DVD Boot and install OK. Safe boot OK. Normal boot panics

[mouchyn]

Ok, I have been crawling the wiki and forums quite a bit trying to get osx installed on my rig. I have downloaded over a dozen dvd images and have only one that boots and installs without errors. It is labeled Jas 10.4.8 AMD and Intel SSE2/SSE3. From what I can tell, it has none of the newer pathches. I have the MD5 checksum for my only working (and all other dvds). I will post those for verification when i go back to work.

 

My Rig:

 

Processor: AMD Athlon64 X2 4600+

Motherboard: MSI K9N SLI Platinum (nForce 570)

RAM: 2GB 800 MHz dual channel kingston DDR2

Video: PCI-e Nvidia Geforce 7600 GS 512MB

Storage: PATA 40GB, USB 2.0/Firewire External 250GB

 

To boot my DVD, the only boot option I pass along is "cpus=2." This gets all the way in to the installer without any errors. USB 2.0 and firewire work, too. I even performed a successful install to the usb2.0 drive. cool. anyway, I have tried installing with all possible combinations. I have tried a bare, basic install. I have tried adding the AMD kexts. I have tried the AMD and Natit Kexts. I have tried installing to the 40GB PATA drive, the usb drive, the ext drive connected via firewire. All produce the same results:

 

I can boot from the HD in safe mode using these options: cpus=2 -x -v . This is about as far as I can get. I need some help from here. Strangely, the only way I can get any os x install dvd or local installation to boot is to ENABLE all the ACPI features in my BIOS. Disabling them yields kernel panics every time, even with appropriate boot options.

 

Since I can boot in safe mode, should I try to install correct hardware drivers from a usb stick or something? Should I delete some of the existing drivers?

 

Any attempt to boot in normal mode yields kernel panics. If the specific kernel panic messages are relevant, I would be glad to take some pics and post them. I'm so close, i can taste it. Please help!

 

Thanks,

Chris

[Oracle67]

SMART must be disabled from Bios.

You can edit com.apple.boot.plist to dont have every time to say that you have 2 cpus.

Open it with text edit on desctop and add this lines:

 

<key>Kernel Flags</key>

<string>cpus=2</string>

 

Repair permissions and restart after that.

 

Dont install Nvidia packages on installation, you ll find after that the correct ones.

[mouchyn]

Yeah, SMART is disabled in bios.

 

I also discovered that the 512MB 7600gs isn't supported. On boot, it says it's a 256MB card and the installer/safe-boot loads, so... <shrug> I'll slap a regular PCI card in there and try installing again.

 

In particular, some ethernet kext causes a kernel panic when booting normally. can i just remove it and all the others i'm not using?