ASUS P6T on 64-bit Snow Leopard 10.6
Comments(89) The ASUS P6T is one of the less expensive LGA 1366 motherboards at the moment. It features some cool overclocking BIOS settings, FireWire, external E-SATA onboard port, and is SLI/CrossFire-capable. SLI/CrossFire is the main difference between the P6T and the P6T SE but you could always cross flash the P6T SE into a P6T to get SLI support. I put a Core i7 920 CPU in it and populated three of the six RAM banks with 2 GB Patriot Viper DDR-3 DIMMs. This baby has OSX86 written all over it, it screams to be run on Snow Leopard :-)
You probably should have at least some OSX86 experience to understand what I’m talking about in this post. This is not an installation walkthrough, I just list the important points you need to take care of when running SL on the ASUS P6T. If you need installation support, please refer to the appropriate OSX86 forums.
There are quite a few catches when installing Snow Leopard (SL) 10.6.0 on an ASUS P6T motherboard. One thing that’s very important to me is that I’m able to use the vanilla XNU kernel. Vanilla simply rulez. It makes updating so much easier. With the ASUS P6T that’s no problem. Even sleep works with no additional kernel extensions. No kernel boot flags are needed with this board. I used one of the many USB stick based installation guides on the net. I’m using Chameleon v2 RC3 as EFI boot loader on the USB stick and on my SL installation drive.
One thing you may want to stay away from are DSDT.aml files created with DSDT-Patcher. DSDT-Patcher creates useful DSDT files for many boards but my P6T doesn’t seem to be one of them. If I use DSDT.aml created with DSDT-Patcher 1.0.1e the kernel always hangs early in the boot process:
Oct 12 00:28:20 localhost kernel[0]: IOAPIC: Version 0×20 Vectors 64:87
Oct 12 00:28:20 localhost kernel[0]: IOAPIC: Version 0×20 Vectors 88:111
It just wouldn’t boot any further. Only when I took out all the DIMMs leaving only the first bank populated I eventually was able to boot. But who wants to use only 2 GB of RAM in a nice triple-channel board?! After hours of experimenting I finally found the culprit: it’s DSDT-Patcher! The modifications the patcher adds to the DSDT are not compatible with my P6T board. That’s when I started to use the “vanilla” DSDT file. You can also use DSDT-Patcher to create the vanilla DSDT file. Call the GetDSDT script that comes with DSDT-Patcher. It will create a file named dsdt.dat. I renamed it to DSDT.aml and saved it to /Extra. Now I was able to start up SL with 6 GB of RAM for the first time. Use iASL (it also comes with the DSDT-Patcher archive) to decompile the DSDT.aml to the human-readable version which usually has the extension .dsl.
If you notice slow drive access on S-ATA > port #1 drives you will need to apply some IRQ modifications in your DSDT.dsl. See this thread for more information or just grab my DSDT below which has this IRQ patch already applied.
- DSDT.aml for ASUS P6T – ready to use with boot loader
- DSDT.dsl for ASUS P6T – human-readable version (mind you, I didn’t say human-understandable version)
- com.apple.Boot.plist for Chameleon v2 boot loader (yeah, I prefer that legacy logo too :-)) for SL installation drive
Hardware
I’m only using S-ATA/P-ATA drives, I don’t recommend using the IDE port.
- Flash BIOS revision v1004. This is essential! The provided DSDT below may not work properly in case you use an older BIOS version.
- Disconnect all unneeded drives
- Make sure your installation drive is connected to the first SATA port which is SATA1 on the P6T
BIOS settings
Start off with resetting to default settings.
- Set storage to AHCI
- Enable ACPI 2.0 support
- Enable ACPI APIC support
- Make sure the BIOS lists your installation drive as the first drive even if you boot from a prepared USB stick.
- Set DDR-3 rate to reflect correct memory timing (optional)
- Disable JMicron ATA (optional, unless you use those additional S-ATA ports)
- Disable ASUS Express Gate (optional, but it’s useless anyway)
- Disable IEEE 1394 (optional, unless you need FireWire)
Minimum kexts
The minimum kernel extensions to get a bootable OSX86 are:
- fakesmc.kext (see netkas.org for latest SL version)
- OpenHaltRestart.kext (needed for proper shutdown/restart)
- AHCIPortInjector.kext and IOAHCIBlockStorageInjector.kext are not needed
Optional kexts
Optional kernel extensions:
- Marionez’ AppleHDA.kext – Probably the easiest way to get sound from that Realtek ALC1200 chip. Install it using Kext Helper to /S/L/E. Download it here. If the volume meter works but you’re not hearing any sound, check your sound preferences if line out is selected.
- JMicronATA.kext- (if you’re using those additional S-ATA ports)
Once everything is up and running: remove fakesmc.kext from /Extra/Extensions and install it using Kext Helper to your SL installation partition. This will speed up booting. I deliberatly run my OSX86 PC in 64-bit kernel mode so there’s no RAM page swapping when the OS accesses the memory above 4 GB.
There’s one more thing…
Bonjour discovery doesn’t work out of the box. That’s why you may not (reliably) see other Macs in your network. Or why you’re unable to pair your Apple TV to your iTunes Library. Apparently, the onboard network chip doesn’t see any multicast network traffic. One way to fix this is to put the network interface into promiscuous mode. See here for details. Promiscuous mode is just a temporary solution until a proper multicast fix will be available, i.e. a working 64-bit version of RealtekR1000.kext.
Check out this implementation of the RealtekR1000 LAN driver. It’s working for the RTL8168C/8111C LAN chip in 64 bit mode and multicast is working as well, which means, no more troubles seeing other Apple devices on the network. There is some support for this driver in this thread over at insanelymac.com.
Looking for kexts? Here’s the kext package I’m using on my P6T based system.
Once everything is up and running, check out this blog post for some speed enhancements using a fine tuned DSDT.
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Andrew, are you using the latest BIOS revision for the P6T? Is the DSDT.aml in /Extra? Also disconnect all other drives from SATA.
Hey Jan, Ya I disconnected all the other drives and it seems to be working nicely now
I have the latest bios 904 so I hope the DSDT.aml still work install as we speak
Personally, I had some problems with the provided DSDT.aml on the latest BIOS (904?), so I compiled my own instead.
Basically, I used DSDT_Patcher, then removed all lines that start with “alias” at the beginning (to get all cores working), and freed an interrupt (to fix slow SATA speed). You can download it here if you want: http://www.mediafire.com/?ynrlx5n0zmi (if you want the source, I will give it to you)
Keep in mind that this particular one only works for i7-920.
hey all. thanks a ton for everything.
for those who have posted i thank you.
for those using the posts, don’t give up I did it! YOU CAN TOO.
i have asus pt6 bios 801, core i7 920 overclocked to 3.5GHz 12 gigs ram nvidia gtx 260. this site was MAJOR help for the DSDT finds. i also spent about a week reading all about chameleon and hackintosh sites/boards. my machine now successfully triple boots to win7 64 ubuntu 9.10 64 and snow leopard. my machine won’t fully shut down via snow leopard, weird,
and i still really don’t have a rock solid grasp of how chameleon works. i installed/used guides from other sites and this sites files to fashion (not compile,,,,,i think) a usb stick with it chamelon 2 rc3 on it. i have tried cloning this usb thumb drive to another stick of same size, and after changing all bios settings, it fails… that puzzles me… i want to get a working backup so i can further explore chameleon especially for rc 4′s available skins and the ability to hide non os drives. i guess i’m not sure what is on my thumb drive and what is on snow leopards partition and how they talk to each other. i assume in my install i never used the 200 meg efi… anyone’s help would be appreciated
but lastly like how mr. trick77 stated, go vanilla and no other way… my question is , is it safe to upgrade to 10.2.x? straight up if so i will, i am currently waiting to get that uncloneable fob cloned, and want to make sure i don’t have to change anything on chameleon’s end before updating.
thanks all and best of luck.
bowen.b.junk at gmail.com
trick77 have you gone to chameleon 2 rc4 yet?
does your machine shutdown properly?
Ben, I just installed RC4 and my P6T still shuts down as it did with RC3. One advantage of not using a pre-prepared OSX86 distribution is that you should be able to upgrade your P6T Hackintosh without any problems. But eventually, it also depends on the hardware you use on top of the P6T and what components Apple changed in the upgrade. I usually write a short post on this blog if a new upgrade works with the P6T.
As for the shutdown issue you may want to try this: try booting with all other disks disconnected from SATA. Does that fix the problem? You may also want to boot with the -v flag. The verbose mode shows the shutdown sequence and I’ve seen some situations where OS X is unable to unmount certain partitions. I have this problem with my SATA DVD from time to time as well but haven’t found a fix for it so far.
Cheers,
Jan
using RC4, i read somewhere that the only difference was replacing the .boot file, and then being able to add extra lines of code in your com.apple…. files in the extra folder to enable themes, and hiding unwanted drives. i’m wondering if that’s the case or do you need to “compile/build and reinstall” thanks for the time.
You just need to copy the file named boot to the root directory of your OS X partition (and to the USB stick) to use RC4. That’s it, no need to compile/build. You have to modify the plist if you want to use the RC4 features though.
Cheers,
Jan
Btw. it took me months until I figured what was really going on with kernels, kexts, bootloaders, DSDT and all that stuff. A working vanilla install from scratch in just one week is quite an achievement :)
Hi!
When I boot and the USB drive initiates, I get the legacy boot screen and not the spinning circle..and it doesn’t go on…it freezes…why?
HD is in sata port #1!
instead…using p6t essentials original files of http://www.insanelymac.com/for…..pic=189052 guide…all goes on and start utility disk..installatio goes well but kernel is 32 bit..not 64 bit!
HELP ME please..THANK YOU!
Help!!!
..when i boot usb stick with dsdt.aml given in this site…boot stops with this message:
IOAPIC: Version 0×20 Vectors 88:111
what can i do?
help me please
sorry man, no idea
@ Luca, are you sure to use the correct bios version and the correct settings?
what would realy be awsome is if someone with a normal P6T board (not se not delux) would make a link with only the files needed to make all the components of the board work i have gotted it to install with remakable spped using sata not ahci but it dosnt see the dvdrw drive and i had no ethernet I was able to get sound to work using the voodoo kext but never was able to find a kext for my GTX 295 also it recognised that i had a I7 920 cpu and the clock it was at but couldnt get all the cores to show up.
Im willing to trade secrits and help the comunity but someone who has a working setup needs to start posting there own links instead of posting old broken links!!
Im so tired of reading through an install guide just to find out all the links to the files needed are broken.
also Im not using a premade cd I own my own retail copy of SL and I think everyone should!
btw the previus post about brokem link was not directed twords anyone of you its directed tward another website that has many tutorial with links to kext files that are all broken unfortunaly there the links to the kext files i think i need.
would it be posable for one of you with a 100% working system to post a link to a zip that includes:
boot loader thats being used
all kext files needed to make P6T fully functional at 64 bit
a brief install guide?
OPG, you’ll find the kexts I’m using here:
http://trick77.com/2010/01/19/kexts-for-asus-p6t/
There’s no guarantee that they work on your system as well though. I haven’t seen many reports from users who got a GTX 295 running in OS X, as this card is not present in any Mac today.
Cheers,
Jan
thank you very much I was able to boot SL by using the method here http://www.insanelymac.com/for.....pic=187151 but have isues with video
I a lil cunfused on what vanila kernal is is the method im using, using the vanila kernal?
As I said, I don’t think the GTX 295 is supported.
Vanilla means the original kernel, not a recompiled kernel. If you’re using the retail DVD you’re automatically using the vanilla kernel.
Ok im at 10.6.2 seems like all that dont work is video i can use the card but get crap res
I found a link that explains how to do it but its all gibberish to me
the link is http://www.insanelymac.com/for.....pic=184318
P6T
I7 920@3.6
GTX 295
12 gig OCZ Gold ddr3 1600
4 SATA drives all working in IDE mode
but for some reason I cant get my SATA DVDRW drive to be seen by Snow Leopard I even hooked up a regular IDE DVDRW and it dont see it but if I switch to AHCI the SATA DVDRW works fine are any of you aware of a kext that will solve this?
Oh yeah and thanks to Jan for posting the kexts once I get this drive working in IDE mode Im going to run some benchmarks and il post results
After further research and snooping i was able to get my hackintosh working fully with Snow Leopard retail, Asus p6t, i7 920 CPU, Egva 9800 GTX 512 mb, 12 GB ram and two SATA drives.
Thanks to all you guys and dolls out there, i finally used EMPIRE EFI to reboot into SL after the install. For my Nvida card to work correctly download Netkas -Enabler_for_Nvidia_and_multiple_ATI_cards.pkg from his web site.
That’s it in anut shell.
Happy hackintosh,
AB
can someone upload an iso of the boot loader
Jan, thanks for your help and everyone else’s to. I’ve got Snow Leopard 10.6 up and running. I’ve been unable to update to 10.6.2 successfully, always kernal panic. How did you do your update?
shifter, I’ve never experienced a KP with this board, not in 10.6.0 nor .1 or .2. Are you sure you don’t have any kexts installed from a previous installation? Are you using the kexts from the package above, including DSDT? Can you post the KP message?
Cheers,
Jan
Jan, I used the guide and kext from eric r’s post. Maybe thats the reason? When I went to follow the 3rd link of his for the update, I couldn’t really figure it out. I am a complete beginner and had SL up and running in a week but only because I followed instructions here. On my own it would have taken months also. Hence, why I really need to understand what I’m doing. I’m still trying to get my head around everything. If I get another kernal panic I’ll try and post it.
shifter, I’m afraid I can’t help because I’m not familiar with this installation guide. I know that if you use the kexts and DSDT from my post and do a vanilla install (I admit that this is pretty hard for a beginner) it just works. Never had any issues when updating.
Cheers,
Jan