ATTN - All Bad Axe 2/1 Owners

[badaxe2]

Just a little thread to ask if we can have a dedicated release of Leopard for these boards. Shout in this thread if you want a release and maybe somebody will do one.

 

[BJMoose]

There have been so many great Bad Axe 2 tutorials in this and the Tiger forum that I suspect most who are using this board are already up and running as near perfectly as one could expect with a hackintosh. All of the Tiger disks and at least all of the Leopard disks I've tried install quite well on the BA2 with a minimum of extra work. Actually, the retail disk, run from either a base tiger or leopard install, is the best of everything for this board. All I ever replaced was dsmos and nvinject and performed some minor edits to aboutthismac.strings and localizable.strings. Of course, I'm using usb sound for in and out so I didn't need to install taruga's audio patch.

[SempronX]

I would really like a release for the bad axe 2 board. im having lots of problems installing kalyway disc with efi guid...

[BJMoose]

I would really like a release for the bad axe 2 board. im having lots of problems installing kalyway disc with efi guid...

Have you checked out Unit's post from this morning? He has compiled a list of some of the most helpful tutorials for setting up a BA2 board from beginning to end. Please note that the BA2 does require an extra step in the prep process (for guid only) that many other motherboards don't need.

[ducman]

I bought my Bad Axe 2 because I thought it would be the most compatible board, so I was surprised at how difficult it was to get a good installation up. However, it seems like a special installation would be a lot of work that would probably be better focused on newer hardware.

[Unit]

Thanks BJMoose. I purchased this board based on your recommendations. Ducman, this board is very compatible with Leopard. As I've indicated in my other post, I only had to add dsmos.kext and my video card driver in order to make it work. It doesn't get more vanilla than that. As far as the extra steps involved to prepare the hard drive for GUID and EFI, it's really not that big a deal. It only takes a few more minutes.

 

So far, this board is running very well. The only issues I've had thus far are as follows:

 

-E6600 core 2 duo is reported as "4 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo" in About This Mac.

 

-IHC7 is reported as "Unknown AHCI Standard Controller" and the Marvell SATA ports are not recognized.

 

-In the application Temperature Monitor" the temp. is reported about 6-10 C hotter than the Kalyway 10.5 install

 

I'm pretty sure there's a way to edit the CPU properties somewhere in order to display properly (still researching this). Possibly the ICH7 ports as well. But I'm not bothered by this at all, because it doesn't seem to affect performance. Also I don't run more than 4 hard drives in my system, so I'm not concerned about the Marvell issue.

 

I am curious as to why the temps. are a little higher on this install when compared to Kalyway. I've checked in the BIOS hardware monitor, and things seem fine, so I don't know. Maybe it's the Temperature Monitor software?

 

If anyone knows, please feel free to discuss.

[BJMoose]

-E6600 core 2 duo is reported as "4 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo" in About This Mac.

Yes this is a cosmetic thing with most of the newer installers. It involves the loginwindow and sometimes by switching to an older version you can get it read properly. I've not gotten that to work. So since it's only cosmetic, I just edited my 'aboutthismac.strings' to read what it's supposed to read. Works like a charm. Here's how to do it:

 

Go to /System/Library/CoreServices/loginwindow.app

 

Right click and click "Show Package Contents" on loginwindow.app

 

Once inside loginwindow.app, go to /Contents/Resources/English.lproj

 

You should see a file called "AboutThisMac.strings" inside English.lproj

 

Copy it to the desktop and open it up with TextEdit

 

Depending on weather you have a single or dual processor, scroll down to one of the following lines of code:

 

Single Processor scroll down to the following code

CODE/* final UI with a description of the processor (e.g. "600 MHz PowerPC G3") */

//"ABOUT_BOX_SINGLE_PROCESSOR_FIELD_FORMAT" = "Processor: %@";

"ABOUT_BOX_SINGLE_PROCESSOR_FIELD_FORMAT" = "%@";

"ABOUT_BOX_SINGLE_PROCESSOR_L3CACHE_FORMAT" = "%@ L3 cache";

 

Dual Processor scroll down to the following code

CODE/* final UI with a description of the processors (e.g. "Dual 800 MHz PowerPC G4")

//"ABOUT_BOX_MULTIPLE_PROCESSORS_FIELD_FORMAT" = "Processors: %@";

"ABOUT_BOX_MULTIPLE_PROCESSORS_FIELD_FORMAT" = "%@";

"ABOUT_BOX_MULTIPLE_PROCESSORS_L3CACHE_FORMAT" = "%@ L3 cache per processor";

 

Edit the red area inside the quotes so that it matches your processor. For example "2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Quad"

[Unit]

Thanks again BJMoose. I'm going to give this a try. The only thing that I'm really wondering about now is the temperature. Should I be concerned? Or is Temperature Monitor not accurate?

 

Thanks

[BJMoose]

As long as the bios temps are okay, you'll be fine. I don't think the temp monitor works properly on hacks. I get higher readings in OSX than I do from Windows within Parallels on the exact same system.

[MacUser2525]

From my testing using both a revision B and G chip in the same motherboard the G chip will show the correct temperatures the B chip will always be ~15C higher than it actually is. I think Temperature Monitor uses the G versions temperature rating of 100C when doing the calculation whereas the B chip has a rating of 85C so that gives you the higher temps when it reads the output from the diode on the chip.