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

[janitor]

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.

 

Great work, Edhawk!

 

Sorry I've been quite, I completely destroyed my initial install (a number of times actually) by messing with some kexts and after trying to run the 10.9.2 and 10.9.3 updates. I've also been busy messing with a cleaner install method that doesn't rely on Niresh's Distro or so many Kexts.

 

I also had many KPs when booting after installation, but deleting the GenericUSBXHCI.kext, that was automatically installed by Niresh's Distro, seemed to solve that.

 

After many attempts at a new and cleaner install method (for easier troubleshooting), I have a pretty good install running now with 10.9 again, but for some reason booting seems to get stuck or kill the windowserver (so no desktop graphics just verbose stuff on screen) unless I have a USB drive attached. Not necessarily the USB Installer either, just any data USB stick during the boot process seems to fix the problem. Something to do with USB Mass Storage Device Controller or something. Still no idea. Probably something completely stupid like a USB rollback or something simple I'm overlooking. It might even have something to do with installing Mavericks on a MBR partitioned drive, which it is currently sharing with Windows 8.1. Who knows?!? Serves me right for trying to troubleshoot three completely separate Hackintosh builds at the same time :-(

 

Still too scared to try any OS X updates... again!

 

Enough of my woes. How goes your troubleshooting?

 

I haven't tried iCloud or iMessage just yet, as I'm really only going to be running OS X Server on this little guy, but i'll take a look anyway.

 

As for your graphics issues, are you talking about the glitchy icons and strange pink stuff that sometimes happens in LaunchPad or Preview and some Icons with semi-transparent images and such? If so, that seems to be a patched kernel issue and not your Radeon HD 6450.

I think at has something to do with the ssse3 and ssse4 emulation within these Mavericks AMD kernels. From what I've picked up in my search for other usable kernels, the ssse3 and 4 stuff is for the bigger and newer AMD chips that support it and that the emulation that was added for the older chipsets, like ours, is far from perfect :-(

 

As for HDMI audio, you may never get that working, regardless of your GPU. I've yet to have success with that on my Microserver, even on Snow Leopard. I might need to revisit the possibly of it though...

 

Otherwise, It might be time to move this discussion over the the Mavericks AMD thread before we get shouted at for breaking the forum rules ;-)

 

Chat soon, 

 

J.

[Edhawk]

Janitor,

 

Good to see you are still having a go at Mavericks on your Microserver.  If I'm honest I too had to install 10.9.0 a number of times (at least 3 times the first day and more than that on the second), until I decided to use one of the HD caddy trays and a spare HD to clone my drive (used Super Duper), once I had it up and running with 10.9.0.  It seemed that each tweak of the system or new kext install was fraught with problems, as too many times the OS wouldn't load after what should have been a simple change to the system.  In the end having two HD drives loaded in the Microserver meant I could always boot in to the spare OS, undo the changes I had made on the main HD and restart/ install the update again.  Updating the spare to the latest stable working OS only once I was sure it was stable.

 

I was so tempted to start again and use an alternative installation to Niresh's distro, never been happy using any distro as its not always possible to know what else is being installed (a bit paranoid I know).  I have gone through both of my Microservers and removed all of the additional software from Niresh and anything that I thought was similar to the 'bloat ware' that comes pre-loaded on a PC.  I have my main Hack (i7 dual boot with Win7 ultimate) to compare the software/installation and other features, obviously some differences between the Intel and AMD systems were found but these were to be expected.

 

The graphics issues weren't related to pink icons or anything as obvious as that, I think I was simply being over optimistic with my expectations with these graphics cards.  I have both cards working with full QE/CI acceleration at 1080P @ 60Hz, so maybe I should just settle for that and not worry about the card not being properly recognised in about this mac.  The relevant AMD kexts have been edited with the appropriate Vendor and Device ID's and they load and work pretty much as expected.

 

The iMessage and iCloud issues are unusual, in that the standard NVRAM fix hasn't worked on the Microserver, I've been looking at some of the other fixes but no luck with either authentication issue as yet.

 

I have not had a chance to play with the HDMI audio since my last post but I hope you are wrong about it not ever working on these machines, otherwise I will be looking to add a USB audio dongle that works with Mavericks OOB.  The main reason I am playing with the Microserver & AMD system is that I want to give one of these machines to my son.  He is currently at University and using his i5 Hack for central backups to Time Machine and as a server for his housemates (all 3 are MBP users), which isn't ideal.  I had the intention that the Microserver would be used as a local server to hold all of their ripped DVD's & music etc. as these are shared in the house, plus be the central Time Machine backup location.  The reason I wanted the HDMI audio is that it will also be connected to their main TV for their regular film fests.

 

I suppose my next step is to extract the DSDT and see what I can do with Toleda's HDMI Audio edits. 

 

You could be right about moving the discussion to the Mavericks AMD section, but this is still pretty much the same hardware that you started with at the beginning of this thread, only Apple in their wisdom have decided to move the goal posts and provide us with numerous other OS's to play with!

 

Happy hacking !

[janitor]

Hi Edhawk,

 

Sounds like you're having fun! I just love messing around with these guys.

 

My current Microserver arrangement is almost exactly the same as what you're trying to accomplish for your son at Uni.

However, given the limitations of OS X on this AMD hardware, I've made some deviations to achieve similar results.

 

In good news. I've now solved my initial installation issues, still not sure what the whole 'USB to boot issue' was, but after clearing out some Kexts and trying a different AMD kernel, that cleared up. I've also successfully updated to 10.9.3. Yay! Turned out to be the way Apple was updating my previously Hex-edited AMD5000Controller.kext and AMDRadeonX3000.kext, where it was keeping some of the files inside the Kexts and updating others. Basically, ruining the recognition of my Radeon HD 5450.

 

My iCloud, iMessage and logging into the AppStore isn't working. Like you said before, none of the usual fixes seem to be working. I did read somewhere that apparently these services make calls to the Kernel, and since the the XNU source code for these parts of the Darwin kernel were never released by Apple, hopes of a quick and easy solution seem to be fading. Will keep digging for a solution anyway, maybe something will pop up...

 

I fiddled with HDMI audio a little last night, but still no glory. I think the big issue has to do with no native on-board audio on these servers, which is what many of the DSDT and AppleHDA fixes by toleda rely on. VoodooHDA seems to recognize the HMDI audio part of my Radeon 5450 card just fine, but still no joy getting any sound out of the system yet. I think if it's going to happen, it's probably going to be with VoodooHDA drivers and tweaks of some sort.

 

Otherwise, from the sound of it, if you really want both a good OS X solution for centralized Time Machine backups and Media storage plus a nice setup for your son's regular "film fests", you should maybe consider installing OpenELEC (XBMC) on a USB stick. This is what I do and how my setup currently works...

 

I have OS X (with Server) and Windows 8.1 dual booting on Drive #1, with Time Machine and File Sharing on Drive #2, TV and Music on Drive #3 and Movies on Drive #4. The OS X server handles our various backups most of the time and Windows is there for when I need it occasionally. When we're up for Movies/TV or some streaming media (with HDMI audio), I just reboot and plug in my OpenELEC USB drive which then boots into an AppleTV-esque environment which points to the Media on my two media HDDs and the Internet for various streaming services and media scraping if required. The best part of this setup is that OpenELEC has no problems with video card detection out of the box, it plays audio happily through HDMI on my 5450, handles DVDs well (if you have an Optical Drive installed) and is pretty easy to setup and customize! And its free! Did I mention, it will run off of a USB stick? Although, it's much faster on a small USB HDD.

 

Anyway, good luck with your progress. I'll be sure to shout if I make any headway on this either issues...

 

PS. I can probably solve your full video card detection issue in Apple System Profiler and About This Mac if you like? Although the benefits will be mostly cosmetic as you already have acceleration and QE/CI etc. Tthe necessary hex-editing will also need to be re-applied every time Apple updates the video kexts within their OS updates. Just shout if you're keen...

[Edhawk]

Hi Janitor,

 

I read something similar about the kernel issues blocking iCloud and other Apple applications.  But I have managed to get full access to both my iTunes and AppStore accounts on both Microservers.  It is just iMessage and iCloud that are not activating for me, which I was able to fix on a couple of other Intel based hacks.  Wrongly assumed I would be able to do the same on these machines.  iCloud was never designed to work with Snow Leopard I was hoping it would with Mavericks installed.

 

I have also being playing with different Voodoo audio installs. Voodoo at first glance seems to recognise the graphics card HDMI but has never worked, no matter which version I have installed. 

 

Thanks for the heads up on OpenELEC, I'll have a play with this Linux distribution, as it is so small I may steal a bit of the SSD and make it available as part of the Chameleon boot. Which version of OpenELEC are you using with the Microserver, a 'Generic Build' or one of the specific builds like Fusion or Apple TV?

 

Thanks for the offer to edit About this Mac, however I am more interested in getting the OS to recognise the graphics card.  This is always something to fall back on to play with when I get bored! 

 

How easy was it to get OSX Server up and running on your Microserver.  I've been putting this off as there have been a number of issues reported with the VPN and Remote Access services following the Mavericks Server install.  I would rather not have to deal with a failure on either of these, especially if the machine is in a remote location.  Did the Mavericks server installation bring up any specific issues?

 

Thanks again.

 

Ed

[janitor]

Hi Ed,

 

Yeah, it looks like the whole iCloud thing could get old fast. I'll be digging into my AppStore issue tonight. It might be something as simple as moving over to Ethernet from WiFi for a bit, but I'm sure it'll come right eventually.

 

If I remember correctly I just downloaded one of the Generic OpenELEC builds. I can't stress enough how much fun it is to play with. Consider yourself warned! It's pretty darn cool.

 

OS X Server was a piece of cake to get running. It's now just a small-ish App you download from the AppStore, so nowhere near as complex as the Snow Leopard server installs I've done on these machines in the past. I haven't put it through much of a grilling just yet, mostly just basic local network File Sharing and Time Machine back ups over Wifi - I still need to get it onto my gigabit ethernet network to get some better data throughput and do some proper experimenting with Remote Access and VPN etc. Unfortunately, my new place doesn't have any built-in CAT5 cabling or infrastructure for wired home networking, so maybe another DIY project for the summer... Hmmmmm.

 

As for the offer regarding your graphics card... what I actually should have explained was that it was to edit or help you edit your AMD6000Controller.kext to correctly match your Radeon 6450's connector info to your card's framebuffer personality. That way when you enable GraphEnabler with "Yes" at boot, OS X sends the correct info to both About This Mac and System Profiler automatically and your card is recognized with it's correct name rather than the generic one you're getting now. I used to have a thread over at TonyMacx86 doing this for a few Radeon HD 5450 owners, basically dumping their VBIOS files and figuring out the correct changes to make to the connector table using bcc9 and mucha's methods from elsewhere on these forums 

 

Cheers for now!

 

J.

[splonk]

 

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.

 

 

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.

 

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.

 

 

 

 

I have the 512MB 5450 card and needed to add a couple of additional strings to my Chameleon boot plist on updating to 10.9.3.

 

AtiConfig=Eulemur    This is needed to get the correct framebuffer up otherwise it defaults to the Radeonframebuffer  and the card is recognised as a generic ATI HD5000 series rather than the 5450. Eulemur improves onscreen graphics noticeably. I am using a TV as a display and the Radeonbuffer graphics look more washed out with scruffier fonts. Might just be my imagination, however.

 

AtiPorts=3                 Without this, I could not even get GraphicsEnabler to run and had to disable it.  

 

I cannot, however, get the bloody 5722D.kext to load. I have tried both the Mavericks and ML flavours but both refuse to play nicely. I force loaded it by kextload and kextstat reported it as running but no dice. No network device found.

 

Oddly enough, I also have a Bluray combi drive attached and Mavericks reports no disk burner attached. Hmmm.

[Edhawk]

Splonk

 

Ok in a convoluted order:

 

As I understand the Blueray issue it comes down to the fact that OSX doesn't support some DVD or Blueray drives.  Pot luck really as to which drive is supported and which isn't.  I've ended up switching a few drives out from other machines to give them a try and there really doesn't seem to be any rational behind which works and which doesn't.

 

Thanks for the heads up on the Atiports and Aticonfig settings I will try them both out this evening.

 

With regards the BCM5772D kext I don't know why your Microserver isn't recognising the kext.  I used Kext Wizard to install the version I use, seemed to work without any issues after repairing permissions, same kext worked for me on both Snow Leopard and Maverick's.  This is a link to the lastet version of the kext http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/files/file/79-bcm5722d/   If I knew how to share the kext I've installed I would do that.

[splonk]

It might be an AHCI issue with the Bluray drive. That might be on the PATA/SATA bridge, it has been a while since I opened this box up so I don't remember. Might need a kext to wake it up. Either that or Niresh has done something funky with the installation. Should have gone vanilla but I was lazy.

 

As for the network kext, the latest kexts don't load. I went back to the kext I compiled a few years back and uploaded here in this thread and that installed and my port was recognised. However, I can only get an internal ISP address whether I have a cable inserted or not, so there is an issue with Mavericks. Might try rolling my own kext from sources and see how that goes.

 

If you want to upload a kext in this thread, it is very easy. Just make sure you don't use Quick Reply (i.e. click on More Reply Options) and you will see a button below the text box for attaching files.

[Saf]

Hey!

 

Nice to know that OS X 10.9 is working on the little HP servers!

 

It seems like only yesterday we loaded Snow Leopard on to it! Been almost 3 years...

 

Mine is still working well on Snow Leopard. Always on for the last 3 years and been used as a file server, plex server, vpn server amongst other stuff. Used daily and has been surprisingly stable for everything! Keep it tucked away in a corner and used headless.

 

Anyway, think I might have to get it out of the corner and try and put Mavericks on in the next week or so. Will try and contribute if I come across anything helpful!

 

But more than that, please do keep the hints/tips and tutorials for 10.9 coming! Help me out before I start it  

 

Also got a HP N54L as well which I use as a Windows box to remote desktop to for some windows software. Doesn't require much power so I'm considering swapping em over if the N54L works well too on Mavericks

 

Nice to see this thread active again, especially with some of the same old people and a few new ones! Oh and thanks again for all the help and info getting Snow Leopard on back in 2011!

 

 

Saf

[splonk]

OK, I have partially fixed my network woes. I forgot to inject my device ID (14e4,165b)  into the latest kexts. No wonder my card wasn't being picked up. Still getting the 000000s for the MAC address on boot up, so no connection possible at present.

[Edhawk]

Splonk,

 

Both my N54L & N36L have modded bios with hot swappable drives set at 3GB speed and the BD drive is connected to the eSATA port with a SATA to eSATA cable, SSD HD connected to the internal port so not issues with PATA/SATA port configuration as far as I can tell.

 

Non ideal why you can't get the Ethernet port to work correctly.. I' m sure I use a kext I downloaded taro this site, for both Snow Leopard and Mavericks, probably provided by you or Saf! Build date 8th August 2011.

 

Thanks for the heads up one the reply options, I have always used the quick reply option!

 

Saf, My N54L has twice the processing power and RAM than my N36L, unsurprisingly it runs much faster that the N36L! I also have a N54l using WHS2011 but plan to upgrade this to WS2012.

Copy of my BCM5722D kext, try it and see if it works.

 

BCM5722D.kext.zip

[Saf]

OK, I have partially fixed my network woes. I forgot to inject my device ID (14e4,165b)  into the latest kexts. No wonder my card wasn't being picked up. Still getting the 000000s for the MAC address on boot up, so no connection possible at present.

 

Last time I had that issue, I changed the boot order in the BIOS to Network first, then the HDD and it somehow managed to work and ensures that OSX is given the MAC address and not the 000000s.

 

Not sure if that'll help but worth a try!

 

Saf, My N54L has twice the processing power and RAM than my N36L, unsurprisingly it runs much faster that the N36L! I also have a N54l using WHS2011 but plan to upgrade this to WS2012.

 

Hmm, would you be useful seeing as I'm wanted to use Plex on it... Wonder if it'll work if I just rip the Windows HDD out of the N54L and put it in the N36L... Should be ok shouldn't it?

 

And then just install Mavericks on the N54L...

 

Now I just need to free up some time to get this done!

 

 

Saf

[splonk]

Had a look at my box (an N40L) and realised that I had not updated the stock BIOS unlike my N36L.  

 

One update later to the latest modded bios (2013) and a switch of all my AHCI devices to 3Gbps and my Bluray is detected.

 

Saf, your tip to switch boot priority did the trick. My Ethernet port has a MAC address. 

 

There is a potential issue with Chameleon, which may prevent certain updates from the App Store, namely to do with the SMBIOS and the fix may be to switch to Clover. I shall investigate.

[Edhawk]

Splonk,

 

Which SMBios are you using? As mavericks is a 64 bit OS the old Mac mini SMBios doesn't work well. I've been using Mac Pro 3.1 and to date have no issues with the AppStore or iTunes. If you find a more suitable SMBios let me know.

 

Can't say the same for iMessage and iCloud, I have problems authenticating both. As discussed with Janitor this is probably related to the Microserver having an AMD processor and any fixes not being applied when the Microserver first attempts to connect to your AppleID during the installation.

 

Ed

[splonk]

I am using Mac Pro 3,1. I hear that for certain configurations an iMac somethingorother might work better. Mac Mini is deprecated. I could only update stuff like iWork or iLife by logging in with my main account that has a cc attached. I wanted a cleaner App Store account on this, which I set up on a genuine Mac and transferred the relevant Library files across. I still got the error message in the App Store.

 

I cannot get Clover to work properly. Boot up takes forever (no change there from when I first tried Clover a while back) but it boots up to a generic HD5000 desktop (lacking the Eulemur polish) and dead usb ports (both inbuilt plus two on the generic USB3 card I have) so I cannot do anything with it. Clover apparently injects a logic board serial number into the SMBIOS, which Chameleon doesn't, and this is supposed to fix the App Store ID problems on updating certain apps.

 

What is your throughput like on the network port? At the moment, I am only feeding an internet line in via an Apple Express and the internet is so slooooooow.

[Edhawk]

I've not noticed any issues with the speed of my network port, internet works just fine via Ethernet cable, not to shabby for internet use with just the wireless in the N54L.  I recently copied 12GB of music across from a WHS2011 (another Microserver on my home network) and that seemed to work OK.  I didn't check the transfer speeds but it wasn't any slower than I would expect transferring data to my Win7 PC from the WHS.

 

I've never tried Clover, I think that may be a step too far for me on these machines.  I'm happy with Chameleon and at least know what I am doing when I change the settings and one of the machines won't boot.

 

I think the transfer/migration of my working Apple ID account settings from one Hack to another may be my next attempt to get iMessage and iCloud working on the Microserver.  I'm not sure an iMac SMBios will make much difference as the sleep function seems to work ok for me with the Mac Pro 3.1 definition.  I used Chameleon Wizard to provide the Mac Pro definition details, adding some manually for the CPU and memory.  Must admit I can't remember what the default Niresh settings were, but the Microserver seem to run better once I had changed them with Chameleon Wizard.

 

Yesterday I updated my N54L to 10.9.4 via the AppStore.  The only issues that arose were the replacement of the AppleMatch, Sandbox and System kexts in S/L/E, which were required to get things working again.  This was expected given I had similar issues when upgrading to 10.9.3.  Although in hindsight I will be using the Combo update method rather than the AppStore download for any future OS updates.

 

I have also updated Fakesmc to the latest version, not sure it really works on the AMD system.  But I had a number of error messages relating to SMC at each boot from the Niresh distro (both Microservers are set to boot in verbose mode), which I was hoping the latest version might resolve or at least reduce.  Not sure it made any difference.

[La_Tristesse]

I subscribed to this thread for some time and until now I was silently waiting for someone to write a updated tutorial on how to get Mavericks or Mountain Lion installed on a N54L. I would really appreciate that work.

[splonk]

Not sure it needs a detailed guide since Chameleon has improved so much since SL.

 

Just create a standard Mavericks installation USB pen drive with Chameleon onn top Grab the latest AMD kernel with matching version AppleMatch, Sandbox and System kexts for that kernel and replace the ones on your pen drive. Use Chameleon Wizard to create. Mac 3,1 SMBIOS.plist and dump that in your Extra folder on your pen drive. That should be enough to get it installed. The rest is tweaking. Best to install using Mavericks 10.9.0.

 

Edhawk, you say that sleep is working? For the record my Ethernet only shows up as 100Mb in SysPrefs. Need to play around with that when I have some time.

[Edhawk]

My Ethernet connection shows as 1000baseT, Full Duplex in SysPrefs.  This is also confirmed during verbose boot.

 

I think sleep is working, when left unattended for 10 minutes the Microserver hd turns itself off, the screen does the same, I have to press a key to get the screen to wake and I then have to log in to Mavericks.  I will check it out again tonight.

[splonk]

OK. Screen dimming and hard drive idling isn't in itself sleep. I get those although with the fans it is hard to tell the drives have spun down. Sleep would be suspending to RAM with all the fans and lights switching themselves off. I wasn't sure whether Chameleon and DSDTs had got so clever that they bypassed basic calls to the BIOS and its lack of S3 state.

 

I just bought a couple of Powermacs for some retro fun. One arrived damaged so is going back and am picking the other up tomorrow. Won't have time for my Hack until the weekend. Hope to sort out the last few issues and then I am going to try Yosemite on it.

[Edhawk]

Just installed Chameleon SSD Optimiser to fix the trim issue after the 10.9.4 update.  As this update breaks the trim setup.  This also has a sleep function that I will play with to see if any of the three options will provide a closer approximation of true sleep on the Microserver.

 

Still no joy with the iMessage & iCloud fix.  I have tried a number of fixes that have been posted on various sites, none of them have made any difference.  On the plus side I haven't broken iTunes and the AppStore.

[tk007b]

Was on a bit of a journey,

 

The last I heard, we were waiting on the magic of Nawcom to come up with a solution to the 'AMD' limitation and I had pretty much given up. Anyhow, I played with OMV & Esxi a bit but both of these rendered the 'console' useless, plus wouldn't do all tht I wanted them too. So, as I preferred to keep my Microserver running OSX coupled with the fact that applications were no longer being supported for 10.6.8 I looked at pricey Microserver Gen 8's <gulp>.

 

Then, not sure why (maybe because of the price of a gen8) but I decided to have one last look and this thread and cannot believe my eyes, as the answer was there infront of me !!!!

 

I feel priviledged to be part of "Page 1" of this project, given my complete lack of knowledge of OSX.

 

3 years later, I don't know a heap more but have remembered what I have learned and have reap the rewards of my efforts.

 

Im sure I'll be asking questions again (at a rate of knotts) but with a bit of reading/re-reading & a few experiments I should hopefully be able to stem the flow.

 

Thanks in advance to Janitor, Splonk, Saf and all the others that have helped me before .. it has not been forgotten

 

:-)

 

TK :D

[tk007b]

ok,

 

Downloaded the DISTRO, download the Mavericks restore package.

 

Couldn't get the restore package to work (yes, I had the DMG in he same folder as the package and was writing to a usb drive but it just kept failing (I tried different sticks and computers but with no success)

 

So copied the contents of the dog to a memory stick and then using a dvd based Chameleon loader, booted from the stick using the "amd -v" parameters

 

The damn thing starts to load and then about 15 seconds into it (the last thing on the screen was "starting Darwinx86_64" and then the Microserver reboots 

 

Can't get past that no matter what.

 

I had 8GB of ram, a dedicated Video Card and Nic but removed 4gb of RAM and both of the cards to get my N36L as close to a vanilla set up (hardware wise) as I could

 

my questions:-

 

1. What do I need to do to get past this problem

2. Shall I put back the 'accessories' inc extra 4gb of RAM

 

Any help appreciated as I've spent hours today and got nowhere fast !

 

Many thanks

 

TK     

[Edhawk]

Keep the dedicated video card and nic in the machine. Have a look at post 199, I'm sure I had to use -f & npic=0x2000 bootflags to get the installation running when installing mavericks.

[tk007b]

Thanks Edhawk,

 

Saw the post but not sure how to create a Plist for the installation.

 

Will manually type in the -f npci=0x2000  before loading from the distro.

 

BTW - I realised (pretty soon) after loading OSX without the two cards (Video & Nic) why I bought them in the first place.

 

I also put all of the memory back. However, I can just use the maxmem=4098 parameter, until someone tells me (or I work out) if you can use more RAM under this distro.

 

Stand back, I'm going in ....

 

*** No Joy - Time for bed and will start again tomorrow - Downloading (and will copy to usb) the ISO file out of desperation - this has the same results **

 

Ok - Plan today is to read up .. and hope for a miracle !

 

If someone can give me basic instructions with no assumptions, I might just be able to get Started ! - Thanks TK