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Leopard on a Shuttle K45 - MiniHack


orsodimare
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Hi There!

I have just ordered a Shuttle K45 barebone PC whose mobo seems to have good chances to be supported... It will arrive in one week.

I have in mind to build a MiniHack, and besides the list of needed hacked ketx I'm considering also the best use for the only PCI slot (FW or what?) and how to afford the lack of an optical device (is there enough space for a slim one?)

Suggestions are very welcomed.

Cheers, Orso.

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The Baby is just arrived on my desk and I already found the solution to one of my issues: there is already a slot for a standard slim DVD unit !!!!! just need to find the right connector (IDE-miniIDE or USB-miniIDE).

Anyway during the weekend I will fire Leo4All inside and let you know how it works. :)

Stay tuned, Orso

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I sooooooooooo want to know if it works as I am planning to do exactly the same thing.

 

Please give as many infos as possible on your components and the problems encountered.

If you need the fix for the GM950 (There can be artifacts but it seems that it doesn't happened all the time), let me know as I managed to find it yesterday...

 

May the force be with you (for us all!!! :) ) and if you need help, let us know!!!

 

Looking forward for your next post :P

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Damn...

Looks like you cannot install the slim DVD player out of the box as some metal structure is blocking the way... Not good :(

 

Sometime, I just do not see why they add little disapointment like that to a great product...

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People..... IT WORKS.here is the story:

Unboxed the shuttle and opened to put an E6550 and a couple of Gb RAM, as elsewhere underlined I soon noticed that there is a slot for a slim DVD (to open the slot you need just to fold the iron and the metal goes away)... there is also a similar way to have a front panel with USB and audio/mic, but it is another story!Very strange that they are non documented in the shuttle k45 advertising!!!

I first put an old spare IDE 40Gb inside and an IDE DVD rom (supplied by an external psu because in the shuttle you have just one power connector (actually there is another but is suitable for SATA only). Fired it up and booted with the Kalyway 10.5.1 DVD everything went OK with the patched kernel (N.B. Vanilla is not supported)

ATTENTION: To tell the true, that was the third attempt because two previous trials ended suddently after few minutes because of overheating of the Chipset... reading the FAQ on the shuttle site I realised that leaving the chassis open (and I had, to since I connected a standard DVD Rom) leads to a bad cooling for the mobo !!!!!! So that meanwhile I take the cover away, I put a real fancooler on the side of the Shuttle and every thing went good ;-)

Ethernet is OK, Audio is just azalia (no mic no line in) but Graphics is OK without any fix besides the Kaly.

Now I am working on putting an extra fan for the northbridge and the slim DVD inside (I have only USB interface and I have already realized that it doesn't boot well from it - I got com.apple.Boot.plist missing booting from the same Kaly DVD....)After then I'll upgrade to 10.5.2 .....Orso

 

I sooooooooooo want to know if it works as I am planning to do exactly the same thing.Please give as many infos as possible on your components and the problems encountered.If you need the fix for the GM950 (There can be artifacts but it seems that it doesn't happened all the time), let me know as I managed to find it yesterday... May the force be with you (for us all!!! :) ) and if you need help, let us know!!!Looking forward for your next post :D

 

No artifacts at all and I imagine that Kalyway 10.5.1 doesn't install any pacth to GM950.

 

Damn...Looks like you cannot install the slim DVD player out of the box as some metal structure is blocking the way... Not good :( Sometime, I just do not see why they add little disapointment like that to a great product...

 

Also here no problems, just fold the metal cover and it goes away...In the shuttle there is also the complete set of screw for mounting the slim DVD, you just need the small board converting the JAE connector to a standard IDE + PowerSupply + Audio (if you like)Check eBay with "JAE IDE converter" and you will find a bunch.

 

Orso, how did you build go? Did it sleep? Did it boot using GUID?

 

I have installed on GUID but used patched kernel (kalyway default) because vanilla gave an error at boot time (Hpet missing or something like that) and I was not able to find the right BIOS setting (as I had to do with the P5W DH in order it to run vanilla without errors). BIOS documentation is completely missing. In the box there is only the few-pages flyer that you find in internet !!!!It goes to sleep in any way (by menu, power switch, energy saving preferences) BUT ...... when I try to wake it, I get a strange black screen with four rows:

Intel ..... bla bla bla

GM950 bla bla bla..

REVERSE ENGINEERING IS STRICTLY FORBIDDEN

bla bla bla

 

And everything hangs there :-(

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orsodimare, thanks a lot for the review on this.

 

I hate to see that sleep doesn't work and I have to skip this baby :wacko:

 

Did you try to sleep with the latest JAS 10.5.2?

 

Not yet. In order to test it for everybody, do you think that I can try just putting JaS kernel or I need to install the complete distro ?

If you PM a link I can speedup such tests.

Orso

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Ok I found a bunch of kernels to play with (from kalyway 10.5.2 DVD) without downloading a new full distro.

Other solutions are related to vanilla kernel (but I didn't manage how to change BIOS settings to eventually support it).

Meanwhile I'm DL-ing the full Kalyway 10.5.2.... since I didn't find a final JaS 10.5.2 sailing around :-(

 

On the audio side, I found a ALC662.txt to use with Taruga's but it doesn't work so I'm back to azalia.

 

Everything else is full working after putting an extra fan on the chipset dissipator.

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IT SLEEPS .... AND WAKES UP !!

 

Just changed a couple of BIOS settings and now my baby runs vanilla kernel and sleeps with just the Kalyway 10.5.1 distro.

I'm so happy that I fear to upgrade now !!! :-) let's go for a TM BackUp first ...

 

Orso

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WOW, that is great news dude!! Good job!

 

Can you share the changed settings with us?

 

BTW: Does it Sleep AND Speedstep?! That would be one of the first machines to do that!

I think you can change the changing CPU speed with iStat Pro.

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WOW, that is great news dude!! Good job!

 

Can you share the changed settings with us?

 

BTW: Does it Sleep AND Speedstep?! That would be one of the first machines to do that!

I think you can change the changing CPU speed with iStat Pro.

 

Yes of course: this night I'll try to make a snapshot to the only BIOS page I changed after re-loading the factory settings.

 

I don't know so much about Speedstep :D : it need particular kernel a/o kext ? may I check it only with iStat Pro or there are other "signs" of its availability?

 

Orso

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You can just run:

sudo sysctl -a | grep cpufreq

The hw.cpufrequency_max should differ from hw.cpufrequency_min. The hw.cpufrequency should differ when idle'ing.

 

EDIT: Hmm, my iMac shows the same for all three of them although Speedstep is enabled.

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You can just run:

sudo sysctl -a | grep cpufreq

The hw.cpufrequency_max should differ from hw.cpufrequency_min. The hw.cpufrequency should differ when idle'ing.

 

EDIT: Hmm, my iMac shows the same for all three of them although Speedstep is enabled.

 

The same for me:

bash-3.2# sysctl -a | grep cpufreq

kern.exec: unknown type returned

hw.cpufrequency = 2331000000

hw.cpufrequency_max: 2331000000

hw.cpufrequency_min: 2331000000

hw.cpufrequency: 2330000000

 

installed also iStat Pro: (see attach)

 

wrt the BIOS, I just put in the Power Management Setup:

 

ACPI Suspend Type [s3(STR)]

Run VGABIOS if S3 resume [NO]

 

To tell the whole story sleep and wake up very well but with this settings very often hangs on Shutdown or reboot :-(

 

I'm starting an upgrade to Kalyway 10.5.2 right now.

 

Orso

post-43221-1208975087.png

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The PSU makes no noise at all, also the rear big fan is quite silent like the CPU one's.... instead my old IDE 40Go is a real .... :poster_spam: Orso
Are you using the onboard GMA950 graphics or did you add a PCIe card? How much space would you say there is in the case for a card? I'm thinking of reusing and old Asus 7300GT (silent) but the heat sink is pretty large and needs an extra 10mm clearance above the card.Also, any problems to report with the 100W PSU? I'd like to use an internal slim DVD plus one SATA HDD.

 

 

 

I'm back after a little research.OK, so there's no PCIe slot. Now I can see how they managed to get this going off just a 100W PSU.

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Are you using the onboard GMA950 graphics or did you add a PCIe card? How much space would you say there is in the case for a card? I'm thinking of reusing and old Asus 7300GT (silent) but the heat sink is pretty large and needs an extra 10mm clearance above the card.Also, any problems to report with the 100W PSU? I'd like to use an internal slim DVD plus one SATA HDD.

I'm back after a little research.OK, so there's no PCIe slot. Now I can see how they managed to get this going off just a 100W PSU.

 

I'm using the onboard GMA950 but if you are interested to external DVI there is a successful story here with a PCI (not express) video card:

 

http://www.sudhian.com/index.php?/forums/viewpost/893552/

 

actually the clearance for the GPU heat-sink is really small....

Orso

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