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Good News for who want to build a cheaper Leopard Hackintosh

Iceman

By Iceman,
in OSx86 10.5 (Leopard)

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rspam
rspam
Posted
Posted

Yesterday I ordered it in Germany from here:

Ihre Bestellung wird innerhalb der nächsten Stunden versendet.

 

--- Inhalt : ---

1x Intel D945GCLF (mit integrierter Atom 1.6Ghz CPU) BOX *neu*

1x RAM 2048MB DDR-II 533

 

Bitte lassen Sie es uns wissen, falls Sie Fragen haben.

Ihr CarTFT.com Team !

 

In germany, it's still not available. I ordered one, estimated shipping date: 02/07/2008 (july). :P
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De_Bilbao
De_Bilbao
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Thank you very much for sharing your experience Iceman !!!

 

I'm really tempted to go for a cheap system like the one you have setup. I have a pretty big iTunes library running in a PC and I want to setup a secondary system just to surf the Internet, listen to music, synching mi iPod Touch, processing some photos with Aperture, and once in a while playing some movies.

 

My main concern about this system is that it outputs only VGA. If only it had included DVI or HDMI output it would have been perfect. I'm going to connect it to a Sony HDM-74P DVI monitor and it's a shame not to take the full advantage of the digital connection.

 

Another concern is to find out a stylish and slim Mini-ITX case. I've been browsing many sites and it seems that the most widely extended optionis the Morex Cubid 3677 and the Noah 3988 cases, both with an external PSU. I'm quite decided over the Noah 3988 being prettier than the Cubid but none of them are really stylish and they only accept a slim optical drive which reduces a lot the possible options.

 

Right now my wishlist is setup as follows:

  • Intel D945GCLF, around 73 € shipped.
  • 2 GB RAM Kingston ValueRAM KVR667D2N5/2G PC5300 2GB CL5 5-5-12, around 37 €
  • 320 GB hard disk drive Samsung HD321KJ SpinPoint T166 SATA, around 44 €
  • Pioneer DVR-115DBK optical unit 25 €.

A full featured system for less than 180 € !!!

 

I need to decide which case will go well with this setup. I'm starting to look for less compact cases as the Thermaltake LANBOX Lite VF6000BNS that is really beautiful and well crafted.

 

Any advice will be greatly appreciated.

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Iceman
Iceman
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Iceman's system runs really fast. Mine isn't too bad. But my question is, is there a way to hide all the code that shows up when the system is booting? I didn't see anything on Iceman's so I'm curious.

 

Do these steps:

Open a Terminal and type:

sudo su

type your password... (you need to have one)

type:

cd /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration

now edit com.apple.Boot.plist:

vi com.apple.Boot.plist

Where you find:

<key>Kernel Flags</key>

<string>-v</string>

delete "-v" (you do this by type "x" positioning over the char you want to delete)

If you want to change boot "apple" resolution, add a line before Kernel Flags (you do this by type "O", shift O) and type:

<key>Graphics Mode</key>

<string>1280x1024x32</string>

You can change resolution if you don't use 1280x1024.

After this, write and save (type ESC, and after ":wq!")

You can do these modifies both by "nano" program, if i remember... (i love "vi"...)

 

Here my com.apple.Boot.plist:

<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>Kernel</key>
<string>mach_kernel</string>
<key>Graphics Mode</key>
<string>1280x1024x32</string>
<key>Kernel Flags</key>
<string></string>
<key>Timeout</key>
<string>5</string>
</dict>
</plist>

 

Bye

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urig-herb
urig-herb
Posted
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My board finally arrived an I installed my system yesterday. It went astonishingly smooth. I was using Kalyway 10.5.2. At first I had USB problems, but with vanilla kernel everything worked. I updated to 10.5.3 with Kalyway's updater and then to 10.5.4 via software update.

 

After updating to 10.5.3 I lost QE and had only 1024x768 resolution. Reinstalling AppleIntegratedFrameBuffer from Kalyway 10.5.2 helped.

 

The speed of this little sucker is amazing! It feels faster than my last system, which was a Celeron 326 @ 2,86GHZ. This CPU used 84W and the Atom uses 4W. Really amazing.

 

I'm not into games, so this is everything I need for a computer. Really nice.

 

Still not decided if I buy a case. Right now everything is running "naked". ITX cases are really expensive. And it sounds stupid to pay more for the case then for Board+CPU...

 

Thanks Icemann for the tip. This is a perfect little machine.

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lh99
lh99
Posted
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This is a really sweet little board; thanks IceMan for the tip! I bought this to setup primarily as a headless fileserver, so video performance wasn't a big concern (the VGA adapter is one of the two downsides to this board). My hardware configuration is:

 

D945GCLF

PicoPSU 90 power supply (tiny and extremely efficient) running off a 12V AC-DC power brick

1GB Kingston RAM

Rosewill RC-400-LX gigabit LAN card (built-in 10/100 is the other downside to the board)

1TB WD GreenPower HD (low heat/power consumption)

 

The whole thing cost under $360, shipping included, and over half of that was just the hard drive. This would be an extremely cheap system if you already have a disk or don't need as much storage. I'm building my own case, but you can get a cheap ITX case with 200w power supply for a few dollars more than the PicoPSU, so a complete system wouldn't be much more than mine.

 

My goal here was something similar to but much more powerful and faster than a TimeCapsule. So far it looks like this does the trick, albeit without the 802.11n wireless router, but I already have one. I was also trying to keep it as energy efficient as possible, which was the thinking behind the PicoPSU and low-power variable speed hard disk. The board could be more energy efficient, but it's not too bad compared to other boards that will run OS X. In all, the system uses 30 watts at idle according to my Kill-a-Watt. Unfortunately, sleep does not currently work (actually it does, but the system draws about as much power in sleep as when awake, so something isn't shutting down) but I'm sure there's a fix out there. Once it does, I'll be able to sleep the system most of the time and use Wake On Lan to bring the system up only when needed.

 

I installed 10.5.0 on the drive from my retail DVD using my MacBook Pro, then upgraded the install to 10.5.4 using the update packages from Apple. I patched the install with the few critical patched kexts from the Retail Install guide on this forum, then installed Chameleon using the installer. This was done using MBR as I was not able to get the system to recognize the drive as bootable under GPT/GUID using Chameleon or PC EFI 8. Still working on that.

 

This thing is actually pretty fast. I haven't tried to do anything particularly taxing yet, but the interface is snappy and it runs Safari plenty quick for daily browsing. I'll post some network disk speed tests once I get a chance as that's my main concern for the system. The only other problem I'm having is getting screen sharing to work -- it kernel panics whenever I try to connect. Will post if I find the fix; has anyone else had this problem with this board?

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MrFlooD
MrFlooD
Posted
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I have created a Tutorial that shows how to create a perfect install. You can find my post in the Tutorial section, titles "How to build a perfect mac for Under $250.

 

There are links for updated video cards, and a step by step guide to set up the system so it works perfectly.

 

I suggest looking at my thread if you have any doubt about building this machine.

 

Cheersm

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urig-herb
urig-herb
Posted
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Ok, it turned out that my kernel panics where related to the Ralink driver of my USB-WLAN stick. No I'm using ethernet and run OS X for more than 10 hours without any problem.

 

Now I've ordered a ASUS WL-138g V2 card to get native (Airport) WiFi.

 

This little gem runs beautiful again. I'm still amazed...

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AK2007
AK2007
Posted
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I have created a Tutorial that shows how to create a perfect install. You can find my post in the Tutorial section, titles "How to build a perfect mac for Under $250.

 

There are links for updated video cards, and a step by step guide to set up the system so it works perfectly.

 

I suggest looking at my thread if you have any doubt about building this machine.

 

Cheersm

 

Link to MrFlooD's thread

http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=113623

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maccompaq
maccompaq
Posted
Posted

I have tried twice to burn the Kalyway 10.5.2 ISO to DVD using Active ISO Burner on an AMD Athlon 64, 2.41GHz and then a Dell laptop with an Intel Core2Duo processor. Both have Windows XP Home SP2. Attached is the error message I get. I tried to burn at 4x and then 2x. My Blue and White G3 tower Mac with Panther apparently cannot burn DVDs even though I installed a Pioneer DVD RW burner in it. If there is anything else you can suggest to burn the ISO to DVD, I would be most grateful.

 

My hardware just arrived to build the Atom computer, so I need the DVD to be burned.

 

For some of you who are wondering what case to get, I got the Antec Sonata III 500. It has a 500 watt power supply that is 80% efficient at all ranges of power usage. It is a very well built case as well as pleasing to the eye.

 

Thanks for any help you provide.

post-250921-1215815791_thumb.jpg

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coolied
coolied
Posted
Posted
I used Kalyway Leopard 10.5.2.

The installation was perfect and after reboot, the system started with sound even with QE/CI enabled (presentation video and music worked).

 

 

Iceman, you MIGHT wanna double-check the QE/CI thing under System Profiler, the reason I say this is I was building a Hack down at work to make up some training sheets (phone support of an Education Portal) and it happened to have an ATI FireGL v3100 with no QE/CI support, and the presentation video still played. I am not sure what the criteria is for the video to show up, but think i've traced it to having an Ethernet card detected with a valid MAC address (not sure why not having a valid MAC would cause a video not to play, but then again the MAC address thing can wreak havoc on Time Machine, too; another seemingly unrelated component)

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AK2007
AK2007
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it possible to add 2 PCI cards to this board using a riser card? I have put in a NEC FireWire card but want to also put in a Gigabit Ethernet card so that it can be my network Time Machine backup box. Anyone using this with multiple PCI cards?

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