http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherb...500/X8DAL-i.cfm

This is the new dual Xeon cpu offering from Super Micro. People have had good luck with the previous gen Super Micros, has anyone tried this puppy out?

Any advice or experience on the dual lga 1366 5500 xeon motherboards would be highly valuable!
thanks

This board looks like it could be the basis for an excellent MacPro clone. Especially considering it has a full length 16x PCIe 2.0 slot (many, if not most, server board haven't). And a decent price tag.

5500 Tylersburg, Realtek ALC883 Sound, Intel LAN 82584L, ICH10R - sounds VERY promising! I can understand why some ppl here would like to build a MacPro themselves, even if it's not cheaper in the end - you still have full control over everything thats used in the computer, plus you don't have this warranty crap Apple 'offers' (one year, must be extended at high cost..).

Hi all

I got my hands on a Supermicro intel 5500 based board.
I'm trying to install with iDeneb distro and having some problems. At first it didn't recognize my HD at all, Then it did, but failed at formatting it. I switched the board's (bios) between RAID and IDE modes with no luck. Now I'm at a stage where it's waiting for the boot volume...

Any tips?

This could be a hell of a hackintosh since it's very close to the original apple machine and costs half!

Thanks

Hi!

Glad to hear you're brave enough to try this! Please stick to this post so we can all learn from your experiences with this board. Would be great if it turned out to be hackintoshable!

- Which version if iDeneb are you using?
- Are your harddrives and optical drives SATA or IDE?
- What options do you have in BIOS concerning the configuration of these drives (RAID, AHCI etc.)?

The problem you get is probably caused by something related to the storage controller. Are your drives connected to the ICH10R controller or to another (don't know if theres a second controller on the board)?

I just got the X8DAL-3 (same as the -i but with and additional on board SAS controller)> I have been trying all day to get iDeneb V1.4 10.5.6 or iPC 10.5.6 installed but I am not having much luck. Basically the problem i am having is as soon as the apple logo appears the computer reboots. Booting with -v doesn't lead any clues because it reboots before any additional info (instead of not using -v) is displayed. Both my CD Drive and HD are SATA and there is no IDE. Any help would be appreciated.

Hi people

I've given up on hacking this machine. After endless tries I got nowhere.
Here is the info I can share.

My Bios was set to the following:
PCI/SATA config - RAID - Intel
Disable HT Technology,
disable Intel C-State technology,
set Active Processor Cores to 1.
select PCIPnP configuration - Set Plug and Play OS to Yes.

The only way I got it to even boot into OS X was to set the cpus=1 switch and only when using the sleep kernel.
Other than that I really don't know what went on there.
I hope someone will figure this out.

Peace

Did you ever try the SATA mode in AHCI? I wouldn't have expected RAID to work at all, and AHCI to be the most likely.

Unfortunately, most motherboards are problematic for Hackintosh with the few most people use regularly being the exceptions, not the rule. But great that you gave it a shot blazing a trail on new hardware, and thanks for reporting the progress.

After you boot into OS X with cpus=1, can you run the DSDT patcher to generate an AML file? You can get it here: http://######.com/index.php?option=...0&Itemid=48

The bios looks to be AMI.

I have it installed with SnowLeopard 10A432 without problem. No KP nothing of that sort. This board is just so compatible that almost like install and run. On SkullTrail, I need to work around the IOATAFamily KP problem before got it running.

I used on 2 kext in S/L/E : dsmos.kext and voodooHDA for sound.

EFIV9 boot file

Patched DSDT.aml

Its great news. X8DAL-i -> this is the cheapest board with x16 for graphics. I have to ask. It is possible to overclock processor?


I know usually you can't but sometimes it is possible. Why do I ask about something like that? Becouse this is so expensive to get fully working xeon. It cost 1000-2000$ vs E5506 for 280$.

i7 can be overclocked to 3,8 Ghz with got cooling it won't be noise. It will be 10% less performance vs 2xE5506 but 2x cheaper.

Could you possibly make a guide for this board? I think there are a few people interested in making a dual nehalem system.

If anyone needs help with supermicro X8 board, let me know... my X8DTH-6F runs like a champ.

Hi! I plan to buy a Supermicro X8DAL-i motherboard with double Intel Xeon E5520 NEhalem 2.26Ghz and i would like to know everything i need to run OS X Snow leopard. Is it as faster as an Mac Pro? Will i have any problem with sound card or something? Thanks.

Looks like a great board in some ways. I'm considering a dual-Xeon board, especially Super Micro. Some questions on this board:

- Video performance? How good is it since this board only has x8 PCIe slots (7 of them)
- Only 2 USB ports? Using any USB add-in cards?
- No audio? What are you using to get audio?
- are the SAS ports working? which chipset? LSI?

Thanks!

I'm looking at doing an install with the X8DAH board. Any suggestions? I've PMed vladthebad with specifics, but basically I'm using the Chameleon 2 RC3 USB install method. I'm using netkas' pc-efi 10.3 boot file and have tried a few kext files and creating a smbios.plist, but nothing helps me get past the ioatafamily kernel panic.

Thanks everyone for any help you can provide!

-masonjames

can you please post the your bios configuration? because i am having a reboot loop on starting darwinx86 point

my configuration is
mobo: x8dal-3
2 x Xeon e5504
4gb ram 4x1

thank you

thx for proposal, Vladthebad,


i'm planning to install snow leopard on supermicro X8DA3 mobo.

could you point us to the global method you used and the tools needed please ?

many thx in advance mate :-)

According to all the tests I've seen, X8 PCIe slots only slightly hurts the video performance. That's why in the past a lot of SLI systems have used x16/x8 configs due to limited PCIe lanes. Most cards/configs don't exceed the bandwidth already present in an x8 slot.