How I installed OS X 10.6 on my Asus P5KPL-AM SE [Updated]

I don’t have this board anymore. I’ll do my best to help you with any problems you have, but the last time I installed OS X using this board was September 2009.

Introduction:

This worked for me, but I was upgrading a 10.5.7 Leopard installation. I would think this would work the same for a clean install, but you’ll be the first to know. This guide assumes that you know what a KEXT file is and which ones you need for your hardware. If you break your computer, its not my fault so don’t blame me. Now that I got that out of the way, heres how I got Snow Leopard working.

Things You’ll Need:

-Blank DVD

-Internet (I would hope you have an internet connection if you’re reading this…)

-A copy of Mac OS X Snow Leopard, the $30 upgrade disc should work even for a clean install

-An Intel Core2 Duo/Quad

-A computer

-An Asus P5KPL-AM SE Motherboard (this guide may work for others though).

-An Insanelymac.com account would help if you need to get KEXTs for your hardware.

Steps:

1. Download Psystar’s Rebel EFI free trial, and burn it to a disc

http://store.psystar.com/featured/rebel-efi-preview.html?SID=ceefd8ieht1gu7nshgl15kn0l4 EDIT: Use Empire EFI, link at the end of the guide.

2. Boot from the Rebel EFI DVD, select “Install Mac OS X” and when it ejects the dvd, take it out and insert the Snow Leopard DVD

3. Install Snow Leopard. You may need to reformat your hard drive if it isn’t using the “GUID” partition table. To do this, go to the Utilities menu, and open Disk Utility. Click the hard drive you want to install to, and click partition. 

Click the partitions menu.

Select the number of partitions you want, then click the Options button. Select the “GUID Partition Table.”

Click OK, then click apply.

4. Enjoy waiting forever for OS X to install, it takes about 40 minutes if I remember correctly.

5. It will probably say the install failed when theres like 1 minute left, thats OK, just click restart.

6. Once the computer restarts, eject the Snow Leopard DVD and put Rebel EFI back in.

7. This time, select the hard drive you installed OS X to and press enter.

8. The first boot will take a little while, just be patient and when it finally starts up, go through the setup process (you don’t have to put in your address and phone number and all that, I skipped it).

9. LAN should work out of the box with the Rebel EFI disc, so download any KEXTs you need and download the myHack bootloader from here: http://osx86.sojugarden.com/downloads/.

10. Install the KEXTs you need for your hardware with “Kext Helper b7,” and restart the computer. For LAN, install the r1000.kext. (The bootloader should have all the KEXTs needed to at least get it running without Rebel EFI. I’m not sure which KEXTs are needed for the sound, I just took all the ones I used in my Leopard installation.)

11. (If you use the onboard LAN and sound) When you get to the bootloader, press space. and then type “-x32″ without quotes and press enter. This makes Snow Leopard boot in 32-bit mode, this is the only way I could get the onboard LAN and sound to work.

12. Now, we’ll get the video card working properly.

Download “EFI Studio,” and run it.

Select your video card from the list. If its not there, you’ll have to figure it out yourself. (If you have an nVidia GeForce 9800GTX+ 512MB like me, you’ll have to select the GeForce 8600GTS 512MB. I don’t think it will affect performance, it just won’t see it as a 9800.)

Click “Add Device,” and copy the code from the bottom half of the following window:

Go to /Extra, and open com.apple.Boot.plist in TextEdit. type this at the end of all the crap in there:

<key>device_properties</key>

<string>[Insert code from EFI Studio here]</string>

To get the bootloader at the resolution you want, type this under what you just added:

<key>Graphics Mode</key>

<string>[Your resolution here]x32</string>

13. Reboot the computer, and everything should be working. (If the computer doesn’t restart itself, download “openhaltrestart.kext” from somewhere and install that the same way you installed the KEXTs earlier.

Now that was a real pain in the ass wasn’t it? Much cheaper than a real Mac though, and it should work almost as good. Snow Leopard has been really stable and fast for me for the past week that I’ve had it. If you need any more help, feel free to comment and I’ll do my best to help you.

UPDATE: Apparently Psystar isn’t selling RebelEFI anymore, but I have tested Empire EFI and it boots the installer without any problems. You can find Empire EFI here: http://prasys.co.cc/tag/empire-efi/