Tag Archives: InsanelyMac

[Labs] Unofficial InsanelyMac.com Search Plugin for Firefox

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Merry Chrismas, guys. We felt it was kinda overdue to have an INSANELYMAC.COM search plugin added to our beloved Mozilla Firefox. Of course we can also do this manually, but why not having things automized? So here we are.

What does the plugin do?
Basically we’re using our beloved Google.com to search the InsanelyMac.com site.

Disclaimer
We are neither affiliated to InsanelyMac.com nor are we affiliated to Google.com, but we felt it might be rather comfy to have this thing automized eventually.

Warning
This is pure amateurish scripting, we won’t garantee anything. Use on your own risk. Although you may hang a cross above your computer, it may explode anyway ;-) For the paranoids among you download XML file for manual installation.

How it works
Click this button and you’re gonna be offered to install this plugin.

[MacOS] Comprehensive Gigabyte Hardware Specification List

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With the advent of Snow Leopard many users have issues installing it onto PC based hardware. Well this is not very curious, since a PC is no Mac. Anyway as Gigabyte motherboards proved to be very close to the original Apple Intel specifications many people decided to buy those boards.

With the release of Snow Leopard DSDT patching seems to have become a must. Installation attempts will most likely fail without it. The intention of this list is to provide comprehensive information on the most used Gigabyte motherboards.

The original idea for this list was by a guy called ximekon (find original list here on InsanelyMac forums).

Model North- bridge South- bridge LAN Fire- Wire Audio BIOS Link Last Check
P35
P35-DS3L P35 ICH9 Gigabit -,- ALC888 F9 08/29/2009
P35-DS3 P35 ICH9 Gigabit -,- ALC889a F14 08/28/2009
P35-DS3R P35 ICH9 Gigabit -,- ALC889a F13 08/28/2009
EP35
EP35-DS3 P35 ICH9 RTL8111B -,- ALC889a F4 08/28/2009
EP35-DS3R P35 ICH9R RTL8111B -,- ALC889a F4 08/28/2009
EP35-DS3P P35 ICH9R Gigabit Yes ALC889a F6 08/28/2009
EP35-DS3L P35 ICH9 Gigabit -,- ALC888 F6 08/28/2009
EP35-DS4 P35 ICH9R RTL8111B -,- ALC889a F6 08/28/2009
EP45
EP45-DS3 P45 ICH10 2 x RTL8111C -,- ALC889a F9 08/28/2009
EP45-DS3R P45 ICH10R 2 x RTL8111C yes ALC889a F11c 08/28/2009
EP45-DS3P P45 ICH10R 2 x RTL8111C yes ALC889a F8 08/28/2009
EP45-DS3L P45 ICH10 RTL8111C -,- ALC888 F10 08/28/2009
EP45-DS3LR P45 ICH10R RTL8111C -,- ALC888 F2 08/28/2009
EP45-UD3 P45 ICH10 RTL8111C yes ALC889a F8 08/28/2009
EP45-UD3P P45 ICH10R RTL8111C yes ALC889a F9 08/28/2009
EP45-UD3L P45 ICH10 RTL8111C -,- ALC888 F5c 08/28/2009
EP45-UD3LR P45 ICH10R RTL8111C -,- ALC888 F5 08/28/2009
EP45-UD3R P45 ICH10R RTL8111C yes ALC889a F9 08/28/2009

you cant see this line, do you?

The Golden Gigabyte Model Rules

  • if last character of the model name is a “number” or a “P” (i.e. EP35-DS3 or EP45-DS3P etc.) it means ALC889a audio chipset
  • if last or penultimate character of the model name is an “L” (i.e. EP35-DS3L or EP45-DS3LR) it means ALC888 audio chipset
  • if last character of the model name is an “R” (i.e. P35-DS3R or EP45-UD3LR) it means SATA Raid controllers
  • The P35 or P45 strings in the beginning are fairly self explaining I suppose (P35 always with ICH9 and P45 always with ICH10)

Your Help is Wanted

Weather these rules nor the list above might be 100% accurate. It is only what I found on the net and summarized from the list above.

  • If you derived a DSDT.aml clean from a BIOS (like using Koalala’s DSDT patcher) and you fixed it for OSX86, you may post it in the comment’s section – don’t forget to tell how much RAM you had while compiling the DSDT.aml (Don’t add individual graphic or wi-fi strings. Just add onboard-devices like onboard-audio and onboard-ethernet.)
  • If your board is not on the list check Gigabyte’s pages and post the specifications in the comments section below.
  • If your board is listed but details above are wrong: please post it in the comments section below.
  • If you know the LAN chipset of the board and it is not listed precisely above (saying Gigabit) please post it in the comments section.

Please always crosscheck with the official Gigabyte specification page for your model (links to your model are included in the BIOS column) before adding a dsdt.aml or anything that could burn your BIOS.

[MacOS] Is EFI-X illegally using 3rd Party Program Code?

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About a year ago a company called ASEM released a device called EFI-X. This device has been claimed to be capable of booting several Microsoft Windows versions and Mac OS X Leopard.

Legal concerns

From the beginning there were question regarding the legal status of the device. But ASEM claimed the device is legal, although it circumvents Apple’s binary protection using Apple’s copyrighted secret operating system keys (OSK1 and OSK2).

Technical issues

Anyway EFI-X devices had some issues. Many forums reported about problems with Bonjour and sharing in general. In the meantime articles from the official EFI-X support forums have been suddenly disappeared. Customers reporting issues or solutions and workaround to severe bugs have been banned from EFI-X support forums – our own help article to recover almost lost data was removed aswell and one of our members has been officially banned from their forums (the reason was this article in october 2008).

Examining EFI-X in deep

Now some frustrated customers who are on the other hand technologically very familiar have examined the EFI-X device in deep. One of the main points AsereBln found: in contrast to what EFI-X is stating: “Our approach is entirely different, (..) all our code and development is our own only” – they seem to be using program code that has been developed by the OSX86 community though. They seem to be using “Disabler.kext“. Moreover another user (RezRov) found out the EFI-X Windows update software seems to be violating the LGPL as it incorporates a modified USB device library (libusb-win32).

Use of possibly unlicensed 3rd party program code, possibly illegal use of Apple security keys, and customer support below grade for a 170€ (250US$) commercial product that seems to be the summary about a year after product launch.

Lessons learnt

We suppose end users should be aware of this possible hassle. Only an original Apple Mac is really hassle free and 100% compatible to a Mac. But if you are technologically interested and have the time and motivation search the OSX86 communities for setups. The OSX86 forums are full of knowledge and willing to help. But remember a PC won’t ever be 100% compatible to a real Mac.