Success story of installing Leopard onto ECS G31T-M9 motherboard.

[wenter]

I want to share my experience of installing Leopard to the ECS G31T-M9 system.

 

First of all - I bought the cheapest motherboard, CPU and Video for my new build (sure not the best way to go )

Here are the specs: Intel G31, ICH7, VIA VT1708B sound and Atheros AR8112 LAN. I also got the e3200 Celeron CPU (ex-dual core Pentium e2220), and Powercolor 1GB HD3650 Video card.

 

First I tried to install iDeneb 1.5 (10.5.7). Booted up fine, installation went flawlessly, but after reboot - no boot due to the framework. I knew it has something to do with ACPI part of system. Since I had iAtkos v.7 laying around I tried it. Installer even not starting - constant reboot.

 

With flags "mach_970 cpus=1 -v" installer started. I installed the system, ACPI and couple more patches, leaving the vanilla kernel to try. No sound, VGA or Lan to install. After completing the installation - reboot loop. Typed "cpus=1" - and I'm in the system. Little research and I'm ready to install kext for the rest of my hardware:

AttansicL2Ethernet090224 - Atheros AR8112 LAN

Azalia for VIA VT1708B sound.

I found link for Driver for HD3650 and installed it - no luck, no resolution changes, nothing. Looked for the device ID it was the same as HD2600 (I was surprised). Downloaded the driver - and I got the proper video settings.

 

There are two things that are bothering me:

1) cpus=1. After i got tired of typing it every time at boot I installed a fix from iDeneb DVD. But still want to use two cores on my system - need to do more research.

2) sound. With Azalia I have sound output on the back of the computer only and no auido built-in devices on "About this mac" and no sound on front panel connectors. Also need to do more research.

 

To summarize everything - this cheap mobo can be a decent Mac