Thread: [GUIDE] AMD 880 and 890 on OS X 10.6

This is an addition to the full AMD on OS X 10.6 guide. Don't use this information if you do not own an AMD 880 or 890 motherboard.

AMD 8xx with OS X 10.6 - Solutions and experiences

I made this topic for people who are experiencing troubles while installing a retail Snow Leopard on their AMD 8xx chipset system.

All solution I came across during my search will be posted here, and explained in an easy to understand way.

Problems with booting and installing

Solution 1
Disabling AMD C1E

This is the most common solution; disabling the AMD C1E option in your BIOS. This particular option enables the use of C1E stepping for your processor, which obviously does not work in OS X and it seems that it breaks the kernel.


Solution 2
Using an older Gigabyte 8xx BIOS

Is your system powered with a Gigabyte AMD 8xx motherboard? There is a chance that you are using a BIOS version that does not work with Snow Leopard for some reason. BIOS versions until FC5 are reported working, so if you are using FC6 or later it won't work anymore. A solution to this is reflashing the BIOS to the older FC5 one. A simple Google search with the keywords Gigabyte + [motherboard] + BIOS FC5 would probably do the trick. But be aware of the risks! If not done properly, you could end up with a non-working motherboard!


Solution 3
Using the SATA 3 connectors

Having an Still waiting for root device error? First make sure that the SATA mode in your BIOS is set to AHCI. Done and still having the same error? Check if your SATA HDD is plugged into the blue SATA3 ports. This is a solution mainly for Gigabyte owners as the SATA6 ports tend to be buggy and mostly don't work.

OS problems

Sleepenabler
with Sleepenabler and IOUSBFamily

Getting sleep to work on AMD can take some of your time. On an AMD 8xx chipset you'll need a version of Sleepenabler for your current Snow Leopard version (eg. 10.6.8) and patched IOUSBFamily. Sleepenabler has to be placed in /Extra/Extensions and IOUSBFamily in /System/LIbrary/Extensions. After installing, make sure to rebuild the caches with Kext Utility.

Sound
with VoodooHDA

The simplest solution for having audio on AMD is VoodooHDA. Unfortunately there is only one working version of the VoodooHDA kext for AMD 8xx, and that would be this one. Installation with Kext Helper.

Experiences?

Succesfully installed your system with or without this tiny guide? Post your experiences here and help other people installing OS X on their systems! Spread the word!

Thanks for your only existing nice guide.
Greetz :-)


Everything works fine & the speed is beyond imagination:
1- 10.6.3 to 10.6.8
2- Using 16GB Ram
3- ATi XFX 6850 dual display
4- EMU 1616M

But they are a few problems that I dont know how to overcome:
1 - It doesn't recognize the CPU with exact L2 & L3 level cache.
2 - applications won't run. They crashes when I run them. I'm using legacy kernel. It's a problem with kernel.

any Ideas?
Thanks in advance.

I have a problem

i have:
Gigabyte 880GM-USB3
Phenom II X6 1055T
Nvidia GT 440

My problem is, i can´t make to work chameleon, when i installed seems to work but when i select snow leopard partition to run, my pc restart, but if i use the modcd snow leopard start.

first up kudos to all of you who help noobs like us. Have a gigabyt emobo and an AMD 1090T 3.2 gig with 16 Gig o Ram. I had almost given up but you guys give me hope that it is infact possible to install this. I have downloaded several installers etc but nothing works. Would it be possible to make a guide with links from where we can get the ISO, boot loaders etc....the ones that HAVE worked.

Will appreciate a quick reply.

Regards,

need help to install OS X 10.6 or 10.7 on my made by me asus M4A77T/USB3 770,1090t 6CORE PHENOMENON,8gig
ati radeon 4850 1024 i've tryed about30 dvd but nothing works any suggestions are welcome



Heeeeelp

i have tried for the 10 th time and in verbose mode & ignore the cache mode and the y las line sayz:
5.868 apleusb 0cicox66a4800):: check sleep capability-controller will be unloaded across sleep
waiting for root device
waiting for root device
waiting for root device

Hello

I installed OS Snow Leopard with the iAtkos S3, and it installed fine, except for.... the ethernet card, the sound, the graphics card, the bootloader and recognizes only 4GB of RAM. My box desktop has the following specs...

Motherboard: Gigabyte 880GM-USB3
Processor: AMD FX 6100 6 core
Graphic card: Saphire ATI Radeon HD 6770 1GB
RAM: 8GB DDR3

I would be happy if at least the ethernet worked and from there i could start searching solutions for the rest via internet, but withuot it is annoying having to change from os x to windows to find a solution anyone that can help me please?