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Old 12-28-2008, 03:05 PM
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McMadd McMadd is offline
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Join Date: Dec 2008
Posts: 15
My Journey to OS-X on AMD (still traveling...)

I like OS-X.
About two years ago I bought my first Mac, a shiny white MacBook.
After a few days of getting used to it I was sold completely and understood less and less on how I ever got by using only Windows for all those years.
Apart from a few job related things and very stubborn habits I never seriously touched XP again.

Later, when I switched jobs I got a MacBook from my new company and I decided to give my old one to my wife.
Now here's the problem. I like working on all sorts of stuff and testing out new (read downloaded) programs and of course I don't feel comfortable doing that on my company laptop.
Buying another MacBook is not an option and stealing my old one back from my wife wouldn't do the marriage any good.
The desktop PC I got is too old (AMD 2100+) and my budget is limited.

Last week I came across a nice deal for a new machine within my budget and without too much checking if OSX86 would even work on it, I got it delivered just before X-mas. I soon found out the specs (see my signature) are not ideal but hey, I like a challenge.

My dream machine would be having OSX86 running stable enough to do some nice multitracking in Logic Express.

My attempts so far:
I figured if I wanted to get this running I probably needed a very recent distro and according to the "InsanelyMac" pages that would be the "iDeneb v1.3 10.5.5" so that's what I got. I was very happy to see the install DVD boot up all the way, seemingly recognizing my SATA devices and without selecting any patches or drivers I let it install.
Unfortunately, when the install finished after 30 minutes it went into an instant reboot loop with an error message that was hard to read and didn't ring a bell. I tried several statup options but they made no difference at all. ("-v, -s, -x, rd=disk..., etc in all sorts of combo's")

I started wading the InsanelyMac forums and soon found out those forums are waaayyy to big and flooded with questions without answers.
The only helpful thing I found there was somebody mentioning that AMD users might have more luck at "InfiniteMac" and tadaaa, here I am.

Second try:
I read a lot of posts about the "Kalyway 10.5.2 Intel Amd" being a nice solid base so I downloaded that and gave it a try.
This distro didn't even boot from the DVD, throwing the dreaded "Still waiting for root device".
I figured that since my first attempt with a newer distro did not have this problem, this route might even be harder.

In the meantime I read about all the disadvantages there are with SATA drives (which is most likely why the Kalyway wouldn't even run) but still not ready to throw in an IDE disk.

Third attempt:
Then I saw the announcement on the forum about the "iPC Public Beta" release and figured, let's try that one before calling in the cavalry.
What I liked most about this distro is that the readme actually gave some info I could work with.
I booted the DVD, selected the Voodoo kernel (and my audio codec) and again 30 minutes later it was ready to reboot.

Now this time (booting with "-v -f -x") it actually started loading stuff from my SATA HD! Lots of interesting info scrolled by but then it ended in the all known "Still waiting for root device". But because it did start loading from my HD I figured that this was finally something I could work with.

I started searching again and found out that using Google is actually better than using the search functions on the fora (maybe more on that later) and came across a mentioning of the "AppleNForceATA" kext in combination with my Nforce4 chipset. Reinstalled iPC, this time selecting the Voodoo kernel, the AppleNForceATA driver, again my audio codec and waited another 30 minutes...
The post-install-auto-reboot puts it in a kernel panic but I found out earlier that that might be because the kext's aren't set up properly, resetted the machine, gave it the "-v -f -x" options and yes!.... there was the keyboard selection wizard. After filling in the forms I was presented with my very own OSX86 desktop running in safe mode on my brand new AMD machine. I rebooted it and was even happier to find out it started up in normal mode, without any boot options and showing a speaker icon indicating it did find some audio device.

Happy, happy, joy, joy, w00t, w00t, etc.... \o/

And now the real fun starts....

These are the problems I still have:
- As soon as I install a kext for either Ethernet or Graphics the machine won't boot up.
- Disks in the SATA DVD are not recognized (installing from there went fine). I attached an external USB DVD writer which works fine for now.
- Until now I kept re-installing with different options but I found the magic single user mode (-s) and am able to find my way on the prompt. Where can I find the kext files on the DVD that are shown in the installer?
- Looking at my hardware, any tips or success stories I can try?

I'll keep on trying and reading and trying and will post my findings here but in the meantime maybe some of the pro's or other users can shed some light on my issues.

Cheers!

Code:
CPU : AMD Athlon64 X2 5600+ Dual-Core 2.9GHz
MB  : ASRock AliveNF6G-GLAN
Mem : 4Gb (2x 2GB, PC-6400 DDR-II 800MHz)
Chip: nForce 430
GFX : Integr. NVIDIAŽ GeForce 6150SE, 256MB shared
LAN : Gigabit LAN 10/100/1000 Mb/s, Giga PHY Realtek RTL8211B
Snd : ALC662 Audio Codec
HD  : SATA 7200RPM 250GB
DVD : SATA 22x DVD rewriter

Running iPC Public release.
Shared mem. GFX will probably never work. Replacement is underway.
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