This is my first post, so please go easy on me. I've never used OS X before, but I'm intrigued by the apparent success of OS X86 and am interested in trying it out.

I'm building a new machine for secondary use. I plan to dual boot XP and OS X86. I have a couple of 80 GB IDE hard drives laying around, along with a nice Antec case and an IDE CDRW drive (I can use a SATA DVD drive for install). I figure that if I get a motherboard, CPU, RAM, and a video card, I'll have a complete machine on the cheap. Initially, I was thinking about a cheap <$100 athlon CPU/mobo combo, but from reading this forum, it looks like Intel works better? I don't mind Intel as long as I can get a good overclock out of a cheap (Pentium Dual Core 2140) CPU and mobo combo.

I was thinking about getting this setup:
Gigabyte P35-DS3L - $100
Pentium Dual Core 2140 (hopefully will hit 3 GHz) - $70
2 GB DDR2 - $50 (after rebate)
7600GT - $50 (after rebate)

That's about as much as I want to spend on this. The problem is that my understanding that with this setup, I'll only get 2 working SATA ports and no working IDE ports in OS X86. Is there any way to add IDE ports via a PCI card or something? Should I consider something else? I'm not unwilling to go with the X2 setup if I can save some money and get IDE without losing functionality...

Figured out the answer to my IDE problem.
http://www.monoprice.com/products/product....=1&format=2

I actually had one laying around, but I thought it didn't work. It does, so I'm good to go. From what I've read, I shouldn't have any other trouble with the setup I'm considering.

I still would like to have more than 2 working SATA ports, so if anyone knows about getting the other SATA/IDE ports working on that motherboard (or a motherboard that does overclocking + ports), I'd love to know about it.

Pretty much anything with an Intel chipset, Marvell, Broadcom or Intel ethernet MAC or PHY and a well known (Sigmatel/Realtek) HDA codec should be 'fully supported' in OS X. That's almost every P965/P35 board on the market; possibly all of them, in fact.

JMicron IDE controllers can be a pain in the ass; they do work (if slowly, but that's just because they're crap hardware. They do it in Windows too.) after install, but they're not bootable without special patches, so you usually have to use a USB or SATA optical drive to install. Unfortunately, almost all P965/P35 boards use these. Still, I guess it's better to put up with it or get an SATA optical drive (I s'pose they're less than £20, what am I complaining about?) than use an older chipset which supports IDE natively.

I don't see why all the SATA ports shouldn't work without the correct AHCI settings in the BIOS. All of those on my 965P-DQ6, including those controlled by the JMB363 work.

ich9 chipset aren't so compatible actualy...

for the best experience, a very good P5LD2-VM 2.0 Asus...

after that, prepare you to switch, it's so beautiful and powerfull...

That's exactly what I thought too!
At first.......

I would say whatever about the IDE drives, I have them on an Intel badaxe 2, which cost a lot for the board, but it runs well.
It's fairly smooth even on IDE which is appreciably slower.
You can also get little IDE to SATA adaptors on ebay, they're rubbish, but they work.

I would also think whatever about the CPU in some respects, depending on what you want to do. As long as it supports sse3

The M/B is really the biggest issue, especially if you want to use up all those old IDE drives, you want something you don't need to blame.
Don't skimp on it, get the absolute best you can. It's a complete pain to put a machine together and find it almost wonderfully but not quite works.

IMHO the Badaxe 2 runs IDE fine, sadly it's not cheap, but in terms of a simple install and general reliability, it saves you money in time and headache.

I have an Asus p5k e but that uses Jmicron for PATA and external SATA, I disabled that and just went internal SATA. It's fine and just as good as the Intel, cheaper and a bit more upgradeable.

There are good things being said about the Gigabyte P35 boards.

Otherwise, get a SATA drive, how much are they there?

Thanks for the reply. I basically did end up getting the config in my post, though I missed out on the great 7600GT deal and had to settle for $73 after rebate. I also bought a SATA DVD burner, figuring I might as well have the capability on the machine rather than having to take my primary computer offline.

I hope the P35-DS3L works well with OS X. We'll see, I guess.

Yeah, SATA drives aren't that expensive (250 GB can be had for about $60-70), but I already have about 1.5 TB of hard drives and only two are SATA drives and both are in use in machines that have to have them there. I don't need more storage right now so it's hard to justify spending an extra $75 just to boot OS X when I've already got 200 GB in 2 hard drives that are sitting idle. We'll see what happens with my IDE-SATA adapter.