[GUIDE] Snow Leopard on HP ProLiant Microserver N36L (AMD)

[buttersb]

Just to add something to the network/mac address issues:

 

Everything was OK except for the network, so I set up the script that assigns the mac address manually to start on boot, and all was well for the last couple of months.

 

Came in today and couldn't connect to the server, so I had a look locally and the network card wouldn't detect the connection, so I tried to re-run the script, and rebooted, none of which worked. After a bit of faffing about I worked out it was the script that was causing the problem. Didn't work with the script, worked fine now without it, its now assigning its mac address correctly by itself.

 

Whats changed is that about a week ago a small cisco switch was put in between the server and the rest of our network infastructure. If I reboot with the server connected to that swtich it all works perfectly. I tested it without the switch in the way, and bam, a mac address of 00:00:00:00:00 again.

 

Don't know what the additional swtich is doing, but as long as no-one moves it, i'm happy. I'm not suggesting this as a viable solution as it'd be much cheaper to just get a new network card, but its interesting none the less.

 

The switch is a Cisco SG200-08 if anyone is interested.

 

James

[fpdesigner]

What he best OSX version for the HP MICROSERVER N40L ?

what the best hack

######

Leopard ,SL or Lion ?

Any help?

[wizzkid41]

Hi guys,

 

just thought I should let you all know iv managed to get snow leopard running under esxi using the previous hint, following that i downloaded a seperate darwin_snow.iso from iFans so i could install vmware tools, I also used donks unlocker and now have the machine running as "Apple Mac OS X Snow Leopard 64 Bit", so the entire proceedure is as follows:

 

1. insert nawcom's boot cd

2. swap to snow leopard cd

3. press f5 until "snow leopard" is listed, select using arrow keys and press enter

3. once installer starts enter disk utility and partition the vmware disk

4. run the installer

5. reboot and swap to modified darwin_snow.iso

6. install vmware tools from iso and reboot

7. install donks unlocker

8. change virtual machine to "Snow Leopard 64 bit"

9. insert nawcoms disk for booting

 

Just thought i'd add that after this was done i 'upgraded' vmware tools using the esxi console =]

 

and your good to go, any questions please ask. =]

[gordies]

hi guys,

 

got as far as Part 5 : Post Install. after following this my N36L sits there with the grey osx screen and the spinning wheel and nothing else happens

 

can anyone point me in the right direction to move on please?

 

thanks, Gordie

[rtrtrtrt]

Hi All, Been a while since Ive been on here. I see Nawcom is working on an AMD kernel for Lion. Though Ive still not tried it on my macbook, so not sure i'd migrate the HP unless it gives better support for the HP hardware - in which case i'd definitely do it.

 

Anyway onto my problem and hopefully some advice.

 

I've just tried to update to latest SL both by running software update and downloading the individual update files from apple.com. The 4 updates are;

 

Java for Mac OS X Update 9

Apple Software Installer Update

Safari 5.1.7

Security Update 2012-002

 

The last 3 have the require restart after instal mark.

 

After running software update for all 4 but not restarting, I run the kernel package and then reboot. I left the 64bit option unticked on the kernel.

 

Interestingly after selecting restart I get a message on screen saying there are software updates to install - but surely I've installed them already? When you go ahead and accept this then surely whatever changes are being made at this stage are overwriting the kernel package changes?

 

I then get stuck in a boot / restart cycle.

 

Next I tried the download the updates separately method. Ran all 4 packages in the order above, ignoring the reboot button for each of the last 3, ran the kernel package and rebooted. Same boot / restart cycle. Is there another way that I'm missing to keep the HP up to date on SL?

 

rtrt

 

hi guys, got as far as Part 5 : Post Install. after following this my N36L sits there with the grey osx screen and the spinning wheel and nothing else happens can anyone point me in the right direction to move on please? thanks, Gordie

 

Might be worth breaking step 5 down into separate sections? If i remember correctly when i originally installed i used carbon copy cloner a lot to back up at each stage - so I got usb working and have a backup of that, same with network and graphics. It was a while ago tho so not sure if my memory is accurate!

 

What he best OSX version for the HP MICROSERVER N40L ? what the best hack ###### Leopard ,SL or Lion ? Any help?

 

well this orignal post is for SL so i'd go with that

[splonk]

Download security update 2012-002 and take a look at the files inside to see exactly what is getting replaced. This one is known to break many a hackintosh, so I have blocked it since my server stays offline.

[rtrtrtrt]

Ok thanks Splonk. Will take a look inside and maybe try to prove thats the issue by installing the other updates excl that one as well.

 

I use mine online so would be good to find a way to install security changes.

[adygt]

Hi guys.

Few days ago I've decided to give OSX another shot, because I deleted it from my HDD few months ago for various reasons, and it works (almost) prefectly on my HPMS with AMD Radeon HD 6450 with QE/CI. Well I've just installed iLife'11, but I have a very annoying problem with iMovie: it crashes every time I try to export a file... Do you know what causes the problem and potentially how to fix it? Because it's really frustrating... Thanks in advance.

[tk007b]

Not sure about anyone else but my microserver seems to lose about 2 or 3 minutes in 24hrs, so I have to click on the "time & date preferences" which seems to cure it. However, it's a combersome solution. I've done a bit of digging and it appears that providing I'm in SU mode I can use this command line "ntpdate -u pool.ntp.org" to correct the time. The bit I need to understand is how to make this run on a daily basis to ensure my system time does not get too out of sync if I am away from it (or forget) for a few days.

Any help appreciated

Cheers

TK

[flakey]

Hi guys,

 

just thought I should let you all know iv managed to get snow leopard running under esxi using the previous hint, following that i downloaded a seperate darwin_snow.iso from iFans so i could install vmware tools, I also used donks unlocker and now have the machine running as "Apple Mac OS X Snow Leopard 64 Bit", so the entire proceedure is as follows:

 

1. insert nawcom's boot cd

2. swap to snow leopard cd

3. press f5 until "snow leopard" is listed, select using arrow keys and press enter

3. once installer starts enter disk utility and partition the vmware disk

4. run the installer

5. reboot and swap to modified darwin_snow.iso

6. install vmware tools from iso and reboot

7. install donks unlocker

8. change virtual machine to "Snow Leopard 64 bit"

9. insert nawcoms disk for booting

 

Just thought i'd add that after this was done i 'upgraded' vmware tools using the esxi console =]

 

and your good to go, any questions please ask. =]

Okey-doke. I've got questions, so I'm asking.

 

I've tried to install Snow Leopard inside ESXi 5.1.0 (build 799733) on an N40L Microserver, but without success.

 

I've applied Donk's unlocker v1.1.0 to ESXi. I can see darwin.vgz in /bootbank, and /bootbank/boot.cfg contains an entry near the end for darwin.vgz. I can see /darwin.vgz loading at the server console during ESXi's boot sequence. If I uninstall the unlocker, then darwin.vgz disappears from /bootbank and the entry disappears from /bootbank/boot.cfg, and /darwin.vgz no longer appears during ESXi's boot sequence. As I write this post, however, the unlocker IS installed.

 

I downloaded Nawcom's boot CD 3.2 (filename OSX86_ModCD-032311-151021.iso) from OSX86.net, darwin_snow.iso from iFans, and also ripped an ISO (7,771,521,024 bytes) of my retail Snow Leopard DVD. All three ISO images are sitting in /vmfs/volumes/Datastore/vmimages/OSX.

 

Using vSphere Client 5.1.0 (build 786111) on Windows 7 I created a virtual machine with the following details:

* Configuration: Custom

* Name: OSX

* Storage: Datastore

* Virtual Machine Version: 8

* Guest Operating System: Other/Apple Mac OS X 10.6 (32-bit)

* CPUs: 1 socket, 1 core per socket, 1 core total

* Memory size: 1GB

* Network connections: 1 (the only available adapter choice is E1000)

* SCSI controller: LSI Logic Parallel

* Select a disk: Create a new virtual disk

* Create a disk: 40GB, Thick Provision Lazy Zeroed, Store with the virtual machine

* Advanced Options: Virtual Device Node SCSI (0:0), Independent mode is NOT ticked

 

I then edited the CD/DVD drive to use the Datastore ISO file /Datastore/vmimages/OSX/OSX86_ModCD-032311-151021.iso (step 1 of your process is to use nawcom's boot CD).

 

If I try to boot from OSX86_ModCD-032311-151021.iso all I see is "unsuccessful." in the EFI console. Similarly, if I try to boot from darwin_snow.iso I again see "unsuccessful." in the EFI console. Lastly, if I try to boot from the Snow Leopard ISO I see the Apple logo briefly before the VM crashes and reboots and the cycle repeats until I power off the VM or unmount the ISO. If I try to press F5 nothing changes; the VM constantly reboots as long as the Snow Leopard ISO is mounted.

 

I went back to the first post in this thread for inspiration. I wanted to avoid using USB sticks or real hard disks as my Microserver is under my desk, and it's a bit awkward to scramble down there (I'm not as young and limber as I once was).

 

The following steps were carried out on a separate computer (Intel Core 2 Duo) running Windows 7 and VMware Workstation 9.0.1 (build 894247), which has a working Mountain Lion 10.8.2 VM.

* I created a second virtual SCSI hard disk of 8GB and attached it before starting the VM.

* I used Disk Utility to restore from the Snow Leopard DVD to the newly-created 8GB partition.

* I downloaded Nawcom's ModUSB app from OSX86.net, as blog.nawcom.com appears to be down for the time being. I ran the ModUSB application and pointed it at the 8GB MAC OS X Install volume.

* I shut down the VM and detached the 8GB virtual disk.

 

Then, from Windows, I copied the 8GB .vmdk file (OSX10_6.vmdk) via SCP to /vmfs/volumes/Datastore/OSX on ESXi, and verified the copy using MD5 checksums in Windows and ESXi.

 

I signed into the ESXi console and used the command vmkfstools -i /vmfs/volumes/Datastore/OSX/OSX10_6.vmdk /vmfs/volumes/Datastore/OSX/OSX10_6_Install.vmdk to convert the Workstation VMDK for use with ESXi.

 

After the conversion was complete, I returned to the vSphere client and attached the new OSX10_6_Install.vmdk file to the OSX VM, on virtual node SCSI (0:1).

 

I started the virtual machine and held down the Alt key to get into the EFI. I chose Boot Manager and picked the new option "EFI Virtual disk (1.0)" which now appeared at the bottom of the list. Just like with the Snow Leopard ISO image, I briefly saw the Apple log before the VM reset itself and attempted to boot again.

 

And now I'm out of ideas. I can't boot from Nawcom's boot CD, I can't boot from darwin_snow.iso, I can't boot from the Snow Leopard ISO, and I can't boot from a (virtual) hard disk created from the Snow Leopard DVD.

 

So where did I go wrong? What do I need to do to get the Snow Leopard installer to load inside an ESXi VM on an AMD Turion II N40L-based system?

[flakey]

I've made a bit of progress. I change the machine type from an EFI-only one (Apple Mac OS X) to a BIOS one (FreeBSD). Now I can boot the VM from Nawcom's boot CD and see the Snow Leopard DVD after changing mounted media and pressing F5.

[alexjj]

Has much development happened on the N36/N40 servers?

 

I'm interested in running my N40L with SL and Zevo zfs but this needs 64 bit kernel...

[oli-j]

I've made a bit of progress. I change the machine type from an EFI-only one (Apple Mac OS X) to a BIOS one (FreeBSD). Now I can boot the VM from Nawcom's boot CD and see the Snow Leopard DVD after changing mounted media and pressing F5.

 

Did it install ok after this? I have a N36L running ESXi and it would be very useful to be able to set up SL on it.

[oli-j]

Are there a list of kexts anywhere for this? I'm trying to install mountain lion on ESXi on this machine.

 

I've been following the AMD mountain lion dev thread and I have unlocked ESXi so I'm hoping that it won't be too much trouble to get it running!

[oli-j]

Ok, I went with the FreeBSD vm option and booted and installed SL 10.60 with Nawcom's ModCD. I then ran ##### as per the guide and installed the newer chameleon (828?). Seems to be running ok, but when I'm not using VNC or the vSphere client to manage it the CPU runs at 100% usage, which is annoying as it slows down other VM's.

[rtrtrtrt]

had a few hdd problems recently so used ccc to backup volumes, move them around and so on.

 

somehow i 'broke' the installation so that whilst it would still boot i needed to hit return during the boot and sometimes needed to press the power button when the boot got stuck.

 

all of that i probably would've lived with, but then i noticed that the micro server was only running with one cpu core.

 

after several hours of looking at the OP and trying different options a simple reinstall of chameleon 2.0 820 gave me an interaction free boot and both cores back.

 

so just came back to say thanks to Janitor (again)

[janitor]

Wow! It has been ages and so much progress since I last checked in on this thread!

 

It seems like just yesterday I was typing that old guide. Since then my Hackintosh journey has taken me to strange and very far off places with a myriad of other builds and projects, yet still I find myself coming back to my good old faithful N36L MicroServers (I have two), which are home to my media and various backups. I just love these little guys.

 

I haven't been running Snow Leopard for some time time now, as my main N36L server is currently running a sweet XBMC installation. But recently I've been looking into running a centralized TimeMachine backup server for my various Hackintoshes and my MacBook Pro. Having messed with a few Ubuntu (running Netatalk) and FreeNas configurations, I just couldn't get the integration, speed or plain ol' ease of use I was after.

 

So the natural solution was, quite obviously, an OS X Server configuration on my spare N36L MicroServer. Luckily, I have had some amazing success running Mac OS X 10.6.5 Snow Leopard Server running on a MicroServer I had set up at my old workplace. The little sucker has been running perfectly for years now, sharing networked volumes (with about 12 users) and backups in a small monthly magazine production environment, which is no mean feet for a tiny little 1.3GHz MicroServer which we picked up for just under $70!!!

 

Anyway, the big problem, is that Mac OS X 10.6.5 Snow Leopard is positively archaic now. Still a very stable workhorse, but an old one. Thankfully, there has been huge advancement in the Hackintosh community over the years and after giving up almost all hope of ever running Lion or Mountain Lion on my N36L, I finally came upon Niresh12495's work.

 

I have always steered clear of Mac OS X Distros, because they can be tricky to get up and running, are hard (sometimes impossible) to troubleshoot (due to their heavy customization and pre-configuration), and quite honestly, they make you lazy

Never-the-less, my desperation for a more up-to-date OS X installation led me to Niresh's OS X 10.9 Mavericks Distro and having noted its apparent AMD CPU support, I simply couldn't resist the temptation!

 

So? The result?

 

SUCCESS!!!

 

After a 5GB download, some pretty straight forward USB installer preparation, installation and some obligatory tweaking and troubleshooting... I can happily report that I am posting this very thread update from my HP ProLiant Microserver N36L (AMD) running OS X 10.9 Mavericks!

 

So far, I can report that it runs as well, in fact, better and faster than my old Snow Leopard installation. I still need to make a few more basic Hackintosh tweaks to my setup, install and configure the OS X Server (3.0) app and run some tests, but it seems that the major hurdles have been cleared and I'll be able to post some notes and a rough guide soon!

 

Will wonders never cease? It seems not, when it comes to these little servers

 

Stay tuned for more, MicroServer fans...

 

 

J.

 

 

 

 

 

[Edhawk]

Janitor,  thanks for posting this I've been following this guide and playing with a couple of these hp units N36L & N54's on and off for the last couple of years, trying out different server and desktop OS's (Windows, Linux & OSX) and you are the first person I've seen post success with one of the newer Mac OS's i.e. Mountain Lion or Mavericks on any Microserver. 

 

Following your example I've installed the Niresh 10.9.0 Mavericks distro on a drive containing a copy of my working snow leopard install. Obviously on a separate bootable partition and I can choose either OS through the Niresh bootloader.  But where as the SL install boots to the OS the Mavericks install keeps rebooting, and too quickly for me to see what is causing the kernel panic.  Can you confirm which bootflags you use with the Niresh Mavericks install? 

 

I've tried booting with the following bootflags in various configurations:  cpus=1 GraphicsEnabler=No -f -x -v Maxmem=2048.

 

My machine is a N36L with mod-bios from 'The Bay', 4GB RAM, single 250GB HP Hard drive in drive bay '0' (GPT with two partitions both Journaled HFS+), Asus HD 6450 graphic card, a DVD RW in optical bay, a usb bluetooth 4.0 dongle, a TP-Link usb wifi module & a usb keyboard & mouse (both BT & wifi work fine in SL with modded kext).  I've also tried booting with the BT & Wifi usb modules removed but this makes no difference.

 

What I will also say is that my Snow Leopard install appears to be working (starting up and closing down) much quicker than previously was the case.  

 

The Niresh install has for some unknown reason altered the Snow Leopard setup, changing the model identifier from a Mac Mini 2.1 to a Mac Pro 3.1, this may account for the improved startup and closing sequence.  I have assumed this is also the model identifier chosen on the Mavericks install.

 

Any assistance you can provide in helping me get this to boot with Mavericks would be appreciated.

 

Ed.

[Edhawk]

OK, impatient person that I am and having a bit of time on my hands today I've decided to reinstall the Niresh Mavericks 10.9.0 distro on a fresh hard drive on my N36L Microserver. I've removed the USB BT & Wifi modules. Using an Asus HD6450 low profile graphics card, monitor connected to the HDMI port.

 

Initial bootflags used: AMD

 

This selects the AMD kernel and gets me to the installation start screen, booting with AMD64 KP's.

 

So I have choosen the language, selected and configured the installation drive and having looked at the customisation/options (bottom left corner) on drive selection screen have gone with the defaults. Hit return and wait for installer to finish. Says time remaining 27 minutes but more like 40-50 as the count down stalls for long periods.

 

System reboots and the boot loader shows the Mavericks HD. I have found that the time out is short, max two seconds to press a key so you can enter your bootflags. If there is an option to have instant menu or to extend this time in the customise list I suggest you select it.

 

I'm back to trying various bootflags to see if I can get mavericks to boot without a KP.

 

Having been stuck in a constant loop with the Microserver rebooting each and every time input different bootflags I tried something different.

 

I booted in to snow leopard and edited the chameleon boot plist, with instant menu and added a couple of other flags, which were present on the Niresh USB. I also added the AMD kernel to the root of the mavericks drive from the USB, adding kernel flag to use AMD.

 

 

When I rebooted mavericks this had all worked to an extent, I got past the apple logo with spinning wheel but now the screen is black, I can see action on the Ethernet and hard drive lights but with a blank/black monitor. I believe this relates to an issue with the graphics kexts. Onwards and upwards!

[jthrilly]

OK, impatient person that I am and having a bit of time on my hands today I've decided to reinstall the Niresh Mavericks 10.9.0 distro on a fresh hard drive on my N36L Microserver. I've removed the USB BT & Wifi modules. Using an Asus HD6450 low profile graphics card, monitor connected to the HDMI port.

 

Initial bootflags used: AMD

 

This selects the AMD kernel and gets me to the installation start screen, booting with AMD64 KP's.

 

So I have choosen the language, selected and configured the installation drive and having looked at the customisation/options (bottom left corner) on drive selection screen have gone with the defaults. Hit return and wait for installer to finish. Says time remaining 27 minutes but more like 40-50 as the count down stalls for long periods.

 

System reboots and the boot loader shows the Mavericks HD. I have found that the time out is short, max two seconds to press a key so you can enter your bootflags. If there is an option to have instant menu or to extend this time in the customise list I suggest you select it.

 

I'm back to trying various bootflags to see if I can get mavericks to boot without a KP.

 

Having been stuck in a constant loop with the Microserver rebooting each and every time input different bootflags I tried something different.

 

I booted in to snow leopard and edited the chameleon boot plist, with instant menu and added a couple of other flags, which were present on the Niresh USB. I also added the AMD kernel to the root of the mavericks drive from the USB, adding kernel flag to use AMD.

 

 

When I rebooted mavericks this had all worked to an extent, I got past the apple logo with spinning wheel but now the screen is black, I can see action on the Ethernet and hard drive lights but with a blank/black monitor. I believe this relates to an issue with the graphics kexts. Onwards and upwards!

I'm stuck wayyyy before you guys. I've downloaded and installed the Niresh Mavericks distro, but all I get when I boot the computer is a blinking cursor. Any advice? I've taken out all but one HD, and I've tried the USB stick in either the front or internal ports with no success. I've also reset the BIOS to defaults. 

 

The one difference with my N36L is that I'm not running a dedicated graphics card. Is that the issue?

[Edhawk]

I've never tried to use one of these Microserver and OSX without a graphics card so I'm not sure why you can't see anything when you start up your Microserver.  

 

I do recall reading something about VGA not working/being supported on more recent versions of Mountain Lion and Mavericks.  I think you have to use a VGA to DVI/HDMI adapter with these OS's but that shouldn't prevent you from seeing the initial Post screen or being able to access the installer on the usb stick when you start up your machine.  

 

Have you made sure that the usb is bootable and that the Microserver is set to boot from your usb drive not the HD.

[jthrilly]

I've never tried to use one of these Microserver and OSX without a graphics card so I'm not sure why you can't see anything when you start up your Microserver.  

 

I do recall reading something about VGA not working/being supported on more recent versions of Mountain Lion and Mavericks.  I think you have to use a VGA to DVI/HDMI adapter with these OS's but that shouldn't prevent you from seeing the initial Post screen or being able to access the installer on the usb stick when you start up your machine.  

 

Have you made sure that the usb is bootable and that the Microserver is set to boot from your usb drive not the HD.

Thanks for your tips Edhawk. It turns out that I had not made the usb stick bootable somehow (...even though I wrote the image directly at the block level using dd). In the end what I did was use a known bootable stick with chameleon on it just to 'bootstrap' my way into the Niresh installer. After that, everything went as planned once I figured out I needed to specify the amd kernel with the bootflag 'amd'. System boots now, though I get 'out of range' if I try to boot without the bootstrap usb stick plugged in. I'm assuming this is something I can sort with my chameleon config later.

 

For those without a dedicated graphics card, you'll be stuck with no graphics acceleration and a super low resolution. For me this isn't an issue, as the server will be headless eventually. The important thing is that it does at least boot and let you change settings.

 

The issue I am having now is with the onboard networking. I installed the kexts from the first post (overwriting my mavericks ionetworking kext with a much older version in the process). This resulted in a completely empty networking page in system preferences. I thought I might have needed the mavericks ionetworking kext and so replaced that with one from my macbook pro. Still completely empty, with nothing helpful showing up in the logs.

 

Can someone post the exact kexts they are using with mavericks to get ethernet to work?

 

Alternatively: does anyone have recommendations for a currently available low profile card that will work with mavericks? Preferably 10/100/1000.   

[Edhawk]

You need to download and install BCM5722D kext in S/L/E for the built-in Ethernet to work.

 

You can find a link to this kext on page 5 post #86 http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/261028-guide-snow-leopard-on-hp-proliant-microserver-n36l-amd/?p=1735249

[Edhawk]

OK, having used Niresh's installer and combining this with the AMD Kernel I now have OS X 10.9 up and running on TWO HP Microservers.

 

1. N36L, with 4GB Ram (2 x 2GB), HD6450 Graphics, 250GB Barracuda hard drive connected via one of the four caddy slots, OEM DVD drive connected to SATA port on motherboard but not recognised by os x,  USB bluetooth & USB wifi both working.
2. N54L, with 8GB Ram (2 x 4GB), HD5450 Graphics, 120GB Sandisk SSD connected to SATA port on motherboard, Samsung BD DVD drive connected to external eSATA port, USB Bluetooth, PCI Express TL-WDN4800 in PCI slot 2 working OOB.

I may swap the graphics cards if I can be bothered.

 

the on-board network port is working with the BCM5722D kext.

 

All SATA & eSATA ports on both machines are hot swappable, which is handy with the caddy loader.

 

I am currently using the Mac Pro 3.1 smbios on both machines, but may play with one as I recall that on snow leopard the smbios used was Mac-Mini.

 

My Chameleon Boot Plist for both machines is as follows:

 

<key>EthernetBuiltIn</key>

<string>Yes</string>

<key>Graphics Mode</key>

<string>"1920x1080x32"</string>

<key>InstantMenu</key>

<string>Yes</string>

<key>Kernel</key>

<string>AMD_kernel</string>

<key>Kernel Flags</key>

<string>-f npci=0x2000</string>

<key>PciRoot</key>

<string>1</string>

 

I'm not really happy with the graphics on either machine, getting glitches and artefacts in Safari and on startup.  Both systems are running 1920 x 1080 @ 60Hz on my Dell U2713H Display.  The graphics cards are shown as 'AMD Radeon HD 6xxx 1024 MB graphics' or 5xxxx under About this Mac.

 

I'm in the process of sorting out issues with iMessage & iCloud not working, the APP Store and iTunes work fine.

 

I have downloaded and I'm about to update one of the machines to 10.9.3 using the combo update method.

[Edhawk]

Update: I have now updated both microservers to 10.9.3 using the combo update. The only issue came when I had to replace two kexts from 10.9.0 - Sandbox.kext & System.kext.

 

It turns out that when using the AMD kernel in Niresh's distro updating causes an OPEMU error, which is only fixed by replacing the two kexts identified above with an earlier version.

 

Still not fixed the graphics issues or got the HDMI sound working as yet, but I'll persevere and see what happens.