Help with Snow Hazard

[Coolvortex]

Hi everybody I was recently stunned with the quality of apple's products (bought a iphone and tried a MacPro some time ago) so I'm planning to get the real thing in the future but right now I'm quite interested in installing OS X somehow on my PC (a Compaq CQ60-210EL). I downloaded Snow Hazard and tried installing. In the installer options I chose the Chameleon bootloader, 1.6.1 and 1.6.2 updates, video drivers for the intel X4500, the atheros fix, voodoohda audio drivers and some drivers for measuring charge on notebooks which I don't remember the name of . After some problems at boot (had to remove AppleTyMCE drivers, I don't know what they are for but they were the problem), the OS booted up. The system seems pretty fast, audio works, even the webcam. But here are the problems:

 

- wifi isn't detected at all (i've got an atheros AR5007).

 

- ethernet is detected, it seems to see that the cable is connected but doesn't get an IP when using DHCP, seems to get the ip assigned when using manual but then from safari I can't go on internet nor contact my router's html page. The ethernet chipset is a Realtek PCIe FE (RTL8101E I believe)

 

- Even if I installed the driver in the installation process, my Intel X4500 isn't detected, and video only works at 1024x768, making the whole thing very tiring and ugly to look at.

 

Are there any known issues with these devices (I.E. should I give up?). And I know that I should experiment, but installation takes really a lot of time and some help could be useful, because I'm really lost here.

 

I really hope you can help me wth this issues and thank you in advance

[srs5694]

I can't help with most of your issues, but you may be able to get better video resolution by editing the /Extra/com.apple.Boot.plist file and adding the following lines:

 

		<key>Graphics Mode</key>
	<string>1280x1024x24</string>

 

Change "1280x1024x24" to your desired resolution, of course. There's also a command you can enter at the boot loader to achieve the same effect on a one-off basis, but I don't recall precisely what it is, offhand. You may need to experiment with different video modes; you can't use every conceivable mode via this method, just those supported by the card's BIOS.

 

Note that this is just a band-aid. The real problem is that OS X isn't loading a driver optimized for your video hardware; it's defaulting to VESA-mode graphics, which perform poorly. In particular, you're not getting "QE/CI" features, which are required for high-performance video operations like some games, DVD playback, etc. Based on my personal experience and posts I've seen here and elsewhere, getting QE/CI working is one of the major challenges for Hackintoshers. You may have to go out and buy a separate video card to get it to work.

[Coolvortex]

Yes I know it's defaulting to VESA mode, what I can't understand is why the included driver, which seems to be made exactly for my card (well, chipset to be precise), doesn't work. Anyway thanks for the string, I'll use it. Ethernet and wifi not working seem to be an even bigger problem though, cos I can't connect to the network at all....

[srs5694]

My understanding, which may not be complete, is that the OS X video drivers are mostly written by Apple, and they design them to work with their hardware. When hardware deviates from what Apple uses, as products for generic PCs almost invariably do, the Apple drivers refuse to work because the hardware isn't as expected, so the system defaults to VESA mode. You're likely to see the same thing if you tried installing a Brand A Windows driver on a computer that uses a Brand B video card, even if both cards have the same chipset on them. Drivers from the chipset manufacturers (nVidia, ATI, etc.) are more flexible, but card manufacturers often tweak their drivers in this way to improve performance or for other reasons.