problems.

 

See my sig for my updated specs ...

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Hi there, I have this mainboard too and also having issues with reboot/shutdown.

Using as little patched files as possible and still no stable shutdown/reboot wioth vanilla kernel.

 

I suspect there is no solution. Tried the processor.prefpane trick (disable one core before shutdown)

And the shutdown fix (CHUD). But it seems that as long as I have worked with the pc, opened application etc

the shutdown/reboot will not work. But if someone has success with shut/reboot with this board please report

and share :)

 

Also, sleep/wake works perfectly.. Sleep takes a while to completely power off fans etc. wake is instant.

Only I am loosing my wireless and nothing that can make it associate it with my AP. Anyone having this issue?

 

And I found a great trick to power on and wake up pc from sleep by mouse:

Enable poweron by doubleclick in bios, connect a PS/2 mouse and no more pushing power buttons.

Ahh, but mouse doen't work yet. Need patched kext I think. But it wakes OS.

 

Bye, relic.

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Thanks for the replies. Like relikwie, if I shutdown right after startup with minimal interaction with the OS, shutdown/restart works. But if it's been on for a while, it doesn't. But thanks for the PS2 trick! It works just fine. Currently when the system goes into S3, the USB ports simply don't wake up when using USB devices despite the BIOS settings. Leopard seems to override the BIOS and turns USB off.

 

Geekbench rates the system at 2834, which is in the ballpark. However, it and system profiler both say the CPU is running at 4 GHz, the FSB at 1GHz and the RAM at 800 despite my having set all of these to stock settings manually in the BIOS. Is it possible Leopard is overriding the BIOS settings or is this purely inaccurate information? Is there something like CPU-Z that will give me an accurate insight on what's going on hardware wise?

 

Perhaps the right thing to do is to install EFI + vanilla like you guys have. I'll probably try the iDeneb before I do that. I'll post about it here.

 

jazzyjoepass: please keep this link updated with any solution you find for the digital audio problem you're experiencing. Once I get this system running properly I need to use this output as well. Thanks.

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Thanks for the replies. Like relikwie, if I shutdown right after startup with minimal interaction with the OS, shutdown/restart works. But if it's been on for a while, it doesn't. But thanks for the PS2 trick! It works just fine. Currently when the system goes into S3, the USB ports simply don't wake up when using USB devices despite the BIOS settings. Leopard seems to override the BIOS and turns USB off.

 

Geekbench rates the system at 2834, which is in the ballpark. However, it and system profiler both say the CPU is running at 4 GHz, the FSB at 1GHz and the RAM at 800 despite my having set all of these to stock settings manually in the BIOS. Is it possible Leopard is overriding the BIOS settings or is this purely inaccurate information? Is there something like CPU-Z that will give me an accurate insight on what's going on hardware wise?

 

Perhaps the right thing to do is to install EFI + vanilla like you guys have. I'll probably try the iDeneb before I do that. I'll post about it here.

 

jazzyjoepass: please keep this link updated with any solution you find for the digital audio problem you're experiencing. Once I get this system running properly I need to use this output as well. Thanks.

 

Finally I have shutdown/reboot fixed (works so far) even after wake shutdown is still good :)

In my search for the PS2 fix I got this as a bonus. Thank ~pcwiz

 

Install this package from ~pcwiz: http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=117359

If you have USB keyboard with PS/2 mouse also update AppleACPIPS2Nub from Chun nan, found in the same forum, this

is a plugin of AppleACPIPlatform.kext (read his post).

 

The pached AppleACPIPlatform.kext will fix your shutdown/restart issues for good. Fixed mine :D

If you don't need PS/2 just open ~pcwiz's package and extract ACPIPlatform.kext and replace with your existing one.

 

For better results in your system profiler just try various AppleSMBIOS kexts (using dotnub's version, working fine)

Also, for "about this mac" use this: http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=98775. Wokred perfectly here.

 

Wat BIOS setting do you set? Wake from USB devices just doesn't work.

There are some people who got it working by attaching keyb/mouse to fron panel (or using the USB heads on the board).

That trick didn't work here :(

 

I recommed using retail dvd instllation method either boot-132 or installing from an existing OSX parition (plenty of guides here).

Won't say it is better, but gives you more control over your system and you learn a bit. Either way, use Chameleon since that is working

better than PC-EFI. But the new pre-patched DVD's also let you install EFI.

 

 

I now have an almost 100% functioning installation. Just need to fix my network playing dead after wake problem..

Guess thats unsolvable at the moment..

 

 

-relikwie

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Thanks, relikwie! Very appreciated.

 

BIOS settings for wake from USB? Power on by Mouse and Keyboard (98 or pass) Enabled. There's not a whole lot of choice there. PME makes no difference. I wonder if it works for XP or Vista?

 

When I was tinkering with this system today I noticed that both the E6600 CPU and 8500GT were REALLY hot. I did some searches and there are some reports of this card being unusually hot. Are yours? As for the CPU, the BIOS started beeping after a while cause I set the alarm at 90 degrees C, so I checked the voltage and it was running at 1.58 volts, when it should be around 1.28! This is with the default automatic settings with no overclock. I had to set CPU and Memory ratios manually to run the chip at it's rated speed and set the CPU voltage manually as well. It's good to know it can take a beating but I don't understand why it would do this at auto settings (the CPU was previously reported as 4 gHz = 9 * 445 !?!! The system feels slower now ;) ...).

 

I tried installing iATKOS on this system today and surprise surprise: both shutdown and sleep are working fine. But wake from USB still only works from PS2. Also, system profile is well populated now. The only thing missing is the audio driver and that the 8500GT doesn't support QE.

 

I've got all the files now to try the boot 123 method. I'll have a go at that. I was spoiled by my original P5W DH experience with Tiger, where almost everything just worked OOB (except audio and sleep)...

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OK! I've installed a vanilla install using Boot 123 and Chameleon using this method to the letter. It turns out the GA-P35-DS4 is a VERY close cousin to our GA-EP35-DS3P.

 

Only things left to install are Audio and 8500GT. Everything else seems to work. The Profile seems quite complete as well. Interestingly the system seems to go into some kind of sleep after a while but the screen stays on. I assume it's because it doesn't have a proper driver yet (only one resolution is shown in system preferences). Reboot works, but shutdown gets me a "You need to restart your computer. Hold down the power button...", maybe also a graphic card issue.

 

I took a look at EFIStudio, but the 8500GT isn't listed. Actually I haven't found a good tutorial on using EFIStudio for unlisted cards. Could either of you help me out with this, or at least point me to a clear resource?

 

And for Audio, I'm kind of worried about installing any old driver after your experience, jazzyjoepass. EFIStudio has Azalia, and Taruga has an 889 kext. What have you tried so far?

 

Thanks!

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My mobo is an Abit IP35-E, almost the same chipset then yours. My Graphics Card is a Gforce 8500GT, QE e CI ok.

 

I have two installations, running perfect. One is an EFI using the retail DVD (running about 4 months with no errors) I´ ve installed it with this guide. I´ve changed some kexts to make everything works. My Ethernet adapter doesn´t work, so I have copied the IONetworking from Kalyway. The audio works after patching the original Apple HDA. I´m using a patched SMSBIOS to fix the reboot and shutdown issue.

 

The Gforce worked fine using latest NVinject but using the OpenGL from Kalyway.

 

My other instalation is a Kalyway, that I uses as a utiliy one, to fix some error...

 

Kalyway is a good instalation too. Easy and fast.

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Thanks Fravin! Following some of the links finally got me to this EFIStudio that covers TONS of cards including the 8500GT 512meg and it's running fine now, QE/CI enabled and xbench shot up a good 70 points :(.

 

I've also installed a recent Taruga AppleHDA for the 889 from this archive. It seemed to work with all I/O showing up and relevant information in System Profiler, but on reboot it was gone. WIP.

 

The system now sleeps properly (though still needs PS2 mouse to wake up) and while Restart works, Shutdown doesn't quite work, leaving the screen blank and the fans turning. I tried pcwiz' PS2Fix1054.zip package but it didn't change a thing. I cleared the kext cache and repaired permissions to no effect. Hmmm. Not shutting down is more annoying for me than not sleeping. Which SMBIOS did you use, Fravin?

 

...

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Thanks Fravin! Following some of the links finally got me to this EFIStudio that covers TONS of cards including the 8500GT 512meg and it's running fine now, QE/CI enabled and xbench shot up a good 70 points :(.

 

I've also installed a recent Taruga AppleHDA for the 889 from this archive. It seemed to work with all I/O showing up and relevant information in System Profiler, but on reboot it was gone. WIP.

 

The system now sleeps properly (though still needs PS2 mouse to wake up) and while Restart works, Shutdown doesn't quite work, leaving the screen blank and the fans turning. I tried pcwiz' PS2Fix1054.zip package but it didn't change a thing. I cleared the kext cache and repaired permissions to no effect. Hmmm. Not shutting down is more annoying for me than not sleeping. Which SMBIOS did you use, Fravin?

 

...

 

Limini, prior to installing that patched ACPIPlatfrom.kext from ~pcwiz I had already installed the CHUD poweroff fix (which initially did not work).

After the PS2 fix package shutdown started working. Maybe it is a combination of these two.

 

Wonder how SMBIOS would affect shutdown behavior. Thought SMBIOS just gathers and sets correct hardware configuration in system profiler.

 

Btw, the PS/2 mouse does not really wake up your pc. It simulates a push of the off/on-button on your case.

Real wake up from mouse/keyb does not signal OSX for some unknown reason. People using other mainboards can fix this

by connecting their USB mouse/keyb on the extra USB heads.

 

And the setting in the BIOS (power-on by keyb/mouse) only work with PS/2 devices. Thats how it is designed.

 

 

Btw2, I think that the DS3P is a bit buggy with voltages etc. I tried to OC my CPU by issueing 8.5*400 and setting all other settings to auto.

Result was that it got way too hot because of voltages set too high. Undoing the settings did not work. A BIOS reset was nessecary.

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Actually, I had installed the shutdown script and when the 889A drivers were active and running (they disappeared after the next reboot and I haven't figured out how to bring them back and stick yet), the system did shut down perfectly. Like when the video driver was still incomplete, I think getting the audio driver working might fix the shutdown as well.

 

I've spent hours now trying to figure out how to get Taruga's 889A drivers active again... I think I have to get forensic on the kexts :)

 

I think the mobo's problem with regards to regulating hardware is that there's too many auto-controls in the BIOS and there might be contention. On top of Intel's stuff, there's all the Gigabyte "Intelligent" stuff (C.I.A.2, Performance Enhance, etc...) and I think both benefit from driver and control software that usually runs in XP/Vista, which is absent in OS X. I still don't know if my 8500GT is supposed to be too hot to touch (just displaying the desktop!), or if this is caused by some "optimization" by the BIOS or some missing driver controls... I'm starting to think that unfortunately the best is to try to manually control things as much as possible.

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It's nice to hear that the Gforce is running great! I love that GFX, not expensive and relatively fast, and has support in OSX :unsure:

 

I'm using the V. 27 of SMSBIOS. But the shutdown/Restart issue is fixed with the hacked AppleACPIPlatform. Use that one, it should work. Don't forget to repair the permissions and delete de kext cache...

 

Are you using DVI ou VGA port form your 8500?

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It's nice to hear that the Gforce is running great! I love that GFX, not expensive and relatively fast, and has support in OSX :)

 

I'm using the V. 27 of SMSBIOS. But the shutdown/Restart issue is fixed with the hacked AppleACPIPlatform. Use that one, it should work. Don't forget to repair the permissions and delete de kext cache...

 

Are you using DVI ou VGA port form your 8500?

 

With my latest changes to my installation, almost everything works well. I've done some documentation of my installation - will post soon.

 

BTW, my monitor's connected to the DVI output.

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With my latest changes to my installation, almost everything works well. I've done some documentation of my installation - will post soon.

 

BTW, my monitor's connected to the DVI output.

Yep. DVI too. BTW, jazzyjoepass, on my long searches for an audio solution I came across this, which discusses glitchy sound with the vanilla kernel on an GA-EP35 board. I managed to try the digital audio with a stereo source in stereo and there were no glitches on my system that I could detect.

 

I finally managed to install "a" 889A driver, but not "the" final Taruga one which displayed all audio I/O correctly. Do you know if ALCinject.kext is used for the later and seemingly complete Taruga driver found here ?

 

Fravin: which "AppleACPIPlatform" are you referring to? AFAIK there's lots of "hacked" ones around :) Could you provide a link? And I installed AppleSMBIOS-27 but the system froze on reboot; after a reset/reboot the system came up again and the Profiler info was the same as before.

 

The system still doesn't shutdown properly. I've also lost the other computers on the network, though the internet works. Weird. I sometimes get the feeling that some of the solutions I read and try are for 10.5.2 and earlier and that they don't necessarily work well or at all in 10.5.4; but granted that could just be a symptom of my ignorance and inexperience. Detailed information specific to 10.5.4 is harder to find.

 

Looking forward to your notes, jazzyjoepass. It's likely that once all the kinks are worked out, it'll be easier to reinstall everything ONCE from the ground up using the right methods and drivers to make the install clean.

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jazzyjoepass: check out this thread over on Tom's Hardware regarding low-latency audio crackling issues with some Gigabyte motherboards, including ours (in the later threads). Since you're running XP on this system you should run the DPC Latency Checker on your system to see how it behaves. I tried running a windows live cd I have but it failed to boot on this system (wrong drivers). Let me know what you find. Thanks!

 

***Update: I haven't gotten around to testing it yet, but this post at RME's forum mentions a BIOS from Gigabyte that solves the DPC problem but that must be requested from Gigabyte tech support. This post over at Digidesign mentions a "F4c" BIOS that solves the same problem, interestingly missing from the Gigabyte's GA-EP35-DS3P's BIOS listing.

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Woah !!! Didn't hear about such issues until u pointed these forums to me!!! I've tried the latency checker - I notice about every 30secs or so, I have a big spike around 2000us , otherwise it is spike floor is less than 500us. That's with F5 bios on a native WinXP SP3. Anyone here has the F4C Bios??? Could u send me the BIOS for me to do a test run?

 

Anyway, I redid the latency check with WinXP SP3 on VMware while running OSX86 and I get spike floor at about less than 1000us, and nothing bigger. That's with the current hardware and software config in my sig. I haven't reach out to determine which hardware was at fault yet. However, I noticed a separate thing that may not be due to the DPC latency. Anything that is using a USB connected sound card (ie. Line 6 PODXT Pro, my USB Audio Codec from my Samsung 22" LCD) has the same stuttering/cracking problem. If I avoid the USB sound card and use the onboard Realtek ALC889A soundchip, it works alright with Apple's DVD Player, Quicktime, ITunes, etc until I try 3rd party software like VLC player, the stutters come back. Even while running anything that has stutters/cracking, DPC latency checker in VMWare is not showing any spikes.

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I installed SP3 on a second hard drive to check out the mobo: the only thing that seemed to cause excessive spiking was the GA energy saving tool, which I promptly disabled and uninstalled, after that DPC fell to under 12us or so at idle (!). I tried running the sound chip with ASIO4ALL and tried a number of sofsynths, getting acceptable results but I haven't tested with USB so maybe there is an issue there. Even if clean though, these problems won't show up till the system is stressed running a full DAW.

 

The possibility exists that the problem has been fixed in the F5 BIOS. At any rate, all you need to do is contact Gigabyte support with the discussion references and I'm sure they'll get back to you. The original posters of the DPC problem were dealing with Firewire so the problem is probably there. USB is not an ideal interface for audio, though it does work. The TI Firewire chip on this board is one of the reasons I chose it, with the intention of getting Firewire audio interface. I guess I'll have to wait till I get one to really see.

 

So far playing media on QT, VLC or iTunes on my system is clean. BTW: I see you're using a wireless card. On my P5W DH system I disabled the wireless card specifically because of audio glitches (DPC was out of bounds). I contacted the DPC people to find out if running the DPC checker under VMWare is a valid test, but no answer yet; perhaps the virtualization invalidates the checker results.

 

Meanwhile, here's my todo list for leopard on this system:

  1. The system still doesn't fully shut down. Restart and Sleep (wake from PS2 mouse, not really a concern) work.
  2. SPDIF In is missing in the audio options. This could be because there's no cable connected to it (the Realtek chip assigns I/O based on what it senses). BTW, the spec pdf has a lot of info about this codec including wiring diagrams for SPDIF.
  3. The Network card works, but the 8111b is listed as 8168b, though the PC drivers are labled "RTL8168b/8111b". My network shares sometimes appear if the system is shut down and powered down for an extended period of time. But I can use "Connect to server" to manually connect to each machine on the network. I guess that means that Bonjour doesn't work (which has been reported).

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Limini, it seems my problem is common amongst many forumers here ... it seems that PC-EFIv8 is unable to detect the FSB freq on Gigabyte P35/EP35 series board. Fast forward to post #10 and the solution is using Chameleon EFI which detects the FSB properly.

 

Since I've already had a almost working system with PC EFI v8 and vanilla kernel 9.4, I just installed Chameleon EFi over PC-EFI and viola!!! I finally have a sound editing system that is behaving like it should. Everything problem that I mentioned previously is gone!!!

 

I don't really care about the latency issue on WinXP cos I'm done mostly with Microsoft. It's only there for those odd occasions where you have to use Windows.

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Well that's probably why I didn't experience any audio problems: my last install was with Boot123 and Chameleon. Glad to hear you found a fix. BTW, thanks for updating your sig ;)

 

2 questions:

 

1.Where did you get the definition for the RTL8111b for EFI studio? I suspect the current driver is responsible for my network computers MIA.

 

2. What does "ATA controller activated using JMicron 64bit kext" mean? Other than AHCIFix, I didn't install anything for the JMicron. I set it as "IDE" and it just appears as IDE and works (no "JMicron" listed in sys.profiler though).

 

I think I fixed my shutdown problem (it shut down successfully twice in a row after some use... a first!). I hadn't installed CHUD. Doh.

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Well that's probably why I didn't experience any audio problems: my last install was with Boot123 and Chameleon. Glad to hear you found a fix. BTW, thanks for updating your sig :)

 

2 questions:

 

1.Where did you get the definition for the RTL8111b for EFI studio? I suspect the current driver is responsible for my network computers MIA.

 

2. What does "ATA controller activated using JMicron 64bit kext" mean? Other than AHCIFix, I didn't install anything for the JMicron. I set it as "IDE" and it just appears as IDE and works (no "JMicron" listed in sys.profiler though).

 

I think I fixed my shutdown problem (it shut down successfully twice in a row after some use... a first!). I hadn't installed CHUD. Doh.

 

 

I read somewhere that you need to install XCode tools. CHUD is one of the packages with XCode, but I think the power shutdown fix does not require CHUD as it has been compiled. Can't remember the forum link, but I always install XCode anyway.

 

I just add the device for Ethernet under EFIStudio and I get the RTL8111B. Have not done any check if it is working or not, but system profiler reports it ...

 

For audio to be fully reported in System Profiler, use the AppleHDA.kext and HDAEnabler.kext. Both AZAL and HDEF in EFIStudio did not work for me - I did not add them in when writing the boot file. BTW, you do not need to plug in to any of the ports for it to be reported in System Profiler.

 

Some guides/files can be found in these posts ...

 

http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=86167

http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=76404

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jazzyjoepass: check out this thread over on Tom's Hardware regarding low-latency audio crackling issues with some Gigabyte motherboards, including ours (in the later threads). Since you're running XP on this system you should run the DPC Latency Checker on your system to see how it behaves. I tried running a windows live cd I have but it failed to boot on this system (wrong drivers). Let me know what you find. Thanks!

 

***Update: I haven't gotten around to testing it yet, but this post at RME's forum mentions a BIOS from Gigabyte that solves the DPC problem but that must be requested from Gigabyte tech support. This post over at Digidesign mentions a "F4c" BIOS that solves the same problem, interestingly missing from the Gigabyte's GA-EP35-DS3P's BIOS listing.

 

Limini,

 

The BIOS version F5 is alright. Here's my own findings. See attached .pdf of my Latency report. I hope you are also getting good results with yours.

Gigabyte_EP35_DS3P_Latency_Report.pdf

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Limini,

 

The BIOS version F5 is alright. Here's my own findings. See attached .pdf of my Latency report. I hope you are also getting good results with yours.

Yep! That's what mine looks like too. Guess it was an old issue after all; the only reason I brought it up is because of the early thread where you mentioned "audio seem to have stutters or audio sync/click problems". My audio was always clean.

 

One question: do you see the Digital SPDIF input (probably labled "optical") in your audio preferences? Thanks.

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  • 2 weeks later...
Yep! That's what mine looks like too. Guess it was an old issue after all; the only reason I brought it up is because of the early thread where you mentioned "audio seem to have stutters or audio sync/click problems". My audio was always clean.

 

One question: do you see the Digital SPDIF input (probably labled "optical") in your audio preferences? Thanks.

 

It should be "optical". Depending on what kext you used or patch .... there may be differences

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