Gigabyte g31m-es2l onboard NIC problem

0x845fed · #1 01-04-2010, 05:53 PM

Hello all. Installed Snow Leopard this AM using the great info found here. One problem I have is the onboard NIC does not work. Is what I need a kext for this to work? If so could someone point me in the right direction?

Thanks so much.

CeleronPopsicle · #2 01-04-2010, 06:44 PM

I banged my head against the wall trying to get this resolved on the same board. I ended up just going to the Apple Store and getting a USB ethernet adapter for MacBook Air, which worked like a charm under 10.5.8. Seems pretty fast too. No drivers had to be loaded either. It worked out of the box.

Imkantus · #3 01-04-2010, 08:18 PM

Or if you want an internal solution, look into buying a PCI card with RTL8111* or BCM5721 chipset.

0x845fed · #4 01-06-2010, 04:01 AM

Thanks so much for the reply. The onboard NIC chipset is Realtek 8111c do I need to look at RTGMAC_1.1.6 ?

lflashl · #5 01-06-2010, 04:24 AM

you cannot use the onboard nic if your board is ver 2.*. only version 1.* had the onboard network card that worked out of the box. you will have to go out and by a PCI network card, look around on ebay i bought one for like 5$ and i installed it and it worked. PLEASE LOOK UP TO FIND OUT A PCI NETWORK THE WORKS BEFORE HAND!

CeleronPopsicle · #6 01-06-2010, 07:21 AM

Elaborating on what lflashl stated... Rev 2 of this board uses an Atheros ar8131 chipset that is unsupported by OS X as far as I can tell. The Rev 1 board used a Realtek Chipset that was supported out of the box. I'm sure that's one of the reasons why this board got so much acclaim for the being perfect for hackintosh. My Rev 2 based hack runs perfectly with the addition of the Apple USB LAN adapter. If you want to spend less money, there are other 3rd party USB to LAN adapters that will work. Just make sure they advertise to work with Mac. Otherwise you may read a year old review of a model number that worked out of the box but no longer does because the manufacturer switched chipsets without changing the model number.

Here are a few USB ideas:
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Macally/AIR2NET/
http://store.apple.com/us/product/MB442Z/A
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-019-_-Product

Here is a PCI idea:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-002-_-Product

I must say, that at the end of the day, compared to what you might spend elsewhere and the time you have invested in working out Kexts or EFI strings and all that stuff, the Apple USB LAN adapter is the way to go.