A8N32-SLI, 7300GT 512mb Install Lessons Learned

[RLembke]

I wanted to make a post covering some of the highlights my install on an A8N32-SLI system. It involved many trials and errors and many hours of research here, at InsanelyMac, and many other sources. I wanted to highlight some of the things that worked out in the end as a reference for others.


A8N32-SLI

In order to get USB working properly, I had to configure my BIOS (latest 1405) in this exact manner. Any small change rendered USB useless. Thanks to damnesiac and probably others for this gem of info:

My BIOS options are below:

IDE
Sata enabled
Sata raid disabled
Silicon image sata disabled

USB legacy disable

Both LAN enabled
LAN bootrom disabled
Audio auto

The only issue I have with this is I am unable to use the keyboard during the initial boot up so I cannot "hit any key" to enter startup options. To get around this, I've added -f to my initial bootup permanently so any changes I make in the future will always get picked up.

AC97 Audio worked when the AC97 option was checked during the install. However, I had strange noises any time I moved the mouse or loaded the system. I found on InsanelyMac someone mention that unplugging their case speaker solved the problem. Sure enough, that's the fix. Unplug your case speaker from the motherboard if you have this issue.

I haven't tried to get the AppleYukon kext working with the onboard LAN as I have a Linksys USB ethernet adapter that works great.

7300GT 512mb Card

I had read that the 7300GT card was the standard card on the past version of the Mac Pro so I bought one off eBay. Come to find out, if you don't buy these 512mb cards direct from Apple, the BIOS does not contain some proper hex code that allows Leopard to recognize the card as having 512mb and it is rendered useless by any nVidia drivers. Gotoh from InsanelyMac runs a website that contains not only details of installing his NVinject kext but also how to flash your 512mb card so it will be properly recognized by Leopard. Here is a link to his how-to - http://nvinject.free.fr/512Mb.html and additional information is available in his forum. Pre-modified ROMs for many 512mb cards are available here http://nvinject.free.fr/roms.php

This post was very useful for me. A simple boot disc and a few DOS commands and the problem was fixed! I have full QE/CI and all 512mb of memory recognized by Leopard. http://nvinject.free.fr/forums/viewtopic.php?t=244

After flashing the card, I was able to install the NVinject "Latest_NVinject.0.2.1_512Mb.zip" available here http://nvinject.free.fr/downloads.php


So far, things are working okay. I'll add any other hurdles as they are cleared.

Rob

[roisoft]

For your marvell adapter you can use this (http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?9c24yc0w3st) kext, replace /ionetworkingfamily.kext/contents/plugins/appleyukon2.kext for this one(delete forcedeth), donīt forget correct the permissions, and for silicon image (in bios = Sata2) download this (http://www.siliconimage.com/docs/siliconimage3132r5_15160.zip).

[erei33]

I found that LAN (Nforce with forcedeth) was very slow until I disabled 1394 (firewire) in the BIOS.

[gipo]

After flashing card bios to mac one, can you still work in windows? no problems?

[RLembke]

The BIOS flashing supposedly does not interfere with operation and performance in Windows. I have not personally verified this though.

Apparently this is nothing more than changing a few Hex settings in the BIOS so that Mac OS can properly detect the card. Those Hex values are not used or read by Windows so the change is not even noticed.

Read around the NVinject forum that I linked to above (third link).