[Solved] nForce (680i, 780i, et al.)

[theta]

Has anyone had any success with the nForce chipsets?

I've got an eVGA 780i board and so far haven't had much luck; previously seemed to stall after it loads the LAN kext, now stalls on, 'AppleNForceATA: Found 0 units'. Note: I'm using an old AppleNForceATA kext from my Leopard install, perhaps this will have to be updated.

Anyway, any thoughts, comments, advice, and so on, is welcome. :)

Cheers!

[scififan68]

Yeah noforce works on Snow Leopard, it works on Dell Inspiron 531, with an mcp61 nforce 4 chipset.

[theta]

Yeah noforce works on Snow Leopard, it works on Dell Inspiron 531, with an mcp61 nforce 4 chipset.

Sweet! Can you give me a rundown of the modified kexts you're using? Are you using AppleNForceATA for example?

[scififan68]

I got AppleNForceATA.kext in /Extra and the patched ioatafamily.kext to fix make boot time faster.

[theta]

I got AppleNForceATA.kext in /Extra and the patched ioatafamily.kext to fix make boot time faster.

Any chance you could send me your AppleNForceATA.kext? I'm using an old one from my Leo install and seems to not want to work. (Stalls with AppleNForceATA: found 0 units, or something to that effect.)

I'm realizing that our chipsets are different, but it seems like it should work. Theoretically at least, haha.

Anyway, thanks!

[alexdr1]

I'm having the same problems

with a Nforce 680i

[theta]

All right, it appears yet again the nForce x80i series (I'm guessing, 680i, 780i, and 790i) are not working; I'm guessing it's the SATA issue... :(

[theta]

I'm having the same problems

with a Nforce 680i

alexdr1, can you post here what kernel extensions you are attempting to boot with and what happens when you try to boot? Thanks! :D

[alexdr1]

ok
i will i try to install the retail osx and start playing with everything fresh give me couple minutes;)

i had the beta before

[theta]

ok
i will i try to install the retail osx and start playing with everything fresh give me couple minutes;)

i had the beta before

All right. Great! Let me know how it goes. :)

[alexdr1]

What kernel are you using

[theta]

What kernel are you using

I'm using the 32-bit kernel, booting with "arch=i386".

[SquidLord]

I have my 780i board working with ethernet and sata using the vanilla kernel and the "PC EFI 10.1.pkg" as the loader. Works well, except my graphics issue, and now this weird kernel panic referencing "warmd"

[theta]

I have my 780i board working with ethernet and sata using the vanilla kernel and the "PC EFI 10.1.pkg" as the loader. Works well, except my graphics issue, and now this weird kernel panic referencing "warmd"

What kernel extensions are you using? Would you mind sharing? Thanks!

Cheers :)

[EDIT] Also please tell us what board you're using and anything else you had to do to get Snow Leopard retail to boot. If you have the time a quick, "This is what I did" would be very helpful. Thanks again!

[theta]

It appears that, 'AppleNForceATA: found 0 units.' may not be the problem after all: I'm currently stalled trying to boot on my Snow Leopard disk with the following error: 'dyld: shared cached file was build against a different libSystem.dylib, ignoring cache'. Now it's possible that AppleNForceATA is still the culprit because above that message is the same, 'found 0 units' message twice. So far I'm stumped. I'll try taking out my GPU's EFI string and see what happens…

[SquidLord]

Here, I edited it to be a little better to read and a little more informative.

Well, I'm using the "HOTiSO" download [it's just the GM version and that's the guy that put it up, don't ask me where to get it]. I wasn't doing this by myself, I was loosely following a guide.

The method I decided to use involves the dmg [not IMG, I do mean DMG] of the disc on the harddrive. This does not allow for direct install over your existing Leopard 10.5.X partition [which is ill advised]. I used DiskUtility and converted the dmg to Read/Write. There's a button on top section of DiskUtility that reads "Convert" simply click that and select the dmg. There's a drop down in a window that comes up after you select your dmg, in this window is where you select "Read/Write", then it'll do the job.

Now with the dmg ready, I replaced the the OSInstall.pkg with a modified one [I believe it was modified to allow it to be used right off the HDD]. During the install I selected the button labled "Customize..." and removed all printers from the install procedure. I've found that leaving the printers selected cause the installer to read "Install Failed" at the end, which left me a little paranoid and set me up for another install :P I then installed the chameleon loader from the "PC EFI 10.1.pkg" file. Now it's at this point that I realized I should have looked into the DSDT.aml thing. So I remembered from my iPC install there was a DSDT folder, and found a tool with a GUI that would make it for me based on my system, hooray! So I did that and placed the DSDT.aml in the root of my Snow Leopard partition and in the /Extra folder of that drive [I didn't know where the loader wanted it]. I had a package from that guide I was following and this had several kexts that should be used...and they were :D I put these kexts in /Extra/Extensions and edited them as I needed. These only required adding the partitions UUID to certain kexts and adding an EFI string for my video card.

Now I was ready to boot for the first time. Hovering over the Snow Leopard drive I had to type "-v -x32", but I added "-f" to have "-v -f -x32" [without quotes of course]. Waited for it begin the first boot process, and found I got the error "Still waiting for root device", so I copied the ATA kexts from my Leopard 10.5.7 install using this terminal command [from inside Leopard]:

cp -pr /System/Library/Extensions/*ATA* /Volumes/MacHD/System/Library/Extensions

Please note the space between the *ATA* and /Volumes, also replace "MacHD" with the
name of your Snow Leopard harddrive name.
Then, after fixing that error, I rushed through the set up process as I had a kernel panic the first time through. I Got to the desktop and went straight to settings to stop Spot Light from indexing my harddrives, as advised from another [it causes a kernel panic if you don't]. Got KextUtility from the package the guide had and used it to rebuild the kextcache, then rebooted. Back on the desktop again [booting with "-v -f -x32" again, -x32 is required for our initial set up to keep it in 32-bit mode] I checked if my drives could be indexed without kernel panic...with success :D Found I had no networking and got angry, lol, so I went looking and found a link to a 32/64-bit nForceLAN.kext that worked on my board . I backed up my Extensions folder with this command:

cp -r /System/Library/Extensions /System/Library/Extensions.backup
Copied the nForceLAN.kext to the extensions folder and used KextUtility to rebuild the kextcache and rebooted again with "-v -f -x32". Found that the OS detected network settings and set itself up on boot and both my NIC's on the board were detected correctly. Now I still had no sound or proper visuals. My video card was not detected correctly [it was detected as "PCI DVI-out"] and it only was finding 32MB of vRAM. Then I screwed things up by trying the same fix that worked in Leopard to my Snow Leopard install...didn't work.

Well, thats' what I did to get my Snow Leopard install working until I screwed things up [lol]. If you have any questions for me, go ahead and ask. My system configuration is in my signature. Ask me about specifics if you feel so inclined :)

[theta]

SquidLord, thank you for taking the time to detail the install procedure! I'm in the middle of moving to a new house so once I'm moved in I'll follow your guide and report back here. Thanks again!

Cheers :D

[SquidLord]

No problem, just ask if you need anything else, classes are a bit dry of homework right now [luck me], I should be able to answer whenever.

[theta]

No problem, just ask if you need anything else, classes are a bit dry of homework right now [luck me], I should be able to answer whenever.

Hello from Snow Leopard! Yes that's right, it's working.^^ So far I have tested: Internet (check, working thanks to 32/64 nForceLan.kext), Sound (check, working thanks to VoodooHDA.kext), Graphics Acceleration (check, working thanks to EFI injection).

If anyone else needs help or has questions please post here or message me. I simply followed Squid's guide and it worked, easy as pie. :)

Thanks again everyone!

Cheers^^

[SquidLord]

Hello from Snow Leopard! Yes that's right, it's working.^^ So far I have tested: Internet (check, working thanks to 32/64 nForceLan.kext), Sound (check, working thanks to VoodooHDA.kext), Graphics Acceleration (check, working thanks to EFI injection).

If anyone else needs help or has questions please post here or message me. I simply followed Squid's guide and it worked, easy as pie. :)

Thanks again everyone!

Cheers^^

I'm glad it worked out for you. Now, what video card do you have? and can you post that VoodooHDA? :)

[theta]

I'm glad it worked out for you. Now, what video card do you have? and can you post that VoodooHDA? :)

I'm using an EVGA 8800GTS. And yes, let me upload the VoodooHDA.kext. :) Remember to remove "AppleHDA.kext" before installing the VoodooHDA.kext.

If you have any questions, please ask. :) Good luck!

[theta]

Haha, I feel compelled to share a screen! :D

http://media.iukkoth.net/images/sl.png

[SquidLord]

Great, ty, I'll test it after I reinstall 10.6, I have too many errors, and would like to know how to make an EFI string for my 9800GX2 :)

[theta]

Great, ty, I'll test it after I reinstall 10.6, I have too many errors, and would like to know how to make an EFI string for my 9800GX2 :)

If you'd like I can also post the app I used to make the EFI string for my card. I'm not sure if the 9800GX2 is supported by that program or not, but an updated version might provide support if the version I had doesn't.

[SquidLord]

Sure, that'd help me a lot, being I have a now discontinued gpu :P

[theta]

All right, let me zip the app for you and attach it here. :D

(Upload is limited to 1.5MiB so here's a link --> http://data.iukkoth.net/EFIStudio.zip)

[eyepiz]

Sure, that'd help me a lot, being I have a now discontinued gpu :P

Hi SquidLord,
Great info thanks! I have almost the same system.. Would you mind posting your bios setings and version you are using,, I'm using P08 and having lots of trouble geting most distos to even boot from CD with out the "waiting on..." boot up error. The olny sucsesfull install I had was IPC 10.5.6 with the nvidia patch so far.. All else failed at disk start up.

Hopfully ill have better luck with snow

I appretiate any tips! :)

Eric

[x986123]

I got AppleNForceATA.kext in /Extra and the patched ioatafamily.kext to fix make boot time faster.

Will the IOATAfamily work on an x58 motherboard to increase boot speed?

[toanbk]

I got AppleNForceATA.kext in /Extra and the patched ioatafamily.kext to fix make boot time faster.

Hi, I install Snow on AMD platform, it starts very slow. please tell me how to patch IOATAFAMILY.kext to boot more quickly ?, thanks !

[scififan68]

Will the IOATAfamily work on an x58 motherboard to increase boot speed?

Nope, the long boot time is only an nforce bug.

[lemn]

Hi, I install Snow on AMD platform, it starts very slow. please tell me how to patch IOATAFAMILY.kext to boot more quickly ?, thanks !

i would also like to know that, thanks.

[djdanny900]

hello i need help my system spec
EVGA NFORCE 680I SLI
CORE 2 QUAD 6600
4GB PATRIO VIPER E.800Hzs
IDE DVD BURNER AND SATA 1000 HARD DRIVE

any body has any guide to install snow leopard on mi system and witch version is better
i have 3 10.5.6 10.5.8 by ideneb and 10.6.1-10.5.2
somebody can help me