RAM isn't properly recognized

[Rhapa]

I'd installed Mac OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.3 on my p.c. successfully without great issues. But there is one that's bugging me around. It only use 1gb of ram, instead of the 2gb I've installed. In the system profile's memory tab it claims to have a 2gb DDR2 slot installed but in the hardware overview it show only 1 gb and actually uses only 1 gb.

 

I also wanted the system to display the right model of my cpu. I'd gotten and AMD Athlon x64 5000+ and it insist on displaying I have a Core 2 solo.

 

Does anyone know how to fix this bug?

 

HardwareOverview.tiff

MemoryTab.tiff

[Gringo Vermelho]

I also wanted the system to display the right model of my cpu. I'd gotten and AMD Athlon x64 5000+ and it insist on displaying I have a Core 2 solo.

 

Are you sure? It should be Core Solo, not Core 2 Solo.

 

This is done automatically, for compatibility reasons, either by the bootloader or the patched kernel you are using.

 

Some apps check the CPU type and will refuse to work or even install if your CPU is not "faked" as one that actually shipped in a real Mac.

[Rhapa]

Well, looking this forward there's no problem on my faked cpu. I thought it's weird too, shouldn't it display Core 2 duo?

Thank you..

... damn it, even changing the memory slot it stills not recognizing my 2 gb. F***.

[otacon6530]

Well, looking this forward there's no problem on my faked cpu. I thought it's weird too, shouldn't it display Core 2 duo?

Thank you..

... damn it, even changing the memory slot it stills not recognizing my 2 gb. F***.

 

You may want to check if there is a flag in /Extra/com.apple.boot.plist

 

if there is then correct the ram and see if the computer boots after.

[Gringo Vermelho]

Well, looking this forward there's no problem on my faked cpu. I thought it's weird too, shouldn't it display Core 2 duo?

 

Yes, if your CPU is dual core, it should.

 

Upgrade to Chameleon 2.0 RC5:

http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=231075

Then check if the CPU is now "faked" correctly - if it's a dual core x2 it's supposed to be set as Core 2 Duo.

 

Are you still on 10.6.3? If you want to know more about the kernel you're using (or should be using!) read the release thread:

http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=214528 - especially the parts on CPUID patching, since you have an AMD CPU.

 

If it still doesn't work;

 

If you have Windows installed, please post a screenshot of the CPU info tab from CPU-z:

http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/cpu-z/versions-history.html

 

Also run Terminal.app, type uname -a and post the output here.

 

I'll then try to forward the relevant information to the Chameleon tribe, and we can find out if there's a bug in Chameleon causing this, or if it's something else.

[dan the man with the plan]

I have this same issue only its 4 gbs and it only recognizes 1gb

 

 

Update -

 

I didn't want to post again but I used myhack and then it found the other 3 gigs.

[Rhapa]

OK. I didn't have time lately. I'll try it now. A.S.A.P. I'll post my results. Thanks!!!

[Rhapa]

Okay, I couldn't afford a Windows installation, but I did with an Ubuntu distro, so I could take my cpu info, and here it is:

Processor

Name: AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 5000+

Family, model, stepping: 15, 107, 2 (AMD Opteron/Athlon64/FX)

Vendor: Authentic AMD

 

Configuration

Cache Size: 512kb

Frequency: 1000.00 MHz

BogoMIPS: 2010.80

Byte Order: Little Endian

 

Features

FDIV Bug: no

HLT Bug: no

FOOF Bug: no

Coma Bug: no

Has FPU: yes

 

Cache

Level 1 (Data): 2-way set-associative, 512 sets, 64KB size

Level 2 (Instruction): 2-way set-associative, 512 sets, 64KB size

Level 3 (Unified): 16-way set-associative, 512 sets, 64KB size

 

Capabilities

fpu: Floating Point Unit

vme: Virtual 86 Mode Extension

de: Debug Extensions - I/O breakpoints

pse: Page Size Extensions (4MB pages)

tsc: Time Stamp Counter and RDTSC instruction

msr: Model Specific Register

pae: Phixical Address Extensions

mce: Machine Check Architeture

cx8: CMPXCHG8 instruction

apic: Advanced Progammable Interrupt Controller

mtrr: Memory Type Range Registers

pge: Page Global Enable

mca: Machine Check Architecture

cmov: Conditional Move intruction

pat: Pate Attribute Table

pse36: 36bit Page Size Extensions

clflush: Cache Line Flush intruction

mmx: MMX technology

fxsr: FXSAVE and FXRSTOR instructions

sse: SSE intructions

sse2: SSE2 (WNI) intructions

ht: HyperThreading

syscall: SYSCALL and SYSEXIT instructions

nx: No-execute Page Protection

mmxext: Extended MMX Technology

fxsr_opt:

rdtscp: RDTSCP

lm: LAHF/SAHF in long mode

3dnowext: Extended 3DNow! Technology

extd_apicid:

pni: Streaming SIMD Extension 3 (Prescott New Instruction) (SSE3)

cx16: CMPXCHG16B instruction

lahf_lm: LAFH/SAHF in long mode

cmp_legacy: HyperThreading not valid

svm: Virtualization support (AMD)

extapic:

cr8_legacy:

3dnowprefetch:

 

Chamelon RC5 installation fails.... (don't know why yet). I must comment that I'd installed myhack (with chamellon RC3) and as it fails to boot (even with chipset drivers, with sata and IDE support) I replaced the Extra folder to the one in the boot cd (Empire EFI for AMD cpu with ss2).

 

About the kernel, I actually didn't understand that post. I'm not that smart...

 

Even with this, I installed the kernel from the link. My system still running great, but with the same issues...

[Gringo Vermelho]

Try to get Chameleon 2.0 RC5 installed, it should help with your CPU faking and RAM recognition.

 

I can probably help you but you'll have to be more specific about what the problem was.

 

If your drive has GUID partition table you can follow my install guide here:

http://forum.voodooprojects.org/index.php/topic,649.0.html

 

Unplug any external drives (including USB flash drives), eject any CDs or DVDs, then run Terminal, type diskutil list and post the output here.

 

Also post the contents of your /Extra/com.apple.Boot.plist.

[Rhapa]

I'm posting my com.boot.Apple.plist here. I'll do your guide from now to check out if it'll work. Hope it does. Thank you.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>Instant Menu</key>
<string>Yes</string>
<key>Kernel</key>
<string>legacy_kernel</string>
<key>Kernel Flags</key>
<string></string>
<key>Rescan</key>
<string>Yes</string>
</dict>
</plist>

[Gringo Vermelho]

Be careful when installing manually following my guide, it's extremely important that you don't make any typos, that you install to the right drive (!) and that you are absolutely certain you are using the GUID partition scheme. The guide will tell you more.

 

I can help you make sure - that's why I asked you to provide the output from diskutil list - please understand that I cannot help you if you don't do what I ask.

 

Your com.apple.Boot.plist looks fine.

 

"Rescan" is a boot-CD only option, you can safely delete that (and the "yes"). It has no effect when Chameleon is installed to a hard drive.

 

You should definitely add EthernetBuiltIn=yes, it's important for compatibility reasons. Some apps generate registration data or other important things based on the MAC-address of your primary networking card but the hardware needs to be recognized as 'built-in' for this to work, normally it isn't recognized as such when running OS X on a PC. In the past we had to use a kernel extension to fix this but now we can set EthernetBuiltIn=yes and that takes care of it. It also fixes the "UUID error 35" that you'll probably see a lot of if you check the system logs (run console.app to view them).

 

I wonder why your CPU is ID'd as Core 2 Solo, AFAIK Apple has never used that CPU in any of their machines. This shouldn't be happening.

 

In finder, click Go, Go To Folder and paste: /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration. Post the contents of the com.apple.Boot.plist located there.

 

Run Terminal, type uname -a and post the output here (I asked for this already, please do what I ask of you if you want my help).

 

It's very important that you get the latest Chameleon installed and running, for various reasons (mostly my memory) I cannot help you when you're running an older version.

Also, the link I posted earlier possibly has a newer version of the kernel that you're using. Maybe it would be a good idea to install that version.

 

I think it comes with its own installer, but if not -

 

Before dropping it at root of your system drive, make sure it's named 'legacy_kernel' - take a quick look at your com.apple.Boot.plist to see why.

 

If you get a message that you can't replace a hidden file (the kernel is normally hidden), run terminal and type

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE to see hidden files.

Run the command again when you're done but replace TRUE with FALSE.

[Rhapa]

Yes, my partition scheme is GPT and yes, my EFI partition is (or at least was) in disk0s1. After rebooting my system it kept holding a kernel panic while booting. For avoiding complications and save time I restore my system with time machine and now my EFI partition is disk0s3. Here's the diskutil list output:

bash-3.2# diskutil list
/dev/disk0
  #:					   TYPE NAME					SIZE	   IDENTIFIER
  0:	  GUID_partition_scheme						*320.1 GB   disk0
  1:				  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD			208.7 GB   disk0s1
  2:				  Apple_HFS Back-up				 49.9 GB	disk0s2
  3:						EFI						 209.7 MB   disk0s3
  4:				  Apple_HFS Shared				  60.8 GB	disk0s4

 

I added the EthernetBuiltIn=yes to my com.apple.Boot.plist and also deleted the rescan=yes, thank for that

 

The com.apple.Boot.plist in /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration looks like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>Kernel Flags</key>
<string></string>
</dict>
</plist>

 

The "uname -a" output is: Darwin Raphael-de-Miranda-Mendess-Mac-Pro.local 10.0.0 Darwin Kernel Version 10.0.0: Fri Jul 31 22:47:34 PDT 2009; root:xnu-1456.1.25~1/RELEASE_I386 i386

 

The boot cd I'm using actually claims to use Chameleon RC5 (but not the Chameleon installer it provides, which is RC3). After restoring my system has no bootloader installed so I'll install it manually to the EFI partition as your guide says. If anything goes wrong I'll post the message here. Thanks and sorry my lack of information (I really didn't perceive that "type uname -a and post the output here" up there).

 

About the kernel, I don't think I got that right but the installer you provided is a patch to get updated kernels (like to update to 10.6.4 or 10.6.5) working fine?

I already installed the .pkg in that post, but nothing happened. Would it be a good idea to update to 10.6.5 with Software Update?

[Gringo Vermelho]

If you're running 10.6.3, your kernel version should be 10.3.0, not 10.0.0 - uname -a should show a 10.3.0 kernel.

 

Enabling hidden files (I showed you how earlier) and looking at the root of your system drive, what's there, what are the names of the files (never mind the folders) there?

 

Your com.apple.Boot.plist is set to load a kernel named legacy_kernel - logically, if the new kernel you've installed is not named legacy_kernel, then it isn't loaded. Either change the name of the kernel itself or change "legacy_kernel" in com.apple.Boot.plist to the name of the patched kernel.

 

I don't understand your question about the kernel installer.

http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=214528

The installer places a patched 10.3.0 kernel that works with AMD CPUs at the root of your hard drive.

From reading the release thread it seems like it would be prudent to add arch=i386 to your /Extra/com.apple.Boot plist as a precaution after installing the kernel.

 

I think your boot CD may have a patched 10.0.0 kernel on it and it's probably loading that kernel instead of the one on your HDD. It's a bit of a mess..lol. Don't update to 10.6.5 it will possibly only create more problems and not help with the issues. Try to fix things first.

[Rhapa]

Well, the boot cd that I'm using to boot is this one:

http://redirectingat.com/?id=292X457&x...wtopic%3D211526

I reinstalled the kernel, but also the same, .

 

Here's the list of all the files in '/':

boot

pfix

.DS_Store

.file

.fseventsd

.hidden

.hotfiles.btree

mach_kernel

legacy_kernel.old

legacy_kernel

 

If needed, I'm putting this files for download( http://www.mediafire.com/?fah12e05a3m2mjc ). Just remembering that now I'm booting from EFI partition, but I don't know which files are safe to delete.

[Gringo Vermelho]

Now I'm confused - are you booting from your boot CD or with Chameleon 2.0 RC5 installed to your EFI partition?

 

Is there a kernel on your EFI partition?

 

mach_kernel is the vanilla kernel, legacy_kernel is probably the new one you've just installed (right-click, get info, check file timestamp to verify this) and legacy_kernel_old is a backup copy that the installer made of your previous kernel.

 

If I'm right, so far so good. Does uname -a show a 10.3.0 kernel now?

[Rhapa]

No, it stills 10.0.0

 

It can be said that I'm using the bootcd Extra folder on the chameleon instalation.

[Gringo Vermelho]

haha, bingo.

 

Don't do that, the extra folder from the boot CD contains the RAM disk image (preboot.dmg) from the boot CD with a different com.apple.Boot.plist that loads a patched kernel that resides on the RAM disk image as well as some other stuff..ugh. You can clearly see that if you open the com.apple.Boot.plist on preboot.dmg. You will also clearly see why you only have 1GB RAM available!

 

You really should read the documentation for the Chameleon boot loader, you could have avoided all this.

 

Mount preboot.dmg and pull out the extensions folder and the themes folder from there and stick them in your /Extra folder.

Then delete preboot.dmg from /Extra. Make sure the com.apple.Boot.plist from post#10 is in /Extra.

 

Post your smbios.plist. Looks like the boot CD doesn't have one, did you make one yourself?

[Rhapa]

Sorry I'm late. I was with no internet connection

 

I died laughing when I read the "maxmem=1024".

I did what you said and now my pc is running pretty good. Smooth (when I say that it means that "everything's really working", what didn't happen while using preboot.dmg). Now I'm recognized as Mac mini instead of Mac Pro and my cpu is Core duo.

 

About the smbios.plist I heard about it, but I wasn't capable of making one all by myself. Is it important?

[Gringo Vermelho]

Nice! Good work.

About the smbios.plist I heard about it, but I wasn't capable of making one all by myself. Is it important?

Sometimes. It depends. It's not that important on PCs that can't use the vanilla kernel and native power management. But it's still good for some things.

 

Chameleon has set MacMini and faked your CPU for you based on what Mac Model it thinks matches your hardware best.

You can override this with smbios.plist if you need to.

 

Some software will only install on certain Mac models, for example nvidia drivers. Instead of hacking the installer itself every time a new driver is released, you can use a MacPro3,1 or 4,1 model identifier and just run the installer as it is, which can be an advantage - people who used a certain alternative method to install the nvidia drivers actually had their drivers downgraded by the 10.6.6 update. That does not happen when you install the drivers properly.

 

On vanilla hackintoshes with Intel CPUs running the vanilla kernel using the appropriate model identifier can help getting power management working for both CPU and video card.

 

On a laptop, using a laptop modifier helps getting all the battery stuff and whatever else is specific to laptops, working right.

 

As you can see, in a nutshell, OS X configures some parts of the OS based on the model identifier - AKA the "Mac" it's installed on.

 

You can stick with the Chameleon defaults for now, and override them if you happen to run into issues with the MacMini model identifier.

 

Making your own smbios.plist is not complicated at all. Just pay attention to the spelling, format, syntax etc as always.

My old P4 10.5.8 Hackintosh is a MacPro1,1. I found the data for smbios.plist I'm using on a site like this:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/n...ers/+bug/657538

You can find similar info for any Mac model on Linux bug report type sites if you google MacModelx,y DMI.

Compare the data on the site with the attached smbios.plist to see how to set everything: smbios.plist.zip

The serial number must be 11 digits. It can be silly as in the example or you can try to fake a real Apple serial number.

Follow this guide by prasys: http://prasys.info/2009/11/understanding-mac-serial-number/

 

I recommend using the Apple Property List Editor that comes with XCode developer tools when editing plists.

[Rhapa]

Thanks a lot, without your help I wouldn't be able to get my system running properly. Today I upgraded successfully to 10.6.4, now attempting to 10.6.6. Hope it works.

 

Thanks for your time and for your help....

[Gringo Vermelho]

Awesome, glad to help.

 

Happy hacking!