This thread has absolutely been the most helpful thread on my long road to a stable SL install. Thank you so much.

I've had a hackintosh for some time. I was a distro kiddie for a long time; Kalyway mostly. They ran well but I think it was going from 10.5.6 to 10.5.7 that I lost my Mac partition for a few months because I tried to take an Apple System Update. Well that was enough to convince me that a vanilla install was the path to take.

A vanilla install has meant going from a simple distro to Chameleon bootloader and DSDT patching. I'm pretty happy with the results. Here's where I'm at now:

Asus P5K-e (bios 1202)
2.33 GHz Core 2 Duo
4GB 800MHz DDR2
disabled JMicron ATA in bios

Completed:
vanilla install
Chameleon install
DSDT patch for: audio, USB, SATA

To Do:
DSDT patch for: Time Machine, Sleep, Speedstep
uninstall 7900GS/install Radeon 4670
double-check RTC fix was in my last dsdt edit
move to EFI partition

As I've lumbered along I did encounter some things that befuddled me. Here are some residual questions I'd like some feedback on:

1. /Extra/Extension.mkext

My DSDT.aml file would not work for the longest time but as soon as I built an Extensions.mkext I suddenly had sound. Is this a necessity? The Chameleon documentation seems to make it optional.

2. DSDT.aml vs dsdt.aml

Must this be capitalized? Is a specific key entry in com.apple.Boot.plist necessary? (ex: r(2,1)/Extra/DSDT.aml

3. EFI Strings... um where?

Ok. I used OSX86Tools to get my 7900GS running. Worked fine but everytime I look at /Extra/com.apple.Boot.plist my efi strings are not in there. I do a spotlight search for com.apple.Boot.plist and none of the ones on my hard drive have the strings? What the heck is OSX86Tools patching? Where are my EFI strings? I need to know to uninstall my 7900GS and stick in the new card.

I know it's a stupid question but I just could not find the edit anywhere.

4. Kextcache on EFI partition

Through this process, to protect my OS install, I've experimented on a spare USB drive before implementing a change on my production partition. The only difference between the two is that USB drive has boot and /Extra on the EFI partition.

After I had success with an Extensions.mkext I attempted to create one on my USB EFI partition but got all kinds of ownership errors on the /Extra/Extensions. I never could create the Extensions.mkext there.

I did chmod/chown the EFI contents. I believe the kextcache command went something like:

sudo kextcache -v 1 -t -l -m /Volumes/EFI/Extra/Extensions.mkext /Volumes/EFI/Extra/Extensions


Thanks again for a really great thread. I feel like I can see the finish line.