How to upgrade to OS X Mountain Lion on the ASUS Sabertooth P67

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This guide is for upgrading your existing Snow Leopard or Lion installation to Mountain Lion on the ASUS Sabertooth P67 (though it will likely work for a lot of other boards). The method described here seems to be the “old fashioned” way of creating an OS X installer drive, but it still works. There are tools out there that make this process much quicker, such as TonyMacx86′s UniBeast.

Disclaimer: I am not responsible if you lose data or if you somehow destroy your computer in the process.

1. Back-up anything important. This is optional but highly recommended.
2. Download Mountain Lion from the App Store. When the download finishes, right-click on the icon and click “Show Package Contents.”
3. Open the “Contents” folder, then open “Shared Support.” Open “InstallESD.dmg.”
4. Open terminal, and type “defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE”, press enter, type “killall Finder” and press enter.
5. You should have a disk image mounted named “Mac OS X Install ESD.” Open that in Finder and open “BaseSystem.dmg.”
6. Open Disk Utility, click on the drive you wish to add a partition to, click the partition tab, and resize a partition. Click the plus icon at the bottom to add another partition. Make sure it’s formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Click apply.
7. Click on “Mac OS X Base System” on the left side, and click on the “Restore” tab. Make sure “Mac OS X Base System” is set as the source, and then drag the partition your created in step 6 to the destination box. Click the restore button.
8. Drag “mach_kernel” from Mac OS X Install ESD to Mac OS X Base System (make sure it’s the partition, not the disk image”. Then drag the Packages folder to /System/Installation on the Base System drive.
9. Add FakeSMC.kext to /System/Library/Extensions on Base System. (Also, at this point in time you need to delete ATI6000Controller.kext if you’re using a Radeon HD6000 series graphics card. If you don’t you may get stuck at a blank white screen when you boot.)
10. Install Chimera to a flash drive or your Base System partition if necessary. Reboot, install, and install whatever options you need from MultiBeast. Here are the options I used:

  •         System Utilities
  •         ALC8xxHDA
  •         AppleHDA Rollback
  •         Non-DSDT HDAEnabler ALC892
  •         FakeSMC
  •         FakeSMC Plugins (Optional; delete IntelCPUMonitor.kext if you install this)
  •         hnak’s AppleIntelE1000e Ethernet (I haven’t tested this but it should work)
  •         Chimera

Do NOT Upgrade your Sabertooth P67 Hackintosh BIOS to 3xxx

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I was having issues with my SATA controller and decided to see if updating my BIOS would fix it. So far that seems to be fixed, but onboard audio won’t work no matter what I try. Once you upgrade, you can’t go back. This may apply to other ASUS boards as well but I don’t know for sure. If you don’t use onboard audio you could upgrade since that seems to be the only problem with it.

Corsair 600T Fan LED Switch Mod

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Disclaimer: I’m not responsible if you break your fans or fry your computer trying to do this mod. If that happens, you’re on your own.

When I was picking a new case for my computer, I was trying to decide between the Corsair 500R and the 600T. One of the things I liked about the 500R was that it had an on/off switch for the fan LEDs, but I liked the 600T more so I picked that. I’ve been wanting to add an LED switch since I bought it, and I just recently decided to do the mod. Unfortunately I didn’t get any pictures while I was doing it but I’ll do my best to describe it. Here’s what I did:

1. Peel back the Corsair sticker on the fan and see which wire going to the LED is the negative. On mine the positive appeared to be a copper wire and negative was aluminum. Cut the negative wire wherever you want, and strip off the insulation on the part of the wire connected to the LED. Repeat for all four LEDs.

2. Cut a piece of wire that goes from the end of one of the LEDs negative wire to the one across from it. Neither of the LEDs this wire is connecting to should be the one next to the fan power cord. Strip the insulation off each end, and cut out a small section in the center. Solder the negative wires to each end of the one you just cut.

3. Cut another piece of wire that goes from the LED opposite from the power cord to the end of the power cord. Strip the insulation at each end, cut out a section of insulation where it will make contact with the wire from step 2 in the middle, and cut out another section next to the end of the LED’s negative wire next to the power cord. Solder both the LED negative wires to that piece you just cut, and make sure the two wires you cut make contact in the middle. You could solder these, but I just taped them together with electrical tape.

Repeat the above for both fans. Here’s a high quality illustration I created using high end photo editing software (Microsoft Paint).

For the switch, I pulled one out of some sort of broken electric device. I already had this wired into an LED strip, so I just connected the long wire from step 3 to what I already had. Whatever you decide to connect your switch to, make sure it’s a negative wire. I’d recommend doing it the way I did it; that way you can shut off all the lights in your case with one switch. If you don’t have any other lighting in your computer, then you’ll have to get a molex connector and solder the wires from step 3 to one side of the switch, and then run another wire from the other end of the switch to the negative on the molex connector.

I have my switch under the black cover on the top.

Achieva Shimian QH270-IPSB 27″ Monitor Unboxing and Review

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I was looking around on eBay a while ago for a cheap Apple or Dell 27″ display, but everything I found that was usable was still way out of my price range, so I decided to be less specific on the brand and I came across the Achieva Shimian 27″ monitors. When I saw how cheap it was I figured it was a scam, but after doing some research I found that it wasn’t and that a lot of people already had them. I bought the QH270-IPSB model because it looked similar to the Apple Thunderbolt Display. The Shimian uses the same panel that Apple uses for the 27″ iMac and Thunderbolt Display. The reason they’re cheap is because they use panels that are rejected by Apple, Dell, LG, etc. This doesn’t mean that the panels that go into these are horrible, they’re “A-” grade while the other manufacturers use “A” grade. There’s a chance that it might have some minor defects.

Specs:

-Size (without stand): 16″x25.75″x~3″

-Resolution: 2560×1440

-LCD size (diagonal): 27″

-Inputs: 1 DVI port

Unboxing:

I purchased mine from eBay seller green-sum. The box came wrapped with some bubble wrap. Inside the box was the LCD, a DVI cable, a power brick with a Korean power cable, and the stand.

Set-up:

The monitor was easy to set up. I only used the stand briefly, and it didn’t seem as flimsy as some have said. I’ve been using a Monoprice VESA arm and it works well. The monitor came with two out of the four screws for the VESA mount. The holes aren’t very deep and the screws are very short. Any screws that come with a VESA mount will most likely be too long. I’m using the two short screws diagonally and a couple of the longer ones in the other two holes. It’s not very solid but it works.

Review:

The colors are great, the picture is very clear, the build quality is acceptable (I didn’t expect much for $320). The glare isn’t too bad as long as you don’t have a light source behind you. Mine didn’t have any dead or stuck pixels or any dust between the screen and the glass. There is a little bit of light bleeding in the bottom right corner that I can only see if I have a dark image on the screen. I haven’t noticed any yellow tint on it. The screen is very bright (too bright actually, I had to turn it down to about 5 button presses above the minimum setting). There’s no settings menu, so any color adjustments have to be done on the computer. The viewing angles are great, as I would expect from an IPS display. The colors don’t really change when I look at the screen from the side. The following photos show the glare and a view from the side.

Conclusion:

I highly recommend this monitor if you’re looking for a high resolution monitor without spending $900. The 2560×1440 screen resolution is great to work with. If you need a monitor with multiple inputs, this isn’t the monitor for you (though I think there is a model that has both DVI and HDMI inputs). If you’re planning to buy one, just keep in mind that there’s a chance that you could end up with some minor defects. For me, the risk of having a couple dead pixels was worth saving $600. There are some sellers that will check the monitor before shipping it to you, so contact the seller before buying it.

No More P5Q Pro Turbo

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I recently sold the computer that pretty much inspired me to make this website, my Asus P5Q Pro turbo hackintosh. Since building my Sandy Bridge system last year I really hadn’t been using the old computer. I tried to find some uses for it, but it was just taking up space. So now that that’s gone, I obviously won’t be able to post whether or not an update killed my OS X installation on that computer. I will still try to help you if you have any issues with your system. You’ll still see the usual hackintosh posts for the P67 Sabertooth though. The latest version of OS X that I can verify works with the P5Q Pro Turbo is 10.7.4. I was never able to get sleep working with it, though.

 

How to install Snow Leopard on the Asus P67 Sabertooth

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Things you’ll need:

  • A blank CD
  • OS X Snow Leopard Retail DVD
  • A Core i3/5/7 processor
  • An Account on tonymacx86.com

1. Download iBoot Legacy, UpdateHelper, and Multibeast Snow Leopard Edition from tonymacx86.
2. Burn the iBoot ISO to the blank CD and save Multibeast and UpdateHelper to another drive.
3. Reboot the computer, press F8, and select your DVD drive from the list.
4. Once the boot loader has loaded, remove the disc from the drive, insert the Snow Leopard DVD and press F5.
5. When “Mac OS X Install DVD appears, type “-v” and press enter (You may also need to add “GraphicsEnabler=No”).
6. When OS X boots, click continue, click the Utilities menu, and select Disk Utility.
7. Select the disk you want to install OS X to on the left side of the Disk Utility window, and click the partition tab at the top.
8. Click options at the bottom and select the GUID partition table and click OK. Make sure the format is Mac OS Extended (Journaled).
9. Name your partition and click apply.
10. Close Disk Utility and click continue.
11. When it asks you what hard drive you want to install to, pick the one you just formatted in step 9, click customize, and select or deselect whatever options you want (optional). Click OK and click Install.
12. When the install finishes and the computer restarts, remove the OS X DVD from the drive and put the iBoot disc back in. Press F8 and boot from your DVD drive.
13. When the boot loader appears, select the hard drive you installed OS X to and press enter.
14. When it boots, follow the directions and set up a user account.
15. When you get to the desktop, run MultiBeast and select System Utilities and hnak’s AppleIntelE10003 Ethernet. Reboot, boot using the iBoot CD, and run  UpdateHelper. Restart the computer when that installs and boot from the iBoot CD again.
16. Download the 10.6.8 combo update. Don’t restart when it tells you to restart. Instead, leave the window open and run MultiBeast.
17. In MultiBeast, select the following options:
System Utilities
ALC8xxHDA
AppleHDA Rollback
ALC892
FakeSMC
FakeSMC Plugins (optional)
NullCPUPowerManagement
hnak’s AppleIntelE10003 Ethernet
Chimera
18. Eject the iBoot disc if you want and reboot the computer, press F8, and select the hard drive you installed OS X to. You should now have a mostly working installation of Snow Leopard

To upgrade to OS X Lion, just follow tonymacx86′s instructions for UniBeast and run MultiBeast again using the same settings as above.

OS X 10.7.3 on P5Q Pro Turbo

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Apple recently released the 10.7.3 update for Mac OS X. I tried to update my hackintosh; at first I had the usual SleepEnabler problems so I rebooted and typed pmVersion=0 at the bootloader and it hangs. It seems to be an issue with FakeSMC. I would recommend not updating yet, I’ll post here when I figure out how to fix this.

Update:

I fixed it. I’m still not exactly sure what the problem was, but I deleted SleepEnabler and VoodooHDA and it booted. I reinstalled VoodooHDA and it still works.

Here’s the new SleepEnabler for 10.7.3: http://xnu-sleep-enabler.googlecode.com/files/SleepEnabler.kext.10.7.x.zip

A Winterboard Theme for iPhone 4 and iPod touch 4G

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I recently decided to try and port a Winterboard theme I made for iOS 3 to iOS 5. To make a long story short, pretty much everything changed since then so I had to start from scratch. I did my best to make it resemble the original but I had to make some changes. Anyways, here it is: I was going to make my own icons but they weren’t turning out very well so I just used these: http://www.kubilaysapayer.com/mojo2/index.html

The theme is only the dock, StatusBar, and wallpaper. I might make it a complete theme eventually; if I do I’ll post it here. I only made it for iDevices with a Retina Display so if you want to use it on an older device you’ll have to scale the images down. You can download it here.

Here’s what the original looked like:

Sapphire Radeon HD 6870 and OS X Lion

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I bought myself one of these Sapphire Radeon HD 6870s a couple weeks ago for my new hackintosh. When I first booted it using the “GraphicsEnabler”=”Yes” flag in Chameleon, it booted fine and recognized the card as a 6870 in System Profiler but only one monitor worked. I disabled GraphicsEnabler and rebooted, and surprisingly it worked perfectly without any hacks. It shows up as “ATI Radeon 6xxx 1024MB” in System Profiler, but dual monitors are supported and all ports work. Unfortunately I couldn’t get 3 monitors to work, which was the main reason I went with an ATI card over an Nvidia card. That seems to be an issue with either the card itself or the DisplayPort to DVI cable I’m using, not with OS X because it’s the same in Windows 7. I definitely recommend this card if you’re building a hackintosh, it performs well and works right out of the box.