Thanks for your help so far.

I believe that I have ended up confusing you guys.

This is what this machine has seen so far :

1. Used boot-132 method to install 10.5.0 (using Retail DVD).
2. Upgraded to .2-> .4 -> .5.
3. I created an EFI partition using various tutorials around (manually). For instance, I used http://www.ihackintosh.com/2009/04/h...meleon-20-rc1/. The funny thing is that I used the same chameleon version - did not use the extra kexts, but the same boot (no GUI installation), and the EFI works. I also used a bit of common sense info from munky's post on insanelymac. Installed the contents of boot-132 generic.iso initrd.img to /Volumes/EFI/Extra/Extensions.
4. I have some plist files :

$ ls -ltrh /Volumes/EFI/Extra/
total 64
-rw-r--r--@ 1 root admin 1.7K Jun 4 13:25 smbios.plist
drwxr-xr-x@ 7 root admin 238B Jun 4 13:25 Themes
-rw-r--r-- 1 root admin 409B Jun 17 12:04 com.apple.Boot.plist
-rw-r--r-- 1 root admin 4.2K Jun 18 10:37 com.apple.network.identification.plist
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 6.8K Jun 19 10:04 preferences.plist
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 907B Jun 19 10:04 com.apple.airport.preferences.plist
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 1.3K Jun 22 16:39 NetworkInterfaces.plist
drwxr-xr-x 24 root wheel 816B Jul 1 14:22 Extensions

5. Added in some extra kexts for my AR5005G card to EFI as well as System extensions (I had a hard time getting that to work).
6. Added in some extra sound kexts (AC97 and Azalia) to the above two locations. Even tried the patched AppleHDA from Taruga. No go. The device shows up, but no sound. No worries. This is a work machine. I do not need sound in my work. So, I am letting things stand as they are.
7. Upshot - the system boots properly (10.5.5) without any CD rom in the drive, with the EFI partition. I cannot hibernate and resume (always get the too old a sleep image message on boot). On attempting to sleep (I have smart sleep panel thing installed), the system makes a clicking sound, and then comes back. Due to unclean loading of the AR5005G kext, the system usually freezes at this point. I simply power off normally when I am done. I would like to have hibernation work at some point, but it is not a show stopper.

Now, I want to upgrade to 10.5.6 since I want to install iWork 09. I know there is a way to mess around with plists and make the installer think it is 10.5.6, but I do not want that. I have patched my DSDT and have a DSDT.aml file in my /Volumes/EFI as well as /.


Getting back to what you asked :

I did partition using the GUID scheme.

$ diskutil list
/dev/disk0
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme *149.0 Gi disk0
1: EFI 200.0 Mi disk0s1
2: Apple_HFS Macintosh HD 50.9 Gi disk0s2
3: Apple_HFS 97.7 Gi disk0s3
/dev/disk1
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: Private *97.7 Gi disk1

Don't worry about disk1/disk0s3 - it is just my truecrypt volume that contains all the user data - necessary since I am messing with the Macintosh HD so much.

EFI extensions :

$ ls -ltrh /Volumes/EFI/Extra/Extensions/
total 0
drwxr-xr-x 3 root wheel 102B Jun 4 13:29 SMBIOSEnabler.kext
drwxr-xr-x@ 3 root wheel 102B Jun 4 13:29 AppleAC97Audio.kext
drwxr-xr-x 3 root wheel 102B Jun 4 13:29 ACPIPS2Nub.kext
drwxr-xr-x 3 root wheel 102B Jun 4 13:29 AppleACPIPlatform.kext
drwxr-xr-x 3 root wheel 102B Jun 4 13:29 AppleAzaliaAudio.kext
drwxr-xr-x 3 root wheel 102B Jun 4 13:29 AppleAPIC.kext
drwxr-xr-x@ 3 root wheel 102B Jun 4 13:29 AppleAHCIPort.kext
drwxr-xr-x 3 root wheel 102B Jun 4 13:29 ApplePS2Controller.kext
drwxr-xr-x 3 root wheel 102B Jun 4 13:29 AppleNForceATA.kext
drwxr-xr-x 5 root wheel 170B Jun 4 13:29 AppleIntelIntegratedFramebuffer.kext
drwxr-xr-x@ 3 root wheel 102B Jun 4 13:29 AppleGenericPCATA.kext
drwxr-xr-x 3 root wheel 102B Jun 4 13:29 AppleSMBIOS.kext
drwxr-xr-x 3 root wheel 102B Jun 4 13:29 dsmos.kext
drwxr-xr-x 3 root wheel 102B Jun 4 13:29 IntelCPUPMDisabler.kext
drwxr-xr-x 4 root wheel 136B Jun 4 13:29 NVkush.kext
drwxr-xr-x 3 root wheel 102B Jun 17 14:36 IO80211Family.kext
drwxr-xr-x 3 root wheel 102B Jun 17 16:03 IONetworkingFamily.kext
drwxr-xr-x 3 root wheel 102B Jun 29 12:42 AppleHDA.kext
drwxr-xr-x@ 3 root wheel 102B Jun 29 13:43 HDAEnabler.kext
drwxr-xr-x 3 root wheel 102B Jun 29 16:45 AppleIntelCPUPowerManagement.kext
drwxr-xr-x@ 3 root wheel 102B Jul 1 13:23 AppleVIAATA.kext

I mentioned this earlier. I do not have AHCI as a possible option in my setup. In BIOS SATA operation - my choices are Normal and Legacy. Legacy leads to the HD above not getting detected.

So, no AHCI.

Do I need to update my BIOS ?