After getting over some initial bouts of stupidity i found that this release (from th tpb iso) works on my system OOTB completely. installed on a separate SATA HD with a freshly formatted single GUID partition and installed GUID EFI v8. the only weird issue is with memory and CPU id. system info IDs the processor correctly but lists only one core, although activity monitor does show two separate and independently operating windows for cpu activity. also my ram is listed at 667 MHz in sysinfo and about this mac. while i would love that my ram is most assuredly maxed out at 400 MHz. only other quirk is having to change my speaker setup to 2ch from 6ch in Audio MIDI setup.

specs:
CPU: AMD Athlon64 X2 4200+
MOBO: MSI K8N Neo-4f (Nforce4 chipset/LAN)
Audio: Onboard Realtek ALC850 (uses AC'97 from install options)
Ram: 2 GB 400 MHz 3-3-3-8 Corsair
HD: 1x160 GB Hitachi Deskstar SATA (Zephyroth 10.5.2)
1x160 GB Hitachi Deskstar SATA (Ubuntu 7.10, OSX can't mount this HD)
1x160 GB WD IDE HD (Vista)
1x500 GR WD USB HD (storage)
GFX: evga Geforce 8800 GTS 320 MB Superclocked
Optical: 1x LG 16x DVD-R/RW+- (can't remember model)
1x Pioneer 111D 16x DVD-R/RW+-
Display: 19" X2gen LCD monitor (VGA connection, ID as display)
22" Viewsonic VX2235m (DVI connection, correct ID in OSX)
Dual screen, Res Change, QE/CI all work

Options on install: 10.5.2 Nvidia Kexts, Nvinject 320 MB, Medevil nForce kexts, forcedeth LAN driver, AC97 audio, EFI_v8 GUID

thanks again zeph for this awesome release and support and everyone else too for being so helpful!

rock on