[Success + How-to] Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) on ASUS G50 notebook

[hdas]

Just dropped by to say that I have been able to successfully install

(to my satisfaction) Mac OSX 10.6 (Snow Leopard) on my notebook

Asus G50VT-X6 .

 

Attached is an archive of all relevant extra files required for installing

SL from the retail install DVD (ver. 10A432) on this notebook

(and other G50 series notebooks), with the following features:

1) Disk: Vanilla (and almost totally unmodified) install of Mac OS X 10.6

(aka Snow Leopard) on the internal (or an external) hard drive with

MBR based (standard Windows) partitioning scheme [1][2].

(For references, see the howto in the attached archive.)

It is fully upgradeable (as of writing, to 10.6.1).

Uses bootloader Chameleon [5][6][7] for booting Mac OS

(and optionally GRUB for selecting and booting other OS'es).

2) Core: Vanilla darwin kernel, 32-bit or 64-bit using com.apple.Boot.plist [5] (and

Chameleon boot loader [5][6][7]). Uses fakesmc.kext [8] for decrypting apple encrypted

binaries. Also uses modified smbios.plist for system model identification [5].

3) Graphics: Hardware 3D graphics acceleration (QE/CI) for Nvidia 9800M GS

(or similar) including native internal panel resolution (1680x1050 here

and 1366x768 on several other models) and external HDMI and VGA ports,

using (modified) Natit.kext [10][11][12][13].

4) Audio: ALC663 codec, internal speaker, headphone jack and external mic jack,

but not the internal mic, using VoodooHDA.kext [9][7].

5) Input: Keyboard and trackpad (including scrolling and tapping) using

VoodooPS2.kext and AppleACPIPS2Nub.kext [9][7]. USB mice work natively.

6) Networking: Internal Realtek gigabit ethernet card works natively.

Those with in-built wireless cards from Atheros work natively (using

Apple Airport Extreme). Those with Intel wireless don't work natively

or otherwise. Can be replaced by Dell/Broadcom 1510 (bgn) or 1390 (bg)

cards which work natively. Alternatively, Ralink internal (not natively

supported, but supported by Ralink) or other generic external wireless

USB dongles may be used.

7) Power Management: CPU fan, speed and thermal management seems to work

reasonably well natively. Not sure about GPU power management.

Battery status works using VoodooBattery.kext [14].

Should give about 1.5 to 2 hrs of standard usage on battery.

Display sleep works, but system sleep/hibernate may not work (possibly

due to Nvidia graphics). There may sometimes be 10-30 sec pause while

shutting down, sometimes arbitrary long, in which case, power button

needs to be used.

 

2. Requirements:

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

0) Some spare time, steel balls, hard drive space, and download bandwidth.

1) Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) retail install DVD (10a432).

2) An iAtkos-v7 or iDeneb-v1.6 bootable OSX install DVD (or similar)

or an existing OS X 10.5 (Leopard) installation.

3) This collection of extra files.

4) Ubuntu Linux 9.10 (Karmic Koala) Live CD (not DVD) for an excellent

Linux environment as swiss-army knife. (Not super necessary.)

 

3. Installation Outline:

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

This is meant for the impatient, or those who just require the drivers,

or for a top level overview, or for those who are already familiar with the

installation procedure described in howtos [1][2],

on which this howto is almost entirely based on.

1) Pre-install: Create two hard-drive partitions for OSX installation,

one about 8 GB and other primary and greater than 15 GB.

Restore the dmg of Snow Leopard Install DVD into the 8 GB partition after

booting from the iAtkos / iDeneb, or an exisiting OS X installation

(separate from these 2 partitions). Replace the

file /System/Installation/Packages/OSInstall.mpkg

in the restored partition with the one in extra files archive,

to support installing on standard MBR hard-disks.

Run this installer (by either 'open'ing from the existing Leopard

installation or by booting from the restored partition after making it

bootable as mentioned in next step) and install SL on the 15GB+ partition.

2) Post-install: Can be done from iAtkos/iDeneb/working-OSX, or Linux.

Install Chameleon bootloader (and configure GRUB).

Copy the extensions fakesmc.kext,

VoodooPS2Controller.kext, AppleACPIPS2Nub.kext,

Natit.kext, VoodooHDA.kext, VoodooBattery.kext from the archive

to /System/Library/Extensions/ of the installed SL.

Delete AppleHDA.kext from /System/Library/Extensions/.

Copy DSDT.aml, com.apple.Boot.plist, smbios.plist from the archive to

/Extra/ of the installed SL. Ready to (re)boot and go!

(If using this step for making the restored SL installer partition bootable,

preferably do not touch the /System/Library/Extensions/ folder. Just create

/Extra/Extensions/ folder in the restored partition for the Installer DVD

and copy only fakesmc.kext, VoodooPS2Controller.kext, AppleACPIPS2Nub.kext

to it. VoodooHDA.kext may cause kernel panic due to conflict with

AppleHDA.kext. Natit.kext may not be loaded from /Extra/Extensions/.

Optionally may also copy the com.apple.Boot.plist to /Extra/.)

 

4. Archive Contents:

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

The archive contains all the extra files mentioned above:

1) OSInstall.mpkg [1][2] for installing on MBR (Windows partitioned) disks.

2) Chameleon-2.0-RC3-r658-bin.tar.gz [5][6][7].

3) fakesmc.kext (v2) [8].

4) VoodooPS2Controller.kext, AppleACPIPS2Nub.kext and VoodooHDA.kext [9][7].

5) Natit.kext [10][11][12][13] and VoodooBattery.kext [14].

6) com.apple.Boot.plist and smbios.plist (from Chameleon, modified slightly).

7) DSDT.aml [15][16][17] (modified by me from Linux, alternatively can use the

same one created for OSX 10.5 using patcher [18][19][3]),

for BIOS version 213. (Preferably upgrade to this latest version of BIOS.)

8) This how-to.

 

5. References and Credits:

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

See the how-to in the attachment

 

6. Attachments:

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

howto-snowleo-g50vt-hdas.pdf

snowleo-archive-g50vt-hdas.zip

howto_snowleo_g50vt_hdas.pdf

snowleo_archive_g50vt_hdas.zip

[Markthedude]

I own the X5, do you think this will work for me?

 

Also great post!

[hdas]

Yes it should, any G50. In fact, even for other notebooks with Intel Core 2 Duo CPU and Nvidia graphics with only the DSDT.aml being specific to the notebook bios.

[aankun]

i have G51, and i think the only deference with the G50 is the graphic card, is it true? so i only need to find a proper driver for it, is it?

 

great tutorial love to hear that works

[maximuxy]

Das bhai jab mahalaksmi aaala tab humne bhi install kiya thodi mashakkat kar k maza aa ra hai

[fuzzylogic64]

Hey I have the X5 an everything works except for the battery status and the kext you provided does not work, also getting camera to work would be plus but no big deal otherwise. was just curious if you had a solution for this?

[hdas]

@fuzzylogic64: Yes it is quite possible that the VoodooBattery.kext in my archive does not work. (It is an old one circa 10.6.0.) Please use the latest VoodooBattery.kext from Superhai - the latest version is 1.3.0. Internal webcam works out of box for me.

 

@maximuxy: Beta yeh jo talaffuz jo hai, bahut badi cheez hai.

[mickeyboy]

I was try in my G50vt-a2 all working but battery status not show.

Was try superhai but no luck.

[eoveem]

Thanks for the great tutorial, but is it possible to install Snow Leopard onto your pre-existing 10.5 partition? I only have about 20 gigs open (total) and I don't want to install it onto my external HD.

[hdas]

@ evoveem: Short answer is no. The way I do it - I have lots of hard disk space and quite a few primary partitions, so I can afford to experiment. At the very least, you might require the external hard drive (or a 8gb usb drive) to extract out (and modify) the 10.6 install dvd, while working from 10.5. (Once you have the installer partition booting and working, from there on you could _carefully_ remove 10.5 and proceed to do a fresh install of 10.6.) Aside, I have not tried an upgrade of 10.5 to 10.6. If your 10.5 is critical and it works fine, you may not touch it. (But at 20gb, I don't think that's the case .)

[killians31]

Wow, somebody has finally done it! I have been trying to get leopard working on my Asus G50-vmx1 (Best Buy edittion) for a few months, then finally gave up.

 

It seemed that every time after i installed OSX onto my HDD it would hang at the apple screen during the initial boot.

 

Currently i am running 4 different operating systems on my laptop (Windows 7, Ubuntu 9.10, Fedora 11, and Backtrack 4). I am operating off of GRUB 2 via a partition within Ubuntu.

 

My partition table looks like this:

sda1 | Windows Seven

--------sda2-----------

sda5 | /boot Ubuntu

sda6 | /Ubuntu

sda7 | /boot Fedora

sda8 | /Fedora

sda9 | /Backtrack

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

sda3 | Shared Drive

sda4 | Swap

 

Would OSX be able to operate within a logical partition? Can i install OSX without corrupting my current GRUB menu.lst? Is a /boot partion highly advisable for this installation?

 

Sorry for all of the questions!

 

Thanks,

Ben

[hdas]

@Ben:

It is not clear when you say the OSX boot hangs on apple logo. Is it 10.5 or 10.6? I believe you are mentioning about 10.5 install from one of iAtkos or iDeneb or such. You should boot with verbose option ("-v" at "boot:" prompt) to see the errors. In any case, for getting 10.5 to work, you need to boot with the option "cpus=1" at "boot:" prompt (or use a modified DSDT).

 

No, OSX does not work from a logical partition. The last time I tried doing that, (I have GRUB on MBR and Chameleon on the OSX partition), GRUB did not recognise the partition.

 

No, a separate /boot partition is not necessary. Although I do prefer to have a separate small (~20mb) boot partition, just containing grub (and nothing else), since I sometimes have multiple experimental Linux partitions to boot from and I do not want to keep backing up and restoring my grub.conf/menu.lst again and again. Also, I sometimes lose a track as to which linux installation has its grub active.

[killians31]

@hdas

 

Thanks for the fast reply!

 

I think im going to be trying this out this week/end. Should i still be installing Chameleon on the OSX partition (then just linking GRUB to the Chameleon OSX partition)?:

 

title MacOSX
root (hdX,Y)
chainloader --force +1

 

Also,

 

I haven't really looked at iAtkos dvd yet, but i am positive that i need to perform the cpus=1 -v commands in order for the dvd to boot properly. Anyway, how would i go about injecting the kext files which you included within the .zip into snow leopard from iAtkos? Aren't these files modified?

 

p.s. When the apple screen was hanging, i was using an older version of iatkos, i think it was 10.5, but am unsure...Im hoping that 10.6 will work better!

 

Thanks!!

Ben

[hdas]

Yes, to install Chameleon, just 'dd' the boot1h file to the OSX partition (either from linux or osx), copy the boot file to the OSX partition and add the lines you mentioned to GRUB. (No need to touch MBR.) You may want to add the line 'makeactive' below 'root (hdX,Y)', since both Windows and OSX want active partition and you can set partitions active dynamically before booting using this GRUB option.

 

I presume you install snow leopard to a different partition than the one in which you have iAtkos. Then you can either access the hard drive partitions either through desktop icons or by subfolders in /Volumes/ folder via terminal. You can also do stuff by booting with the iAtkos DVD and using the terminal. (And I have mentioned in the how-to about all the relevant places you need to copy the kexts, plists and such.)

 

If I get some time (and I really don't think I have it), I will elaborate the steps in the how-to. However, all the information is out there (and I mentioned all of the relevant sources), so one can just read it, get enlightened, and of course a little creativity would be bonus .

[killians31]

One more quick question, I am under the impression that i will be booting from the iAtkos DVD, opening the disk utility, then restoring the retail DVD.dmg file to the partition of my choice. Once this is done, i need to load in the kext files which you have provided, this will be done through the terminal, reboot, and enjoy.

 

Do these steps seem to be accurate?

 

Thanks for all your help!!

[zmzhuai123]

first thanks ，hdas。

with your Tutorial，I have been install mac osx on my notebook G50vt-x1，but there is a problem。

Cover flow works when I'm using it to browse folders (such as applications), but in iTunes, it says it cannot be displayed with cover flow.

can i fix it?

I'm a chinese, and is not good at english. but i think you can understand me.

thanks.

[hdas]

@zmzhuai123:

 

Nice to know that the how-to was helpful.

 

I will try to see sometime if I have the coverflow working in itunes.

 

At this moment, can you just verify that your graphics is working properly at full resolution with hardware 3D acceleration (i.e., if QE/CI is working)? The most simple way to tell if it is working is that the menu bar at top should be translucent. If it is opaque white, graphics is not at its best. Also, the animations should be smooth and screensavers (like flurry) should be working fluidly in full screen.

 

You do speak good english and of course I can understand. (Had you not mentioned, I wouldn't even be able to distinguish .)

[hdas]

@zmzhuai123:

 

As I mentioned in last post, I checked it and yes, coverflow works fine in iTunes (both in older version 8 and new 9.0.2). So I would just suggest to check your graphics.

[zmzhuai123]

@zmzhuai123:

 

As I mentioned in last post, I checked it and yes, coverflow works fine in iTunes (both in older version 8 and new 9.0.2). So I would just suggest to check your graphics.

 

thanks for your reply.

I think the problem is my graphics.The QE/CI is not work.

I use bootthink boot my mac osx.because I can't use Chameleon boot my system.it don't find my mac osx partition.

and I put fakesmc.kext,

VoodooPS2Controller.kext, AppleACPIPS2Nub.kext,

Natit.kext, VoodooHDA.kext, VoodooBattery.kext

to C:/Darwin/System/LibrarySL/Extensions.

and put DSDT.aml, com.apple.Boot.plist, smbios.plist to

C:/Drawin.

i don't know where i miss. I will find the way to open QE/CI.

thanks.

[hdas]

@zmzhuai123:

 

You probably cannot keep Natit.kext in C:/Darwin/System/LibrarySL/Extensions/. (Equivalently, it also does not work when kept in /Extra/Extensions/ when using Chameleon boot loader.)

 

So remove it from C:/Darwin and copy Natit.kext to /System/Library/Extensions/ from within OSX. (Do copy as root and take care of the permissions.)

 

Do not use any additional efi strings (in com.apple.Boot.plist) or other nvidia injectors.

[zmzhuai123]

@zmzhuai123:

 

You probably cannot keep Natit.kext in C:/Darwin/System/LibrarySL/Extensions/. (Equivalently, it also does not work when kept in /Extra/Extensions/ when using Chameleon boot loader.)

 

So remove it from C:/Darwin and copy Natit.kext to /System/Library/Extensions/ from within OSX. (Do copy as root and take care of the permissions.)

 

Do not use any additional efi strings (in com.apple.Boot.plist) or other nvidia injectors.

 

thanks for your replay。my graphics is works well. I use "kext Helper b7" to install natit.kext to /System/Library/Extensions/, and I delete it from C:/Darwin. so QE/CI is work.

thanks for your answer.

and a litter question about webcam. is it work for you? on my notebook, webcam is not work. but it looks like be recognized by mac osx . is there a solution?

[hdas]

@zmzhuai123:

 

Nice to hear that your graphics works now. I hope that also implies coverflow is working in iTunes.

 

Yes, the built-in webcam has always been working for me. Looks like some models have a different webcam. Out of curiosity, it would be nice to know your webcam model (from device-properties in Windows or 'lsusb' in Linux). Mine is '064e:a115 Suyin Corp.' as shown by lsusb (i.e, vendor-id=064e and device-id=a115). In general, any generic webcam that is compliant with UVC (usb video class) should work and most webcams are uvc.

[killians31]

After attempting to get his all going today, I seem to be having some issues mounting any partition within the disk utility of iAtkos....

 

I currently have a 15GB partition available (which is going to be where i restore the retail disc, and install snow leopard), and a portable hard drive with the retail disc .dmg file saved on. But when ever i try to mount either partition, i get an error stating that the the partition is unmountable, and needs to be checked with first aid...

 

What file system type did you use when mounting the install disc? I have tried FAT32, and NTFS.

[zmzhuai123]

@zmzhuai123:

 

Nice to hear that your graphics works now. I hope that also implies coverflow is working in iTunes.

 

Yes, the built-in webcam has always been working for me. Looks like some models have a different webcam. Out of curiosity, it would be nice to know your webcam model (from device-properties in Windows or 'lsusb' in Linux). Mine is '064e:a115 Suyin Corp.' as shown by lsusb (i.e, vendor-id=064e and device-id=a115). In general, any generic webcam that is compliant with UVC (usb video class) should work and most webcams are uvc.

 

My webcam model is '04f2:b012 Chicony Electronics Co., Ltd.' it's don't work ,and I can't find a good driver.

in addition, I find a new version of audio driver is good.internal mic is work well with it。

I think it's useful.VoodooHDA.kext.zip

 

and you can use this VoodooHDAprefPane.zip to confiuger the voodooHda

[zmzhuai123]

There are some update of texts.

I find a fakesmc.text version 2.5

 

you can see the details here http://netkas.org/?p=338

and I upload it,

fakesmc10.6.zip

It's good for use istat menus. you can see the CPUs temperature。

 

I hope it's usefull