DFI LanParty P45 mATX board.

[thenameisgabe]

its as high as it goes.

[bing]

How did you pick your mem timings, and what processor are you running? I can't seem to get my E6600 past 2.8ghz. The FSB won't go higher than 310 unless I mess with voltages, and even then, its unstable.

 

E8400 E0 stepping.

 

If you can boot XP or the like, use CPU-Z. There's a mem tab there that will list standard timings for the RAM. I changed tCL, tRCD, tRP & tRAS to the optimum settings (4-5-4-11,) and left the rest on auto. Use only the 333/667 or 400/800 settings ("strap") under the DRAM Speed BIOS option. My RAM is spec'd to 2.1v, so I set that manually. (I only use mushkin, they have terrific web support.)

 

The first page of that [H] thread is great, then you have to skip to page 20 or something like that to get back into the meat of the OC discussion. My posts are at the very end of that thread.

 

I tried 8*400 (3.2Ghz) but it wasn't stable. 9*385 (3.47Ghz) is. Funky. Testing with SuperPi and IntelBurnTest, it's almost as fast as when it was running at 9*400 (3.6Ghz,) which also was not stable.

 

BurnTest of 1.4GB takes about 73 seconds for one pass, SuperPi 1M is about 12.250.

 

Do you know what the typical OC for your CPU is? If not, google around for [H] posts or the like, or check NewEgg reviews.

 

Also, just FYI, I use RealTemp, or CoreTemp, or the SmartGuardian app that comes w/ the board to monitor temps/fan speeds.

 

Not sure what the equivalent apps for testing/monitoring are in MacLand (yet.)

 

h~t~h

[thenameisgabe]

lol, OCing in OSX is limited. netkas created an app like cpu-z called cpu-x, don't think it lists memory timings though.

 

As far as temp monitoring goes, theres a couple that work, but they won't read all the mobo sensors (I can only get cpu cores and HD temps).

 

Also, XP will allow you to overclock more than OSX. I can get xp stable at 2.8, but OSX will not work correctly unless i scale it down to 2.7.

 

I will try those settings. I use G.SKill ram, its on the recommended DFI list.

[bing]

lol, OCing in OSX is limited.

 

Guess I shoulda figured that.

 

I got a bit further. Coincidentally enough I started by going to non-OC settings of 9*333.

 

AHCI=ON

JMicron=ON

 

Used an IDE DVD drive and IDE disk. Had a couple EBIOS errors but it kept chuggin' along (literally, I thought my poor old DVD drive was going to let go the magic smoke it was just grinding away for what seemed like forever.)

 

Anyway, got all the way to where I presume the install switched to GUI and the screen went funky blue/purple speckles. Couldn't see any mouse movement, nothing. Fun stuff.

 

I suppose it's because I have a HD3850 installed. The only other video card I have is a really old TI4200-AGP. Maybe I should get a 7300GS, or ?

[thenameisgabe]

I got an 8800GT myself, which works like a charm.

 

I havn't looked into radeon cards much, but I think the HD3x series is supported. I suppose there are kexts floating around, in which case you would have to add them to the initrd.img file on the grub-dfe.iso. That should work.

[bing]

 

Used the -x switch, got a GUI.

 

But alas, no mouse/keyb.

 

Just about gave up on it for the night, as I have only the wireless Logitech mouse/keyb combo I was using, so I was stuck...

 

I was using a ps/2<>usb adapter for the keyb, the mouse is ps/2 only. I pulled the keyb cord, and replaced it using the usb plug. Voila! Both keyb AND mouse work! lol... Onward!

 

[bing]

Progress... Thanks to thenameisgabe for the PM help........

 

I tried to install 3 or 4 times from a DVD made with ImgBurn, kept dying with an error: Install Failed "contents of the 'AdditionalSpeechVoices' package."

 

googling around it seems a somewhat common problem, with no real solution but guesses ranging from simply re-burning new media to bad RAM. I went down the hardware road for awhile, unfortunately, booting w/ a single stick of old slow RAM, etc. Finally, today, I re-burned the image using PowerISO and the subsequent install went fine.

 

I am stuck tho. Booting the new install via DFE to follow munky's boot-from-efi-partition guide, I can't get a desktop, just garbled screen. Tried the -x & -f boot flags, same problem. So frustrating. Any clues appreciated.

[thenameisgabe]

at this point I would suggest doing what I stated earlier: loading the video driver kext through grub-dfe.iso.

 

To do this, make another initrd.img with the original kexts from grub-dfe and the ati kext (natit.kext I think its called). Theres a couple of guides to do this both on windows an mac. Basically, it involved grabbing the initrd file from the iso (using magicISO), extracting it (I think macdrive does this?) and placing the new kext in, compressing again, put it back into grub-dfe and reburn.

 

That should boot. Your problem is obviously the videocard, since we have the same hardware. This is most likely due because your install media is 10.5.0, and ati support did not improve until 10.5.2. You may not need a full kext after you update.

 

-Gabe

[bing]

Thanks again, I will give it a go. I was hoping the was another switch aside from -x -f that would give me a basic 800x600 or whatever desktop.

 

BTW I'm using a 10.5.4 Retail img.

[thenameisgabe]

that is weird then. Usually flags such as -v -f -x will solve the problem. The only others ones I know of are cpus=0 and cpus=1 which will control the cores and -s which will boot single user mode.

 

Good luck, I'd say messing around with kexts would be the best option, that or getting a new card.

[Valdeam]

Anybody have pics of a rig built with this?

 

Valdeam

[thenameisgabe]

Anybody have pics of a rig built with this?

 

Valdeam

 

 

None that would be of any use. Mine is cramped inside a silverstone SG01 box. You can barely see the board, haha

[thenameisgabe]

Another thought for Bing.

 

If you're any good with a terminal you can probably do munky's method in single user mode.

[bing]

Another thought for Bing.

 

If you're any good with a terminal you can probably do munky's method in single user mode.

 

Thanks Gabe. After spending way too long reading about the woes of my 3850 I ended up with a bootable system by reinstalling using a 10.5.0 Retail img, instead of 10.5.4. I've only booted it once so far, (w/ -x -f,) so I'm not sure what I've really got. It seems many ATI cards broke at 10.5.3... I've not found anyone using the exact card as me, down to the device ID + BIOS version, that has a confirmed working solution. But I do have an older BIOS on my card, from 12/07, and I gather that's a good thing.

 

If I remember right '-f' forces a load of kexts from the grub-dfe img, vs the system kext for the same device. I've tried to find a reference for the '-x' switch and haven't found one yet. Is that 'Safe Mode'? And of so, what is that exactly? And how does that differ from 'Single User Mode', which I gather is the '-s' switch?

 

Acronis TI 2009 will not clone from the IDE drive (where the OS is now installed,) to a SATA disk. I'm not sure if this is a limitation w/ IDE<>SATA, or the HFS+ partitioning, or ? I will need to look into a clone utility or migration utility within OS X to get the fresh system cloned as it takes forever to install w/ the old IDE DVD drive. That, and I've read of more than a few cases of guys messing with ATI drivers only to end up with non-bootable systems due to 'disco screen.' That state is no fun, as I've witnessed myself. Plus, I'd like to end up with OS X on a SATA drive utilizing AHCI, of course.

 

It's all seemingly coming together, slowly... But I really like the idea of a Retail + EFI install. I need to get the process down pat and then use what I've gathered to intall on a MSI Wind netbook. Trickier, that, since I'm limited to one disk and I want to keep XP as bootable, at least until I'm more comfortable in OS X, then I might put the copy of VMware Fusion to work. It's been like 15 years since I've used a Mac.

 

System will not boot off the CD with AHCI on. Not sure if it's the drive, BIOS, or what. I may look into grub-dfe via USB flashdrive, this would be nice to have in the case of the Wind as well.

 

System ran overnight burning at 389*9 (3.505Ghz) and aside from VNC server dying after atesting completed in the morning it was 100% stable. I settled on 389 after 391 wouldn't post.

 

I sure like having the hotkeys w/ 4 banks for BIOS settings!! I have a bank for 'MacBoot' settings (9*333, AHCI=ON, RAM@2.0v, etc.) And then a config for StableXP, and BurnXP. Really nice that the banks persist after BIOS reset w/ the jumper.

 

 

Need to find the VNC-ability in OS X so I can control from my other PC, the 1024x768 is bad on a 24" monitor.

 

To anyone who's still reading at this point,,, sorry for all the random rambling thoughts....

[thenameisgabe]

The only program I know that can clone is diskutility and some mac clone programs. The way you can do this (you need large drives to store images). Make an image of your IDE drive, then restore it to the SATA drive. Of course, you need like 3 drives to do this, or an external USB. Keep in mind tha tyou need to have the buffer drive formatted as HFS+, because mac can't write to NTFS and fat32 has a filesize limit. You can do all this from diskutility on the install CD.

 

Safe mode and single user are two different things. Safe mode is like windows safe mode, just loads standard system kexts. Single user mode runs the system as root, with only a terminal and nothing else. Everything must be done manually.

 

I don't know why your system won't boot CD with AHCI on, considering that there are people here with SATA DVD who have done that (Hyper X being one I think). I personally have a IDE DVD drive, which works fine.

 

I would just reinstall to the SATA drive, cloning will render munky's method useless, because you will not take the EFI partition along for the ride, since it stays hidden in Disk Utility.

 

Good luck.

[bing]

The only program I know that can clone is diskutility and some mac clone programs....

 

[thenameisgabe]

haha, nice. Just make sure you carried the EFI partition along, or else munky's method will be useless. You can use the terminal to check if its there, its the first part of munky's tutorial.

[lucaferr]

For the record, I managed to solve similar S3 sleep problems on another but quite similar DFI board by enabling the JMicron controller in BIOS.

 

Initially I was installing OS X with it disabled since I had no need for it but after much experimentation I found that enabling this option solved the wake-up issue.

 

However, I still have trouble going to S3 sleep when enabling "Wake up from USB in S3/S4 sleep" (or something along those lines) in the power management menu in the BIOS. If I enable this option, as the system tries to go to sleep, it turns off the fans for a bit, wakes up with a blank screen and remains there with the system LED blinking.

 

With that option disabled, I cannot wake up the system by moving the mouse or pressing a key on the keyboard. I even set the jumper on the motherboard to enable standby power to the USB ports to no effect.

 

Anyone know of a fix for this?

[bing]

I installed the 10.5.2 ComboUpdate from 10.5.0....

 

SuperDuper! does not copy the EFI partition. Neither does Carbon Copy Cloner, despite reports to the contrary. I've done two recent clones using CCC, and each required multiple reboots due to system crashing during the copy operation. Not sure if the system as a whole is unstable, or if it's limited to CCC itself. I will try SuperD again, next clone. I've been rebooting so often that if it's a problem with general stability, I wouldn't have noticed. But I will soon enough as I'll be running it full-time.

 

I am using the EFI partition to boot, did all the steps manually on the fresh disk prior to reboot after the cloning, at least I copied the kexts from the known-good stale disk to the fresh one, that saved a bit of time. I will have to script this if a complete clone solution isn't found. I read Ghost works w/ HFS+ partitions, but I just dropped coin to upgrade Acronis, and I'm not a fan of Norton products anyway. I have the history of commands for this procedure, if anyone wants it, PM me.

 

The kexts I used are as follows:

 

ACPIPS2Nub.kext

dsmos.kext

IntelCPUPMDisabler.kext

SMBIOSEnabler.kext

LegacyIOAHCIBlockStorage.kext

LegacyAppleAHCIPort.kext

SMBIOSResolver.kext

 

I think (4) are from the GRUB-DFE ISO, (2) are from the AHCI link Gabe provided, and the last one I needed to solve a "_CFGetHostUUIDString: unable to determine UUID for host. Error: 35" error condition.

 

Graphics are up, miraculously.

Chipset Model: ATI Radeon HD 3800

Type: Display

Bus: PCIe

PCIe Lane Width: x8

VRAM (Total): 512 MB

Vendor: ATI (0x1002)

Device ID: 0x9505

Revision ID: 0x0000

ROM Revision: 113-B1480A-236

EFI Driver Version: 01.00.236

Displays:

SyncMaster:

Resolution: 1920 x 1200 @ 60 Hz

Depth: 32-bit Color

Core Image: Hardware Accelerated

Main Display: Yes

Mirror: Off

Online: Yes

Quartz Extreme: Supported

Rotation: Supported

Display Connector:

Status: No display connected

 

I used a combo approach. The following tutorial (the 10.5.2 path...) got me 90% of the way.

 

GFX-EFI Tutorial for NVIDIA GeForce 8800GT 512MB (G92), A complete guide with support files

 

At step 6 I got stuck for a bit. I didn't read ahead carefully and after installing the Leopard Graphics Update, I rebooted, only to met by the dreaded disco screen. I rebooted using '-x', and installed lastExile's Updated ATI Radeon HD 3850 -- Device ID:9505 package from here:

 

ATI Radeon HD pkg installers 10.5.x (Current 10.5.5)

 

Rebooted with '-s' and completed the last of step 6 with the following:

 

rm -rf /System/Library/Extensions.mkext

rm -rf /System/Library/Extensions/Caches/

rm -rf /System/Library/Caches/

 

Rebooted again, this time with '-f', and found a beautiful 1920x1200 desktop.

 

Quite nice after being stuck at 1024x768 for so long.

 

I didn't like using the Installer, I'd rather to have manually copied the kexts and such. I'd like to understand that part of it better. What else does the installer do? Not knowing bugs me. But oh well. I'll probably reinstall to a different disk from scratch just to make sure I've got the whole process down, and I can go into that further at that time. It never takes nearly as much time the second time around.

 

Some random thoughts. Apple still doesn't include a focus-follows-mouse option?! W.T.Fook? Tried MondoMouse, didn't like it. Using Zooom now, it's still a broken implementation as far as I can tell, but it's better than nothing.

 

http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/04/se...use-debate.html

 

It's nice to be running an OS with b a s h as an integral feature again. I use to use Linux quite a bit, so it's coming back slowly...

 

I like all the control available for each piece of the GUI, fonts specifically. That said, a lot seems hidden by the GUI, and that bugs me. For example, and I know this is probably simple, but, how do I see the whole system disk file structure from down at the root level in Finder, instead of just Apps/Lib/Sys/Users?

 

Anyway, I guess that's what bash is for.

 

I like the Console app, nice, instead of having to find the log I want in a shell and using "tail -f" or whatever.

 

Firefox runs OK, not as well as under 'doze though, and my favorite add-on -MouseZoom- doesn't work. That's a real drag. I'll look into a gestures package of something to duplicate the functionality, I guess.

 

Haven't been able to get VineServer to work with TightVNC on the 'doze machine.

 

Found a little app for viewing QAM TV feeds off the HDHomeRun, need to make that work soon. I don't want to shell out for EyeTV, as I'll probably move to FIOS soon, and then the HDHR will be hitting eBay.

 

I like installing software from a .dmg file, the process in general is so graceful compared to 'doze though I miss having a centralized app to uninstall stuff.

 

Front Row is one sweet looking app, though I only looked at it for two minutes....

 

Should I tempt fate and upgrade to 10.5.5? Not right now.

[thenameisgabe]

Well, I'm glad you're happy.

 

To see the root stuff, you need to enable hidden files. Google this and you should come up with a solution, there are terminal methods and also application methods (but of course the app methods are just the terminal methods with a gui). If i remember correctly, you can just browse to it by clicking on "Go to Folder" (or something like that) on one of the menus of the finder (Go maybe?).

 

My memory fails me, as I'm not using OSX anymore. Switched to ArchLinux a couple of weeks ago.

[bing]

Thanks Gabe, again. That Arch looks nice. I've been using Mint lately on my Wind netbook, I'll have to give Arch a look.

 

BTW, here's some BIOS clues:

 

http://csd.dficlub.org/forum/showthread.php?t=8008

http://forums.overclockersclub.com/index.p...howtopic=158348

 

And RAM clues, specific to mushkin parts, but they may prove helpful for someone that likes to mess endlessly with the hardware.

 

http://forums.mushkin.com/phpbb2/viewtopic...f=3&t=12380

http://forums.mushkin.com/phpbb2/viewtopic...f=3&t=12321

 

I discovered that I like building a system independant of the case to start. Will do so from now on. Much easier to pull RAM, disk cables, and PSU cables when it's out of the box, so to speak. I discovered that one of the PSU's I bought (to upgrade another system,) had a really annoying whine under certain disk benchmarks. It was nice to be able to swap the other one in easily to verify (and the bad unit was painlessly RMA'd with NewEgg.) My ThermalRight Ulltra-90 finally arrived today, so I guess it's time to actually build it. I'll be using a Noctua or Scythe S-Flex fan for the CPU and a mini P180 case.

 

Valdeam, here you go.

[Mathies]

hey,

i have the same motherboard, with a Gtx 260, and i've tried Kalyway 10.5.2.

The installation was succesful, but if i want to boot my machine after the Setup, it stops and a Crashreport [41] is displayed. So i dont know what i should try, i hope someone kan help me

 

Mathies

(Remember im from germany)

[thenameisgabe]

As far as I know, the GTX260 isnt supported yet, so I don't know if that has anything to do with it. Also, I would suggest following the boot-132 guides. I know for a fact that the mini-guide I posted a few pages back works. Kalyway is not the best option for this board (I couldn't get it to work).

 

On a side note, what cpu coolers are you guys using? I can't seem to find a definitive selection. I need to replace my NT06-Lite as the backplate doesn't fit correctly.

 

-Gabe

[Hyper X]

Guess interest in this board died off, still some small problems never resolved like USB and sound after sleep ;\

[replicant]

Guess interest in this board died off, still some small problems never resolved like USB and sound after sleep ;\

 

hyperx! please don't say that. there just aren't many mostly working mATX boards out there. i've been looking to build an update to date htpc, and figured i'd base it around this mobo since its pretty new still and seems (seemed) to have activity in the thread..

 

if you don't turn on sleep in the bios or in the power settings of system preferences, there shouoldn't be a problem, right?

 

just hope activity doesn't completely die off on this thread since i'm about to buy this board and setup boot132+chameleon.