[HowTo] Building my first OSx86 box...

[bofors]

No problems here, this card worked right out of the box. I made no adjustments. The only thing I noticed is that the computer booted in a mirrored mode, BIOS splash screen and OS X start-up screens on both displays. Then OS X switched to extended desktop mode:

 

 

GMA 950:

 Chipset Model:	GMA 950
 Type:	VGA-Compatible Controller
 Bus:	Built-In
 VRAM (Total):	256 MB
 Vendor:	Intel (0x8086)
 Device ID:	0x2772
 Revision ID:	0x0002
 Displays:
DELL 2005FPW:
 Resolution:	1680 x 1050 @ 60 Hz
 Depth:	32-bit Color
 Core Image:	Supported
 Main Display:	Yes
 Mirror:	Off
 Online:	Yes
 Quartz Extreme:	Supported
SyncMaster:
 Resolution:	1280 x 1024 @ 75 Hz
 Depth:	32-bit Color
 Core Image:	Supported
 Mirror:	Off
 Online:	Yes
 Quartz Extreme:	Supported

[munky]

superb

 

now i have to decide between getting an ADD2 for full-on osx86 support, or get a radeon X1800 for powerful gfx....

 

decisions decisions

 

thanks for the speedy reply dude

[bofors]

who hates bofors for having a cool setup!

 

I DO!!! =(

 

I picked up these BOSE MediaMate speakers for my OSx86 box at Sam's Club for ~$60 yesterday. They look pretty sharp and sound decent, good bass without a sub-woofer. Since I want two computers on my work "bench", I might actually use their dual input feature at some point. I could actually connect them to my PowerMac now as well, but unless I run out of space on my table, I want to use my USB Harman/Kardon Soundsticks with sub-woofer instead,

 

 

I should have the system set up in it's final configuraton, next to my PowerMac, later today.

[Bearcat]

bofors:

 

I should have the system set up in it's final configuraton, next to my PowerMac, later today.

 

Quick question, if I may, the stock kernel in 8f1111g would have sse3 emulation.

 

What kernel did you switch to in this setup?

 

thanks

[bofors]

stock kernel in 8f1111g would have sse3 emulation.

 

I do not know, my CPU supports SSE3 natively so I have not had to deal with any SSE2 issues.

 

What kernel did you switch to in this setup?

 

JaS's "final" patch for 10.4.3, which is what I used, comes with some other kernels, but I have not tried any of them yet, nor messed with any other patchs (or kernel tuning) yet. This system really has not been used much at all. That is about to change, now that I have dual displays running.

 

However, it seems to be very stable. It had one kernel panic the other day during Safari use and then some odd spontaneous shutdown happened last night that I think might be associated with the memory timing being a little too agressive (but I really have no idea what caused that).

[rockspeter]

Great setup!

I will be a German copy cat and purchase the same parts since I am not a genious like you :

Motherboard: Intel D945GNTLKR

CPU: Pentium D 920 (65nm dual "core" Presler, 2.8GHz, 2 X 2 MB cache, 800MHz FSB)

RAM: 2xGB DDR2-667 (4-4-4-10)

HD: 1x100gb have yet to find a make

2xDell

Which graphic card is the one you would recommend, Sil1364 DVI ADD2-N?

Is the x1600 a double dvi card. I would prefer a card, which apple uses so that i will always be able to get drivers.

For the setup, did you update the bios or efi. I will wait with the setup untill 10.4.4 is patched, so Im uptodate and not a step behind.

 

If you can give me advice on the graphics card, that would be awesome. Your detailed pictures have made me confident that I will be able to handle this. Great forum and Great job bofors!

[bofors]

Which graphic card is the one you would recommend, Sil1364 DVI ADD2-N?

Is the x1600 a double dvi card. I would prefer a card, which apple uses so that i will always be able to get drivers.

It is difficult to recommend a graphics card at the moment because the ATI x1X00 cards are not yet fully supported. However, Danman has reported some very positive results with his ATI x1600 here: http://www.win2osx.net/forum/showthread.php?t=2736

 

I expect to get an ATI x1600 at some point, but only after they are fully supported, which may be days or months. I paid only $24 for my DVI ADD2-N card and likewise the addtional cost for a motherboard with a GMA950 chip is very reasonable (so I am happy with my interim solution for dual displays, of course at least one DVI-D display is required).

 

For the setup, did you update the bios or efi.

Yes, I updated the BIOS (using Windows because I do not have a floppy drive) to the latest release from Intel, version "3309" (January 2006).

 

I will wait with the setup untill 10.4.4 is patched, so Im uptodate and not a step behind.

EDIT: Assuming that one is choosing an EFI capable motherboard.

The only reasons to wait at this point are: (1) Graphics card support might be clarified significantly (hopefully in the next few weeks) and (2) Intel's new chips, Crusoe in particular, are not available yet and what type of motherboard they will need is not clear (but here I talking about waiting for at least six months).

 

Your detailed pictures have made me confident that I will be able to handle this. Great forum and Great job bofors!

Really, this is very easy with the right hardware. I only got into trouble with setting the memory timings (and they still might not be quite right) because I did not know what I was doing (and I have some "issues" with Intel's BIOS).

[Juurlo]

No problems here, this card worked right out of the box. I made no adjustments. The only thing I noticed is that the computer booted in a mirrored mode, BIOS splash screen and OS X start-up screens on both displays.

That rocks. My setup still won't work, I have tried everything. I've got the exactly same MB, with the same bios (newest). My ADD2 -card is "Silicon Image Orion ADD2-N DUAL PAD x16 CARD Rev 1.45", Model Sil1364. You also have this card?

 

I suppose that I need to accept the fact that my ADD2 card is defective...

[bofors]

I have a full height, "Dell/Silicon Image Orion DVI, ADD2-N Dual PAD x16 PCIe Graphics Card 1Z63X4X40371661606".

 

Serial #: CN0J45706986149B2313.

 

 

I got it from Alan Computech International, refurbished for $24 plus $11.55 ground shipping:

 

http://store.yahoo.com/alan-fm/j4570.html

[rockspeter]

Alright, so I will get ADD2-N. Although I wouldn't mind buying an x1600. If I knew what the status on them is right now. All I use it for right now is having two firefox screens or pages/word documents on the two 20"inch screens. So if that feature is supported as of now, I think going ahead and waiting for some months for all the other features to be enabled is fine. So what features would I be looking with the x1600 as of now?

I will be ordering all parts tomorrow.

The first step should be to install xp and then flash the bios...Can I use the Efi instead of the bios with the new 10.4.4? What advantages would it give a user over bios (speed increase since no patch is needed for running it in an efi capable board)

[bofors]

Alright, so I will get ADD2-N.

I am now noticing the small problem with ADD2-N card. I driving two 20" Dell 2005FPW's at 1680 x 1050 and the VGA panel is not as sharp as the DVI one. I was doing the same with my ATI 9600XT on my PowerMac G5, i.e same panels one with DVI and one VGA (via an ADC->VGA adaptor), and did not notice this issue. I have yet to try lowering resolutions or tweaking BIOS setting to see if this issue goes away or not. For me, this is a minor annoyance, not major.

 

So what features would I be looking with the x1600 as of now?

According to Danman, resolutions must be set manually and I have hear no word on wether or not dual displays are supported with his technique.

 

The first step should be to install xp and then flash the bios...

Alternatively, you can use a regular PC 3.5" floppy drive if you have one handy.

 

Can I use the Efi instead of the bios with the new 10.4.4?

This is unknown as of yet, but it seems very like that a some point you will use EFI to run OSx86 on EFI-capable boards.

 

What advantages would it give a user over bios (speed increase since no patch is needed for running it in an efi capable board)

EFI is not really about "user" advantages per se, but rather will make it easier for companies to produce device-like products for PC's.

[bofors]

I am now noticing the small problem with ADD2-N card. I driving two 20" Dell 2005FPW's at 1680 x 1050 and the VGA panel is not as sharp as the DVI one. I was doing the same with my ATI 9600XT on my PowerMac G5, i.e same panels one with DVI and one VGA (via an ADC->VGA adaptor), and did not notice this issue. I have yet to try lowering resolutions or tweaking BIOS setting to see if this issue goes away or not. For me, this is a minor annoyance, not major.

I should mention that this VGA blurriness issue is specific to viewing text.

 

Toggling BIOS parameters had no affect on the mildly blurry VGA display issue, nor did droping from 32-bit color to 24-bit. But lowering resolution and increasing frequency from 60Hz to 75 seemed to improve the quality. However, I want 1680 x 1050. In attempt to further isolate the source of VGA blurriness, I switched VGA and DVI cables between my two displays. For whatever reason, perhaps do to interference from a "rat's nest" of cables, that largely appears to to have solved the blurriness. Yet, as one might expect, the DVI-D picture quality is still slightly better than that for VGA.

 

Here is my final hardware configuration and I am now ready to start using the new box full time:

 

[Hiro_]

Excuse me Bofors if i'm making a idiot question, therefore i'm suffering much prejudice here by be brazilian, more i believe than here has several peoples with good heart, then i would like know if i can it ask for you the configuration of the machine than obtained 105 in the xbench test, for than i can it evaluate and it see if your price, no would exit much expensive in my country.

[bofors]

Hi Junio,

 

I am not sure if I understand what you are asking me. But this is the machine's configuration that scored 105 in Xbench:

 

Motherboard: Intel D945GNTLKR (8F1111g: AHCI, Ethernet, Audio and FireWire, but no RAID)

CPU: Pentium D 920 (65nm dual "core" Presler, 2.8GHz, 2 X 2 MB cache, 800MHz FSB)

RAM: 4GB DDR2-667 (4-4-4-10) HD: 2 x 36 GB SATA WD Raptor (10K RPM) DVD-RW: Pioneer DVR-110D

GPU: Intel GMA950 + ADD2-N (supporting QE/CI at 32 x 1680 x 1050 on dual Dell 2005FPW's)

Xbench: 105.59 (Beam Sync. disabled, QE 2D enabled)

 

Of course, you could probably build a similiar machine for much less money. 4GB of RAM is certainly not necessary here (1GB is probably the minium for good general performance), nor SATA hard drives and while the CPU I picked out is a good value, a Celeron would much cheaper and should work just fine for many tasks. I also picked a full-feature motherboard, Intel makes similiar ones that are less expensive as well.

[bofors]

I could set up a special swap partition for virtual memory on the second drive (made even faster by creating a 10 GB parition at the "front" of the disk). For details on how to do this on Tiger see here:

 

http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?sto...uery=tiger+swap

 

I have just done this (set up a special swap partition for virtual memory on the second drive), do to the apparent lack of RAID support in 10.4.3 for internal SATA drives.

 

While this should make a significant performance improvement under high loads, it had no affect on my Xbench score.

[Hiro_]

Thank you bofors i'm searching for everything of the list than you posted here, in my country i not find, but in ebay i finded everything.

 

But i would like did more a question, which's the model of the Samsung LCD, than they are on a of the your pictures?

[bofors]

But i would like did more a question, which's the model of the Samsung LCD, than they are on a of the your pictures?

I have two Samsung 712n displays (VGA only, 12ms response), that I got last year. Samsung makes a variety of newer, similiar 17" displays, some of which support DVI, that I recommend you consider. These Samsung 17" panels are still the best deal on the market right now.

 

For those looking at the larger panels, I ordered a 24" (1900 x 1200) Dell 2405FPW yesterday (for my brother) and had no problem getting an extra $60 off the discounted price. I got it for $765 (including shipping) plus State sales tax.

[bofors]

Here are a couple notes for people interested in what it is like to rely on a machine like this for work.

 

(1) I had some problems trying to copy a gigabyte or so of data using IP over FireWire. The symptoms included a kernel panic and the system spontaneously rebooting. I switched to the regular Ethernet connection and had no problems using it.

 

(2) I have started working with Xcode and during some compilations, the system spontaneous rebooted (no kernel panic). Although I had seen this spontaneous reboot phenomena perhaps twice before on this box, it was happening consistently in Xcode and since it results in mild, repairable corruption to my boot partition, I had to address this problem before trying to continue my work.

 

I suspect that my "aggressive" memory timings are at fault here, so I switched them back to the "factory"/SPD settings: 5-5-5-15, and have had no more problems with the spontaneous reboots since. But it has only been a few compliations and I need more data to conclude that memory timing were in fact the problem. Likewise, I need to retry the IP over FireWire with this relaxed memory timing.

[munky]

those issues certainly sound like they could be related to a RAM problem. keep us posted!

[bofors]

I suspect that my "aggressive" memory timings are at fault here, so I switched them back to the "factory"/SPD settings: 5-5-5-15, and have had no more problems with the spontaneous reboots since.

OK, I have had no more spontaneous reboots. So, I guess the question now is, since 4-4-4-10 is out, what timings work. I suppose I could test with 4-4-4-11 et seq. and run some heavy Xcode compiles to figure this out, but right now I really do not care.

 

My next "issue" seems to be kernel panics that may be associated with the screen saver (I am running the Apple "Computer Name" screen saver, black with Apple logo). I had two kernel panics today, I noticed the first one when I woke up, the machine had paniced running the screen saver. The second panic occured while I had Xcode running, but I had not been doing anything on the machine for a while, so I think the screen saver code have been starting up.

 

Anyways, I suppose to should check around to see kernel panics are known to be assoicated with the screen saver. I also could try just turning the screen saver off for a few days or switch screen savers types. For now, I will continue to run the same screen saver and see if I can continue to associate panics with it. Note, the screen savers works fine otherwise and I have no problem logging in through it.

[Quingy]

Hey Bofors reading about your memory woes reminds of a situation I had with Kingston Hyperx memory.

 

I had purchased 2x256 of hyper-x memory for an abit board and never had any problems. Sometime later I had "upgraded" to an intel board, 865 chipset I think, and was re-using the hyper-x.

 

No matter what I tried I couldn't get the system stable with 2-2-2 4(can't remember the exact timings, but they were tight), I ended up having to run slack timings that were slower than what the memory was rated at. It turned out that, the abit board had been overvolting ever so slightly, just enough to get the memory to run correctly.

 

I understand this is an Intel board and IRRC you can't adjust the voltage for the RAM. but maybe its differnt now. If you can adjust the voltage, bump it up a .10 of a volt and see if it helps. Also you can download a bootable .iso image with memtest to test your ram to be 100% sure.

 

Anyways, just a thought.

[Juurlo]

My next "issue" seems to be kernel panics that may be associated with the screen saver (I am running the Apple "Computer Name" screen saver, black with Apple logo). I had two kernel panics today, I noticed the first one when I woke up, the machine had paniced running the screen saver. The second panic occured while I had Xcode running, but I had not been doing anything on the machine for a while, so I think the screen saver code have been starting up.

 

Anyways, I suppose to should check around to see kernel panics are known to be assoicated with the screen saver. I also could try just turning the screen saver off for a few days or switch screen savers types. For now, I will continue to run the same screen saver and see if I can continue to associate panics with it. Note, the screen savers works fine otherwise and I have no problem logging in through it.

 

Have you tried disabling the power saving options (sleep mode) from the control panel? For me this stopped kernel panics that occurred when I had left the machine on overnight. You can leave screen saver and hd spin-off enabled, just don't let the cpu go to sleep. Worked for me perfectly, not a single kernel panic since (and the screen saver/screen shut-off still works).

[Hiro_]

Bofors, Do you can it say than the power of the computer than you built is compatible with an Mac than use an PowerPC processor, or is best?

[bofors]

Have you tried disabling the power saving options (sleep mode) from the control panel?

 

Yes, I always turn that {censored} off. Anyways, I have had no more kernerl panics to report (yet) and the machine is constantly on now.

 

Bofors, Do you can it say than the power of the computer than you built is compatible with an Mac than use an PowerPC processor, or is best?

 

Junio, again, it is not clear WHAT you are asking me here? So, I have to guess.

 

The machine I built is of comparable speed to my dual 2.0GHz PowerMac G5 (3GB RAM). However, that is for native, x86, applicationa and not PPC applications running on Rosetta (like PhotoShop). For some of my work, compiling software, my x86 box is much faster because the Gnu C compilier (GCC) is optimized for the x86 over PPC.

 

So, it depends on what your software needs are at the moment and also what we expect of the future. Fore example, Adobe may not release an x86 (Universal) Photoshop of OS X until next year. But these are relatively short term issues in my mind.

[munky]

hi guys.. first post from my new hackintosh. very similar to yours, bofors, except a D945GTP board instead of your GNT, and a lot less RAM Pentium D 920, 2x512Mb Corsair 667 in dual-channel mode, etc. and i have to say, this is damn sweeet! much better with accelerated graphics. i recommend anyone to build a hackintosh if they're considering it... beats the {censored} out of an imac

 

now just need to get my wireless (Linksys WMP54G), onboard audio (Intel onboard 7-channel thingy) etc to work. im typing this via the airport on my powerbook which is shared over firewire IP

 

EDIT: i just picked up an X1800XL for £160 off ebay. Schweeeeet.