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Tyan S2696 8 Core Hackintosh

Team Scream

By Team Scream,
in OSx86 10.5 (Leopard)

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Team Scream
Team Scream
Posted
Posted

Heres the skinny.

 

(1) Tyan S2696WA2NRF Motherboard (SAS Version) See it here

(2) Intel Xeon X5355 Processors

(4) Gigs Crucial DDR2 667 FB DIMMS

(4) WD5000ABYS (500GB) Drives for RAID-0

(1) WD5000AAKS (500GB) Boot Drive

(1) LG GSA-H55N DVD-RAM (IDE) Drive

(1) BFG 8800 GT-OC 640MB GPU

(1) Siig 3 port Firewire 800 PCI-X card

(1) Antec P-190/1200 eATX System Chassis

 

On a whim, I decided to try a Kalyway installation on a WD Passport external USB drive to see if I could get the system to boot before I broke my existing RAID and shelved teh XP installs and basically took the perfectly working system down to start hackintoshing......IT WORKED.

 

Today I decided to take it to the next level, here what I did:

 

I installed Kalyway 10.5.1 onto one of the 500GB drives and got the system up and running, no special tweaking, I just selected nvInject, MBR and both vanilla kernals and proceeded to install using one partition. For ease of getting it up and running I unhooked all the other hard drives so that while I was installing and messing around in BIOS I did not have 5 or 6 hard drives to sort out since they are all basically identical.

 

Installation took about 15 minutes and upon reboot I hit "F2" to get into BIOS and changed the boot priority back so that the HD was the first boot device.

 

A minute later I was at the Leopard desktop.......period.

 

After I got it up and running I started hooking up the other drives to test out ALL of the 14 SAS/SATA ports this motherboard has onboard......THEY ALL WORK OUT OF THE BOX with Kalyway 10.5.1

 

Once I got the other 4 hard drives mounted using an MBR scheme and 1 partition each, I created a stripped RAID out of the 4 drives using Disk Utility, simple, no brainer, worked perfectly.

 

I then started the tedious process of switching the boot drive around on each of the remaining SAS/SATA ports to get the boot drive to NOT show up as a SCSI removable drive, it took me about 6 switches and 6 reboots to nail it.

 

I now have a 1.8 TB RAID-0 which shows up as a removable drive on the desktop (Orange Icon w/SCSI logo) and the boot drive looks like a normal HD icon.

 

Networking worked out of the box.

 

The 8800 GT-OC is indicated in System Profiler as a GeForce 8800 GTS w/ 256 MB memory (my card has 640MB memory).

 

Everything else seems to work as it should, all of my memory is reported correctly in the correct slots.

 

My Firewire 800 card works perfectly as my (2) WD MyBook 1TB units show up on the desktop and I can read/write to them flawlessly.

 

ISSUES SO FAR:

 

EDIT-----After reading Skippyretards thread I installed his ALC888 package and onboard sound is now working. (Thanks HyperX)

 

 

When I go to power down the system, it goes through the motions and powers down the monitors but then a screen comes up that requires me to hold the power button down to shut the system down.

 

I have not tried any of the sleep/hibernation modes yet, I will do that next. (CAN ANYONE HELP ME WITH THIS?).

 

[edit]I just let the system sit there idling for about 30 minutes, it went into sleep mode, the fans powered down, screen went down and I left it there for about 10 minutes....then I clicked the mouse and it all fired back to life! I think Sleep works perfectly as well!

 

So there you have it!

 

A MacPro Octa with over 2 terrabytes of storage, 4 gigs of RAM (ordering up 4 more this week) working nearly 100%.

Hopefully I can get the ALC888 onboard sound working and hopefully some of you can help me understand some of the things I am not clear on like do I actually have the best drivers available for my video card and what should I do to optimize this system further?

 

I am already this far along so I am totaly willing to test things out and see where we get with this thing.

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https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/83229-tyan-s2696-8-core-hackintosh/
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Hyper X
Hyper X
Posted
Posted

ALC888 Drivers

 

The Video card, just do a search. Since 10.5.2 is not officially out you will need to use the beta drivers and there is a special string you need to put in natit for 640MB

PZZ
PZZ
Posted
Posted

I have sucessfully installed Kalyway on the following hardware:

 

Tyan S2696 Motherboard

8gb Crucial FB-DIMM 667

2 x Xeon 5345 (8 cores total @ 2.33ghz)

Nvidia 8800 GTX 768mb

 

I chose only the vanilla kernel on the Kalyway install and used nvinstaller for my video card drivers (there is a 768mb option).

 

The system itself is extremely fast and responsive. I find compiling/running Java applications 10% to 20% faster than Windows Vista x32. I'll be testing Photoshop soon and I expect similar results. I've managed to get a tri boot system running with the Vista boot loader so I'm able to boot Vista x32, x64, and OSx86 off three seperate drives from the Vista boot screen.

 

** EDIT

Geekbench score

http://browse.geekbench.ca/geekbench2/view/36550

 

My Xbench scores are below (although I don't find Xbench to be very reliable/consistent).

 

Results 174.20

System Info

Xbench Version 1.3

System Version 10.5.1 (9B18)

Physical RAM 8192 MB

Model Mac Pro

Drive Type WDC WD1500ADFD-00NLR4

CPU Test 136.46

GCD Loop 275.04 14.50 Mops/sec

Floating Point Basic 138.87 3.30 Gflop/sec

vecLib FFT 109.07 3.60 Gflop/sec

Floating Point Library 107.44 18.71 Mops/sec

Thread Test 297.62

Computation 429.99 8.71 Mops/sec, 4 threads

Lock Contention 227.57 9.79 Mlocks/sec, 4 threads

Memory Test 134.89

System 143.46

Allocate 230.48 846.40 Kalloc/sec

Fill 118.14 5744.22 MB/sec

Copy 123.33 2547.25 MB/sec

Stream 127.29

Copy 124.97 2581.26 MB/sec

Scale 124.59 2574.03 MB/sec

Add 130.47 2779.37 MB/sec

Triad 129.35 2767.03 MB/sec

Quartz Graphics Test 165.13

Line 146.22 9.74 Klines/sec [50% alpha]

Rectangle 189.19 56.48 Krects/sec [50% alpha]

Circle 153.88 12.54 Kcircles/sec [50% alpha]

Bezier 161.14 4.06 Kbeziers/sec [50% alpha]

Text 183.45 11.48 Kchars/sec

OpenGL Graphics Test 150.56

Spinning Squares 150.56 191.00 frames/sec

User Interface Test 274.38

Elements 274.38 1.26 Krefresh/sec

PZZ
PZZ
Posted
Posted

Geekbench score:

http://browse.geekbench.ca/geekbench2/view/36550

 

The system was around $4800 at the end of the day. But that included 2 x 150gb 10k rpm Raptors, a 1 TB raid using the on board tyan controller, server case, dvd-rom, and a 1200w power supply. Add that to the list above and I figure this system comes in at half what a Mac Pro on apple would cost. The amount of savings is worth the minor performance hit from a non optimized system IMHO.

 

GL!

 

PZ

osxflex
osxflex
Posted
Posted

Wow this is sounds really great. Congrats to the both of you who got leopard installed on tyan motherboard.

 

I too would like to install Kalyway 10.5.1 on my Tyan motherboard.

 

Specs Below:

 

MB TYAN S5397

http://www.tyan.com/product_board_detail.aspx?pid=560

HD 320gb Sata

RAM 8gb 667mhz

CPUs 2 e5420 Xeons

GPU 8800GT Nvidia GPU 512mb pci gen 2.0 card

DVD lg dvd+dl burner Sata

 

What specific bios settings were used and what options were checked on install(Kalyway 10.5.1)?

 

I was about to install Vista Ultimate X64 first but is it better to install Leopard kalyway 10.5.1 and then use bootcamp to install Vista Ultimae X64(does bootcamp work with windows x64)?

 

This is very similar to the TYAN S5396 so I think the settings should be the same...

 

Any help would be appreciate.

 

Thanks.

PZZ
PZZ
Posted
Posted
Wow this is sounds really great. Congrats to the both of you who got leopard installed on tyan motherboard.

 

I too would like to install Kalyway 10.5.1 on my Tyan motherboard.

 

Specs Below:

 

MB TYAN S5397

http://www.tyan.com/product_board_detail.aspx?pid=560

HD 320gb Sata

RAM 8gb 667mhz

CPUs 2 e5420 Xeons

GPU 8800GT Nvidia GPU 512mb pci gen 2.0 card

DVD lg dvd+dl burner Sata

 

What specific bios settings were used and what options were checked on install(Kalyway 10.5.1)?

 

I was about to install Vista Ultimate X64 first but is it better to install Leopard kalyway 10.5.1 and then use bootcamp to install Vista Ultimae X64(does bootcamp work with windows x64)?

 

This is very similar to the TYAN S5396 so I think the settings should be the same...

 

Any help would be appreciate.

 

Thanks.

 

I didn't change any settings in the Tyan bios. I checked only the vanilla kernel options on Kalyway and the MBR option and used nvinstaller for video drivers and ac888 for audio. I already had two versions of Vista installed on seperate drives so I added a third drive to for OSX and followed instructions online for using Vista's diskpart to partition the drive with the "af" id. I then used Easybcd to add the OSX boot option to the Vista boot loader. If you plan to use Vista, save yourself some time and follow the instructions for using diskpart rather than use the osx installer disk utility. Otherwise you can't dual/tri boot. I also added chain0 file to all my root drives, but I'm not sure if that did anything.

 

Good luck! Post your results when done.

 

PZ

osxflex
osxflex
Posted
Posted

Thanks for the detailed reply. I'm new to all this so I'll need to look up what you've recommended but it certainly gives me a guideline specific to my hardware which is extremely helpful.

 

I have another thread I started trying to obtain some help. I go through the steps I've made so far in my first attempt. check out link below.

http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=85238

 

One thing that seems strange is the way it described my set up in system profilier. It doesn't seem to match my hardware like my fsb is only 100mhz and the chips fsb is 1333. I listed the details in the other thread but I'll put them here to.

 

Copied from the link above:

Well I haven't gotten any responses from anyone who posted stating they've installed on a tyan succesfully so i just went ahead and did it. Vinilla Kernal(both check marks marks), Installed GPU drivers later, and set up drive GUID Journaled. Nothing else. Didn't even do anything special in the bios just set up dvd as first boot then changed it back to HD after i got the install working. So basically it worked without any issues except on reboot it came up with the plist error. I just removed the dvd, restarted it and it came right up and let me finish the installation.

 

Now I'm typing this message from the tyan machine...but it seems a bit odd. It says several interesting things in the system profiler that don't make sense...something must not be set up correctly.

 

Here's a look: I have two 2.5 mhz xeon processors and they should have 1333 mhz fsb not 100 and a total of 8 cores. Also the internet is v v slow. Not as concerned about that right now.

 

Anyone know why this is happening? I used the Kalyway 10.5.1...

 

Hardware Overview:

 

Model Name: Mac

Model Identifier: Mac Pro

Processor Speed: 2.49 GHz

Number Of Processors: 1

Total Number Of Cores: 7

L2 Cache: 12 MB

Memory: 8 GB

Bus Speed: 100 MHz

Boot ROM Version: Hack.int.0sh

 

update: i think i'm confused about the bus speed being 100 MHz...but still there is something wrong here. i just hit the toggle switch on my 4u server case to get it out of sleep mode and it flashed osx and then it rebooted.

 

About this mac states:

Processor 2 x 2.49 GHz Unknown

Memory 8GB 533 MHz DDR2 FB-DIMM (it's actually 800MHz-Qty. Four 2GB DIMMs)

-System Profilier states my memory is 1.54 GB 533 MHz

 

So I'm not getting the full potential of my cpus nor my memory.

 

Maybe you can check to see what your specs are to compare. I installed Vista Ultimate X64 last night initially before attemping the OSX86 Kalyway 10.5.1 since nobody responded to my questions about trying to get an install going on a tyan board. I hate to say it ran super fast. But this Leopard install is not running fast at all.

 

Really appreciate any feedback or suggestions.

 

Thanks.

PZZ
PZZ
Posted
Posted

I've seen many users with odd FSB speeds and the general consensus is that the chips are running at normal speed and os x is reporting them incorrectly. I would wager the same for your 7 instead of 8 core problem. If you are having sluggish performance with that processor/mb config it seems you may have to research some tweaks and mess with the bios more.

  • 2 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...
digiz
digiz
Posted
Posted

Thanks Team Scream for posting this.

 

I too have a monster S2696 (my Axio HD edit station) and was inspired to try Kalyway 10.5.1 on it - success! ;)

 

I also have a 3ware SATA Raid controller with over a TB storage on it plus five other drives on the SATA ports (and two SATA DVD/BD drives) - just downloading the 3ware sidecar drivers to see if I can get the 3ware to be recognised or not.

 

Does anyone use a DVI KVM switch here? I switch two of my three Dell 24" desktop monitors between this Hackintosh and a Vista PC - have a few problems with the OS X screen switching to low res and not always switching back to full res again when the KVM is switched back to OS X. More of a problem is the mouse pointer though - when switching back the mouse is either uncontrollable (a few gitters and it then locks up) or just doesn't appear at all. Sometimes I can see the right click menu when RMB is clicked, but normally nothing. USB mouse is permanently connected to the OS X PC, so not a problem with the KVM.

 

Any ideas?

  • 3 weeks later...
pucca
pucca
Posted
Posted

I finally convert my 8-core Vista to 8-core Mac Pro, thanks Team Scream for the post here, give me encourage and confident to do so.

 

similar hardware as Team Scream,

Tyan S2696 (non-SAS), 2x Intel E5345 2.33GHz, 8G (2x4GB) FB-DIMM, Nvidia 7800GTX, 500GB Boot Drive.

I have a Arcea 1220 PCIe RAID Controller with 6x 500GB, 2.5TB RAID5, it works OUT-OF-BOX!

 

the only thing need is the ALC888, Thanks to the post by HyperX, it works.

 

using Kalyway 10.5.1, upgrade to 10.5.2; btw, I installed every single update from Apple, it works!

it has been up and running over 1 week, very stable, 0 complain so far. :P

  • 1 month later...
pucca
pucca
Posted
Posted
Sorry to dredge up an old thread but, is your S2692 system booting off the of the raid and using the raid as your system disk, or just as scratch storage?

 

I changed my system. now is the RAID bootable, system disk.

2 volume under 1 Raidset-RAID5, volume 1 500GB as boot/system, volume 2 2TB as storage.

and using external 500GB as time-machine drive.

 

cheers.

  • 3 weeks later...
dust'n the callipygous
dust'n the callipygous
Posted
Posted

is the 5396 a better board than the 2696? they look pretty identical. the only difference i can see is that the 2696 has max ram listed as 32 and the 5396 says 64/32. i'm thinking about making a FCP editing system using e5410 chips. any suggestions?

  • 1 month later...
digiz
digiz
Posted
Posted

Anyone installed a new Kalyway 10.5.2 on this board yet and got sound working?

 

I did this recently and can't get sound (tried so many different ALC888 packages and patches etc). One time it worked OK but after a reboot, the sound device just didn't show up again. Pulling my hair out!

 

Thanks.

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