hi there

as i´m fairly new to osx (10.4.8 on vmware a while ago, now 10.5.1 zep r1 native).
i´m doing a lot of browsing forums and sites.

as i came across the EFi, i wondered how much this concerns me as an AMD user.
now i compiled some info and thought about adding it to the wiki (if appriciated ).

i think i just understood the basics, so i´m looking forward to some feedback and
additional infos before publishing.


zuz 242


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-EFI Basics:
EFI (Extensible Firmware Interface) can be seen as the next gen of BIOS, it provides
a basic interface between the hardware and the operating system.
One improvement over BIOS is the ability to use a hi-res GUI even at startup and support
for GUID partition tables (additional to MBR).

Genuine Mac computer use hardware on an EFI base, Win PC´s still stick to
BIOS. As OSX relies on EFI it (Kernel and some Apple kexts) needs to be patched
in order to run on Win hardware.

-PC_EFI:
One great improvement for the hackintosh community brings the PC EFI Patch by
netkas. It emulates EFI via an bootloader and brings a hackintosh closer to the
real thing.

-PC_EFI Advantages:
Intel (Core CPU and Intel chipset) users can use unmodified ("vanilla")
kernels (after installation) and use the online update without problems.
AMD and Intel users can set up partitions with GUI,and use some unmodified
stock kexts.
Further possiblities lie in "PC EFIs Pluggable Strings". They could replace "injector"
tools like NVinject, Titan or Nitat, thus making more hardware working just by adding
appropiate device ids (if a suitable kext is present). thread

-Installation Guide:
based on:
Install the EFI Patch by iGuru
thread


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some questions:

-whats the benefit for AMD user´s? I´m not using GUID, is anybody else
experiencing significant advantages?
-what happens to the EFI install if the patition is copied / moved, even
to an other hdd, by acronis or ccc?

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Leopard 10.6.5 | Core i3 | Gigabyte H55M-USB3 | ATI 5770 | Coolermaster Cosmos

well.. i used guid and mbr with rev 1 and i didn't notice any difference, with rev2 RC2-efi leo is more stale and faster... again i'm not using GUID only mbr

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http://filebeam.com/ed1d2cc264d475f3...b57f7de191.jpg

i just thought of another question, often asked, never really answered in the posts i read:

how do you know if efi is running (properly) on your system? booting with -v, some efi outputs appear
onscreen for a second or two, but is there a way to check it on a running system?

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Leopard 10.6.5 | Core i3 | Gigabyte H55M-USB3 | ATI 5770 | Coolermaster Cosmos

i just entered this info at http://osx86.wikidot.com/misc-information .

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Leopard 10.6.5 | Core i3 | Gigabyte H55M-USB3 | ATI 5770 | Coolermaster Cosmos

you can see if efi is properly installed with this utility

Won´t there be the possibility to run a amd patch script just after installing apple updates so an efi amd system could also use apple´s updates?
This would end up in something similar to intel vanillaish osx86s.