My OSX86 Installation Woes

[DJGuardy]

First of all, I'd like to say thank you to everyone who has contributed to the forums, the OSX86 projects and its releases, and everything else related. You guys/gals are exceptionally talented people, and I salute you .

 

Now on to my problemo. I downloaded the JaS.10.4.8.AMD.INTEL.SSE2.SSE3 ISO image (the version that came packed with 260 RAR parts), MD5 checked it, verified, and burned. I then hooked up to the Primary Master IDE a spare single partition 80GB Western Digital PATA hard drive. I then booted from the DVD.

 

I recieved the (what now could be called legendary) "Still waiting for root device" message. I searched on the forums, biosed like mad, changed all possibly related options, including Masters, Slaves, what the DVD drive was on, external USB DVD drives, and all sorts of fun and delightful stuff. My motherboard is the ASUS K8V-SE Deluxe with the VIA 8237 SATA chip (no SATA drives were powered or connected during the attempt of native install). Naturally, this gets picked up by Darwin (I think it's Darwin), and then repeats the root device message again and again and again. I tried reformatting, repartitioning, all sorts, no luck. I heard disabling AHCI on the motherboard might help, yet I could find nothing in the BIOS. It could POSSIBLY be a jumper than configures that, yet I checked the manual and found no word of it at all. If anyone could help on that area it would be most appreciated .

 

So, I thought, let's try it in VMware Workstation 5 using a virtual drive (didn't want to try a physical drive just yet). I configured the virtual machine using various configs, including the 'Other', 'FreeBSD' and 'Linux' settings, with 512mb of RAM, and a virtual IDE drive. I booted using the physical DVD drive at first, and then mounted the ISO image using DAEMON Tools also, and directed VMware to that. Both get me into the install screen (WOOT), and then SOMETIMES I get the language select screen, where I then select English and move on, SOMETIMES it just gives an installation log message and a 'Due to a problem, the installation could not be completed' straight after I get into the blue screen with the cursor and the rainbow dial has done its thing. SOMETIMES (this ones more rare), I get to the START of the installation, the 'Welcome to the JaS install etc. etc...' and then try to hit continue.

 

This is when, and during other points, it goes straight back to the Darwin DOS-type screen and produces the most amazing list of crashdump messages you've ever seen. It then kills all processes, halts the CPU, and the virtual machine with it (naturally).

 

Out of curiousity, I patched it with the first PPF for that release, and remounted and retried both native and VMware installs, with no luck.

 

I've searched these forums, googled, wiki'd, and all sorts, to no prevail. I'll post my specs below. If ANYONE can help me, you'll be my friend for life. I really want to try the OS X before I move on to making a Mac purchase - it's just I've been a Windows guy all my life, and want to make that switch . It's just whether my money will be well spent (I'm sure it will, just want to make sure!).

 

All help would be appreciated. I hope this post is detailed enough to help . If I can, I'll try and post those crashdump messages.

 

Here's the specs:

 

ASUS K8V SE Deluxe Motherboard (has a SATA chip and two connecters, both of which are disconnected during installation)

AMD 64 3400+ (NewCastle) CPU (SSE2)

Using an 80GB IDE Western Digital Hard Drive set to Primary Master

2GB RAM

NVidia 7800GS 256MB AGP Graphics Card

BenQ 16x Dual Layer DVD Drive

BenQ 52x CD-Rom Drive

Floppy Disk Drive

 

That's all I can think of right now .

 

Thanks to all in advance.

 

DJGuardy

[troubby]

I think there might be a problem with the file we (me too) downloaded. I'm having the same problems, and I patched it with two ppf files. I'm gunna try burning to a DVD in about an hour or so and then after that re-un-raring the file. If that doesn't work...it's back to square one with downloading the install file allll over againnnn. And if that doesn't work, I'm giving up on this.

[DJGuardy]

Thanks for your response, glad to know I'm not alone on this one!

 

Since my post, I've tried other configs, with no success, including swapping jumpers, both virtual and physical. ARGH, it's so annoying that some can run this what appears to be a beautiful operating system and I'm missing out!! I really want to test the field before making that big investment (hopefully with Leopard ).

 

If anyone else has any ideas, I'd be happy to try them out. Troubby, let me know how you get on!!

 

P.S. The crashdump stuff isn't a kernel panic as far as I'm aware.

[David or Johnny]

Try another version of the release.