bboy_sonik Posted April 3, 2009 Share Posted April 3, 2009 Hi guys! First off, a quick introduction, *bows*, completely new to the OSX platform, I'm an Aussie, always used Windows (currently dual-booting between iDeneb v1.4 and Windows 7 RC1) but am enjoying OSX so far, it reminds me a lot of my old Amiga days *nostalgia* So I have Leopard working 100%, it seems, on my PC, thanks entirely to the great forum you guys have. Here are my specs, all taken from System Profiler where possible: - AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 5000+ (at 3.12GHz) - 2GB DDR2 RAM (at 960MHz 4-4-4-12) - Gigabyte GA-MA78G-DS3H Mainboard, which has the 780G Northbridge and SB700 Southbridge - 9600GT Graphics, running NVDarwin 512MB that was included in iDeneb v1.4 packages - Using some random SB700 Extensions.kext i found on the web, built for iDeneb, allowing my OSX installed as partition 2 on SATA, running in native IDE mode on "Tertiary" controller (the one after secondary); 160GB IDE on Primary Master; IDE DVD-RW on Primary Slave; all working 100% fine with great boot speed (less than 30 seconds) and all my NTFS/FAT32 partitions working - Onboard network, Audio, USB2 working very well OK, so all is well and I'm pretty happy. I've already done a bit of exploring, and have a few questions for someone more experienced to give me a few pointers if possible, and if they would be so kind to let me experience more greatness of this OS 1) I'm wondering how to change some little options to do with the UI, and if there is some sort of "Power Tool" out there for tweaking and stuff. Specifically, I have a few annoyances... a) Mouse acceleration, I hate it (I have a 2000dpi Laser Mouse) but can't find where to turn it off; Is there a way to make the Maximize cover the whole screen and/or to make the double-click of the title bar maximize instead of minimize (like Windows?) and c) How do I make it so Home and End keys move the text cursor to home and end, rather than scroll to the top/bottom of the page (if this is a Safari thing, i'll be going straight to Firefox lol)? All in all, I would love if someone could recommend some software for tricking-out the options of OSX, if you know what I mean, and would love for someone to even advice websites or specific software that is regarded useful. In other words, i'd like to know what YOUR personal list of "OSX Essential Software" is, so I can have a play around =D (P.S., I already have the iDeneb included software installed, and even updated them to latest versions, such as OnyX, Kext Helper b7, Pacifist, and so on) 2) I downloaded the "NVIDIA 9000 Series Driver v2" from these forums and installed them, but it didn't seem to do anything. Everything in the system profiler is the same, will the in-built NVDarwin 512MB be good enough? Or can I get better performance? I noticed that changing resolution caused a blank blue-screen, and I hard to do a hard-reset, but after reboot the new resolution was in effect. Strange, but livable as I will not change it again But would I gain benefit from a newer/different driver? If so, how would I install it? 3) Given my specs I listed above, I have attatched a full result from Xbench in plain text format. If someone could review and tell me if it looks good, that'd be fantastic! The numbers look good to me, I think, but a second opinion always helps 4) Lastly, if anyone has any pointers or tips for an OSX newbie, such as handy websites, or certain things I should try out and research, i'd love to hear them OK, well sorry if that post was huge haha... i'm keen to discover more about the platform, and will keep exploring for more hours to come. I look forward to anyone's reply, and I thank you very much in advance. Peace! Xbench.txt Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lanceomni Posted April 3, 2009 Share Posted April 3, 2009 #2 In System Profile does it show QE/Ci supported for your graphics card? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bboy_sonik Posted April 3, 2009 Author Share Posted April 3, 2009 #2 In System Profile does it show QE/Ci supported for your graphics card? Quartz Extreme = Enabled What's Ci? It says Hardware Accelerated... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lanceomni Posted April 3, 2009 Share Posted April 3, 2009 Quartz Extreme = Enabled What's Ci? It says Hardware Accelerated... Core Image. I was just curious. Are you able to change resolutions at at all or do all of the settings result in black screen. What is your current resolution? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bboy_sonik Posted April 3, 2009 Author Share Posted April 3, 2009 Core Image. I was just curious. Are you able to change resolutions at at all or do all of the settings result in black screen. What is your current resolution? Core Image is not in the list... is this normal? EDIT: Sorry, I was only in Windows and was going off memory =P NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT: Chipset Model: NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT Type: Display Bus: PCIe PCIe Lane Width: x16 VRAM (Total): 512 MB Vendor: NVIDIA (0x10de) Device ID: 0x0622 Revision ID: 0x00a1 ROM Revision: NVdarwin 1.2.5 Displays: Display Connector: Status: No display connected NEC CI A727: Resolution: 1280 x 1024 @ 60 Hz Depth: 32-bit Color Core Image: Hardware Accelerated Main Display: Yes Mirror: Off Online: Yes Quartz Extreme: Supported Rotation: Supported This is good? I can change resolutions, but whenever I do it results in the light-blue colour covering the whole screen (the same colour that'd appear when iDeneb first loads when the cache and all that has been cleared... so before the GUI/Shell is loaded or whatever it is). But after I press reset and load OSX again, the resolution that I clicked on is enabled and working. It's at 1280x1024x32. Animated backgrounds run well, but they "jerk up" when I move windows around. I think that's OK right? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
granolamonkey Posted April 4, 2009 Share Posted April 4, 2009 I have pretty much the same setup as you - same mobo, video card and a x2 5000+ with a 150gb raptor drive. I gave up on it and installed via iDeneb v1.4 on an intel based Shuttle SD39P2 with a 9600gt. Since you used the iDeneb disc, could you tell me the options that you chose in the customize step of the install and if there are any bios settings you changed? Thx - edit: also - the links to those kexts that worked well for you would be great too. I realize it's a lot to ask, but I put in a weekend's worth of work on my old AMD rig and couldn't get it to work with the options/kexts I chose. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bboy_sonik Posted April 4, 2009 Author Share Posted April 4, 2009 I have pretty much the same setup as you - same mobo, video card and a x2 5000+ with a 150gb raptor drive. I gave up on it and installed via iDeneb v1.4 on an intel based Shuttle SD39P2 with a 9600gt. Since you used the iDeneb disc, could you tell me the options that you chose in the customize step of the install and if there are any bios settings you changed? Thx - edit: also - the links to those kexts that worked well for you would be great too. I realize it's a lot to ask, but I put in a weekend's worth of work on my old AMD rig and couldn't get it to work with the options/kexts I chose. Sure. iDeneb v1.4, I chose the Voodoo 9.5.0 Kernel, and the Seatbelt fix. I chose ALC889 audio driver, and RTL1000 network (or whatever it is, maybe RT1000). Both working fine after install. Only thing I had to disable was Firewire in the BIOS, but I never use it anyway. My SATA drive that I installed to was on the very-first port, so it was listed as "Channel 3 Master" on the BIOS boot screen thing (Primary=Channel 1, Secondary=Channel 2). On my gigabyte board, using SATA ports 5 or 6 makes it come up as Secondary (Channel 2) which is native AND legacy IDE mode, this did NOT work! Only native IDE option in the BIOS is a must, and do NOT use Ports 5/6 for legacy IDE! Using the Extension.kext below and over-writing the one in iDeneb v1.4 ISO with Transmac allowed a super fast 10 minute install, and my IDE DVD-ROM booted A-OK and both my IDE and SATA harddisk (i installed to SATA) were detected 100% correctly... BUT you STILL have to select ATIATA or whatever it is in chipset drivers, the first one there (it lists the SB700 in the info box). ...the kext can be found at http://rapidshare.com/files/160514598/Nexu...sions.mkext.zip it was made by a guy called nexusmac who posted them on infinatemac forums. I also chose all the 'Applications' in iDeneb installation, but they are all optional of course. I installed NVDarwin 512MB for my GeForce 9600GT 512MB card (PCI-E 16x of course). Apart from that, I think that was it. I didn't choose any other fixes apart from Seatbelt (which is required for AMD's and Voodoo Kernel 9.5.0 it said). I didn't choose any of the two Shutdown fixes either as I wasn't sure which one to choose, I just installed without either, and I made a partition image with Acronis after installing so I have a backup incase I do something wrong. Now, I can try out either one with the Pacifist program (to add packages off original iDeneb disc). Oh, and yeah the shutdown fix is needed, I hope one of them fixes it, because whenever I try to restart/shutdown, it goes though to the end, and my monitor powers off, but it just stays there without actually powering off or rebooting. Well, that's pretty much it I think. Oh and P.S., the thread from where those kexts came from can be found at http://www.infinitemac.com/f5/sb700-sucks-...1435/page4.html on post #35 - I hope I don't get in trouble for linking to another, not-as-good OSX86 forum haha! Cheers =) Let me know if you have any recommendations for cool software or 'tweaks' granolamonkey! Good luck! EDIT: forgot a few CRITICAL details... my bad.... double checked, and everything here is exactly what I did =) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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