How can I get OS X on my Asus A7N8X-X with Athlon XP 2500

[beeo]

I'm running Windows XP Pro on my AMD Athlon XP 2500. Just bought a MacBook for my wife, and would love to install Mac on my PC. Is it possible? What files do I need. Thanks in advance. (BTW, I've tried downloading full iso files, and burning to disk, but when I boot up, it just keeps rebooting.)

[Ianxxx]

I'm running Windows XP Pro on my AMD Athlon XP 2500. Just bought a MacBook for my wife, and would love to install Mac on my PC. Is it possible? What files do I need. Thanks in advance. (BTW, I've tried downloading full iso files, and burning to disk, but when I boot up, it just keeps rebooting.)

With an athlon processor it's easier to use someone else's prebuilt image than try to do it yourself. Have you tried leo4all? What chipset does your motherboard use?

[beeo]

M/Board is Asus A7N8X-X. Chipset is nVIDIA nForce2 400, nVIDIA nForce2 MCP

[nfoav8or]

http://www.asus.com/products.aspx?l1=3&l2=13&l3=58&model=219&modelmenu=1

This gives a little more info on your system. Looks like you have AGP8X (AGP 3.0) on your board which there are known fixes for AGP cards (you just have to look around a bit).

for your distro selection, I would recommend Leo4Allv3. I know it is 10.5.2 (I'll help get you the single updates to get to 10.5.5... don't use the combo update or any of the updates through Apple Software Update... we'll use Zephyroth's AMD Software Update). Another distro to try is LawlessPPC. His is 10.5.4 and has broader system support. Go with either of these but when burning, make sure you do it at a much slower speed.

A few more questions on your system make-up... I see from pictures of your motherboard on the site above that you don't have SATA; is this true of your board? IDE works great with OS X and will also enable you to have burning support with the nForce chipset. What other components make up your system and how are they connected (ie. Hard drives - IDE vs SATA, DVD burners - IDE vs SATA, Video Cards - AGP vs PCI, Wireless card [and chipset] - PCI vs USB... etc)?

When you install, make sure you customize and select the proper "drivers" for your system. Also, try to set aside an entire Hard Drive for the purpose of testing it out on your system... it helps to not get other Operating Systems messed up, esp if you plan to keep using windows on your PC as well. Once you've gotten OS X installed we can think about getting your OS's onto the same Drive for ease of OS choice at boot.

[scififan68]

I think the AMD Athlon XP 2500 only has sse.. so it's not gonna work, you need at least sse2 to run os x.

[beeo]

Many thanks, nfoav8or, for your response. I'd love to provide you with the answers to all yours questions...truth is...I'm not very knowledgeable about all of this. I guess I need someone to walk me thru this, literally!

Let me answer what Q's I can...

I don't even know what SATA means, so I'm not sure if I have it. But when I Iook thru all the specs on Device manager, I can't find any mention of SATA, but IDE is mentioned several places.

I've already downloaded Leo4Allv3, and burned it to DVD. But when I try to install, it just keeps rebooting.

All your Q's about my system, I'm just not sure where to look to find the answers. When you advise me to "be sure I customize and select the proper drivers", I'm afraid I don't know enuf to do that.

I do have an external 120GB hard drive that I can use to install Mac, and I would eventually like to have both systems operating on my PC.

In short, I obviously need a walkthrough. I'd be most grateful if you could do that, but I can understand if it's too much to ask. I'm very keen to search the various sources for info on how to do what I want....problem is, I usually find that the material I find is already over my head!!

If you can provide me with step-by-step inst's on how to get the info you want, I'd greatly appreciate it. Meanwhile, thanks so much for your assistance so far.

[nfoav8or]

Scififan86 is right. Sorry I didn't catch the whole "XP 2500"... I was busy trying to cover all the other bases with the motherboard.
http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=56280&hl=Athlon+2500

I think upgrading is in order... take a look at the Hardware Compatibility List wiki here:
http://wiki.osx86project.org/wiki/index.php/HCL_10.5.2
and know that these systems are all updatable to 10.5.5.

[beeo]

Thanks for the info. At least I won't be chasing after the impossible, at least on that machine.

I do have another PC, with an Intel Pentium 4 CPU @ 1500MHz. I couldn't find it on the Hardware Compatibility list you provided. Is it possible to istall Mac o/s on this machine??

Thanks in advance for your help.

[nfoav8or]

give a little more system spec info and we'll see what we can do.

[beeo]

Not sure what to give you, but here's some of the info taken from Device Manager
IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers
-Intel 82801 BA Bus Master IDE Controller
Intel 82845 Processor to ACP Controller 1A31
HDD WDC WD20oBB-60CVBO
Pioneer DVD-ROM DVD-104
Display Adapter -NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200

Is that enuf to start?

[nfoav8or]

hmmm. yeah. if you could get a motherboard model and number for us to check system specs that would help a lot more.

it looks like the 845 chipset with the 82801 southbridge/audio.
I've seen some installs performed over at hackint0sh.org for this but haven't really followed up on them.