arshmenarnar Posted December 17, 2007 Share Posted December 17, 2007 I wanted to make this post for owners of the MSI 945P Neo3-F. I picked up one today for use as a new hackintosh server in a clearance bin at a computer store. Even though this board is based on the 945 chipset, the thing that really sold me on it was that it supports dual core AND the max ram is 4gb instead of the usual 2gb for the 945 series. For those of you who have been using osx on pc hardware for a while, the 915-945 series is likely one of the most hassle free installations of OS X you can have. You'll be able to easily boot into the installer via DVD in any version of OSX86 designed for intel. I have tried nearly all of the osx86 releases and I still think that if you are running OS X to actually work vs for fun, that the Jas 10.4.8 PPF release is the best way to go. Install the Jas release, select X11, that's about all you should select though. It supports usb, sata right away via clean install.Once you have that out of the way, I next recommend that you install the SMBIOS package from either the Uphuck or the Kalway releases (System/Installation/Packages) so you can run Creative Suite. The onboard networking (which by default is disabled in the BIOS and should be enabled) will be greyed out upon first launch with the JAS, but if you install the R1000 package included with the Uphuck & Kalyway release you'll solve your networking without any kext editing. In terms of the onboard audio, I havent really had a chance to futz around with it yet because way long ago I bought a USB Turtle Beach dongle that's completely detected by OS X natively, it runs around $20 at Best Buy... and as per video, since this board does not have any integrated video card, I recommend a 7000 series Nvidia and use NVinject. I had a couple issues with the Kalyway DVD experimenting with kexts and such, and also being that Kalyway was originally designed for HPET only (even though I have a dual core cpu), I don't have the time to mess around with broken installations. If you are running an Intel chipset, I really recommend the Jas DVD over the Uphuck & Kalyway simply because I have had far less problems with the SATA drivers in the Jas release; using many different boards to date, have bought external enclosures for HD's, CDroms, sata to ide etc etc and I'm sick of that. If you follow my install guide above, I have attached to this post msi.zip which includes the networking fix, nvidia kexts, and smbios so that you can archive this all in one helper for your future reference. If you aren't sure how to install a kext, use Kext Helper b6 to do it automatically for you. As a side note, if anyone knows which kext enables onboard audio so that I don't have to tinker with anything else, please let me know and I'll add it in. Also, lastly, I was curious if anyone has any clue as to why my system is only recognizing 3.2GB ram when I have 4GB installed? This is occuring at the bios/post as well, for some reason the board is only seeing 3 1gb modules and not the other. I'm sure its something very dumb that I'm doing wrong. As for the 10.4.9, and 10.4.10 releases, I'm not sure that it is really worthwhile to run the newest updated OS X because I have had problem after problem on countless boards, configurations, amd/intel cpu, intel & nvidia chipsets etc, etc, and the Jas release seems to be the only one that always boots up after I mess around with something. Cheers! msi.zip Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/76686-definitive-thread-for-msi-945p-neo3-f/ Share on other sites More sharing options...
arshmenarnar Posted December 18, 2007 Author Share Posted December 18, 2007 also, if you are using the msi 945 boards, and you want to install the kalyway release, make sure that you check the following options in the install : gma, remove cpu power manegement beause it enables support for non hpet, select the intel sse2, install the RA1000 package, you MUST install the SATA package or you will be waiting for root device, smbios, i think thats about it. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/76686-definitive-thread-for-msi-945p-neo3-f/#findComment-542001 Share on other sites More sharing options...
arshmenarnar Posted January 2, 2008 Author Share Posted January 2, 2008 if you install leopard, make sure you have the bios set to non pnp os or you will not have the correct bootloader information. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/76686-definitive-thread-for-msi-945p-neo3-f/#findComment-562830 Share on other sites More sharing options...
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