vpvl66 Posted October 23, 2005 Share Posted October 23, 2005 Not sure if this is the right place for this type of post, but it may be useful to some of you: I just noticed compgeeks has refurbished Gateway 3250 barebones: Intel 915GAV mobo + case + supply, for $69 + S&H ($17 for me to NJ). This appears to be a perfect mobo for osx x86 and retail versions of the similar models run over $100. This way you get a case and a power supply (but it is refurbished). Here are the links, gateway's with detailed specs and geeks': http://support.gateway.com/s/PC/3200Series...1008288nv.shtml http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=GW3250-BB&cat=BBK Geeks also has, for slightly more, models 5200 & 7200. 7200 comes with a full case and BTX mobo, but has Marvel Yukon LAN, which does not seem to work, as of now, on x86. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
guilliamo Posted October 24, 2005 Share Posted October 24, 2005 Not sure if this is the right place for this type of post, but it may be useful to some of you: I just noticed compgeeks has refurbished Gateway 3250 barebones: Intel 915GAV mobo + case + supply, for $69 + S&H ($17 for me to NJ). This appears to be a perfect mobo for osx x86 and retail versions of the similar models run over $100. This way you get a case and a power supply (but it is refurbished). Here are the links, gateway's with detailed specs and geeks': http://support.gateway.com/s/PC/3200Series...1008288nv.shtml http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=GW3250-BB&cat=BBK Geeks also has, for slightly more, models 5200 & 7200. 7200 comes with a full case and BTX mobo, but has Marvel Yukon LAN, which does not seem to work, as of now, on x86. I picked up one of the 3250s yesterday...there seem to be frequent "sales" where the price goes down to $62 plus shipping. Since I'm local, I just paid $62 plus tax. I had a SATA drive already running OSX X86, so I put it in along with a Pioneer DVR-109 DVD-RW & 2.66GHz Celeron with a pair of 512MB DDR400 Ram sticks. Short version is that essentially everything works perfectly. Longer version: Case I got was a 3250S, part number 1008288. In addition to what is listed on the Geeks website, case contained a nice (stock) fan, heatsink and baffle, and had two FRONT IEEE1394 ports in addition to the rear IEEE1394 port listed. The card reader was integrated with a floppy drive in the lowest 5.25" bay. What works: All 3 IEEE1394 ports, sound out, all USB ports, camera/memory card reader, ethernet, video (all resolutions....right now driving my Dell 2405FPW LCD @ 1920by1200). NO problems booting, NO kernel panics. Deep sleep works and the front Gateway lighted power switch pulses (almost) like an Apple Mac. Wake from sleep flawless. What doesn't work: Sound In, Front Sound out, floppy, PCI modem. The Firewire is a nice plus, since it is an Intel option that few shipping 915G motherboards seem to have, and the flawless sleep is also cool. Case is nice, clean. Only damage in the case I got was a few very minor rub marks in the paint on top of the case. Go for it! G Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kanji_Man Posted November 5, 2005 Share Posted November 5, 2005 I, too, picked up one of those cheap Gateway 3250s systems off of geeks.com .. after shipping it was $79. I added a couple sticks of Kingston Valueram PC2700, an old maxtor 60gig HD, and a spare Pioneer DVR-109. The CPU I bought for it was a P4 3.0Ghz w/EMT64 2MB cache.. approx $175 from newegg. The 3250s from geeks came with a big coolermaster cpu fan complete with plastic air tube to the side of the case. I dusted off my Relese 1 ISO and installed without a problem but the system seemed to pause randomly for a second or so for no apparent reason. I did a little research and according to a tutorial on identifying bios on intel's website I discovered the board was a gateway oem Dekstop D915GEV so I leeched the latest intel bios and flashed it. Well, OSx86 would no longer boot. So I put the install DVD back in and did a clean install. Now the system works great and the random pausing is gone.. the system works much better with the Intel BIOS than the Gateway BIOS. This system fully supports SSE3. So here's a breakdown: Onboard Graphics: Fully supported, can even change resolution from within OSX Onboard Network: 10/100 intel pro works right out of the box, osx plays well on a windows domain and workgroup Onboard Audio: stereo line out from the back works fine, front headphone connector appears dead Onboard Audio: I have not tested the input Floppy drive is not recognized. The single onboard ATA66/100 connector works fine and all drives I've tried are recognized by OSX I have not tried any of the SATA connectors but given the layout of this system I'd highly reccomend using SATA for your HD and reserving the single PATA for your CD/DVD My system did not include a card reader, wtf do you want for $79? PS/2 mouse and PS/2 keyboard work fine System powers on, shuts down completely, reboots, hibernates, and has full ACPI functionality. OSX even recognizes the PC98 power button on an old generic keybaord I had laying around. Overall the system performs incredibly well, especially for the price. If you can live without a floppy drive and a front headphone jack (remember, rear jack for line out works fine) than this might be just the cheap OSx86 box for you. I eventually plan on picking up one of those xenarc 7" touchscreen monitors and putting the whole thing in my car so I can listen to iTunes on the road. Refurb. Gateway 3250s from geeks.com $ 80.00 P4 3.0Ghz w/EMT64 and 2MB cache $175.00 1gig SDRAM approx. $ 80.00 60gig Maxtor HD, est. value @ .50/gig $ 30.00 You can get a DVR-110 from newegg $40.00 So for just over $400 you can beat the {censored} out of a mac mini, just add keyboard monitor mouse Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scj312 Posted November 5, 2005 Share Posted November 5, 2005 What is the XBench score one one of those? I am currently running OSX on my 9310X inside vmware.. (powerful system for games, but they are only Wndows games. ) I get an XBench of 18 inside vmware... I may just buy one of those 3250's just for this... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Baliw Posted November 6, 2005 Share Posted November 6, 2005 Just ordered mine tonight Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kanji_Man Posted November 9, 2005 Share Posted November 9, 2005 Using Xbench 1.2 on the above mentioned system I received an overall score of 35.38 -- CPU 66.30, Thread 91.90, Memory 94.96, Quartz 49.45, OpenGL 193.26, UI 9.25, Disk 35.89. Yes, the HD is a slow piece of junk. See this thread about flashing the firmware on this system, I have noticed it runs much more smoothly with the intel firmware but another user reports possible problems with the firewire. If you do purchase one of these systems please try to retain a copy of the original firmware to help debug the firewire. My firewire appears to work fine but to be honest I dont use it a whole lot. Also, my system did come with the connexant pci modem but I removed it on sight because I have no interest in telco connections with this system. I can also confirm that the audio input does not work, it is not even listed in the audio control panel. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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