Experience Installing OSX on AMD

[diemaker]

This info is meant (1) to give details on my specific hardware since it is really common and (2) I had a hard time finding a simple and to the point description of what people were having to do for the install and to get everything working. It is easier than I thought. I really should thank JaS though!

 

I'm using "Mac OS X 10.4.8 [JaS AMD-Intel-SSE2-SSE3 with PPF1].iso" with MD5 "0ef2904e0aad1864c69b2ac67e050255". I used a prior version of the 10.4.8 image from JaS, but it bricked my harddrive (computer would not even boot to the BIOS with the HD installed). I suggest getting a used $10 10Gig drive at your local used parts computer store.

 

I am posting these details because everything works on my system except both gigabit LAN (10/100 baseT LAN does work) and iCal only runs once you set it to use Rosetta. If anyone can tell me how to get the gigabit LAN working, that would be great! I'm still working on it.

 

CPU: AMD X2 4400+ (Toledo)

MB: Lanparty UT nF4 Ultra-D (using on board sound and LAN, only the nForce4 LAN port)

Video: BFG nVidia 7600GT (256MB)

HD: an old WD 160GB

DVD: Samsung SH-S182M/BEBE

 

I had to use a PS/2 keyboard and mouse. Make sure USB keyboard and mouse are set to disable in the BIOS. You can get all this working after the install.

 

After the install screens start, my HDs did not show up, use disk utility to erase the drives. This will format them and mount the drives. Return to the install screen and select the HD which now shows up. From the options, I only selected AMD CPU and Titan (make sure to swirl down and select only nVidia - if you don't, the result will be full video, but on only half the screen). The install is simple after that.

 

All the apple software updates worked once I booted to the desktop, but the security updates on AMD will not allow you to boot to the desktop. Don't install them! I don't have airport, so i didn't install that update either.

 

USB 1.1 works, but not USB 2.0 - after install from the desktop, I used "PCGenUSBEHCI-2.6.1a.zip" following the instructions included for the terminal operations - only about 5 commands which are mostly moving files around. I didn't download the kit to install, USB 2.0 is fully operational without it.

 

For the USB keyboard and mouse, don't enable USB keyboard/mouse in the BIOS, ever. Startup the computer with only PS/2 or no keyboard/mouse. Once you get to the desktop, plug in the USB keyboard and mouse. I tested a Dell multimedia keyboard and a logitech laser mouse, both on USB and it worked. I shutdown and rebooted with the mouse/keyboard still attached, everything came up and worked without problems. I then decided to buy ($29) an Apple wired keyboard. I plugged it in, and everything works perfectly, even the eject key on the keyboard. I normally use Synergy KVM, which works OK with OSX, but much better on 2 Windows machines.

 

Lastly, I have a Brother HL-1450 laser printer, it was able to print without problems from the USB port.

 

Hope this helps people with my hardware setup or gives you some idea how easy it can be to get MAC OSX running on a PC.

[huynhj]

I have the same cpu you do and the stats show that only one core. Is it the same on your rig? It runs very weird on my pc. I would boot up sometimes and everthing would work fine, then it would crash a while later. Sometimes it does not boot up at all. This is very frustrating because it is different every time. I really feel that it is my CPU that is screwing up. What do you think?

 

 

AMD x2 4400 Toledo

2gb OCZ Platinum

Asus A8N-SLI Premium

MSI Geforce 7800GT

2 x 74GB WD Raptors SATA RAID 0

1 250GB WD IDE (Mac Partition)

[Chief9999]

Hi I have a Asus A8N-sli deluxe M/B with a sli (one) graphic card I'm looking to build a hackintosh with this board do you have any suggestions that will make it easier on me. I see you did it yourself so any help or ideas will be a great help

 

I have the same cpu you do and the stats show that only one core. Is it the same on your rig? It runs very weird on my pc. I would boot up sometimes and everthing would work fine, then it would crash a while later. Sometimes it does not boot up at all. This is very frustrating because it is different every time. I really feel that it is my CPU that is screwing up. What do you think?

 

 

AMD x2 4400 Toledo

2gb OCZ Platinum

Asus A8N-SLI Premium

MSI Geforce 7800GT

2 x 74GB WD Raptors SATA RAID 0

1 250GB WD IDE (Mac Partition)

[mcdull]

your lan adaptor is easy to fix, I have nF4-d which only has 1 ethernet slow and it is working fine.

 

check this out

 

http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?sho...3&hl=nforce

[diemaker]

In response to huynhj, on my computer, "about this mac" does show only 1 core, but the activity monitor shows 2 cores are active.

 

Did you run another OS on your computer, and did you get similar behavior with it crashing?

 

In general, what you describe is a classic example of bad memory in my experience. It's fairly easy to test using memtest86 (http://www.memtest86.com/).

 

huynhj, I forgot to mention, while working with the keyboards, sometimes I had to just power down with the power switch. When that would happen, and I would restart, the computer would not boot. I had to shut down again and then on restart, everything would work OK. This is very repeatable. If you crash, you may have trouble booting for the same reason. I don't know if you've noticed a pattern to the times when you have trouble booting.

 

Chief9999, your MB is listed here, http://wiki.osx86project.org/wiki/index.php/HCL_10.4.8#Asus.

 

It sounds like it will work, but I would not use anything but a very cheap HD as you work to get the install up and running. It looks like the poster used a different version of 10.4.8 than I did.

 

mcdull, thanks for the link, I had already read through this post. It sounds like they have no functional LAN. I can't tell if they are doing the driver to get the LAN to work, or just work at gigabit speed. Reading through the entire post, the part about system freeze made me decide not to try it since my LAN works, just not at gigabit speed.

[gavspav]

I am running 10.4.8(Tub Girl) AMD X2 4400 on an Asus A8n SLI Deluxe.

 

As far as I can remember (it was over 3 days ago!) everything worked straight out of the box.

 

Except for the graphics card issues which are now sorted. QE/CI with a POV 7600GT

 

About this Mac does report only one core but the activity monitor and terminal (I forget how-search the forum) report both cores working.

 

My Xbench score is ~127. Geekbench (is that the right name?) ~ 175

 

OSX Seems pretty stable to me,

 

Gavin

[adbradwell]

Well I have problem installing 10.4.8 on my rig

 

 

spec:

Proc : Sempron 2800+

mobo :gigabyte GA55SLI-S4

RAM :1gb DDR2 5300

chipset :NF4

VGAcard: Gforce 7300GT 128ddr3

Ethernet: Nvidia Nforce network controller

HD: 40+80+160(PATA), 250(SATA).

 

Tried to install into single 250gb SATA without other HD, after restart come up with kernel panic attached above.

Also when I tried to install into single 80gb PATA the same problem occure.

Any step that I miss? Thx b4

Edited March 9, 2007 by adbradwell

[loonymonkey]

I have a DFI LanParty Ultra D, and the Marvell LAN port seems to work just fine. I used the JaS AMD/INTEL SSE,SSE2 iso, and didn't add anything else to it. Any ideas why it works for me?

 

ALSO, how did an iso brick your hard drive?

[diemaker]

I did try the network driver from here (http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?sho...3&hl=nforce), and it worked with no problem, but still no 1000baseT gigabit speed connection. Also, with further testing, I don't get normal speed on my LAN with either driver (driver installed during OS install or the driver in the previous link). The speed is acceptable, but could be up to 5x to 10x slower, a 500 MB file takes about 1 min between 2 XP computers on 100baseT and 10sec. on 1000baseT, but 5 to 10 min. from XP to the PC MAC. My router and config are OK, I did get full speed (100 and 1000 baseT) when using 2 XP computers on the LAN.

 

----------------

 

Audio issues showed up when using the system for a while now. I tried new drivers and kernel, but nothing fixed the issue. Audio would work immediately after boot. I would use iTunes to play an MP3 with no problem. When I switched to Quicktime, the movie would play, but no sound. From then on, sound would work or not work, no real pattern. The only pattern was that on reboot, sound would always work, after that, no predicting what would happen. I reinstalled and everything works fine now. I suspect it was an update I did, but it could have been software that I installed, not sure exactly what caused the problem since I did several things before the problem showed up.

 

----------------

 

On the USB keyboard and mouse topic, I've discovered you can't use the keyboard connected to USB and a PS2 mouse at the same time on the desktop. Note also, during install, a USB keyboard connected to the PS/2 port with an adapter does not work, but the a USB mouse with an adapter does work. The USB mouse tracking is a little different on the desktop, the acceleration is stronger than when using PS/2.

 

----------------

 

loonymonkey, I've tested both of my network ports, and they both do work for me as well.

 

The HD question is a good one, I've tried to find some information, but no answers. I have read many other people having the same issue. I use mobile docks on all my computers, and with that HD installed on all my computers (3), I could not get to the BIOS. The computer would turn on, and would POST OK, then stop. I couldn't hit <delete> to get into the BIOS because it never got that far, it would just stop. I tried floppy/CD to boot, no luck. My plan was to just reformat the drive, but I couldn't get far enough to boot anything that would let me access the drive. I used another iso (the one listed above) and everything went OK as I described.

Edited March 11, 2007 by diemaker

[audit13]

Well I have problem installing 10.4.8 on my rig

 

 

spec:

Proc : Sempron 2800+

mobo :gigabyte GA55SLI-S4

RAM :1gb DDR2 5300

chipset :NF4

VGAcard: Gforce 7300GT 128ddr3

Ethernet: Nvidia Nforce network controller

HD: 40+80+160(PATA), 250(SATA).

 

Tried to install into single 250gb SATA without other HD, after restart come up with kernel panic attached above.

Also when I tried to install into single 80gb PATA the same problem occure.

Any step that I miss? Thx b4

Did you try disabling the sata controller? I couldn't load anything until I disabled the sata connections on my msi nForce4 board and pata drive.

[feriso]

Installed the JaS iso and selected the AMD extns and teh Titan drivers (tho don't recall seeing any choice between nvidia or ati) and seems to install fine (albeit a bit slow) but on reboot it just begins to drop into the desktop and dislays nothing although the monitor is still active (a signal is being outputted) - have you a suggestion on this then, please?

 

CPU: AMD X2 3800+ (Manchester)

MB: Abit KN8 Ultra

Video: Gainward 7900GT (256MB)

HD: an old WD 40GB

DVD: Sony something or other......

[loonymonkey]

Installed the JaS iso and selected the AMD extns and teh Titan drivers (tho don't recall seeing any choice between nvidia or ati) and seems to install fine (albeit a bit slow) but on reboot it just begins to drop into the desktop and dislays nothing although the monitor is still active (a signal is being outputted) - have you a suggestion on this then, please?

 

CPU: AMD X2 3800+ (Manchester)

MB: Abit KN8 Ultra

Video: Gainward 7900GT (256MB)

HD: an old WD 40GB

DVD: Sony something or other......

 

I have the same thing happen to me sometimes. Are you able to ever get to the desktop? I sometimes can get to the desktop, while other times the screen goes black after the grey Apple screen.

[diemaker]

Feriso, I did the install the first time and didn't notice that the Titan drivers have options for either ATI or nVidia. I got really strange behavior when doing the install with both. Take a look again, you should try the install again and make sure to select only the vendor for your video card. If you have the install DVD I listed above, it should have options for one vendor or the other.

[adbradwell]

Now I just installed 10.4.8 on my rig using only single PATA drive. After booting there's a new problem. Before I installed SATA driver I could choose my monitor resolution. But after that only 1024x768. Already using TITAN, NATIT, manual using -s "Graphics - ..." nothing happened.

Edited March 12, 2007 by adbradwell

[diemaker]

I've been testing software, installing several of the most popular apps, the only one that wouldn't work so far is Motion in Final Cut Studio (not univeral binaries). I will test the universal binary version soon.

 

Tested as working on AMD JAS install 10.4.8:

Final Cut Pro (universal binary)

GraphicConverter

Adobe Creative Suite 2 Premium

iLife '06

iWork

Stuffit Deuluxe 11.0.1

Toast Titanium 8

Adobe Acrobat Pro 8

Macromedia Studio 8

MS Office 2004 Mac

[feriso]

diemaker - spot on, I actually thought about this and reinstalled it with only nvidia drivers and it works fine. Should make it a little more obviosu though.

[diemaker]

I've been doing more network testing, and it seems I do have better than 100baseTX. I set the network pref manually to configure speed to 1000baseT. The operation is not 100%, I'm sure that larger files are quite limited with regard to transfer speed (up to 30 to 50 GB are <<100baseTX) but files as big as 100MB transfer much faster than 100baseTX.

[CS Shyam Sundar]

Does anyone knows why JaS AMD-Intel-SSE2-SSE3 with PPF1 & PPF2 does *NOT* show any HDD Partitions for my Athlon X2 ( TL-50 ) Laptop.

 

I have been going over this issue for the past 2 days without any success!

 

I have posted a query: http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=47449

 

diemaker posted like " After the install screens start, my HDs did not show up, use disk utility to erase the drives. This will format them and mount the drives. " . Can you be little descriptive.

 

[naquaada]

Has anyone an idea if the Athlon 64 4000+ for Socket 939 with Toledo core is working for OSx86? These are the dual-core cpus with one CPU deactivated. The San Diego 4000+ works well.

[colo]

Hi!

 

My rig:

 

Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe

Opteron 165 Dual Core

Hynix 1 GB DDR400

80 GB Seagate PATA

80 GB Seagate SATA

XFX 7300GT 256MB

Onoard AC97 AL850

NIC: Marvell/Nvidia/Realtek

 

All working with Jas 10.4.8+ 8.8.1+ PPF1+PPF2

Stats show one core, activity monitor shows two

QE/CI/ working with Titan.

NForce4 SATA working after patch

Audigy4 not working. Onboard sound works with 5.1 output

MacFuse+NTFS-3g crashed machine

[naquaada]

The A8N-SLI series are maybe the best Socket 939 boards ever made for OSx86. All onboard components are supported. Me and three of my friends of mine are using six A8N-SLI Premium and one A8N-SLI SE, each equipped with a Gigabyte Radeon X1600Pro Silentpipe 2 and 2 Gigs of RAM, in one of mine I've got an FX-55 (will downgrade to 4000+) and 1,42 TB HD.

I also have an Asus K8N-E Deluxe, it's a great Socket 754 board which has the same onboard chips as the A8N-SLI, so it's also 100% compatible. It has a 3400+ without SSE3, a very rare GeCube X1600Pro AGP with Heatpipe, 2 Gig RAM and 1.22 TB HD.

[RobNyc]

good to see DFI users ..

I am going to keep trying to get my stuff to work with .4.9

[flapane]

i have the same hardware, what about 5.1 audio surround using the dfi onboard audio chipset?

and what about cool&quiet?

[knobi]

i didnt work for me though.

 

I installed it on my opteron 170 with DFI-Expert, it installed but when i reboot, i get text mssg all over the place

[lonerider7777]

I have the best luck with AMD rigs. Some notes (many repeats of other posts)

 

 

-ps2 for mouse & keyboard for install / usb mouse works fine after install is completed

 

- nforce 4/3 I've had sucess with

 

- via I've had success with

 

- never had success with serial ata. i now stick to parallel ata with hackintosh

 

- dual core x2 amd cpus work for me

 

- i buy the $5 airlink101 pci ethernet adapter (rtl8139d) and keep'em handy. they work out of the box.

 

- I create my partitions in linux, and use "os x" to "erase" them. jas 10.4.8 disk utility is broken. i use my jas 10.4.7 iso to select and erase(format) the partition. If I use 10.4.8 iso, it seems like it works, but causes all sorts of bizarre problems, from not being able to dual boot, to startup issues. Installing jas 10.4.8 is fine, just don't use the disk utility from it.

 

- I disable power savings and disk sleeping. They always lock up my machines.

 

- Sleep locks up my machines. I don't use it. I disable the power button sleep option.

 

- I've been bitten by some DVD drives.

 

- If setting up a triple boot. I install in order: xp, osx, ubuntu or sometimes xp, ubuntu, osx ...I aways use grub to bootstrap everything. I know grub, it's easy to manipulate, easy to fix. If just dual booting, I install xp first, then os x. OS X can boot both operating systems.

 

that's all I can remember for now.