My Native Dual Boot (Mac OS default) Installation Guide and Hardware

[scuba]

HARDWARE

Hardware selection is important... Particularly the Motherboard. I went with Intel and in particular the Integrated GMA950 graphics as it is in production models and will therefore be natively supported for multiple generations of the OS. If I need extra graphics grunt, I can install a PCI-E card down the track but I'm no gamer, I can also easily bump up the processor to a Real P4(even Dual Core) and I have 2 RAM slots free for extra RAM. I think I've future proofed myself (as best you can) fairly nicely.

I was also aiming for a quiet (not silent) system... moving from a fanless CRT iMac I appreciate quiet computing.

 

New Components

-Celeron 331 (2.66GHz EM64T)

-Intel D945GNTL (same Integrated GMA950 graphics as MacBook and Mac mini)

-2 x 512Mb DDR2 RAM (Dual Channel)

-Case is a Black Macron 8601 with 400W Macron PSU (quite a nice yet still cheap case, $110 Australian)

Overall cost $510 Australian

 

Recycled Components

-20Gb IDE HDD (Partitioned 11Gb HFS+ for MacOS and 9Gb NTFS for XP)

-10Gb IDE HDD (Partitioned FAT32, all my User folder and My Documents reside here)

-Firewire PCI Card

-Firewire external case with Pioneer DV-105 single layer burner.

 

MEDIA

I had my sister's fiancee download a 10.4.6 torrent for me (they have a nice fat connection), so I'm usure what version it is, suffice to say it included support patches for AMD as well as Intel processors.

 

INSTALLATION - MacOS

I started with the burner and 20Gb HDD in the machine (it only has 1 IDE bus) booted from the MacOS DVD, partitioned the drive with disk utility into the 11Gb and 9Gb (or whatever the remainder is) partitions, and formatted them HFS+ and MS-DOS format respectively. I wanted more space in MacOS because I intend to use it 90% of the time.

Then continued to install Mac OS.

All went smoothly, no hiccups and all features seem to be working (although I have been unable to try SATA support). I selected all the appropriate support patches for my setup, (Sigmatel Sound, SSE2 and SSE3).

 

(Interestingly for people with a Sigmatel 9220 (I think it is) audio chipset who are getting sound out of their rear microphone port (rather than speaker port) I have the same issue, BUT I also get sound out of the front headphone port. Thus for my dual boot system, I don't have to swap speaker inputs when switching between OS's.

I've not yet tried the same with my front Microphone port, but I'm hoping....)

 

INSTALLATION - XP

I installed XP MCE to the other partition, getting Windows to re-format the partition to NTFS. I had a few issues with the Windows install surprisingly, but that was probably my fault more than anything, being more a Mac person. I still have issues with sound in Windows when under a heavy processor load.

 

DUAL BOOT SETUP

To get MacOS to boot by default I used Hiren's Boot CD (Google it) and the MBR Work Tool to make the Mac partition active. (Bit of DOS work here, but it's reasonably straight forward)

To give me the option of selecting Windows from the Bootloader, I had to follow these instructions. (courtesy "samba" another user of this forum and someone else who I can't seem to find who used the same method without the using Terminal)

 

Boot into MacOS, copy /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.Boot.plist to the desktop, open the Desktop copy by double clickingand add these lines:

 

<key>Quiet Boot</key>

<string>No</string>

<key>Timeout</key>

<string>10</string>

save, then drag and drop the file from the desktop back to

/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/

 

the system will ask you for the admin password to overwrite the file.

Enter the Password and restart.

 

The system should boot with the Darwin Bootloader and give you 10 seconds to press a key to select which partition to boot from. It even identifies each partition as the name you give each partition, I called mine Mac HD and Windows HD.

 

MOVING USERS and MY DOCUMENTS FOLDERS TO SECOND PARTITION (Optional)

EDITED 16 June 06, had trouble with freezing after system sleep, worked out the second HDD was not waking, therefore I have adjusted theis section so the Users folder is now simply on a second partition of the system drive rather than a separate HDD. My second HDD is now a resident in my external Firewire Case.

 

By moving all your documents to another partition, you make it very easy to backup or to fiddle with the system partition without risking your valuable documents.

Since future updates to MacOS will be risky, having my documents easily accessible and removeable is valuable.

XP can't even see the HFS+ partition and OS X can only read the NTFS partition which is fine by me...neither OS can overwrite something important...

 

in MacOS I used the following to move my entire Users folder to the second partition http://maczealots.com/articles/home/

WARNING-requires using the Terminal and "superuser" status, but it's all laid out for you in the article, just follow it closely and re-read before doing anything.

 

in Windows I cheated by using TweakUI's "Special Folders" feature and re-directing the Desktop, Documents, My Music and My Pictures to their Mac equivalents inside the Users Directory.