EFI 9 + Time Machine

[alsheron]

I've never really posted here before because even though i'm a n00b in every sense, I somehow manage to "fix" problems installing OSX myself.

 

In fact, only yesterday, I had an absolutely PERFECTLY working iATkos 5i installation running from my external USB HDD with 10.5.6 (I just pressed -f once the updater rebooted and my installation loaded - seemed to work!) Quartz extreme, sound (sort of - no mic), wireless drivers etc, the whole shebang. I even had it working in DUAL screen, which was freaking awesome. The whole thing took about 4 solid days of messing around, reading forums (here mainly) and tweaking etc. My installation was so spanking great, I'm thinking of documenting it so others might get some help - but I need it working first!

 

Today however is a different story and I finally need some advice/help with this one: I just couldn't help mucking about and in my efforts to get the "More info" panel to correctly identify my GFX card (completely unnecessary because it was working fine!) I messed up my installation good and proper. I've tried all sorts of stuff to get it working: deleting offending kexts and rebooting etc etc.

 

In the end I used a time machine backup to restore my system but now of course it won't boot: and I know why. Thing is, I don't know how to get it booting because for all my googling, I can't find any instructions for installing EFI 9 WITHOUT loading up OSX86 tools.

 

I've already tried booting up with my iATkos disc as using the -s flag and then typing the "darwin" command - but it wont seem to install the bootloader for some reason (USB a problem?)

 

Anyway, basically, the only backups I have are time machine backups as I couldn't find any other way of backing up the drive (Superduper seems good but wouldn't boot)

 

So to sum upp: I'm looking for a step by step guide to installing EFI 9 bootloader on my USB based HDD (don't know if that's significant) so that the time machine backup I have restored to it already can boot.

 

I genuinely have searched google and this forum for this info, so this request really is genuinely needed.

 

My Specs are:

 

ASUS P5k Premium WiFi/AP with onboard audio

Linksys Broadcom based wifi card

3 internal SATA HDDS, 2 external USB 2.0 HDDS

4GB RAM

SATA DVD drive

 

Any help with this would be greatly appreciated - i've got some other questions about EFI strings and info.plist stuff so I've got a more accurate way of "tweaking" but they can wait for later.

 

Thanks!