Zotac zbox HD-ND22

[GInGout]

This is a very nice box has the potential of being an inexpensive $250 Mac Mini

 

Intel CULV processor SU2300, max RAM 8G, Nvidia ION chipset

 

There are 2 codecs ALC888 10ec,0888 and MCP7A HDMI 10de,0007

 

A few has successfully install Snow Leapoard on it, but the result is not consistently repeatable with the published instructions. Audio via HDMI not yet solved either.

[Darth Sith Lord]

Hallo GInGOut,

 

the sound problem can be solved by using the Voodoo HDA package 2.7.2.

 

I' ve running the SL on ASUS EeeBoxPC 1501U, on the XFX 9300 and on the

MSI P7MGN-digital mainboard. Never had have problems with the ION- Chip.

Nearly everything is working out of the box. My SL source is allways Hazard.

 

During installation I never choose a chipset or graphics driver for the ION. The

only special driver is for LAN (depending on the network chip).

 

In the Chameleon bootloader there is no need to selct nv-inject or USB-Fix.

 

Hope, this will help.

[GInGout]

Darth Sith Lord,

 

Good to hear from you, and thanks for your advice.

 

Currently running Windoze 7 and OSX 10.6.6 on it.

 

The OSX was not installed from scratch, but a restoration from a time machine image of a running system on a different machine, with modified /Extra/Extensions kexts (still experimenting with what the bare minimum is) and /boot

 

Can boot up with Chameleon v2.0-RC5-r699 and a flavor of Chameleon v2.0-RC4 but the display is fixed. I eventually used a modified (for ION) Chameleon v2.0-RC3 uploaded to another thread by a user named idoc, and display came up perfect with all available resolution. Can even work at x64.

 

One strange quirk though, the hard disk LED (and I presume the hard drive) keeps on blinking for more than 20 minutes before eventually stopping, and I have no idea what the system is doing. This happens every time on boot up and so the system is a bit sluggish during this period of disk activities. Siimilar phenomena occurred under Windoze 7 when the hard disk driver was changed, but once done, did not occur on every boot. Strange! I will try a clean install or another hard drive later.

 

Onboard RT2860 works with driver from Ralink site. Unfortunately, though the driver was recently updated, it is explicitly for 10.5.x, though it seems to work under 10.6.x, but only under 32 bit mode. Does not work under 64 bit mode.

 

The latest RT2860 driver, STA_RT2860 D-1.2.2.0 UI-3.0.0.0_2010_05_18.dmg, is problematic - it drops the connections after a few minutes and manual reconnect has to be done repeatedly, and the connection is always lost with failure to reconnect after waking from sleep.

 

The version that I have been using on my Wind U100 plus for more than a year now, STA_RT2860 D-1.1.2.0 UI-1.7.1.0_2009_02_17.dmg, is usable and stable.

 

Yes, Realtek sound seems to work using VoodooHDA, but audio through HDMI (Nvidia HDMI sound) might be a hard nut to crack. The fact that there are 2 codecs, were discovered via VoodooHDA that loaded with a recent version of [url="http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/279450-why-insanelymac-does-not-support-tonymacx86/"]#####[/url], but off hand I do not remember which version of VoodooHDA it was.

[GInGout]

Can boot up with Chameleon v2.0-RC5-r699 and a flavor of Chameleon v2.0-RC4 but the display is fixed. I eventually used a modified (for ION) Chameleon v2.0-RC3 uploaded to another thread by a user named idoc, and display came up perfect with all available resolution. Can even work at x64.

Now running with Chameleon v2.0-RC4_PCEFI-10.5_AsereBLN-1.1.9

 

One strange quirk though, the hard disk LED (and I presume the hard drive) keeps on blinking for more than 20 minutes before eventually stopping, and I have no idea what the system is doing. This happens every time on boot up and so the system is a bit sluggish during this period of disk activities.

Found my zbox running the following process and consuming as much CPU resources as Firefox :-

 

/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Frameworks/Metadata.framework/Support/mds

 

No idea what it is doing and why. Really need to do a clean install.

[Darth Sith Lord]

Hallo GInGout,

 

the new Harzard Snow Leopard 10.6.6i is annouced. Perhaps it would be a

good choice to test it (doin' a new, clean install).

 

I'm still waiting for this compilation.

 

The adapted Chameleon (2RC3) for the ION I've also found a few month ago in the

ion_itx package. This Chameleon works good, but you can't set the boot options

with help of the system control panel (double click on Chameleon icon).

The "build in" configurator for the *boot.plist in the Chameleon 2RC5 versions is a nice tool.

 

Until now, I 've never tested the Asere bootloader. But perhaps soon.

 

I' m on the search for a new ION- based mini PC. Zotac is okay, but the Foxconn

box is a hard competitor. The Foxconn box without RAM and HDD is offered for 154,--€!

 

Therefore one question about the Zotac box: "Did it have two SO-DIMM sockets for note-

book RAM (dual mode), or is one socket for WLAN?

 

 

Have a nice weekend.

[GInGout]

the new Harzard Snow Leopard 10.6.6i is annouced. Perhaps it would be a

good choice to test it (doin' a new, clean install).

Darth Sith Lord,

 

Never tried Harzard myself. What advantages to use it instead of Vanilla?

 

The adapted Chameleon (2RC3) for the ION I've also found a few month ago in the

ion_itx package. This Chameleon works good, but you can't set the boot options

with help of the system control panel (double click on Chameleon icon).

The "build in" editor for the ***.plist in the Chameleon 2RC5 versions is a nice tool.

How does the above work? I am not aware of the above features. Sounds interesting and useful.

 

Until now, I 've never tested the Aspere bootloader. But perhaps soon.

Actually it is quite a good bootloader, but the author kind of "disappeared" after the 1.1.9 release, and I suppose some of its feature are incorporated into latest Chameleon build, though I am sure not all, or I would have been able to use the latest RC5 r700 build.

 

I' m on the search for a new ION- based mini PC. Zotac is okay, but the Foxconn

box is a hard competitor. The Foxconn box without RAM and HDD is offered for 154,--€!

Which Foxconn model are you thinking? I have had experience with only 1 Foxconn LGA775 board. It's cheap and I suppose good value for money, but for desktop system I lean towards MSI, Asus and Gigabyte.

 

For ION based embedded CPU systems, I think Zotac (which is more or less the pioneer of this product space) and Asrock and MSI (their barebones) are my favorites.

 

Therefore one question about the Zotac box: "Did it have two SO-DIMM sockets for note-

book RAM (dual mode)?" This would be an advantage against Foxconn.

Yes, 2 SO-DIMM sockets for a max of 8G.

 

Build quality good. Looks nice, lying flat or upright. Wish they had a piano white version to complement the current piano black casing.

 

WiFi antennae built-in so no ugly black antennae pole sticking out of the box.

 

One of the easiest Hackintosh built that I have done (I must admit that my previous experience building other systems makes it easier), although there are quirks (like sleep and HDMI audio) that needed ironing out.

[Darth Sith Lord]

Hallo GInGout,

 

here are some answers:

 

a: I ' m started with OSx86 on AMD based motherboards tree years ago. That's the reason why I do prefere AMD based (Snow) Leopard versions like Hazard, iPC or others.

 

b: 18 month ago I took a deeper look into the hardware of Mac mini's and Macbooks. So I decided to test XFX and MSI mainboards with the ION chipset.

 

c: Last September I bought a ASUS EeeBoxPC 1501U. The EeeBoxPC runs without modifications with the HDD's from the ION- based mainboards I 've tested before.

 

d: Now I'm planning to build up the cheapest Mac clone. Therefore I think, the Zotac ND-22 is the best solution, because the Foxconn nt525 Box has only one SO-DIMM socket. The Zotac Box is planned to be placed behind a 24" full HD+ monitor. So it is a good alternative to a notebook.

 

Bye.

[Surcouf35]

I've got a zotac nd-22 but I can't boot with [url="http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/279450-why-insanelymac-does-not-support-tonymacx86/"]#####[/url]. It freezes after few seconds. How did you install snow leopard on it? With wich version of [url="http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/279450-why-insanelymac-does-not-support-tonymacx86/"]#####[/url] did you install it ? I know that I need to change SATA mode to AHCI mode under IDE option and also disable highspeed usb. But it freezes anyway.

 

Thanks for your answer.

 

Gaël

[seanchronnery]

out of curiosity, Surcouf, what version of SL are you using?

[Surcouf35]

I'm using a Snow Leopard retail DVD 10.6.0

[seanchronnery]

i was thinking about buying this but it's only use would be Plex...

please keep us updated

 

i'm also following the discussion here;

http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php...37091&st=40

[Surcouf35]

The latest RT2860 driver, STA_RT2860 D-1.2.2.0 UI-3.0.0.0_2010_05_18.dmg, is problematic - it drops the connections after a few minutes and manual reconnect has to be done repeatedly, and the connection is always lost with failure to reconnect after waking from sleep.

 

The version that I have been using on my Wind U100 plus for more than a year now, STA_RT2860 D-1.1.2.0 UI-1.7.1.0_2009_02_17.dmg, is usable and stable.

I have the same issue but I can't find the version : STA_RT2860 D-1.1.2.0 UI-1.7.1.0_2009_02_17.dmg

Is it possible that you send me the driver ?

Thank you very much

Gaël

[GInGout]

DSDT WARNING

 

Wasted a whole week on sleep issue.

 

Different RAM configurations, total RAM and/or RAM allocated to GPU, results in slight changes to extracted dsdt.

 

Sleep will not work for SL and Windoze 7 if the "wrong" version of dsdt is used.

 

So if you add or reduce the total amount of RAM or change the amount of display RAM, you will need to modify your dsdt accordingly.

 

One strange quirk though, the hard disk LED (and I presume the hard drive) keeps on blinking for more than 20 minutes before eventually stopping, and I have no idea what the system is doing. This happens every time on boot up and so the system is a bit sluggish during this period of disk activities.

Found out that Spotlight is indexing the read-only Windoze 7 partition.

 

Problem solved by excluding it under System Preferences -> Spotlight-> Privacy

 

I have the same issue but I can't find the version : STA_RT2860 D-1.1.2.0 UI-1.7.1.0_2009_02_17.dmg

Is it possible that you send me the driver ?

I downloaded it when it was the latest version. Here it is. Enjoy.

STA_RT2860_D_1.1.2.0_UI_1.7.1.0_2009_02_17.dmg