LukeWarm74 Posted August 18, 2010 Share Posted August 18, 2010 Hey all, I'm using [url="http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/279450-why-insanelymac-does-not-support-tonymacx86/"]#####[/url] ATI on a Core i5-760 system with an EVGA 132-LF-E655-KR P55 motherboard, and I cannot get past the infamous "Still waiting for root device" problem. I've verified that both the HDD and DVD drives are in the first two available SATA ports, and the BIOS is set to use AHCI. The only possible thing I can think of is that I have my hard drive split into two parts. The first partition is 500GB and has Windows Vista on it. The second half is 500GB of unpartitioned space. I highly doubt that's it, and I don't want to re-install windows unless I know I have to. Any ideas? Thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
verdant Posted August 18, 2010 Share Posted August 18, 2010 Hey all,I'm using [url="http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/279450-why-insanelymac-does-not-support-tonymacx86/"]#####[/url] ATI on a Core i5-760 system with an EVGA 132-LF-E655-KR P55 motherboard, and I cannot get past the infamous "Still waiting for root device" problem. I've verified that both the HDD and DVD drives are in the first two available SATA ports, and the BIOS is set to use AHCI. The only possible thing I can think of is that I have my hard drive split into two parts. The first partition is 500GB and has Windows Vista on it. The second half is 500GB of unpartitioned space. I highly doubt that's it, and I don't want to re-install windows unless I know I have to. Any ideas? Thanks! OS X Installer will not recognise unallocated space, so format the second 500GB as a simple NTFS primary partition, which OS X should see...... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OnePlane Posted August 18, 2010 Share Posted August 18, 2010 Still waiting for root device means that Mac OS X wants to find your HDD, but doesn't have the means to do it. Usually it comes down to: - Disk not supported - Connection not supported - Formatting not suppored One of those not supported means your system won't boot. If it's not supported you have two choices:\ - Make it supported - Change it Changing involves swapping parts, making it supported involves drivers, plist editing and BIOS settings modification. Information & Solutions for all of the above can be found using: SEARCH Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LukeWarm74 Posted August 18, 2010 Author Share Posted August 18, 2010 Still waiting for root device means that Mac OS X wants to find your HDD, but doesn't have the means to do it. Usually it comes down to: - Disk not supported - Connection not supported - Formatting not suppored One of those not supported means your system won't boot. If it's not supported you have two choices:\ - Make it supported - Change it Changing involves swapping parts, making it supported involves drivers, plist editing and BIOS settings modification. Information & Solutions for all of the above can be found using: SEARCH With all due respect OnePlane, I searched for hours before posting this. All I was finding was the same old stuff: -Make sure the cables are in the first two ports. -Make sure AHCI is enabled. -Make sure it isn't some dumb JMicron driver problem. etc, etc. In any case I tried formatting the second part of the hard drive and it still isn't finding the root device. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OnePlane Posted August 18, 2010 Share Posted August 18, 2010 Formatting isn't the issue; When UNIXes start, they usually get a ramdisk, or just the kernel, from the bootloader, which then starts whatever is needed to access the disk. That includes drivers, filesystem support, disk drivers etc. If it is waiting for the root device, it's done all it could (loaded all the drivers, filesystems etc) but still no drive became accessable. What you need to do, is go back to the Mac OS X installer, and find out what driver is used by your SATA chip. Then, find out if that same driver exists at your Mac OS X installation, and if it's OK (means: loadable by kextd). If the driver is there, and loadable, check the hardware ID strings. These make the kernel decide what the driver is used for. If the hardware ID isn't there, it's not loaded for that piece of hardware. Usually, if Mac OS X installer can do stuff with the disk, the Mac OS X installation can do that as well. However, if you use a special patched Mac OS X installation disk, it might use drivers that aren't installed on your installation, and therefore make the disk unavailable to the kernel. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
_Jay_ Posted August 18, 2010 Share Posted August 18, 2010 http://tonymacx86.blogspot.com/2010/04/ibo...ac-os-x-on.html That's what I would suggest you try and follow seeing that you have the P55 chipset. Jay Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LukeWarm74 Posted August 20, 2010 Author Share Posted August 20, 2010 Thanks everyone for your advice. I actually just tried scraping even deeper into my motherboard's BIOS and I discovered there was a second AHCI setting that had to be turned on. Seems ridiculous to me, but it works! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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