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Illustrated PDF: Vanilla OSX 10.5 on the Asrock ION 330 NetTop - NB: NOT for Pro or HD versions


shoarthing
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Is Quicktime X playing other formats than mkv @ 1080p okay or dropping frames as well.. ?

 

Nope it can play other formats so far pretty well. Some MP4 and .MOV files so far so good. Unfortunately I have a lot of MKV.

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. . . hmmmm: not only does the Ralink Wireless N driver force use of the 32-bit kernel; but Safari adblock [& other vital plugins] work only when Safari is launched in 32-bit mode . . . . .

 

. . . still, SL itself works OK . . & runs fine in x86_64 mode, if your necessary applications allow.

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Quicktime X wont play an MKV even with Perian 1.1.4 installed. I'm seeing the playback issues in Front Row, Plex, VLC, QuickTime7, and mPlayer. I can get .MOV files that are 1080p to play beautifully (apple trailers). I have my main hack configured to convert some MKV's to other format to test playback in QuickTime X

 

Its running Chameleon v2 rc1 build date 2009-07-23 at least thats whats on the screen. My friend set an installer. It wasn't any more complicated than install SL from a flash drive or HDD restore. Run the installer and reboot. He was working on cleaning up some more items so that they appeared to be more genuine Mac last night and I went through the install again and it was like buttttta.

 

For sound I'm using a USB dongle from a Logitech gaming headset. Most cheap USB audio connections seem to work fine.

 

Apparently Quicktime X doesnt want to open any file other than those registered as movie files.

According to the cocoaforge forum, an application called niceplayer will fix this issue, but im unsure as to whether the playback will be smooth, especially in 1080p. The implementation of OpenCL on SL may include whatever codec that is being used with the MKV file container.

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Apparently Quicktime X doesnt want to open any file other than those registered as movie files.

According to the cocoaforge forum, an application called niceplayer will fix this issue, but im unsure as to whether the playback will be smooth, especially in 1080p. The implementation of OpenCL on SL may include whatever codec that is being used with the MKV file container.

. . sadly, that forum rumour sounds unlikely: niceplayer is/was a one-man project, with no releases for over a year & no SL support.
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Would you say 10.5.8 is still the most complete and solid install for our little box at this moment ?
. . . best performancde/compatibility is 2+2 'cores' HTT enabled running 10.5.8 w/ 10.5.6 kernel/system.kext/seatbelt.kext plus both 10.5.6 bluetooth kexts.

 

SL 10.6.1 works fine as a base install on the ION 330 in full x86_64 mode - which doesn't have adequate driver/plugin support yet, so isn't practical; or in hybrid mode running the 32-bit i386 kernel, which is itself a bit complex in the real world since quite a few applications/plugins/prefpanes/whatever need to be configured to run in 32-bit mode inside what is a 64-bit OS.

 

I would state as an opinion that the 9400M appears to me to give better screen output in 10.6.1 than in previous versions of OSX; but I also find that the background load on the Atom 330 seems to me to be quite a bit higher - between them; Transmission, Safari, the Ralink Airport agent & a few system processes are eating over 25% CPU time.

 

When running 2+2 'cores' in Leopard, the same sort of background stuff would eat only around 8~12% of CPU time.

 

Overall, it is probably sensible to wait a bit until 64-bit is practical - full 64-bit probably claws back most of the performance lost by not having HTT [only with the 10.5.6 kernel]; but SL is an equally easy install process so most folk (like me :P ) will probably go for the shiny new thing . . . .

 

. . there's also a raft of new hassles doing real work compiling (for example) Handbrake; but this is the sort of thing you'd expect to have to work through with new OS & gcc versions.

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Greats jobs guys,

 

But as i want to use my asrock as a mediacenter, i will wait before installing Snow on it... Wait for an upgraded PERIAN and why not a voodooHDA.kext with 5.1

 

Back to xubuntu and XBMC which are working so fine on asrock as HD mediacenter

 

I will continue to follow this thread

 

Thanks a lot for all your advices and how to

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Thnx shoarting for your advise and appreciated opinion,

Just like Fpoil I want to use my asrock as a Mediacenter and maybe some background torrent downloading.

 

But since it will be mainly used as an HTPC it has to have smooth video and 1080p playback and ofcourse the audio(external adapter). So from what I read here SL on the asrock is not yet ready for handling all the video and audio stuff as 10.5.8 is.

 

Though I will be following this thread because as you, I really like new shiny stuff ;)

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Hello,

 

thanks for this very detailled tutorial.

 

i own an asrock ion and i've tried to carefully follow it but i can't install chameleon RC2 or even RC1, installation fails at the end.

 

I'm running SL 10.6, any idea ?

 

Thanks for your help.

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Also thanks for this nice tutorial.

 

I have exactely the same problem here. I have a 330 ION with REV 1.06

 

I installed Leopard 10.5.6 and then I tried to install Chameleon, but I also got an installation fail.

 

I connected the HD via USB to my Macbook and I used Chameleon RC2 from the link in this tutorial.

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Also thanks for this nice tutorial.

 

I have exactely the same problem here. I have a 330 ION with REV 1.06

 

I installed Leopard 10.5.6 and then I tried to install Chameleon, but I also got an installation fail.

 

I connected the HD via USB to my Macbook and I used Chameleon RC2 from the link in this tutorial.

. . . if using BIOS 1.06 you'll need to make & edit your own dsdt: the ION 330 will not run OSX properly without an edited dsdt

 

IMO there's no reason to use BIOS 160 & in fact I doubt OSX will work properly with it, since it is unlikely to have the necessary USB fixes available in 150d

 

A simple install of SL requires Chameleon RC3 b658 [or greater] or - untested by me - netkas' PC-EFI 10.3 [or greater].

 

Chameleon RC3 b658 gives me full graphics in both 32c & 64-bit SL - I haven't tried the new build of PC-EFI but it is based on Chameleon RC3 code so the graphicsenabler enabled through apple.com.boot.plist should do the same job.

 

I extracted the attached IONVGA.ROM [ie the integrated NVIDIA 9400M's ROM] from the ION 330's firmware in a Windows environment using AMI tools - I was going to play with it to see if these above bootloaders would load it & if there was any point/performance gain in so doing.

 

I also played with editing the dsdt to include a fix for the inbuilt graphics - but since there are now SL-friendly bootloaders with working graphics enablers I couldn't see the point in perfecting this.

 

I shall be changing over to another Atom 330/ION MCP7A platform in the very near future [for my work I need a silent box - something with no moving parts ie no fans plus an SSD boot volume]; so won't be working further on this nice little Asrock ION 330 Nettop

 

. . . good luck to all & continue to have fun & move the project forward ;)

IONVGA.ROM.zip

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. . . if using BIOS 1.06 you'll need to make & edit your own dsdt: the ION 330 will not run OSX properly without an edited dsdt

 

Thanks for your reply. Actually my bios is 1.50d. 1.06 is the revision of the Asrock 330.

 

I tried it one more time and always get the installation failure from Chameleon, after I installed Snow Leopard 10.5.6 from my MacBook to the Asrock's hd.

 

Is there another bootloader available that might work?

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Thanks for your reply. Actually my bios is 1.50d. 1.06 is the revision of the Asrock 330
. . . my apologies for not reading you post more carefully.

 

I tried it one more time and always get the installation failure from Chameleon, after I installed Snow Leopard 10.5.6 from my MacBook to the Asrock's hd.

 

Is there another bootloader available that might work?

. . . odd: is the ION's HDD connected via a USB bridge?

 

Can you install Chameleon RC2 manually via Terminal?

 

Chameleon makes life easy due to its builtin graphics enabler. Other bootloaders will require the usual EFI string or a dsdt fix for graphics.

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. . . odd: is the ION's HDD connected via a USB bridge?

 

Can you install Chameleon RC2 manually via Terminal?

 

Yes, I have an adaptor like this one:

 

http://images.andale.com/f2/118/129/148602...253555SA_01.jpg

 

Very nice, since you don't even need to unscrew the hd out of the ION. Just open it, unplugg the hd and plug the adaptor in.

 

I haven't tried to install Chameleon via Terminal yet, since I don't know how to set the options from the installer there.

I found a guide which shows a three command procedure, but I guess that won't be enough.

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Thanks for the guide it worked perfectly for me. ou should maybe rephrase the part where you mention where to place the kexts, it was clear to me until I saw the screenshot in the zip package that I hadn't placed them correctly. This is probably the problem Bramo had near the bottom of page three: http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php...8372&st=40#

 

As for video playback, my findings are on par with everyone else (10.5.8)

720p trailers are smooth.

720p MKV are unwatchable (in VLC).

Also, Boxee hangs at launch on a black screen then crashes twenty or so seconds later.

 

My Geekbench score at stock speed with 2GB was about 900.

 

As I'm using it for films and music I'm quite tempted to get a Cyrus 8 XPD, or realistically DAC Magic as a sound card.

 

 

Thanks again for the guide.

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I couldn't understand a word he was saying about how to enable Hyperthreading, could it be because of that?

 

I redid it and got 1017:

Platform: Mac OS X x86 (32-bit)

Compiler: GCC 4.0.1 (Apple Inc. build 5490)

Operating System: Mac OS X 10.5.8 (Build 9L31a)

Model: Macmini3,1

Motherboard: Apple Computer, Inc. Mac-F4208DC8

Processor: Intel® Atom CPU 330 @ 1.60GHz

Processor ID: GenuineIntel Family 6 Model 28 Stepping 2

Logical Processors: 2

Physical Processors: 1

Processor Frequency: 1.66 GHz

L1 Instruction Cache: 32.0 KB

L1 Data Cache: 24.0 KB

L2 Cache: 512 KB

L3 Cache: 0.00 B

Bus Frequency: 532 MHz

Memory: 2.00 GB

Memory Type: 0 MHz DDR2 SDRAM

SIMD: 1

BIOS: Apple Computer, Inc. MM31.88Z.00C1.B00.0802091544

Processor Model: Intel Atom 330

Processor Cores: 2

 

You should be able to do 720p MKV playback in Plex...

Yup that works a treat, but F*ck me is it cumbersome to navigate and add media to Plex/XMBC/Boxee etc

 

Are there any other good MKV players for this sytem? I'm none-too fussed about media management.

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Hi there,

 

First of all, thanks for this tuto.

I bought the Asrock as soon it went out, being sure Mac OS will be ok on it.

And without this tuto, I'm sure I'd still be running win or nux on it.

 

So I'm in Leopard 10.5.6 and I'd like to upgrade to 10.5.8

 

I've read I have to back up and restore kernel and some kext to keep HT running.

 

But... How to do it ?

 

Which files to backup ? How to backup ? Just copy them on the Desktop is enough ?

And how to restore ? Just copy them back ? When ? Before reboot ? After reboot ?

 

Thanks for your support.

Next step after this is to buy the audio usb key. done and working

Regards

Cedric

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. . . & hardware accelerated Video - I'm running a custom resolution via SwitchResX, effectively 720p, overscan off, on a 37" Panasonic TX-37PX80B plasma connected via HDMI - VGA also works:

 

Could you please explain how you got video working on HDMI?

 

I have a Bravia that can't handle VGA input properly, so I am stuck with HDMI.

 

I have followed your guide to a T, and am using 10.5.8, however I have not done the UUID hack nor the Hyperthreading hack.

 

I woud be so greatful if you could elaborate on the HDMI issue, thanks in advance.

 

Edit: Got it somewhat wokring, it was because I also had it hooked up by VGA. By HDMI the TV says "out of range" but that's probably a TV issue.

 

Re-Edit: Party time! It was a resolution issue. BTW I mamanged ot get 1280x720 without using SwitchResX, I tihnk it was actually 10.5.6 (or 7) that had disabled certain resolutions that were later restored.

 

Re-Re-Edit: Actually SwitchResX is needed to get a clean uncropped picture.

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Could you please explain how you got video working on HDMI?

 

I have a Bravia that can't handle VGA input properly, so I am stuck with HDMI.

 

I have followed your guide to a T, and am using 10.5.8, however I have not done the UUID hack nor the Hyperthreading hack.

 

I woud be so greatful if you could elaborate on the HDMI issue, thanks in advance.

 

Edit: Got it somewhat wokring, it was because I also had it hooked up by VGA. By HDMI the TV says "out of range" but that's probably a TV issue.

 

Re-Edit: Party time! It was a resolution issue. BTW I mamanged ot get 1280x720 without using SwitchResX, I tihnk it was actually 10.5.6 (or 7) that had disabled certain resolutions that were later restored.

 

 

I've got mine working with HDMI/DVI via custom DSDT. I can post mine or email it to you if you'd like. I'm travelling for the next day but could provide it Monday late afternoon / early evening...

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I've got mine working with HDMI/DVI via custom DSDT. I can post mine or email it to you if you'd like. I'm travelling for the next day but could provide it Monday late afternoon / early evening...

Thanks Goz, but it seems to be fine now that I've unplugged the VGA cable - what advantages des your DSDT have?

 

Also, are you Goz of chewingpixels fame?

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