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Build a Perfect Mac for less than $250


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Ok,

I'm convinced... This is a great build for the price (ignoring the xbench very low score).

I installed all update as directed in the first post but didn't do the video "fix" and no artifacts with great looking QE and CI. The resolution default is the one I would pick anyway -- so not being able to change it is no big deal for me.

I've load it up and for web browsing, DVD watching, ITune listening, and Office work this little machine works great!!!! Parellels worked but was slow (went back to just a native XP install). Photo shop also works but as would be expected is also some what slow.

 

Thanks again!

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Is it possible to add 2 PCI cards to this board using a riser card? I have put in a NEC FireWire card but want to also put in a Gigabit Ethernet card so that it can be my network Time Machine backup box. Anyone using this with multiple PCI cards?

 

And the answer is YES. I took a chance and experimented and got lucky. There are many types of riser cards some are manufacturer i.e. via specific. I used this one and worked for me:

http://www.logicsupply.com/products/pci201_32

 

If anyone else tries it, there is a row of jumpers which set the interrupt for the second card. The included instructions refer to a dos program that it didnt ship with, and in any case I dont have bootable dos anything to deal with that. So I did what any hacker geek would do keep trying the jumpers until I found a position that worked. It will vary depending on your card and there is a possiblity that you will fry your cards doing this. But it worked for me.

 

I now have a Rosewell NEC Based firewire card in slot that has iSight attached to it, and I have a 1G Dlink Ethernet card, both are working perfectly. Now to move some stuff off of the old drive on to the 1 TB samsung and I will have a home built "Time Capsule for backing up all the macs.

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Hi, I'm think of trying this soon..But, I need to add a usb and a firewire card.

What cards would be the most compatible?

 

I used this firewire card http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16815265003 worked out of the box no additional drivers were required. It is NEC based which seems to be the way to go. But why would you want to put in a USB card there 4 in the back two on the mobo header and if you need more why not just add a usb hub?

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Guys can anyone tell me if or if you know of a heatsink which can replace the one on the gpu? I'm thinking about ordering this within the next few days and I am planning on putting it inside a 360 case. Only problem is Im looking at pics and videos and the heatink+fan thats ontop of the GPU looks a little tall...

 

So is there a replacement I could use to make it a little thinner? btw can someone run a temp test on the cpu and the gpu and let me know what they are like?

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Well I did this system build and so far so good. got all the parts from New egg, got the iso file of 10.5.2 and did the install. then did the 10.5.3 update and then did the online update to 10.5.4

seems I did some video update along the way, not sure I can tell that it did anything.

I am so new at this I am not sure what to look for or check but as far as I can tell everything is working. I am using it now for this message, so it got on my local home network, it has sound, it will go to sleep and wake up, I am able to see my network computers which are all windows, I do not think the windows computers can see this one on the network but am not sure that is a big deal and also sure once I play a while longer I will find what ever it is that I do not have turned on or set correct. I got a wireless keyboard and mouse working on it, got some software installed, skype. firefox, filezilla, and open office. am not sure I have office all setup correct, can not find it or get it running with out going through a bunch of hoops. but I was able to copy an xcel spreadsheet from one of my windows machines and then edit and save it on this machine. I have a wireless card on the way so will give that a try. It looks like everyone is having good luck so I do not think I will run into any trouble there. when I built the system the mother board came with a small case speaker I would call it, anyway I did not find it in the insturctions and did not see a place on the mother board to plug it in, so as far as I can tell that is the only thing that is not perfect with the install and setup. need less to say I am proud of myself to make it this far. I guess what I am saying if an old man like me can do this I am proof that anyone can. I am not real sure I am ever going to use this system for anything but It was something I wanted to try, and so far I am very happy with the out come. I just may want to install OSX on the msi wind when I get one. it looks like they are having great luck with OSX on the wind and I think they are just about done with a setup that will be plugnplay for OSX on a wind. Seems I have a lot to learn, just the little simple things, take a snap shot of part of the desktop.....well that took me about an hour to figure out just how to do it. (but) I did get it done. ye ha.....now on to a simple thing of change the mouse curser. hmm I bet it is here somewhere.

guess that is all I can think of just wanted to pass along the great info that I am playing with OSX on a machine I built. cool

 

 

thanks very much to everyone here that has posted into, I would never have tried this without all the great info that is here.

 

Well I did this system build and so far so good. got all the parts from New egg, got the iso file of 10.5.2 and did the install. then did the 10.5.3 update and then did the online update to 10.5.4

seems I did some video update along the way, not sure I can tell that it did anything.

I am so new at this I am not sure what to look for or check but as far as I can tell everything is working. I am using it now for this message, so it got on my local home network, it has sound, it will go to sleep and wake up, I am able to see my network computers which are all windows, I do not think the windows computers can see this one on the network but am not sure that is a big deal and also sure once I play a while longer I will find what ever it is that I do not have turned on or set correct. I got a wireless keyboard and mouse working on it, got some software installed, skype. firefox, filezilla, and open office. am not sure I have office all setup correct, can not find it or get it running with out going through a bunch of hoops. but I was able to copy an xcel spreadsheet from one of my windows machines and then edit and save it on this machine. I have a wireless card on the way so will give that a try. It looks like everyone is having good luck so I do not think I will run into any trouble there. when I built the system the mother board came with a small case speaker I would call it, anyway I did not find it in the insturctions and did not see a place on the mother board to plug it in, so as far as I can tell that is the only thing that is not perfect with the install and setup. need less to say I am proud of myself to make it this far. I guess what I am saying if an old man like me can do this I am proof that anyone can. I am not real sure I am ever going to use this system for anything but It was something I wanted to try, and so far I am very happy with the out come. I just may want to install OSX on the msi wind when I get one. it looks like they are having great luck with OSX on the wind and I think they are just about done with a setup that will be plugnplay for OSX on a wind. Seems I have a lot to learn, just the little simple things, take a snap shot of part of the desktop.....well that took me about an hour to figure out just how to do it. (but) I did get it done. ye ha.....now on to a simple thing of change the mouse curser. hmm I bet it is here somewhere.

guess that is all I can think of just wanted to pass along the great info that I am playing with OSX on a machine I built. cool

not sure what I did wrong or different but when I go to system software overview it says kernel is Darwin 9.4.0 I know I should have done the Vanilla but somewhere I missed that step and since I do not know how to change it and as far as I can tell it is running ok I guess I will just leave well enough alone

 

 

 

thanks very much to everyone here that has posted info, I would never have tried this without all the great info that is here.

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how do you use guid with the atom. When i start my computer (i have 2 HD's in) and the leo install is not recognized as an os. but if i click that drive it says somethig about reboot and when it reboots it goes into my leo install

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Looks like I need some help-----I spoke too soon and it seems all is not well

I tried restart and this is what I got

a dos screen that showed a buch of lines that were debug

then a line that said

Syncing disk... killing all process

 

continuing

unmount of /home failed (45)

unmount of /net failed (45)

done

mach reboot

 

 

after that nothing happened. I had to push and hold the power button to turn it off and then push the power button again to restart it

 

what in the world do I have screwed up now?

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Hello everyone,

 

New member here. I've been a Windows user all my life and have recently ventured to the Mac side. My dad's computer was acting up so I decided to switch out some parts. At first I was just going to install XP again, but then found this wicked tutorial. I should have switched a long time ago... haha! Anyways, my next purchase will be the revised MacBook, can't wait!

 

All I bought for this build was the Intel D945GCLF ($70 @ NCIX.com) and a stick of memory. The rest are older parts that I'm reusing for the time being. Future upgrades include a newer harddrive, miniITX case, and new LCD.

 

Followed the tutorial step by step and was up and running in no time. Had some problems with some devices not working, but a quick restart fixed that.

 

I still haven't applied the Graphics Fix yet. Can someone provide more detailed steps for this fix? Thanks!

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Guys can anyone tell me if or if you know of a heatsink which can replace the one on the gpu? I'm thinking about ordering this within the next few days and I am planning on putting it inside a 360 case. Only problem is Im looking at pics and videos and the heatink+fan thats ontop of the GPU looks a little tall...

 

So is there a replacement I could use to make it a little thinner? btw can someone run a temp test on the cpu and the gpu and let me know what they are like?

 

could someone also measure the height of the GPU heatsink (the one with the fan on)

 

anyone?...

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Guys can anyone tell me if or if you know of a heatsink which can replace the one on the gpu? I'm thinking about ordering this within the next few days and I am planning on putting it inside a 360 case. Only problem is Im looking at pics and videos and the heatink+fan thats ontop of the GPU looks a little tall...

 

So is there a replacement I could use to make it a little thinner? btw can someone run a temp test on the cpu and the gpu and let me know what they are like?

 

could someone also measure the height of the GPU heatsink (the one with the fan on)

 

anyone?...

 

 

 

just took mine apart and from the bottow to the top of the screw is 1 3/4"

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just took mine apart and from the bottow to the top of the screw is 1 3/4"

 

Thanks man! thats real helpful :) I didnt know it was that small :D It will be perfect cheers once again.

 

Is anyone able to do a temp check on it? in bios or on an OS? also does anyone know of a new gpu can be added to the pci slot?

 

I know its not PCI-E but theres some old PCI cards still hanging around out there.., or would there be know point? the onboard probs works better than old PCI cards anyway I supose

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this thing is awsome. all i have left is the reboot bug. other than that i can sleep wake just fine except that when i wake i have to renew the ip on the mac and my bluetooth has to reconnect.

 

mine has a reboot bug as well. I had not tried to reboot until I installed OS X86 tools, it did some check and wanted to reboot, this is when I found out that reboot does not work. I have a question you might be able to answer, since you said sleep works.

mine will go to sleep but I do not know how to wake it up. I think it has something to do with not pressing the correct key, since I am using a windows keyboard and do not have the special keys made for mac. then again it could be that I do not know what the hell I am doing.

can we plug a mac keyboard in? I have no idea what type of plug they have.

thanks

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good deal maybe I just need to get a mac keyboard.

 

I have another question, I am trying to get my windows computers to see the mac, have done lots of reading and several things say to go to Directory Access utility (under Applications -> Utilities)

I do not have Directory Access

 

All I have there is Directory.app and directory utility.app

did directory access not get installed? Is there a way to install it?

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I just finished building my first Intel mac using this mobo with 2gb of ram and 250gb sata HDD. I would say this is a great mobo to use to try out Leopard.

 

I almost got everything working except for the reboot issue, it just hangs if you try to reboot. Currently Leopard is 10.5.4 with 9.4.0 kernel. Anyone have any fix for this?

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Thanks a lot for this guide! I was looking to buy the atom board anyways, but being able to easily put OSX on it made the decision easier. I just got it installed last night, 120gb sata 2.5" drive and 2gb ram, using the instructions here. :P

 

It took a couple tries to get it to boot from the dvd but once it did it installed smoothly. I haven't had jittery video or reboot issues. Only thing left is to find a mac compatible usb wireless card (using a mini itx case with no room for pci).

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Anyone?

 

 

I'm currently using SATA hard drive and formated with GUID. I have not tried using PATA hard drive. Once you format the hard drive either MBR or GUID, you have to run fdisk and mark it active. The Kalyway DVD does not do it for you.

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