Tuesday, December 28, 2010

New Unified Realtek Onboard Audio Solution: ALC8xxHDA


Introducing ALC8xxHDA.kext, a single combined LegacyHDA replacement for Realtek ALC888, ALC887/888b, ALC889, ALC885/889a, and ALC892 high-definition audio codecs.  In order to initiate audio, this driver must be combined with a DSDT from the DSDT Database or HDAEnabler.  For any codecs other than the native ALC885/889a, AppleHDA Rollback must also be used.  All options now available in the latest MultiBeast.

To update from an existing MultiBeast LegacyHDA + AppleHDA rollback:
  1. Delete LegacyHDA from /Extra/Extenisons
  2. Open MultiBeast
  3. Select ALC8xxHDA + AppleHDA Rollback + System Utilities
  4. Reboot
To update from an existing MultiBeast VoodooHDA:
  1. Delete VoodooHDA from System/Library/Extensions.
  2. Open MultiBeast
  3. Select ALC8xxHDA + AppleHDA Rollback + System Utilities
  4. Reboot
Realtek ALC888, ALC887/888b, ALC889, ALC885/889a support:
OUTPUTS: Analog Front Headphone/Green Line-out, Orange Line-out, Grey Line-out, Digital SPDIF-OUT
INPUTS: Analog Pink Microphone, Blue Line-in, Digital SPDIF-IN
Realtek ALC892 support:
OUTPUTS: Analog Front Headphone/Green Line-out, Digital SPDIF-OUT
INPUTS: Analog Pink Microphone, Blue Line-in, Digital SPDIF-IN
Please report your results with this new method in the forum.  Special thanks to complx for the ALC8xxHDA logo.  Enjoy!


For discussions on this and other topics, register today at tonymacx86.com!

Monday, December 6, 2010

Graphics Card Support and Mac OS X

The issue with graphics cards in OS X is that there are what is called a "Reference Design" which is based on what ATI/AMD or NVIDIA provides to manufactures for a baseline hardware design. Then there is what cards manufacturers ship, either a "Reference Design" or their own unique spin on that hardware. They do this unique spin to set their card part from the "Reference Design" cards. That is fine in Windows, but can create problems in OS X. Apple typically uses a "Reference Design" or very close to one in their graphics cards.


So where am I going with this. Apple ships and supports a limited set of ATI/AMD "Reference Design" cards in OS X, they do not provide support for all models or any major variations from the "Reference Design". The reason being that the ATI/AMD architecture requires specific model driver support. For example in 10.6 Apple only supports some 46xx and 48xx cards, there is no OOB support for the 45xx cards. So that is why you see patches and/or modifications for Apple's drivers to support some of these other cards.

The ATI/AMD 5xxx cards are finally easier to install. This has more to do with the GraphicsEnabler technology used within Hackintoshing, Kabyl's boot loader and ATY_Init. Even then you are limited to what cards are supported Out Of BOX (OOB) by Apple. For example the following are the only desktop ATI 5xxx cards Apple supports OOB:

ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series:        Device ID 0x6898
ATI Radeon HD 5800 Series:        Device ID 0x6899
ATI Radeon HD 5700 Series:        Device ID 0x68B8
ATI Radeon HD 5600 Series:        Device ID 0x68D8
ATI Radeon HD 5500 Series:        Device ID 0x68D9

If your card's device id is not in this list, then you need to add your device ID to ATI5000Controller.kext and possibly ATIRadeonX3000.kext. This is great workaround but will be needed to be done after each and any Apple software update that touches the ATI drivers. Ouch.


NVIDIA cards use a different architecture and allows for a more generic driver than can support more models and variations. The new 4xx cards are based on a new architecture nicknamed "Fermi" and require new drivers.  Check out this article on Tony's blog for our solutions for NVIDIA 4xx cards.

So until Apple ships support for more cards or allows AMD and NVIDIA to ship generic drivers, graphics card support is a challenge.

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Minimal DSDT Edits for Gigabyte Socket 1366 Motherboards


Since I posted Minimal DSDT Edits for Gigabyte Socket 1156 Motherboards I picked up a Gigabyte X58A-UD3R Rev 2.0 motherboard as part of the post tonymacx86 and I did for the CustoMac Pro 2010 project on his blog.

I started researching and testing what edits from my Socket 1156 post were or weren't needed on this board. The good news is that the majority of the edits carry over, but some are not needed. For example, we don't need to inject anything for the USB ports to be fully recognized. But there are a couple of required Socket 1366 specific edits.

The following is a guide for editing the extracted DSDT from the new Hackintosh-friendly BIOSes only. If you don't have a new Hackintosh-friendly BIOS, as I described in a previous post, you will have to have to manually edit the DSDT for the CMOS reset issue. You will also need to do the three required edits needed regardless of BIOS version. They are to include Method DTGP, add Return Package at the end of _WAK and fix the "Method local variable is not initialized (Local0)" error.

Now let’s review the common edits that are valid for the Socket 1356 and Socket 1156 motherboards.

First up are the cosmetic changes. Gigabyte uses generic device names in its DSDT instead of descriptive names like Apple does. One example is Gigabyte uses PX40 instead of LPCB for the LPC Interface Bridge. So the first thing we can do is to search for PX40 and do a global replace with LPCB. The next is to rename the System Management Bus (SMBus) device PX43 to SBUS. Next would be to rename Device (IDE1) to Device (SATA) and then within it rename Device (PRIM) to Device (PRT0) and Device (SECD) to Device (PRT1). The final cosmetic edits deal with USB. You can rename the devices to more appropriate ones as shown within this list:

Rename USB0 to UHC1
Rename USB1 to UHC2
Rename USB2 to UHC3
Rename USB3 to UHC4
Rename USB4 to UHC5
Rename USB5 to UHC6
Rename USBE to EHC1
Rename USE2 to EHC2

Next we need to add to Device (SBUS) a sub-device named Device (BUS0) as seen here:

                Device (BUS0)
                {
                    Name (_CID, "smbus")
                    Name (_ADR, 0x00)
                    Device (DVL0)
                    {
                        Name (_ADR, 0x57)
                        Name (_CID, "diagsvault")
                        Method (_DSM, 4, NotSerialized)
                        {
                            Store (Package (0x02)
                                  {
                                    "address",
                                     0x57
                                  }, Local0)
                            DTGP (Arg0, Arg1, Arg2, Arg3, RefOf (Local0))
                            Return (Local0)
                        }
                    }
                }

The next edit is for audio. Gigabyte uses a device name of AZAL, so we need to do a global replace with HDEF. Then we need to add codec information to Device (HDEF). All that is required is to inject layout-id and PinConfigurations.

Here is an example of what needs to be added for a board using an ALC889 codec and using our Legacy889HDA.kext:

                Method (_DSM, 4, NotSerialized)
                {
                    Store (Package (0x04)
                        {
                            "layout-id",
                            Buffer (0x04)
                            {
                                0x79, 0x03, 0x00, 0x00
                            },
                            "PinConfigurations",
                            Buffer (Zero)
                            {
                            }
                        }, Local0)
                    DTGP (Arg0, Arg1, Arg2, Arg3, RefOf (Local0))
                    Return (Local0)
                }

There is a problem with Audio break ups in 10.6.3 and later that can be corrected in the DSDT. The first is in Device (PIC) remove these two lines:

                IRQNoFlags ()
                {2}

The other fix for audio break ups is in Device (TMR) where Gigabyte has not yet added Hackintosh logic. We need to change:

                    Method (_CRS, 0, NotSerialized)
                    {
                        If (LGreaterEqual (OSFX, 0x03))
                        {
                            If (HPTF)
                            {
                                Return (ATT6)
                            }
                            Else
                            {
                                Return (ATT5)
                            }
                        }
                        Else
                        {
                            Return (ATT5)
                        }
                    }

To:
                    Method (_CRS, 0, NotSerialized)
                    {
                        Return (ATT6)
                    }

Gigabyte has not yet added Hackintosh logic to Device (HPET), so you will get kernel panics in AppleIntelCPUPowerManagement. The fix is easy; just change Method (_STA, 0, NotSerialized) to Return (0x0F) and to change Method (_CRS, 0, NotSerialized) to Return (ATT3).

The next edit allows use of the power button to put the computer to sleep.  In Device (PWRB) change Name (_HID, EisaId ("PNP0C0C")) to Name (_CID, EisaId ("PNP0C0C")).

One fix we can do in a Socket 1366 DSDT that I haven't been able to figure out how to do in a Socket 1156 DSDT, is cure the orange external drive icon issue. In Device (SATA) you need to add the following code:

                Method (_DSM, 4, NotSerialized)
                {
                    Store (Package (0x02)
                        {
                            "device-id",
                            Buffer (0x04)
                            {
                                0x81, 0x26, 0x00, 0x00
                            }
                        }, Local0)
                    DTGP (Arg0, Arg1, Arg2, Arg3, RefOf (Local0))
                    Return (Local0)
                }

For the final edits, we can thank insanelymac user mm67. His modification enables shutdown without a kernel panic (KP). This is a two part edit, of which for the first part after:

    OperationRegion (APMP, SystemIO, 0xB2, 0x02)
    Field (APMP, ByteAcc, NoLock, Preserve)
    {
        APMC,   8,
        APMD,   8
    }

Insert:

    OperationRegion (PMRS, SystemIO, 0x0430, 0x01)
    Field (PMRS, ByteAcc, NoLock, Preserve)
    {
        , 4,
        SLPE, 1
    }

For the second part change:

    Method (\_PTS, 1, NotSerialized)
    {
        Or (Arg0, 0xF0, Local0)
        Store (Local0, DBG1)
        OSTP ()
        If (LEqual (Arg0, 0x01)) {}
        If (LEqual (Arg0, 0x03)) {}
        If (LEqual (Arg0, 0x05))
        {
            Store (0x99, SMIP)
        }

To:

    Method (\_PTS, 1, NotSerialized)
    {
        Or (Arg0, 0xF0, Local0)
        Store (Local0, DBG1)
        OSTP ()
        If (LEqual (Arg0, 0x01)) {}
        If (LEqual (Arg0, 0x03)) {}
        If (LEqual (Arg0, 0x05))
        {
            Store (0x99, SMIP)
            Store (0x00, SLPE)
            Sleep (0x10)
        }

So with these edits you'll have a fully functional Socket 1366 DSDT for Gigabyte motherboards. If you don't want to tackle these edits yourself, we maintain a database at tonymacx86 with all of these edits already applied. You will always find the latest versions listed here and can access the complete database here.

If you don't see your Gigabyte Socket 1156 or Socket 1366 motherboard or version listed. You can submit it on the tonymacx86 Forum by clicking here. The instructions are at the top of the topic. After we receive it and verify that it is vanilla, we will do the edits and upload it to the database.

For discussions on this and other topics, register today at the tonymacx86 Forum!

Friday, October 1, 2010

Update in New Minimal DSDT Edits for Gigabyte Socket 1156 Motherboards

I have updated the New Minimal DSDT Edits for Gigabyte Socket 1156 Motherboards post to reflect that these edits are for Socket 1156 motherboards and to include some information I found while working on edits for Gigabyte Socket 1366 boards.


The change is in the Device (SBUS) section. I have added the injection of "address" with a value of 0x57 as shown here:




                        Method (_DSM, 4, NotSerialized)
                        {
                            Store (Package (0x02)
                                {
                                       "address", 
                                       0x57
                                }, Local0)
                            DTGP (Arg0, Arg1, Arg2, Arg3, RefOf (Local0))
                            Return (Local0)
                        }

You can find the complete and updated Device (SBUS) in the original post.

Sunday, July 18, 2010

Typo in New Minimal DSDT Edits for Gigabyte Socket 1156 Motherboards

I was notified that there is a typo in the USBE/EHCI and USE2/EHC2 device edits section of my article New Minimal DSDT Edits for Gigabyte Socket 1156 Motherboards.

In that section:
                            "AAPL,current-extra",
                            0x04C,
Should be:
                            "AAPL,current-extra",
                            0x044C,

So that it matches what an iMac with a Core i5/i7 reports.

I have corrected the original article and I would suggest using this correction in your edits.

Many thanks to rekursor for finding this.