Lifehacker Guide with GA-EP45-UD3P Motherboard

[MacWannaBe]

I have the exact build from the article, no subs. Everything works perfectly. I switched to the Halloween install and lost sound. Did the select in the sound preference pane like before but no success with Halloween. I reloaded the saved "Extra" folder and have sound again, without Halloween of course. Any thoughts?

 

Thanks.

 

Just checked my Sound settings, I have "Internal Speakers" -> Built-In Output selected. Sound is working with this setting.

[delphinus87]

I don't suppose the Halloween Installer Package is motherboard specific is it? I'm getting KPs when I get to the Apple logo when booting off of the flash drive. I'm attempting on my Dell XPS 420

[SilverRubicon]

I don't suppose the Halloween Installer Package is motherboard specific is it?

 

If you would have gone back a single page, you would have seen the post that says "this installer is for the GA-EP45-UD3P only". A little effort never hurts.

[Rx4Mac]

Slightly OT:

 

Stell,

 

Do you just feel that the MSI P45 Platinum is a better board in general, or is it better for making a Hackintosh than the GA-EP45-UD3P ?

 

Specifics as to why if it is the latter ( if possible )

 

And what does it take ( can you point us to a tutorial ? ) to use the MSI P45 Platinum. You stated "if you're willing to do some work". Does that just mean the Terminal work of the Non-Hack Method or is there more involved.

 

I am potentially going to do a build for a friend.

 

( Should this have its own topic in the Forum ? )

 

Thanks!

 

( the Life Hacker build is cooking along just fine 8^) )

[Idahomoon]

Just checked my Sound settings, I have "Internal Speakers" -> Built-In Output selected. Sound is working with this setting.

 

You gave me the answer. Prior to Halloween my sound preference had been set to "line out" to work with the headphone jack powering my Bose speakers. I assumed the same was needed and did not even try "internal speakers" until you replied. Thanks so much for the answer!

[stellarola]

Hey myeomans & stell,

 

Working on a tri-head setup as well. (Do bio-stats, so the extra real estate is very beneficial). I'm running the "lifehacker" setup almost exactly, but trying to run dual 9800gtx+ cards (& had to switch to the onboard eth due to second graphics card taking up too much space, but have that running w/ bonjour).

 

Using the Halloween installer w/both cards I get the same KP on boot screen (assuming the new boot loader graphics detection can't handle 2 graphic cards). Card in either port works. Right now I switched back to the previous boot loader and the DSDT hard coded for the card, but only the primary works obviously.

 

I'd be fine staying with the DSDT solution if I could get that running dual cards. Stell, any thoughts on how to get dual cards setup, DSDT or some other way?

 

Thanks,

~serich

 

P.S. Halloween installer rocks, major thanks from the community!

 

The bootloader is doing all the graphics work right now, not DSDT. It can handle only a single card at a time, afaik. For you, I would suggest hardcoding into the DSDT. Now remember, Gigabyte boards are crappy with their DSDT in how they use PCI Bridges and their virtual addresses. Check your ioreg and compare to the DSDT to make sure you have the adr correct for the gfx cards.

 

-Stell

[Rx4Mac]

Just checked my Sound settings, I have "Internal Speakers" -> Built-In Output selected. Sound is working with this setting.

 

I was having the same issue with sound - It now works... Thanks for the info!

 

Firewire 400 external hard drives are working with the on board port.

 

Are all of the SATA ports on the MB usable in SL ?

 

The System Profiler shows 6 Intel ports ( the orange inside ) and 2 JMicron ( Purple - one of which has my boot drive )

 

I have the front panel SATA connected to an orange port and I don't seem to get recognition.

 

Thanks for the great community!

 

** Update ** It seems the connectors are a bit off - they DO work (front & rear and therefore the Orange SATAs do work)

 

BUT; the boot process will hang at the "Verifying the DMI Data Pool ..." if I have a SATA drive plugged in and turned on that does not contain a valid Hackintosh OS.

[HAVEC]

Networking.

 

"I have this board, an E6750 Core 2 Duo overclocked to 3.2 GHz, an 8600 GT 256 MB"

--skip

 

So it should be possible to install SL on a EP45-UD3P running a C2D E6600@2.4 and a Asus 9600GT. I get to the install successful check part but on restart I get kicked back to the USB install. Where it says a Mac install can be recovered.

 

System profile shows all the right hardware and I have an IP on the Trendnet plugged in the bottom slot and Nvidia 512 graphics engine plugged into the blue PCIe.

 

I've been over and over the bios settings. Any ideas?

[CoHPhasor]

So it should be possible to install SL on a EP45-UD3P running a C2D E6600@2.4 and a Asus 9600GT. I get to the install successful check part but on restart I get kicked back to the USB install. Where it says a Mac install can be recovered.

 

System profile shows all the right hardware and I have an IP on the Trendnet plugged in the bottom slot and Nvidia 512 graphics engine plugged into the blue PCIe.

 

I've been over and over the bios settings. Any ideas?

 

Yes, on boot when the SL installer starts back up quit it.

It will ask you which disk to startup from, select the HD.

Once in SL run the Halloween installer AGAIN. This time point it to the HD.

Then it will boot. Remember, the installer adds the bits SL needs to know how to run this system.

[kmare]

Stell, did 10.6 break your DBT-120 Bluetooth wake from sleep? The option is grayed out in my control panel in 32/64 bit mode -- Was fine back in 10.5.x

[HAVEC]

Yes, on boot when the SL installer starts back up quit it.

It will ask you which disk to startup from, select the HD.

Once in SL run the Halloween installer AGAIN. This time point it to the HD.

Then it will boot. Remember, the installer adds the bits SL needs to know how to run this system.

 

Thank you, Thank you, Thank you! It was hiding behind the hackintosh usb drive. All I had to do was click on the reverse progress bar and the hd was there to boot off of. I feel a little dumb but I've haven't had a Mac since system 9.

 

Within 5 minutes I had the updates installed along with the Halloween installer. Everything works. Network, Sound etc.

 

It's a really nice quiet machine with the fanless Asus 9600GT and didn't cost that much to put together because I already had the E6600 and 3 gigs of Cosair RAM lying around.

 

I'll install windows 7 on another drive latter this week when it ships and give the 2 OS's a head to head test.

 

I'll say one thing SL sure is a good looking OS and easy to use compared to Vista.

 

Thanks to Stellarola and Adam for making this such a rewarding experience.

[CoHPhasor]

Thank you, Thank you, Thank you! It was hiding behind the hackintosh usb drive. All I had to do was click on the reverse progress bar and the hd was there to boot off of. I feel a little dumb but I've haven't had a Mac since system 9.

 

Within 5 minutes I had the updates installed along with the Halloween installer. Everything works. Network, Sound etc.

 

It's a really nice quiet machine with the fanless Asus 9600GT and didn't cost that much to put together because I already had the E6600 and 3 gigs of Cosair RAM lying around.

 

I'll install windows 7 on another drive latter this week when it ships and give the 2 OS's a head to head test.

 

I'll say one thing SL sure is a good looking OS and easy to use compared to Vista.

 

Thanks to Stellarola and Adam for making this such a rewarding experience.

 

Glad you got it up and rolling. The details can really bite you when tryin to make

the right OS go on the wrong machine lol!

I think anything would have alooked good compared to Vista!

But OSX and its Unix base are very useful and accomodating. I'm sure you'll like it.

ps, hope you got the NIC, if not and you use onboard it won't support Bonjour

Unless you force it into promiscuous mode. (No iTunes sharing, or mac2mac communication on local network)

[pacrat007]

I built my system Friday night.

 

GA EP45-UD3R

Intel Core 2 Quad 8400

4 gigs Corsair DDR2 800

Seagate SATA Drive

Plextor SATA DVD Burner

EVGA GeForce 9500 GT PCI-E 2.0 1GB

Retail copy of SL

 

I installed SL Saturday night.

 

I own an iMac 24", which I used to make the image of SL. I restored to a 16GB Corsair USB thumb drive, which I previously had formatted in Disk Utility as per instructions. I then downloaded and installed EP45UD3P Snow Leopard v2 to the thumb drive.

 

Attached the prepared thumb drive to the new rig and booted up. I entered bios to change the settings as per instructions from lifehacker. Restarted and the SL installer came up. I fired up disk utility from the installer and used it to format the new HDD in the pc. After this I went back into the installer and proceeded to install SL. I was standing outside having a smoke when the installer finished. It said I had installed successfully.

 

Last thing I had to do was copy and install life hacker's package over to the internal drive of the pc so I could boot without the thumb drive attached. After this, I rebooted, went into bios settings and picked the internal HDD as the 1st boot device.

 

I was able to go through the welcome screens and get to the Finder. I then connected an ethernet cable and fired up Safari. I then went over to software update and downloaded three updates including 10.6.1. Everything installed okay and I rebooted. SUCCESS.

 

I have checked in System Profiler and everything is identified correctly. The processor, the video card, ethernet, firewire, usb, etc. all detailed. The drives as well. All the sound ports show up. I have sound in the front and rear panel via headphones.

 

I have downloaded and installed openoffice, been on iTunes Music Store and surfed online.

 

It seems that everything is working. What should I be looking for?

 

I haven't checked bonjour. How should I do this? Can it be verified by turning on in Safari Preferences --->Bookmarks?

 

I left my iLife 09 DVD at the office and only have the 06 version on hand, so I'll wait to install Monday night.

 

THIS WAS TOO EASY THANKS TO LIFEHACKER'S PACKAGE.

[stellarola]

Stell, did 10.6 break your DBT-120 Bluetooth wake from sleep? The option is grayed out in my control panel in 32/64 bit mode -- Was fine back in 10.5.x

 

Hey, kmare. I don't own the DBT-120, but from Apple's site it works just the same as the built-in. Might want to google some apple forums as I've read similar things from mac users. Good luck.

 

-Stell

 

I built my system Friday night.

 

GA EP45-UD3R

Intel Core 2 Quad 8400

4 gigs Corsair DDR2 800

Seagate SATA Drive

Plextor SATA DVD Burner

EVGA GeForce 9500 GT PCI-E 2.0 1GB

Retail copy of SL

 

I installed SL Saturday night.

 

I own an iMac 24", which I used to make the image of SL. I restored to a 16GB Corsair USB thumb drive, which I previously had formatted in Disk Utility as per instructions. I then downloaded and installed EP45UD3P Snow Leopard v2 to the thumb drive.

 

Attached the prepared thumb drive to the new rig and booted up. I entered bios to change the settings as per instructions from lifehacker. Restarted and the SL installer came up. I fired up disk utility from the installer and used it to format the new HDD in the pc. After this I went back into the installer and proceeded to install SL. I was standing outside having a smoke when the installer finished. It said I had installed successfully.

 

Last thing I had to do was copy and install life hacker's package over to the internal drive of the pc so I could boot without the thumb drive attached. After this, I rebooted, went into bios settings and picked the internal HDD as the 1st boot device.

 

I was able to go through the welcome screens and get to the Finder. I then connected an ethernet cable and fired up Safari. I then went over to software update and downloaded three updates including 10.6.1. Everything installed okay and I rebooted. SUCCESS.

 

I have checked in System Profiler and everything is identified correctly. The processor, the video card, ethernet, firewire, usb, etc. all detailed. The drives as well. All the sound ports show up. I have sound in the front and rear panel via headphones.

 

I have downloaded and installed openoffice, been on iTunes Music Store and surfed online.

 

It seems that everything is working. What should I be looking for?

 

I haven't checked bonjour. How should I do this? Can it be verified by turning on in Safari Preferences --->Bookmarks?

 

I left my iLife 09 DVD at the office and only have the 06 version on hand, so I'll wait to install Monday night.

 

THIS WAS TOO EASY THANKS TO LIFEHACKER'S PACKAGE.

 

While this DSDT shouldn't be used on any other board other than the one in the guide, I'm glad you had some success with it. From what I've seen, this is some people's first venture into building computers, and it's great that everyone is getting a little experience. It can be a fun project.

 

-Stell

[Shownarou]

Okay, so. I've got this exact system other than I'm using a lite-on dvd drive. I partitioned Windows XP to 500gb of my 1tb drive in the very beginning, and now, while trying to install OSX I cannot see the other half of the drive in Disk Utility. I tried using a live boot of gnome and formatting the other half as HFS+, but it still doesn't recognize it in Disk Utility. Any suggestions? I'm feeling incredibly dumb.

[stellarola]

Okay, so. I've got this exact system other than I'm using a lite-on dvd drive. I partitioned Windows XP to 500gb of my 1tb drive in the very beginning, and now, while trying to install OSX I cannot see the other half of the drive in Disk Utility. I tried using a live boot of gnome and formatting the other half as HFS+, but it still doesn't recognize it in Disk Utility. Any suggestions? I'm feeling incredibly dumb.

 

Don't use a single hard drive to house two operating systems. Get yourself another hdd to install Windows.

 

-Stell

[claroquesi]

I was having problems with the 10.6.1 seeing my Lite-on Blu Ray drive (see my sig for the model if you are interested). It would always show up in the system profile, but it would become inactive after a while. I finally decided to monkey with the SATA ports. I unplugged the drive from ICH10 (Intel) port ~5 or so and put it on JMICRON (Purple) port 0. Upon reboot, it was detected... I threw a disc in... voila... could see it. No big deal, though, so I let it sit for hours and then went back and threw another disc in... voila, could STILL see it. So, it either had to do with a lose connection... the system not being happy with an optical (or Blu ray) drive being on a higher port number... or maybe some general issue with that lite-on and the ICH10 bus vs JMicron.

 

Hope that helps someone... in any case, if something isn't working right, it never hurts to fiddle with the order of where things are plugged. I always try to keep the OSX boot (and I suppose will do the same for any other OS) on the lowest possible port. I put OSX on ICH10 (Orange) port 0.

 

The real annoying thing is that Parallels (downloaded the latest trial version a couple days ago) cannot see the drive. I try to add a "real" drive to a WinXP system and it doesn't even show up. The real drive button is greyed out.

 

I then removed my paid-for version of Fusion from my macbook so I could install on my hack-box... downloaded the 2.06 version and installed... again, the XP vitual machine (and VM Fusion in general) doesn't see the optical drive (Liteon Blu Ray).

 

So, I decided to partition my auxilary HD (non-OSX containing) to install XP, SP2 (UGH, UGH, UGH). I unplugged the OSX drive to do this and set to IDE in the BIOS. It installed just fine and XP could see my drive (which I had to put back on ICH10 orange ports since XP couldn't see JMicron until I loaded the gigabyte drivers, which REQUIRED the CD to work!). Anyway, I got XP, SP2 going... then I tried for hours to get the drivers in XP to update to ACHI rather than IDE... I followed a few procedures I had found on message boards that involved updating the registry and manually placing a driver... alas, I had no luck. If I had a floppy drive when installed XP, I would have just been able to hit F6 and update the drivers during installation, but XP is so friggin' lame, you cannot update after it is installed in any reasonable way. I just refuse to go buy a $10 floppy drive and a disk to do this. I haven't touched a floppy in several years and I aint about to start!

 

If anyone has ANY good way of installing XP for the UD3P and updating the drivers to ACHI without a floppy... after install, please let me know...

 

otherwise, does anyone know if the base version of Win7 will work with AnyDVD? It makes me sick to think I will have to buy Windows AGAIN, but I do want to be able to use the Blu Ray.

[Idahomoon]

If anyone has ANY good way of installing XP for the UD3P and updating the drivers to ACHI without a floppy... after install, please let me know...

 

otherwise, does anyone know if the base version of Win7 will work with AnyDVD? It makes me sick to think I will have to buy Windows AGAIN, but I do want to be able to use the Blu Ray.

 

Not sure if this will help you but I was having major problems trying to install SP2 in Parallels. I gave up and downloaded the sysadmin version of SP3 from the Microsoft site and went straight from XP SP1 to SP3 with no issues. All my programs are running great under this SL build from Stell.

Good luck.

[MacWannaBe]

Are all of the SATA ports on the MB usable in SL ?

 

The System Profiler shows 6 Intel ports ( the orange inside ) and 2 JMicron ( Purple - one of which has my boot drive )

 

I have the front panel SATA connected to an orange port and I don't seem to get recognition.

 

Thanks for the great community!

 

** Update ** It seems the connectors are a bit off - they DO work (front & rear and therefore the Orange SATAs do work)

 

BUT; the boot process will hang at the "Verifying the DMI Data Pool ..." if I have a SATA drive plugged in and turned on that does not contain a valid Hackintosh OS.

 

This a little concerning. I currently have my boot drive on port 0 on the orange side. I also just ordered another SATA drive to use as a scratch disk for Final Cut Pro. Will it not be recognized?

 

When it gets here, should I put it on the lowest available orange port or on the purple ones?

 

Thanks!

[serich]

The bootloader is doing all the graphics work right now, not DSDT. It can handle only a single card at a time, afaik. For you, I would suggest hardcoding into the DSDT. Now remember, Gigabyte boards are crappy with their DSDT in how they use PCI Bridges and their virtual addresses. Check your ioreg and compare to the DSDT to make sure you have the adr correct for the gfx cards.

 

-Stell

 

Well, got my setup working.

 

The DSDT just never worked for me. I had the correct adr's in there, just always ended up giving me KP's.

 

Ended up gutting the graphics from DSDT and going with disabling the auto graphics detection that the bootloader that came with the halloween installer was doing and putting an EFI string in (along with using PEG2 for init boot graphics). Used EFI Studio 1.1 (1.1 was the key it seems, what I made in 1.0 didn't work) on a regular leo install.

 

Wish I could have gotten DSDT setup, the strings are just messy, but the DSDT was causing too many problems.

 

What was strange, using the original lifehacker installer flash drive (pre-halloween), the Mac OSX installer detected all three monitors, but when using the same config to boot OS X I got a KP. Maybe had something to do with the installer not needing full graphics... not sure, will investigate if I have a chance.

 

~serich

[stellarola]

This a little concerning. I currently have my boot drive on port 0 on the orange side. I also just ordered another SATA drive to use as a scratch disk for Final Cut Pro. Will it not be recognized?

 

When it gets here, should I put it on the lowest available orange port or on the purple ones?

 

Thanks!

 

Let me clear some things up. From what I can tell, only the first two orange (ich10) sata ports can boot an operating system on Gigabyte boards. If they're not in these ports, people will get boot0 error, or nothing at all. That doesn't mean that the other ports are dead. You can hook as many hdds up as you want no problem as long as it's not hosting the OS to boot.

 

So to answer your question, yes you can hook other hdds up as scratch drives for Final Cut Pro.

 

-Stell

[BillB50]

I have been a reader now for a couple of months. I have built three machines all based upon the EP45-UD3P. I have some general observations based upon my experience with this setup:

 

- External Network card - using the card from the recommended build list, I have only been able to get things working properly using the second last slot (from the bottom of the board). If you use this slot, you can successfully add this card even AFTER you have a setup performed. Any other slot produces shaky results.

 

- BIOS version - I tried upgrading to the latest FDa revision last night (upgrading from FB, which is installed on a 1.6 rev board by default). Bottom line - Don't do it. I found all kinds of funky behavior - most notably a severe KP when you run "about this MAC" - one in which the machine logs you out and back in. I have a Win7 install on my machine as well, and when running FDa for the first time the OS detected a new TI Controller of some sort - I believe 1394, which is most likely the cause of the errors. I reverted back to FB (don't know why I saved it first???) and all the issues went away.

 

- Video issues on install - especially blank blue screens - I had this issue on the last machine I built using a 9800 GT card (I use Lifehacker's package). I found that the 9800 is sensitive to using the left-side port. On the case I used this time, the MB is up-side-down, so the LS port was reversed on the video card. Once I plugged the cable in the opposite port, things were fine.

 

Issues I have with my install - only one really. I cannot find a decent boot mechanism. Using Chameleon, Win7 won't sleep due to booting off an EFI partition. If I try to use the Win7 boot DB, I bomb on booting 10.6. I have had questions posted over on the Voodoo board, but have yet to get a solid recommendation. All attempts at boot0/boot1h fail, even using BCDedit to make the changes. I have resorted to F12 at boot time and booting natively off each drive. I need the sleep capabilities as I don't reboot until I need to use the other OS.

 

Here are the specs for my current rig

 

EP45-UD3P, BIOS EB, rev 1.6; 8GB DDR2 800 Gskill; Q8400 w/Tuniq tower; on-board audio for MAC - Asus Xonar for Win7 sound; installed drives - 80GB Intel SSD/G1 for Win7, 500GB Hitachi for MAC, Aux drives - 500GB NTFS - Data; WD 1TB drive for iTunes - shared/NTFS, WD 1TB drive for Time Machine/HPFS. I use Acronis for disk imaging/backups on the Win7 side.

 

Any suggestions for a boot loader would be appreciated.

[Rx4Mac]

Let me clear some things up. From what I can tell, only the first two orange (ich10) sata ports can boot an operating system on Gigabyte boards. If they're not in these ports, people will get boot0 error, or nothing at all. That doesn't mean that the other ports are dead. You can hook as many hdds up as you want no problem as long as it's not hosting the OS to boot.

 

So to answer your question, yes you can hook other hdds up as scratch drives for Final Cut Pro.

 

-Stell

 

Stell,

 

In contrast to what you have seen, I have my boot HD connected to the Purple Gigabyte 0 port and it boots fine. My DVD drive is connected to an Orange port. I HAVE been having issues with external SATA HD's being available after booting on the orange ports... ( I haven't tried the other purple port ) AND if I have a HD connected to an orange port and powered on during boot the process THEN it hangs at "Verifying DMI Pool Data"... So it sounds like there is a bit more complexity here. The LifeHacker guide could possibly be amended to include exactly where Boot HD's should be connected, where the DVD drive should be connected, and where other non-boot devices can be connected WHEN all of the ifs, ands, or buts are determined.

 

••• Update --> MANY fewer problems with having the boot drive(s) on the first 2 orange sata ports - the purple ports may work at times .... but there are not consistent.

[Rx4Mac]

Currently:

 

-Time Machine works ( across Ethernet to a USB drive connected to a TimeCapsule - This is enabled thru Cocktail )

-Both Chess Game and iMovie work ( so QE/CI is working per my understanding )

-Sound is working

-SATA ports ( both Purple and Orange ) are working MOSTLY ( I have issues with getting an external SATA HD to

consistently be recognized ) I have only tried booting with the Boot Drive connected to Purple 0

( FYI - I have had issues with 'real macs' where SATA HDs aren't recognized when plugged in; I don't know if it is

cables, specific hardware or what... It is not a show stopper for me as I can work around it )

-FireWire 400 HDs are working; they work when plugged in and can be ejected w/o issue.

 

I have a FireWire 800 card on order an will post the results. A 300 gig Velociraptor is also in the queue...

 

I do get some curious ( to me ) notices in the console:

 

com.apple.notifyd[11] EV_DELETE failed for file watcher 45

com.apple.WebKit.PluginAgent[339] Debugger() was called!

com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.netauth.sysagent[624]) Exited with exit code: 255

 

These don't seem to affect usability - although I was getting an occasional visual artifact flashing across the lower part of my screen while running various system programs. Haven't noticed them since I disabled the onboard Ethernet ports - but that may just be coincidence.

 

This a great project and a great community! Thank You!

 

••• Update --> MANY fewer problems with having the boot drive(s) on the first 2 orange sata ports - the purple ports may work at times .... but there are not consistent.

[BillB50]

Stell,

 

In contrast to what you have seen, I have my boot HD connected to the Purple Gigabyte 0 port and it boots fine. My DVD drive is connected to an Orange port. I HAVE been having issues with external SATA HD's being available after booting on the orange ports... ( I haven't tried the other purple port ) AND if I have a HD connected to an orange port and powered on during boot the process THEN it hangs at "Verifying DMI Pool Data"... So it sounds like there is a bit more complexity here. The LifeHacker guide could possibly be amended to include exactly where Boot HD's should be connected, where the DVD drive should be connected, and where other non-boot devices can be connected WHEN all of the ifs, ands, or buts are determined.

 

For the record, I always connect boot drives to regular port 1 or 2 (have booted off of both with 2 separate 10.6 installs) and connect the DVD/CD drive on port 6.

 

I have seen issues with LightScribe drives not allowing sleep...