Help with an Intel S5000VSA

[bgruen]

I have 5 2U rack computers that run as a video processing render farm. They currently run Windows, but I'd like to add the capability to run Mac OS-X 10.5.x. Not sure if they will be dual boot or not, but the first step is to just get OS-X running on one of them. I have a Mac Pro Leopard workstation to use as a resource.

 

As the board name implies, it has the S5000 chipset. The two methods I've been trying are Lifehacker's thumb drive method that uses a vanilla install disk and Chameleon 2.0 RC3 (I'm using a Leopard disk instead of a Snow Leopard disk) and a fully patched iPC Leopard disk.

 

The problem I run into is that it cannot see the SATA disks. The iPC install disk sees the SATA disk just fine and installs the image, but when I reboot I get the dreaded "Still waiting for root device" error. The thumb drive method does not see the SATA drive at all (but this method is really for Snow, so not so sure about it anyway). ACHI is enabled, and I only have one disk in SATA port 0.

 

I was able to take a PATA drive that has an iPC installed image on it from another machine and I got the Intel to boot from it, but it couldn't see the SATA drive either.

 

The fact that the iPC disk can see the hard disk and installs to it gives me hope. Does anyone know the 'extras' that are on the iPC install boot sequence that might point to a solution during install? There are two Intel chipset drivers which do not help, and I'm currently working with IOPCIFAMILY.kext, but I don't think that is the solution because I assume it is loaded from the root device. I have also worked with the BIOS and the ACHI settings (no S.M.A.R.T. in this BIOS). There is a Legacy mode in there that emulates PATA with SATA drives which is another possibility as the PATA drive I swapped in did boot.

 

Also, while booted in the iPC install CD I checked the system profiler and the SATA drive settings (Intel ESB2 ACHI) match very well against my Mac Pro with the exception of the S.M.A.R.T. status. Is this a true diagnostic of the Mobo, or is this just what the Apple Installer loads? Either way, the BSD name shows disk0S2 and the DVD drive shows disk1s2, so I don't think there is a problem pointing to the wrong BSD.

[ukhanlists]

Hi,

 

I just bought this board and I would like to install Snow Leopard. Were you able to resolve you issues? I had similar problem ""Still waiting for root device" error," the solution was to switch the SATA to AHCI mode, but sounds like you already went down that road. Do you know if there is a boot cd for this board? Any pointers you can share on getting Snow running would be great.

 

Thanks

 

I have 5 2U rack computers that run as a video processing render farm. They currently run Windows, but I'd like to add the capability to run Mac OS-X 10.5.x. Not sure if they will be dual boot or not, but the first step is to just get OS-X running on one of them. I have a Mac Pro Leopard workstation to use as a resource.

 

As the board name implies, it has the S5000 chipset. The two methods I've been trying are Lifehacker's thumb drive method that uses a vanilla install disk and Chameleon 2.0 RC3 (I'm using a Leopard disk instead of a Snow Leopard disk) and a fully patched iPC Leopard disk.

 

The problem I run into is that it cannot see the SATA disks. The iPC install disk sees the SATA disk just fine and installs the image, but when I reboot I get the dreaded "Still waiting for root device" error. The thumb drive method does not see the SATA drive at all (but this method is really for Snow, so not so sure about it anyway). ACHI is enabled, and I only have one disk in SATA port 0.

 

I was able to take a PATA drive that has an iPC installed image on it from another machine and I got the Intel to boot from it, but it couldn't see the SATA drive either.

 

The fact that the iPC disk can see the hard disk and installs to it gives me hope. Does anyone know the 'extras' that are on the iPC install boot sequence that might point to a solution during install? There are two Intel chipset drivers which do not help, and I'm currently working with IOPCIFAMILY.kext, but I don't think that is the solution because I assume it is loaded from the root device. I have also worked with the BIOS and the ACHI settings (no S.M.A.R.T. in this BIOS). There is a Legacy mode in there that emulates PATA with SATA drives which is another possibility as the PATA drive I swapped in did boot.

 

Also, while booted in the iPC install CD I checked the system profiler and the SATA drive settings (Intel ESB2 ACHI) match very well against my Mac Pro with the exception of the S.M.A.R.T. status. Is this a true diagnostic of the Mobo, or is this just what the Apple Installer loads? Either way, the BSD name shows disk0S2 and the DVD drive shows disk1s2, so I don't think there is a problem pointing to the wrong BSD.