QuietOC Posted February 11, 2008 Share Posted February 11, 2008 My previous homebrew Mac was a FrakenMac PowerMac 8500 -> PowerMac 8600/9600 conversion. It had a 350MHz "Mach5" processor from a 9600/350 and a 8600 motherboard in a 8500 chassis. Even with a Mac Voodoo 5 5500 PCI and 512MB of EDO memory it was pretty slow. No, I never tried OSX on it. I have had this Intel Pentium Dual Core E2140 for use in a new gaming system, and finally found an Abit IP35-E instock to go with it. Some other boards wouldn't run the chip anywhere near 3.2GHz (ASUS P5K-VM, eVGA 112-CK-NF75-K1). I put the E2140 in the IP35-E and immediately had it running at 3.2Ghz and tested it thoroughly in Vista (3.3Ghz is about maximum using quiet cooling). I have been quite disappointed with my 20" iMac for work--even with the max 3GB of memory things running very slowly. I just swapped out the original 250GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 for a 150GB Western Digital Raptor, which only helped a little. I have no desire for my employer to waste money/energy on an 8-core Mac Pro, and reading about OSX on generic hardware made my want to give it a try. After purchasing a $28 SATA DVD burner, I got XxX OSX 10.4.11 running. I even used the Apple branded Seagate pulled from the iMac, so not only do I have all my apps, but I should be legal. So, far no QE (X800GTO PCIe), audio, or LAN working. I am thinking of trying the ASUS P5K-VM again--maybe with a E8400 chip, though I am not sure about the status of the Intel GMA 3100 built-in video support with Tiger or Leopard, but I could always add a cheap ATi HD 2400 card if necessary. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
QuietOC Posted February 22, 2008 Author Share Posted February 22, 2008 So, far no QE (X800GTO PCIe), audio, or LAN working. X800GTO seems to be installed (QE/Core), although I downloaded ATI's Debevec demo which won't run, and I have mouse tearing. Audio is working thanks to AppleHDA Patcher. LAN is working. USB and cheap Rosewell 4in1 card reader works. Windows XP in Parallels seem to run better than on my iMac even though the E2140 doesn't support virtualization. Maybe the extra Gigahertz helps or the vastly more memory bandwidth. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts