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I have FINALLY got Leopard 10.5.4 running


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Ok, I guess I can call this my introduction help thread and what not. I got Mac OS X Leopard 10.5.4 after THEE DAYS of getting the dam thing to finally boot off the harddrive without the DVD (dam Darwin Bootloader just would not install right, it wouldn't boot...jut a blinking cursor on screen)

 

Now I do have a few questions here as to what to do now that I have it running:

 

1. How do I dual boot this with my Vista/XP? (I already have a dual boot system of Windows XP, Vista, and a BartPE OS that has XPE <-- I use this for backup and for a quick boot up to do simple diagnostic tasks). I have XP on Harddrive 1, Vista on Harddrive 2 (BIOS is set to boot from drive 1), and Mac OS on Drive 3.

 

Let me get this streight. I WILL NOT be installing MacOS on the same drive as my primary system!!! I had a lot of bad experiences when fiddling around with the MBR and partitions on my Windows drives a long time ago, and doing any dual booting from the same drive as my windows drives is out of the question. I will not be risking it.

 

2. I still need drivers for my NetGear W311G PCI WiFi Card, and my motherboard's built in sound card. I will detail my specs further down this post.

 

3. Is Mac OS 10.5.4 the latest that Apple has out for the Intel Macs right now? I'm just curious...

 

4. Whats so special about the Kalyway ISO that everyone here seems to be using? I noticed it had more to offer driver wise, But as of now I won't be switching. It was a pain in the ass just to get the f***ing bootloader to work, and I won't risk killing it if I attempt to use this. By the way, I had no idea how I got the bootloader to work. It just finally decided to install.

 

The weird thing on the bootloader, is that when I updated the booloader with the iATKOS 4i DVD, it will install, and during this, my hardrive will make some "funny" noises, like it has bad sectors or something (not sure how to discribe this sound to you). It sounds like a clicking noise that it would make if power was intermittently going on a off for it. (no, the power is just fine). Then it will say it failed to make it the "Startup Disk". Afterwords, DESPITE the error, it boots! After a repair with Disk First Aid everything runs fine. I don't really know why.

 

I do know that I swapped out the power supply for a mATX supply (even though I have a full ATX case)since the old one interferes with TV reception, has a loud fan (two fans no less), and is overall...a piece of {censored}. The ONLY change I can fathom here is that I am using two power adapters for the SATA drives now instead of one (since the old supply had one native SATA power jack, so only one of the drives had an adapter, though this had no effect for the IDE drive that Mac OS was installed on)

 

Since the install was for non-EFI, it will only boot with the X86 bootloader. I won't be switching or otherwise "changing" the bootloader/Mac installation untill I can be sure as to how it got it to update the MBR properly.

 

I did try Darwin installer in the terminal early on, but it always bitched about "Resource Busy" when it attempted to update the harddisk MBR. so that never worked for me. Oh and yes, I did make sure BIOS was set to boot the drive. My BIOS is rather crappy and doesn't even have a "boot menu" to do a quick change of boot drives. So I have to go into BIOS and change the boot order any time I want to boot the Mac system. Really annoying...

 

 

Anyways, here is my computer specs which might help in finding the right drivers. The video card drivers already seem to work great for my Nvidia card. (I'm dam glad I don't have AMD system! I heard it was a pain to get Mac to work on AMDs)

 

 

Motherboard: Foxconn 915GL7MH-S with integrated sound/video (using PCI-E Nvidia NX8400GS at the moment)

 

Sound card: SoundMax. I will have to go into BIOS to check exact chipset for this, since the drivers don't tell me what the hell this really is....Hopefully you can figure it out when you google up the mobo model.... :)

 

Network card: NETGEAR WG311v3 802.11g PCI Wireless card. Works great in windows...just not in Leopard. lol

 

CPU: Intel Pentium 4 3.2Ghz with HT (This is NOT a dual core CPU)

 

Hardrive(s): 2x 300GB drives and one 80GB drive for the Mac OS. The first two run off SATA, the Mac is running of IDE. I have like 3 drives and a internal USB card reader packed in. Its a rather large case.

 

Floppy drive: External, USB "SmartDisk". Advertises that it can read/write twice as fast as internal FDD drives

 

Install Method: iATKOS 4i

 

Note here, that for some reason the Mac OS will not recognize the second SATA drive. Its the same filesystem (NTFS) as the first, but the Mac OS "doesn't recognize" and offers to format, ignore, or eject. I choose eject every time, but it would be nice to see my Vista drive show up....

 

That's about it on relevant specs. I will post any details that you request.

 

Only major issue: The clock is off by like 5+ hours, even when on correct timezone settings. I don't think it was a "slow clock" issue, since it was off like this the instant the Mac OS started. I can "correct" the clock, but then the clock in my Windows OS will be off by 5+ hours in the other direction....

 

I do hope I can get some help here, since the MacOS seems to be running pretty well on my hardware. I might beable to do EFI if I can figure out how I got the bootloader to install, but untill then I will be sticking with the modded kernel and the x86 bootloader.

 

I hope I didn't strain your eyes, or any potential ADD disorder you might have by making this really long post, but I want to make sure I get all my info out so that anyone who wants to help, will know all the info needed to do so. :D

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The weird thing on the bootloader, is that when I updated the booloader with the iATKOS 4i DVD, it will install, and during this, my hardrive will make some "funny" noises, like it has bad sectors or something (not sure how to discribe this sound to you). It sounds like a clicking noise that it would make if power was intermittently going on a off for it. (no, the power is just fine).

 

OKAY, you have a lot of very different questions... there is a very detailed tutorial and posts on DUAL BOOTING, check them out. The simplest way is to install the systems on separate drives and use the boot menu (usually f12 at POST) to pick the drive to boot from.

 

BUT THIS LINE in quote jumps out at anybody with a minimum knowledge of hard-drives: that drive "with the clicking noise" is in dire danger of kicking-the-bucket, soon(!)... irregardless of what OS is installed on it. This is NOT a software problem and could never be caused by any software.

 

Also installing LEO on IDE is not the preferred way to go, as SATA controllers are supported better.

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there is a very detailed tutorial and posts on DUAL BOOTING, check them out. The simplest way is to install the systems on separate drives and use the boot menu (usually f12 at POST) to pick the drive to boot from.

 

My bios does not have that feature. I have to go in and change the order manually. Believe me, I checked!

 

As a last resort, I may decide to split the second partition on my first drive and just do a dual boot from there, but I really don't feel comfortable disturbing my Vista Bootloader, but whatever. If I do do this I will need to know how to do it while preserving the Vista bootloader.

 

that drive "with the clicking noise" is in dire danger of kicking-the-bucket, soon(!)... irregardless of what OS is installed on it. This is NOT a software problem and could never be caused by any software.

 

Yes, I am aware that this is a bad noise for a drive to be making. Why do you think I don't have my main system on it anymore? lol.

 

The hard drive only makes that noise when it the install try's to update the MBR. During all other times, it is silent. I've never had any problems with it. Back before the bootloader would work correctly, the harddive wouldn't make this noise at all during the install procedure and the install would finish without error and restart, then fail to boot. (blinking cursor freeze described ealier)

 

Which is weird. Why would a clicking noise that sounds like the death scream of a harddrive actually make something that didn't work before, work now? Actually I think MacOS is booting faster now. It took a flat 30 seconds to boot up.

 

Before, when I had to use the DVD, it would take a bit longer (I didn't include the time it takes to boot the DVD in this). Still. I will think about moving it to my first drive. Since it fails to even mount the second SATA drive (due to it "not recognizing" the file system), I will have it installed on the first SATA drive. But believe me, I will be VERY uneasy about doing this!

 

Update: Ok spent an entire day trying to figure out how to reconfigure my system partitions. I used GParted to create space at the beginning of the drive, since the Disk Utility refused to work when the partition is at the end of the drive. So I had to create free space at the beginning of the drive. THIS TOOK 8 HOURS! It had to move ALL 230+GB of files 8GB further down the drive so that it could make the free space. It took all night to do this and I'm dam lucky there wasn't a power failure during this, or I would be severely screwed right now! But it went uninterrupted and now I finally have a partition that can be bootable (though I will restore the Vista bootloader afterwards and use the boot0 files to boot it instead).

 

Not only that it seems all the files in my "secondary" partition (where it kept quite a bit of media and a few video games), went missing, so now I'm running file recovery on it. THIS IS WHY I DIDN"T WANT TO F***K WITH SYSTEM PARTITIONS! God dam, they need to refine this {censored} so I don't have to do this. Make it so I don't have to make free space at the beginning of the drive god dam it! Everything was fine until I was forced to move a 230GB partition around. No surprise, it screwed something up, since my second partition is "empty" now.

 

Fortunately I didn't lose anything else and my primary partition remains healthy.

 

EDIT: Phew...I was able to fully recover the partition. Since neither XP nor Vista store any pagefiles or anything similer on this partition, the data was left untouched, so I was able to restore it without any significant losses. Still, I recommend that if you simply must try out Mac OS X on your system, do it on a separate drive or on a new drive that hasn't been setup for windows yet or just has and doesn't have anything important on it yet.

 

Its the safest way to do it. This is definitely not for those who aren't familiar with the NTFS/FAT and partition scheme for hard drives. Be sure you know what your doing and the correct software you will need, because you won't be able to do this with the default software for Windows! So unless you have second drive to put this on or a free partition that is bootable, then don't even bother.

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