bofors Posted January 28, 2006 Share Posted January 28, 2006 This may not be that useful, but these guys are flashing a Linux kernal directly into a normal BIOS: http://www.linuxbios.org/index.php/Main_Page Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xtraa Posted January 29, 2006 Share Posted January 29, 2006 I don't know if this has been said before, but... Somebody discovered that their iMac had a hidden 200mb FAT partition on their hard drive, which is part of the EFI spec. It appears that this space is used to store some EFI files. As of the moment, the partition is totally empty. But with future OS X updates, we expect to see some new files appear in this partition. Yes I also wrote this two weeks ago, but no one believed me. Afaik the files or, more important, the drivers are stored in a directory named efi/corefw/drivers/fat/ I read this somewhere at Intel. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Urbz Posted January 29, 2006 Share Posted January 29, 2006 hey forcer, back to the bootable cd: where is your fat partition on your drive? and which type of fat is it (12, 16, or 32?)? also, do you finalize the cd when you burn? finally, exactly what is on the fat partition? Thank you very much, Urby Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
arne Posted January 29, 2006 Share Posted January 29, 2006 @Urby3 The Efi Bios can read fat32 and it should read fat15 and fat16 too. maybe interesting: How_to_enter_EFI_menu_in_your_Intel_Mac Using Nero* Enterprise Edition to Burn EFI Visible/Bootable CD-ROMs arne Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
forcer Posted January 29, 2006 Share Posted January 29, 2006 hey forcer, back to the bootable cd: where is your fat partition on your drive? It's up to you where you create the partition. and which type of fat is it (12, 16, or 32?)? I use fat32. also, do you finalize the cd when you burn? Good question - I don't really know if it is default on CDBurnXP. finally, exactly what is on the fat partition? all files what you see on the CD - example EFI aplications. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Takuro Posted January 30, 2006 Share Posted January 30, 2006 A quote from DeathChill "Anyway, as Pianoman said it looks like we don't need to worry about EFI at the moment because OS X 10.4.4 still supports BIOS's apparently. This means we can boot it on normal machines regardless." Somebody apparently tried popping in the DVD into a normal beige-box computer and it actually booted to a certain point, I'm guessing. But it seems stupid that Apple would go so far as to implement EFI only to give it some BIOS support too. I wonder how things that rely heavily on EFI, such as the ATi drivers, will function when we do get this thing booted through BIOS. Maybe they simply won't work and this whole thing was a mistake on Apple's part. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
c0nfused Posted April 13, 2006 Share Posted April 13, 2006 Has anyone tried to see what Apple included in their firmware update (included with Bootcamp)? It may have the necessary EFI files for compatibility with older operating systems. I don't have access to my hackintosh right now, so I can't check the DMG out. Edit: The original firmware is also provided as a download by Apple. We may be able to extract some of the original EFI files from it as well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
daefiman Posted April 14, 2006 Share Posted April 14, 2006 Hi, atm I'm working on compiling the IA-32EMB implementation with VS6 to boot off a fat32 partition using GRUB. I'm making slow progress, and I'm trying to figure out where the problem lies. My thread is here. If/when I get it working, I'll use Boot Camp or xom.efi to boot into XP, and provide a partition image. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
St0nehead Posted January 27, 2007 Share Posted January 27, 2007 How to make native Mac boot disks bootable on PC ? For example: i have iDefrag Boot CD (for Mac) - can i make it bootable for my BIOS-based Hackintosh ? .............. Thx Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
glassJAw Posted January 29, 2007 Share Posted January 29, 2007 So is the progress for this dead? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
frizbot Posted January 29, 2007 Share Posted January 29, 2007 (edited) Wait until the MacEFIx86 forum is recreated. This thread has nothing to do with general purpose OS bootdisks, and its ancient. Use rawrite, nero etc to create bootdisks. Just download a iDefrag bootdisk for a general mac, which won't work on a hackintosh. The utilities that made BootCDs (like "BootCD") don't work under Tiger, so I don't know what they do now. Defragmenting isn't important, don't worry about it. Edited January 29, 2007 by frizbot Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kevinosx Posted January 29, 2007 Share Posted January 29, 2007 (edited) So does anyone know if there is someone actually working on the project or are we just hoping someone restarts the MacEFIx86 forum? What happened to it anyway, every link I find about it on the net says "link not found" and the last info about anyone working on the EFI was from Sept 7th. And none of the download links work for the dev wiki http://osx86box.net/efidev/index.php/Main_Page Edited January 29, 2007 by kevinosx Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
asap18 Posted January 29, 2007 Share Posted January 29, 2007 read here http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=40142 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kevinosx Posted January 29, 2007 Share Posted January 29, 2007 :censored2: Holy {censored}!! Well the good news is that the EFIx86 forum is being put back up! Woohoo!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
frizbot Posted January 30, 2007 Share Posted January 30, 2007 Its been said that EFIx86 is progressing rapidly, but IMO it can't progress fast enough. It's absolutely crucial to the future OS X86, even to the present. The forum should be up soon, but not much development discussion has happened there since the summer IIRC. Maybe it all happens in the IRC channel, I haven't visited. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mifki Posted January 30, 2007 Share Posted January 30, 2007 Yes, work is still being done on EFI. We hope to have a working solution soon Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
marliwahoo Posted January 30, 2007 Share Posted January 30, 2007 Looking forward to it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
frizbot Posted January 30, 2007 Share Posted January 30, 2007 Didn't mean to imply there was no work being done. Sorry, had a hard time phrasing that. The forum will be great to have back (thanks to the administrators gradually recovering it manually), but development discussion seems to happen elsewhere. Soon is very encouraging . I'm very excited about it, and I wanted the people here in the hardware forum to know how crucial it is for true hardware support (MacEFIx86 is a bit hidden in the development subforums). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kevinosx Posted January 30, 2007 Share Posted January 30, 2007 That's great to hear guys, you keep doing what you're doing. You have no idea how much I look forward to the launch of such an implementation, it will mean full native hardware support, bypassing the bios and more importantly NO MORE CPUS=1!!!!! It will be interesting how they come about a solution, how TPM emulation is done aswell! It would be a neat thing to pop in a mac os x dvd that installs directly from it! Keep up the good work guys, your work is very much appreciated!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
n0oNE Posted February 1, 2007 Share Posted February 1, 2007 Hello, recently I bought new barebone laptop PC with EFI bios on it (I hope so ) Mitac 8258D it's tech. specifications: BIOS EFI InsydeH2O (512kb rom/ 4Mb EPROM) I think its on Intel Firmware hub device Southbridge ICH-7 video ATI mobile X1600 Intel core2 duo CPU Napa technology I think it's really near Mac book specifications, I would like to run MacOS on it, I could help you with testing or something on native EFI supported board. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mifki Posted February 1, 2007 Share Posted February 1, 2007 yah pretty much anything with 4mb eprom is efi compatible, and as for tpm, contrary to commong belief, the kernel doesnt need it, so we could pretty much boot a original apple kernel, and run near perfect (providing we had either decrypts or a rXdX.kext installed) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
n0oNE Posted February 5, 2007 Share Posted February 5, 2007 so is anyone interested ? i am trying decompile that bios Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
frizbot Posted February 5, 2007 Share Posted February 5, 2007 A few people have EFI boards. Any new boards (=/>945 chipset) from Intel has it. I'm sure the offer is appreciated though. Kiko is the resident expert on MacEFIx86. The forum isn't up though, maybe there were issues with recovering it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
frizbot Posted February 11, 2007 Share Posted February 11, 2007 Sorry to double post, but how is the forum restoration coming along? Rumors of 10.5 for late March have me excited again about MacEFIx86. If the forums aren't needed for development, thats fine, but I'd like to follow along. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kevinosx Posted February 11, 2007 Share Posted February 11, 2007 ^^ Ditto :glare: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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