Help Wanted to install Leopard

[Sittyosx_man]

I've managed to install Jas Tiger 10.4.8 base system on my PC. Now i want to install Leopard as my previous tries weren't so successful.

I've tried many distros of Leopard like: iAtkos v5i, Kalyway 10.5.2, ideneb v1.4, LawLess PPC, Leo4all v3, Leo4all v4.1 etc. They all have the same problem. When I boot from the DVD and start loading it restarts the PC automatically thus cannot see the apple logo and get to the installer.

I have also tried JAS 10.5.4 and successfuly passed that issue but it gets me an error: "Still waiting for root device".

Can anyone help me on how can i install Leopard on my system.
Thanks for your help!

[NebKiwi]

Hello!

First off, I personally wouldn't touch one of the distros, but it really depends on how easy you want it to be... I much prefer retail installs, they are far cleaner and easier to update.. + you know exactly what drivers are running on your system.. I recently wrote a tutorial on how to install retail if you wish to follow it. Click me (http://www.infinitemac.com/f19/howto-install-retail-leopard-on-intel-near-retail-t2712/)

As for the "waiting for root device", if your HD is IDE, try switching to SATA, it solved the problem for me on multiple occasions :)

[Valentine]

I see you got a AMD Sempron 2600+ on a 754 Socket some of them can do SSE3 some not.
Best kernel to choose seams therefor Voodoo kernel. It's on the iPC distro. Also on XxX_x86_10.5.6_Install_Disc_Universal_Final.v2
(and maybe some others)

But as it looks with your specs it isn't going to be easy. Please find out more about your specs (LAN, audio, also SSE3)

[Sittyosx_man]

My motherboard is n250a-FR and includes an additional Silicon Image Sil3114 Serial ATA/RAID controller, an onboard realtek 5.1 audio codec, a Realtek Gigabit NIC, IEEE 1394 and a dual BIOS feature. My processor has support for SSE3 capability.

P.S: I installed Tiger on an IDE hard-disk.

Thank you for your help!

[Valentine]

Ok then Voodoo kernel should work fine. But the Sil3114 could be troublesome.
It is likely that a installed system will work perfectly, but the problem lies in that not all
southbridge chips (merly a few) are supported at DVD boot.

I would try to go for a Boot 132 retail setup.
See here: http://www.infinitemac.com/f19/howto-install-retail-leopard-on-intel-near-retail-t2712/
and here: http://www.infinitemac.com/f19/howto-efi-partition-booting-zero-modification-installs-on-t1609/

You have to build yourself a customized boot CD with your Sil3114 driver on it.
Also Voodoo kernel on the disk. I have not seen a kext for Sil3114 but there is a
Sil3124 on XxX_x86_10.5.6 and on iPC. Maybe that works.
Extract them with Pacifist.

Try finding more information on the Sil3114 see: http://pcwizcomputer.com/osx86search/

As soon as you can install from DVD you can fix the other kexts.
You can check out your hardware more exact using Everest Home (Windows).
That will tell you the exact what kind of soundchip and ethernet.


Another way to go might be putting a distro of your choice on a USB stick and boot from there. Has your Bios a AHCI option?

[Sittyosx_man]

Another way to go might be putting a distro of your choice on a USB stick and boot from there. Has your Bios a AHCI option?

No in my bios there isn't the AHCI option.

[Valentine]

Thought so.
I found some specs of the board
The soutbridge is a Nvidia nForce3 250 MCP
http://www.motherboards.org/reviews/motherboards/1463_2.html

Question is what is the Sil3114 doing? Your IDE?


PNY 6200 is no problem by the way:)

[Sittyosx_man]

I don't have any hard-disk on the Sil3114 controller and the IDE hard is onboard channel 1.
The sata drivers therfore are on the integrated ATA133 controller not on the SIL3114.

But how i installed Tiger and can't install Leopard?

[Valentine]

Like I said it all depends on if the distro supports the southbridge (Nvidia nForce3 250 MCP) at DVD boot up. The "boot up OS X" and the
"installation OS X" are not the same.
The DVD boot up extension.mkext you tried held no Nvidia nForce3 250 MCP support. Tiger must have.

The boot process rougly is: EFI boot starts, the boot.plist gets read, the kernel gets loaded and then the kexts are being loaded.
The soutbridge kext is loaded very early to provide access to the harddrives. Some of the last kexts are video and ethernet.

Mainly the soutbridge (and maybe keyboard and mouse ps/2) are needed to install OS X. To get there the kernel, the southbrige (and video) have to be supported by the distro you choose. If not so, you have to provide the kernel and southbrige yourself via the Boot 132 customized disk and do a retail install.

As the "boot up OS X" starts it searches for (or loads) a (or the) appropriate southbrige kext. If succeded it continues to load from the setup DVD (it recognised the DVD drive), if not succeded, it presents you with a "still waiting for root device error".

The trick is now finding the "right" distro (unlikely) or finding the Nvidia nForce3 250 MCP kext (most likely) and putting it
and some other kexts on a Boot 132 CD.

It is some efford, but if you got a perfect working Boot 132 disk and have installed retail, you are the king of the hill. No distractions through
distros, 100% OS X as near to the real thing as possible. No reliance on some upcomming distro update. If you do it right you even can
update trough Apple software update.