SUCCESS! iDeneb 1.3 10.5.5 on Gigabyte GA-8INXP / P4 / ATI 9700

[aphoticd]

I've spent the past few days trying to get this system to work, and finally we have success!

 

Here are my notes...

 

* Initially tried BrazilMac-9a581-Patch with my retail Leopard DVD. Installer booting would hang at "BSD root device" message. After several attempts I gave up on BrazilMac and downloaded iDeneb 1.3 10.5.5 (The torrent took about 5 days to download)

* Began install of iDeneb 1.3 using http://www.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=121388 as a guide

 

 

My homebrew system:

 

2.53Ghz Intel Pentium 4 (SSE2)

Gigabyte GA-8INXP Motherboard

- Intel E7205 Chipset

- Intel Pro/1000 Gigabit NIC

- Realtek ALC650 AC97

- Intel 2180 1DB ATA

- Promise PDC20276 ATA/RAID (not supported)

- Sil 0680 ATA133/RAID (not supported)

- Sil 3112A SATA/RAID (not supported)

ATI Radeon 9700 (RX300 128MB)

512MB PC266-2100 RAM (Dual-link)

40GB Seagate IDE HDD

Sony DVD-RW drive

 

(Packaged in a dirty old beige ATX box that's probably 10 years old!)

 

* Removed existing components (these both seemed to cause boot problems with iDeneb installer)

Creative SB Live 5.1 card

D-Link RTL8139 NIC

 

 

* Flashed BIOS with 8inxp_f5 (was using vers f3)

http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Support/Motherb...elName=GA-8INXP

 

* Configured BIOS Settings:

Advanced BIOS Settings -> Boot device: CDROM

Integrated Peripherals

-> Enabled USB Keyboard and Mouse support

-> Disabled Onboard LAN (during install)

-> Disabled AC97 Audio (during install)

-> Disabled SATA

-> Disabled ATA RAID

-> Disabled Serial, Parallel and Game Ports

 

 

* Inserted Install DVD and entered -v at the boot prompt.

 

* Formatted the 40GB drive as 1 Partition - HFS Extended (Journaled) using MBR partition map option.

 

* Selected drive and then chose iDeneb Custom Install Options:

+ X11

+ Patches 10.5.5 Ready

-> Audio -> AC97Audio

-> Chipset -> ICHx Fixed

-> Chipset -> JMicronATA

-> Kernels -> 9.4.0 StageXNU

-> Fix -> Video -> AgpGart

+ Applications

 

 

After installation finished, but before reboot (or if you miss the 30 second countdown, just reboot from the DVD again)

- Go to Advanced -> Terminal

$fdisk -e /dev/disk0

flag 1

write

exit

 

$reboot

 

* Next, I ejected the DVD and entered -v -x at the boot prompt

 

 

 

Notes:

* Vanilla 9.5.0 Kernel caused the system to instantly reboot after Chameleon boot prompt. I discovered this was due to the Vanilla kernel being SSE3 only and this system was SSE2. Speedstep or XNU Kernels will boot beyond this point, but now hang with "Still waiting for boot device".

 

* Further research lead me to enabling both ICHx Fixed and and JMicronATA Chipset fixes (set in iDeneb Custom Install Options). I can now boot into Leopard!!

 

* Next, I found myself trapped in a loop when setting up the new system on the Welcome screen, each time I choose "Do not transfer from an existing Mac" the assistant stalled for a few minutes and then restarted at the beginning.

 

* Some further research gave me the solution to bypass the setup assistant loop:

 

boot with -v -s options then:

$/sbin/fsck -fy (this just checks that the filesystem is OK)

$/sbin/mount -uw / (mounts the filesystem read/write)

$passwd root (allows you to supply a root password)

$touch /var/db/.AppleSetupDone

$exit

 

 

-- Hoorah! The Mac desktop... We made it.. --

 

 

* To finalize the install, I created a new Administrator user account in System Preferences -> Accounts, then changed the Time Zone in System Preferences -> Date and Time and a few other preferences.

 

 

 

Display (ATI 9700) Notes:

 

* I started to research a solution for ATI 9700 support because I was stuck at 1024x768 and no Core Image or Quartz Extreme. I installed the most recent Callisto extensions (now discontinued - http://omni.110mb.com/callisto/) and followed the instructions to update the PCI address pointer and added the reference to CallistoFB to the existing ATIRadeon9700GA.plugin extension.

 

Once Callisto was installed I saw a garbled screen, rebooted again and it seemed to be OK (still has moments when it comes up garbled). Now I am able to change the display resolution, but still no CI/QE support, so screen redraws are not accelerated and there is no support for 3D games, etc. I will keep looking for a solution for "Leopard OSx86 ATI R300 support", but in the meantime, this is working all as expected. (Does anyone have a solution for this?)

 

 

 

Replaced 9.2.0 Kernel with new 9.5.0 (with SSE2 support):

 

* I then installed the VoodooXNU Kernel (9.5.0), which supports SSE2 and is meant to have faster SSE3 emulation and overall better speed. I can confirm that this kernel definitely feels more solid and there have been less delays when launching apps, etc. The voodoo kernel is wrapped in a very professional package with great documentation. Now with this Kernel, the regular Apple Software Update service is available. Updated iTunes and a few other packages OK.

 

 

 

Some final optimizations:

 

* Booted back into BIOS and enabled the onboard LAN and AC97 Audio, both work very well.

 

* Next I went into BIOS to overclock the system bus from 133 to 142. CPU temps went from about 44C to 48C, so I shut down and cleaned out the CPU fans and cleaned off the old thermal compound to add a fresh coat of ArcticSilver5. I booted back up, spent some time using the CPU at the new speed of 2.7Ghz and the overall temp is now around 36C on average.

 

The CPU temp monitor app that comes pre-installed with iDeneb can only see the drive's SMART temp and not the CPU temp, so I could only monitor this while in the BIOS.

 

 

 

Some final notes:

 

* I read up about the SB Live 5.1 card (SB01000) that I was previously using in Windows and all search results pointed to zero support in Leopard, so I decided to leave it out (AC97 works fine).

 

* I tried putting the RTL8139 NIC back in to use the system as a dual-NIC firewall, but each time I clicked Apply in System Preferences -> Network the system would freeze up and require a manual power-off. I decided to pull the card back out again and just leave it as is.

 

* I tried using Time Machine to do a backup to an external USB hard drive and had another total system freeze while backing up. Powered-off, rebooted, verified disks, repaired permissions and tried again (still going).

 

* X11 didn't work, it bounces and closes, tried running repair permissions, (an hour later and it still hasn't finished)

 

 

 

I hope that others can use my notes here to help with some of the common (and not so common) hurdles that you might encounter when installing OSx86.

 

Cheers!

-AphoticD

[aphoticd]

Ok, another day of testing and it appears that the onboard Intel 1000 NIC was troublesome. It kept dropping out randomly and caused many Kernel Panics.

 

The driver at fault was the /System/Library/Extensions/IONetworkingFamily.kext/Contents/Plugins/AppleIntel8254XEthernet.kext

 

Using Pacifist I pulled the latest version of this kext from the 10.5.6 combo update, but this still caused Kernel Panic when starting file transfers, screen sharing, etc

 

I then tried the same kext from 10.4.11 Combo updater. This seemed to be a little more stable, but caused System Preferences to see the connection as "Unplugged". I continued to get KP randomly, so I gave up on getting the onboard LAN to work and tried the RTL8139 PCI NIC again. After many more KPs and a lot of send and recv errors and collisions I decided to hunt down an alternative driver. I found a custom AppleRTL8139Ethernet.kext here: http://stormdrake.blogspot.com/2007/12/app...39ethernet.html - This works flawlessly!!

 

I'm still looking for a way to get CI/QE to work with the ATI Radeon 9700, if anyone can help, please let me know!

[dtufano]

While you were still troubleshooting your installation, did you ever get any SAM Multimedia READ or WRITE failed?

 

I have a very similar hardware setup:

 

Abit Ai7 i865PE

Intel P4 2.4 Northwood (SSE2)

1GB DDR PC3200 (2x 512MB)

nVidia FX5500 AGP

40GB Seagate IDE

Sony DVD-RW IDE

Onboard LAN

Creative SB Live (SB0100)

 

Are you saying that removing my SB and disabling my onboard LAN will allow me to boot the install?

[ruller]

Hey guys, I followed the advice to type the text on the -v -s mode boot. However, when i type passwd root, i get an output saying that the command passwd could not open some node on the /Local/Default folder. I'm lost. What I am supposed to do now?

[aphoticd]

While you were still troubleshooting your installation, did you ever get any SAM Multimedia READ or WRITE failed?

 

I have a very similar hardware setup:

 

Abit Ai7 i865PE

Intel P4 2.4 Northwood (SSE2)

1GB DDR PC3200 (2x 512MB)

nVidia FX5500 AGP

40GB Seagate IDE

Sony DVD-RW IDE

Onboard LAN

Creative SB Live (SB0100)

 

Are you saying that removing my SB and disabling my onboard LAN will allow me to boot the install?

 

 

I'd try to first remove the SB0100 card, because apparently there is no support for these cards at this time. In my situation, the installer wouldn't even boot with my SB card installed. Then I'd try to disable some integrated peripheral options in the BIOS. The only thing I found to be necessary to boot the installer was USB keyboard and mouse support (because I was using a mac keyboard and mouse), otherwise I disabled all onboard options, LAN, audio, parallel ports, printer, game ports, SATA, RAID, etc

 

Once you've successfully installed, then you can start switching things back on one at a time and then figure out how to get the devices to work (search for osx86 drivers, etc)

 

A quick google search seems to indicate that the SAM Multimedia READ / WRITE error is due to a faulty DVD burn, try to burn another disc (don't use a RW disc), and try again.

 

Hey guys, I followed the advice to type the text on the -v -s mode boot. However, when i type passwd root, i get an output saying that the command passwd could not open some node on the /Local/Default folder. I'm lost. What I am supposed to do now?

 

I just found a topic about this here: http://www.macshadows.com/forums/index.php...t=0&start=0

 

Try entering '/usr/bin/passwd root' instead of just 'passwd root', that might make a difference, otherwise read through the above link and see if there's anything in there that will help.