[yidakee]

I keep seeing this "problem" here daily. I really think a sticky is in order, as x-mas is right around the corner and I am certain this forum is going to grow quite a bit.
I am fairly new here, secretly popping in before taking the plunge, found a mini 9 real cheap second hand and bought it, in preparation for a 10v.
As always, read read read, search search search, try try try... THEN ask!

Have my 10v for a week now and its by far the best hackintosh I've had (half a dozen now!). I'm quite experienced, but my main difficulty with the 10v was to figure out and decide on the BIOS, since I didn't even want to flash it to start with, let alone have to do it a second time, to later find it to be the "least better for me".

I think I'm not alone here... (Yoda voice ->) fear of the brick have I

The speed of change is impressive, be it new updates, bios's, NBI revisions and worse of all... threads with misleading titles and info. Not that they are on purpose, but they grow old really quick and remain active for debate and development.
I am still trying to figure out which Bios is better, and why!
From what I gathered...

- A04 and A05 are the most OSX compatible. A04 is flashable by DOS USB and A05 only by Windows method. That is the ONLY factual difference I've registered.
- Battery life is equivalent on A04 and A05, being slightly better in A06.
- A06 is OSX compatible with 10.6.1, but KP's with 10.6.2 as of this date, and I found it to KP on the battery manager having IOAHCIfamily dependacies, so there is a direct correlation there, devs!!

Other than that, I've seen several unsupported opinions, 50% saying A04 is better, 50% supporting A05.
So what did I do... ? Check out the big boys to see what they used...(yes, you OS' hackin' bootloader whackin' and kext slappin' geniuses you)
No consesus either. So I just followed my gut instinct and chose X users over Y based on the "geekiness" they they demonstrate
So please, jump in and share what you know, the tests you've ran, your conclusions.
Help unify and demistify.
for instance, will any BIOS allow the use of third party 9-cell batteries?
does different Bios allow USB Legacy + sleep to work?

Share your secrets!!

[ttabbal]

I'm running 10.6.2 on A06 just fine. The install might KP, but it does run fine. I did the install on a mac mini, so it wasn't an issue for me. Of course, whatever the next OSX version is , might cause me problems. After using Asus motherboards with the built in BIOS flasher, Dell just seems so primitive. It is insane not to have OS agnostic BIOS flash utilities these days. Dell even sells these things without Windows, what are those customers supposed to do if they need to update for some reason?

[yidakee]

Yes, but I'm not discussing that. I meant this thread to help out figure out the BIOS's we use for OSX. Pro's and Cons.

I found, for instance, that with A04 under 10.6.0/1/2 - iStat Menu's wont report the internal wifi traffic. All other brands of USB wifi, ethernet etc work fine

You can use A06 with 10.6.2, if you downgrade, install and upgrade. Why would you do that? Why risk a brick? And, if it KP's but installs fine... man are you in for a surprise in the long run !! Never underestimate a KP on install !

[achong4]

I've been following this thread with interest and I thought maybe I can share my experiences.

With A06, I was able to install 10.6.1 w/o problems, with the USB enclosure method. Everything worked (sound, wifi, camera, mic, etc) However, I would get random KPs all the time. Time Machine would NOT work, either through wifi to a NAS, or even a local USB drive.

I finally got sick of all the KPs and reinstalled XP to flash directly to A05, via the new guide from a few days ago. Reinstalled 10.6.1 via USB enclosure method. Since then, absolutely no KPs. Time Machine to the NAS works perfectly. Did all the other things that would cause KPs before and it works perfectly. So A05 is much much more stable.

Don't know about A04, since I never had it.

[snkhan]

@achong After you installed the update and ran NBI, did you repair permissions? I used the enclosure method too and have yet to experience a single kernel panic. It's very, very stable. (I'm on A06 too).

[DMBryant]

I was looking at this thread as I was contemplating updating to the latest BIOS but looking at the potential issues I think I will stick with A04, it's been rock solid with all versions of OSX (up to the current 10.6.2). My choice of going with A04 in the first place was pure luck. My 10v came with A00 and when I upgraded A04 had just come out so I went with that

[yidakee]

Mine came with A06 and I know my way around hackintoshing pretty well.
Kp fest all around. Downgraded to A04 a rock solid.
I urge you all to update your signatures containing as much info as possible. Some are finding it hell, other go straight through with A06.
It would be great to find this "itch" so that people dont risk bricking from flashing.
Not that flashing these days is as dangerous as past years, but still a risk.

[EldRick]

If a KP is when you get a black dialog box saying you need to power off and on again, I had the same experience with a new 10v yesterday.

After installing 10.6.2 on an SSD by the external hard drive method, the system would die after 5-10 minutes.

I downgraded to A04 to override the A06, then upgraded to A05, and the system has been rock solid since, everything but one non-issue working perfectly.

The one issue is that while the BIOS setting are reset to defaults by the boot loader, the time is always reset after a restart - only the hour changes at random, while the minute/second and day remain as set. Weird, but apparently it doesn't matter, as OS-X always show the correct time.

Thanks for the hard work of all who have developed and assisted many others in this effort.

[achong4]

@snkhan I tried repairing permissions multiple times without any luck. Seemingly the KPs I had were random (Time Machine always, movies sometimes, many times trying to load XP onto VMware2, even iChat). Retried all those with A05 and rock stable.

So it seems like A06 is hit or miss. My A06 was pretty good, until I tried something processor intensive it seemed.

What pushed my decision to downgrade the bios was a combo of the new guide to go directly to A05, as well as the posts saying it's difficult to go to 10.6.2 with A06.

I hope this thread continues (great job yidakee) since I suspect there are quite a few A06-ers sitting on the fence, like I was.

[yidakee]

EldRick - there is a fix for your resetting bios issue. add the following to you com.apple.boot.plist located in /Extra folder, located in the root of your HD. The folder might be hidden. I am attatching a small script that shows/hides hidden files. Use it to show/hide hidden files.

<key>UHCIreset</key>
    <string>Yes</string>

This next trick is to avoid messing with permissions.

locate file "com.apple.bios.plist" and copy it to desktop. Edit the file in desktop and add the above code in. Save the file and be SURE NOT TO save as txt. If you do, just rename the extension to ".plist".

go to /Extra folder and delete the un-edited com.apple.boot.plist. From desktop, copy the edited file into /Extra (prompt for admin password). Run "UpdateExtra" and leave the mouse running the volleyball until its done, it can take a while. Just for extra super-duper safety, repair permissions. Reboot and fiddle with BIOS settings to taste. Save setting and voilá!

Let it simmer for 2 minutes and reboot to test if it works.