Coming Soon: iPC OSx86 Intel AMD SSE2 SSE3 (10.5.5)
 

Well,

I've decided to post this here and on my site because apparently InsanelyMac doesn't want this as shown by the fact that any threads regarding this are deleted. I am the one and only pcwiz and I would like to present my upcoming OSx86 distro, iPC OSx86.

What sets iPC apart from other distros is that it is as close to a vanilla install as possible, and there is superior driver support to accommodate close to all common hardware. Here's a screenshot of the options list:

http://img527.imageshack.us/img527/4099/fulllistou5.png

What is not on the list that will be included in the final release is NVIDIA GeForce 9800GTX Drivers, all the language packages (yes, I removed the languages to free up space but ultimately I will put them back in) the 9.5.0 Voodoo kernel, and of course the AMD patch. 9800GTX package is done, I'm in the process of building the DVD to make the AMD patch, and I'm waiting for the voodoo kernel to be released.

At this current time the DVD is sitting at 10.5.4, I'm waiting for the Voodoo 9.5.0 kernel to be finalized before I update it to 10.5.5, but ultimately the final release will be 10.5.5 Now I need YOUR input. Any questions, suggestions, and comments are really appreciated!

I think this sounds like a rockin distro! I only wish I had the time and energy to make my own updatable distro. But alas, not to be so I'll rely on those better than me. Keep up the awesome work and thanks for introducing this to us all. :cool:

Thanks PCWizz, looking good!! Btw, you're more than welcome to post here.

fine work. just what the doctor ordered

Sounds Cool! thanks for this :)

Hi pcwiz,

Looking good. You may want to add "NullCPUPowerManagement" as default in case that "AppleIntelCPUPowerManagement" is installed by accident and cause kernel panic.

In addition, can you add uli526x NIC driver (PCGenUli526xEthernet.kext) on your iPC OSx86? I am using this driver for ASUS K8U-X motherboard. Here is the link (Post #17): http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.p...p;#entry274469

Thanks in advance and look forward to it.

Chun-Nan

BTW, I guess "VIA/SiS/Marvell/SB Chipset Drivers" includes "AppleGenericPCATA", "AppleOnBoardPCATA" and "AppleVIAATA". If so, is it possible to make three independent packages (at least "AppleGenericPCATA" separated from the other two)?

I have found that even though "AppleOnBoardPCATA" and "AppleVIAATA" have been injected extra ids to try to work on other PATA devices, in some case it is still not stable and will cause kernel panic or medium error, etc. Although "AppleGenericPCATA" only supports "PIO 4" mode on PATA, it is generic and much more stable.

Hi again,

Here are the beta5 IOPCIFamily and IOPCCardFamily I have revised. You can consider to add them to your iPC OSX86.

IOPCIFamily:
Basically, it is the same as the beta3 IOPCIFamily. It will try to fix devices/bridges misconfigured by BIOS, including pccards, ethernet/wireless, etc. (ie. most of the laptops and desktops with pci-pcmcia cards)

In beta5 edition, it will double check ethernet/wireless device entry (class code 020xxxx) to see if they really get the correct memory resources. (ie. bcm4311 in compaq laptops)

IOPCCardFamily:
For CardBus/PCMCIA PC Cards support. I have revised it based on pcmcia-cs 3.2.8 and apple's pcmcia-cs 3.1.12. It needs to be installed with IOPCIFamily at the same time.

Chun-Nan

Thanks
 

Hey guys, thanks for all the comments. One person I would like to thank immensely is bhast2 for answering all my questions and helping me with my problems :)

Now onto the suggestions. For NullCPUPowerManagement, the final release includes Disabler.kext by Kabyl which will not only disable AppleIntelCPUPM but kexts like AppleEFIRuntime as well as they cause problems on some systems.

Chun Nan,

Thanks a lot, I will include those if I can :)

The installation options menu is looking fantastic. But is your image created competely new or it is based on an older image? If so, have you tested some known issues, f.e. Zephyroth's image wasn't able to play mounted Video DVD images, DVD Player and FrontRow are exiting. So it's a system problem, not a problem of the program.

What is the difference between the drivers with ATI Radeon X1000 Series ID 71c2 and the Radeon X1600 drivers? I vae this card with ID 71c2, it's a X1600Pro, ATIInject detects it as a X1650. On which driver base versions are the patched ones, 10.5.5 or an earlier version?

What is the difference between the PCI-E and AGP versions? In Leo4All V3 I had for the X1600 a PCI (?) and an AGP version. It seems that the AGP version only adds the AGPGart driver, the others are the same. But I have to install the AGP version, the 'PCI' one is not working. In the system I can delete AGPGart.kext, it isn't even loaded. If only AGPGart is the difference the PCI-E versions could maybe be skipped because AGPGart won't be loaded on PCI-E systems.

What about the 9.5 Kernel and Zephyroth's AMD Updater?

Wow, some comprehensive hardware support you have there :D

Looking forward to testing it out!

naquaada,

Nope, iPC is based 100% on the Mac OS X 10.5.4 9E25 Retail DVD with minimal modifications so those problems should not exist. I included both packages just in case because it seems that they use different kexts. The 71cx ATI drivers are basically disassembled versions of MacLovin's packages, can't find the link to them right know but I found them somewhere around InsanelyMac I believe. Not sure what driver base they are but I can check the versions of the kexts if you want to, but they do work.

In regards to the PCI-E/AGP version differences they don't add AGPGart, but afaik the device IDs for AGP and PCIe versions of a card are different, so the PCIe/AGP versions are patched with their correct IDs.

I will add the 9.5 kernel but its currently in beta so I will wait for the final release and then add it. Thanks for pointing out the zephyroth ASU, I will make a note to add that to the DVD. I hope that answers your questions and if you have any more feel free to ask!

P.S. I hope this board doesn't cripple outgoing site links, but mods feel free to remove this if its deemed necessary. You can learn about the progress on the iPC DVD as I go along on the blog I set up:

http://pcwizcomputer.com/ipcosx86/

Newer chipset needs support
 

It would be great if you can support ICH10R with the new Intel P45 chipset. I still have a minor glitch with this chipset.

Is there a driver?
 

Show me where the driver is for ICH10R and I can add it. But I think the "Intel ICHx" option on the DVD should sufffice, but I'm not too sure since it hasn't been tested on ICH10R.

Looks good
 

I have an obvious suggestion, but one I think nearly all OSx86 authors overlook.

Include a ton of help info in the installer as to WHICH SYSTEMS SHOULD APPLY WHICH PATCHES!

Let me give you guys the noob thinking pattern... "do I need AppleSIMBIOS patch? Which kernel should I install? What features do the different kernels have? What is EFIStudio? What is AppleHDAPatcher? Do I need any of this stuff?..."

Most distros completely lack sufficient info to help you figure out what extras you should install. They just assume you know your hardware and which patches you should apply, but it's very rare that a person would know this info straight out of the bat. This kind of thing makes it very difficult for a noob to install OSx86.

At the very least include a readme file on how to find out what hardware you have so you'll have some sort of clue what patches to apply. I finally found DriverMax to scan my system for all the details. But even after that I had to search the insanelymac forum for countless hours to figure out which kext I needed. This kind of stuff should be handled by the OSx86 distros. (Yes I know new fixes come out all the time, but why include fixes on the distros without help on what they fix/which systems need those fixes?)

Ok I'm off my soapbox now.

I've included some descriptions for the installer options in the installer itself, which should give you a basic idea of what you should install. But as many people say, if you don't know what components are in your system exactly, its not going to be an easy ride figuring out what to install.

I simply don't know! I am fairly new at this but very passionate about it. I am able to install retail DVD on 4 different machines at home(1 laptop) except the latest machine with a BIOSTAR with Intel P45 chipset. I did however manage to to boot it up and use it from a cloned drive from a ICH9R machine. But the System Profiler shows wrong info on bus serial devices. BTW, the only to boot it up is with flag 'cpus=1".
Till this I don't know whether a driver for ICH10R exists.
But your distro looks so promising fot it has kext for Intel ProWireless 3945. But did this kext test out OK? 'cause I installed this kext on m HPdv2000 laptop and it doesn't work. It shows up as an airport device but disabled and I can't turn it on.
thanks

I've attached an installer package that installs DuNe's drivers for ICHx so installing that may let it recognize it properly. Other than that there is no other drivers for ICH chipsets. Your boot issue doesn't have to do with ICH10R, but I've heard of success using the BOOT 132 method on P45 boards.

Yeah those Intel Wireless kexts are from the iwidarwin project. The 2100 should work stable fine, 2200 is beta but it should work, but 3945 and 4965 are both beta untested drivers so it wouldn't be a surprise if they didn't work. I've just included them there just in case.

EDIT: Oh and btw my work on the DVD right now is at a minor standstill because I haven't gotten some of the files I needed from bhast2, but I'm not gonna rush him there's plenty of time till the voodoo kernel is released but it would be nice to get testing underway faster on the 10.5.4 based beta of the DVD. Haven't seen bhast2 around anywhere for a few days now. He seems to be online on the Leo4All forums and I've sent him a PM there but no reply yet. Oh well I'll just wait :)

yay
 

wow i can't wait for that. i am currently running on iAtkos v1.0ir2 and i can't use my graphics card capability to run transparent things because it cant support it. mine is a radeon hd 2400 and you have that as an option. awesome i will delete iatkos when you release this.

@pcwiz:

If it's based on the retail DVD this will be OK. I just installed iDeneb, and yecch, it has a changed backgroundpic, another readme file and the 'About this Mac' logo is replaced by a custom one. I hate this. Because they used another background pic, the original black/purple 'Aurora' background pic is not available on this installation anymore.

Another problem of iDeneb is that it doesn't marks the installation partition active. I was installing on my 2nd boot partition (which is the second on the HD) and it was not booting from there, so I got a message 'apple.com.boot.plist not found' because it wasn't able to boot frrom the first partition because it was empty.

Sorry pcwiz, that's not true. I have an X1600Pro AGP from GeCube on my SSE2 system (not in use anyome) and we have about 10 identical X1600Pro PCI-E from Gigabyte, and both have the ID 0x71c2. In former times (Tiger) I had an X1600XT PCI-E, this one had the ID 0x71c0. It was curious: I had QE/CI from the beginning, but it was not possible to change the monitor resoulution, no patch was helping. After this I got my X1600Pro AGP for my 2nd SSE2 system and this one worked, this is why I reverted to the Pro version on PCI-E too. The X1600Pro is shown as X1650 when using ATIinject. And only with PCI-E 8x speed, saw it the first time...

Info: The 10.5.5 drivers are NOT working with ATIinject, another problem on iDeneb. The last drivers which were working with ATIinject were from 10.5.2.

What about Quicktime 7.5.4 for compatibility reasons? Maybe the old 10.5.2 gfx drive and/or the the courious fact that's only running in 8x speed are the problem for the low speed of QT 7.5.5, but I'm not sure. While testing I have better Xbench gfx results as some nVidia 7xxx or 8xxx cards. Could you give me the drivers you want to use for testing?

iPC will have NO customizations. No changed bg, no changed About this Mac, just retail Leopard as it should be. Believe me, I don't like customizations either. Takes away from the experience of using Leopard. The DVD uses the official Chameleon installer package on the Chameleon site to install the bootloader onto the partition and I'm pretty sure it marks the partition as active, although that will need further testing to confirm.

OK so I did some in depth analysis of the difference between the PCIe and the AGP kexts. The two cards I chose were the ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro AGP and PCIe versions. Each driver package contains 3 kexts, ATIRadeonX2000.kext, ATIRadeonX2000GLDriver.bundle, and Natit.kext. I compared the Info.plist of each kext in AGP and PCIe. Here are the differences:

ATIRadeonX2000.kext

The only difference in terms of AGP and PCIe is the version number of the kext. The AGP version is version 1.5.24.9 (5280) where as the PCIe version is 1.5.28.21 (5703)

ATIRadeonX2000GLDriver.bundle

Again, only a difference in version with 1.5.24.9 (5280) with the AGP and 1.5.28.21 (5703) with the PCIe.

Natit.kext

In the Info.plist for the Natit.kext of each version, I found a more considerable difference. In the AGP version the name string is set to ATY,Lamna throughout the plist and in the PCIe version its set to ATY,Triakis.

In regards to ATIinject.kext, the only drivers in my distro that use that kext are the ATI Radeon X1000 71cx Drivers, but I think MacLovin said somewhere that you didn't even need ATIinject.kext for it to work. Do you know if leaving ATIinject causes a KP or is it OK to leave it? I don't have an ATI card here so I can't test that.

Not sure about QuickTime, never had problems with it even with 7.5.4 so I think its a video related issue. Which drivers do you want?

Good to know that it will stay original ;-) iDeneb isn only working in safe mode (-x), otherwise I don't have a black screen with mouse cursor.

To the gfx cards: I was talking about the X1600 cards, not the X2600. My gfx card's core/name is Wormy. To get a working system I need these files:

ATIInject.kext, ATINDRV.kext, ATIRadeonx1000.kext, ATIRadeonX1000GA.kext, ATIRadeonX1000GLDriver.bundle, ATIRadeonX1000VA.bundle in version 1.5.24.9 (5280) AND IONDRVSupport.kext version 1.5. They are from Leo4All V3, OS X 10.5.2.

Natit I haven't tested. What are the differences betweeen Natit, Titan and ATIinject?

Quicktme 7.5.4 was working without problems, 7.5.5 is so slow that it needs about 90% on an Athlon 64 4000+. I still have iDeneb on my 2nd system, you can give me the drivers I listed above.

Natit, ATIinject, and Titan are all injectors, they serve the same purpose but sometimes they work for different cards and different versions of OS X. Well if 7.5.5 is slow, then I think you can revert back by installing QuickTime 7.5.4 over it, correct? I'd love to give you the drivers but unfortunately bhast2 said that he'd be making the packages for the ATi Drivers and I haven't been able to get in contact with him for a few days leaving this project at a complete standstill :(

@ pcwiz:

No, it's not so easy to revert to QT 7.5.4. The installer says that there's a never version on the system and won't allow an installation. I created an installer package which was bases on the 7.5.5 package but contained the 7.5.4 contents. But this installer donesn't work anymore, maybe they have upgraded Quicktime again.

Why not try deleting the 7.5.5 receipt package first and then try reinstalling the older one again.

Already tested, is not working. It seems to tetect the version otherwise.

I see you have an Athlon X2, do you have the Dual-Core bug? I have an Opteron 185 and my friend an Athlon FX-60 which are nearly identical, and we both do not have it on our Asus A8N-SLI Premium boards (Socket 939). R0GUE seems to have massive problems with his Dual-Core.

How do you want to create the DVD and the installed system, booting in verbose mode as default or with Apple logo? I would recommand the verbose mode, maybe looks not so good but it's easier to detect errors.

ALthough all authors of various flavors of OSX86 are brilliant in their own rights, your work alone in OSX86 Tools inspires confidence. I have been only in this hobby for 3 months for evryday but let me tell you about my experience.
I started out with 1 motherboard that is least compatible (but always containing Intel chipset) and gradually moving to as close to Vanilla acceptable as possible for all the patched installs were broken after a major update. But the road to a successful Retail DVD install is not as clear cut or easy as choosing one of the distros to install. People in the Boot132 forum are so less helpful, partly because they know a lot about OSX86 already and the other part is they assume everybody who's doing Boot132 eventually succeeds. Well, not all motherboards are the same when it comes to BIOS firmware and the one nagging problem with retail install is how to overcome kernel panic stemming from cpu power management and all the return values of the PCI-E/PCI bus devices during boot.
So a true to Vanilla distro would be a huge step forward in that if it fails to load, one has to go back to BIOS setup to tweak things here and there until it's right.
Or wait a few months till all motherboards sport EFI. But by then Apple may go back to TPM. Oh well, we always test until we find a workaround solution.
Thank you PCWiz for never ceasing to getting involved.

Thank you for those kind comments :) I'm glad OSx86 Tools has helped you.

If you have some 10.5.5 drivers for the X1600 with ID 71c2 finished please give them to me. I leave that crappy iDeneb 10.5.5 version on my second test system. I actually only can boot with -x to get graphics, so other drivers are neccessary.

Failes to boot at restart PLEASE HELP
 

I have an AMD 5200+, Asus M2V Motherboard Based on VIA K8T890 (Socket AM2) Chipset, 2Gb DDR G-Skill at 800 Mhz,250 hdd,40 Gb hdd, saphire ati HD3850 GDDR3 512.

I've tried so many versions that I don't know what to do anymore...please help

This release is at a standstill because bhast2 hasn't sent me the files yet, I hope he does it eventually :) If anyone can get a hold of bhast2 please tell him to contact me.

Hi...

Sorry for the English: it is not very good.;

I tried several versions of OS x86 (Leo4All, iDeneb, Zephyroth, LawlessPPC, and more!) And I could not do my onboard network card work. The motherboard supports the ASUS M2N-E SLI sucks.
I hope that in the version we have better support for this card.

My hardware:
AMD Athlon64 X2 4000+
M2N-E SLI (Chipset nVIDIA 500SLI)
GeForce 6600 256MB PCi-E
Pionner DVR-210D SATA
Network card offboard: 3Com PCI

I think I know this motherboard, I also didn't the onboard LAN card to work. I installed Tiger on this board for a friend some time ago and he also has to use a PCI card.

In Tiger, everything works fine!

But in Leopard, the network adapter does not work and I also have some problems with the processor. [AMD Athlon64 X2 4000+ Am2 Socket]

The Leopard recognize him with a single core but this processor has two cores.

I used many versions of Leopard for OSx86 and all (too many kernels) recognized as a core only!

I used many kernels, like:
Kernel 9.1.0
Kernel 9.2.0
Kernel 9.2.2
Kernel 9.3.0
Kernel 9.4.0

And all recognize my processor like single core!


Will be released when the final version of the iPC??
I believe that it will fix my problem!

Thx for pcwiz!

rpbelentani if you tell me what your onboard LAN is I could tell you if it is supported. I believe the Voodoo kernel will fix your one core issue and it will be included in the final iPC release. I have a nice progress update: I have completed the DVD (thanks to bhast2 for sending me the files I needed!) and am testing now. I'll tell you all how it goes/if it works out :)

Hi,

i had a silmiliar Mobo, M2N-SLI and had no luck to get the Nforce network card working.
Several "forcedeth" drivers did not work. So i advise you to do as i did: get a cheap pci
network card (5-10€) and you are set.

there are several people to get the nforce nic working, but often not stable or just with
CPU=1 flag at boot.
http://www.infinitemac.com/showthread.php?t=1379
http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=125569
http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=89475

good luck

zuz

thanks for your job
 

it's ready? It's ready for download?

may be my radeon asus 3650 512mb ddr2 will work like in zeph os x

Anyone to help?
 

its ready for download and from where?

@lkal3, it's not out yet. All pcwiz has said is that it's been completed and now in testing.

thanksyou
 

thanks you.I suppose we'll have information in publish release

Worx...but with some bad news
 

Hey guys,

So I completed my testing and it went great. I had the ISO image of the distro written to a spare HD, installed to a test partition and everything worked out beautifully. So then I decided to write the ISO to a blank DVD and guess what..."Still waiting for root device" :( I'm confident that it is a problem with insufficient SATA drivers because the DVD drive I installed from is SATA. I will consult with bhast2 later today and see what he can do about the matter. It should be a relatively minor problem because the installer boots fine from hard drive.

P.S. And I hate to wreck the hope of some people for a fast release, but this beta will go only to a select number of people. I can't afford to lose time on a messed up release or on a public beta. After that I will do another beta (again to a select number of testers) after the Voodoo 9.5 kernel is released so that it will feature 10.5.5. After that THEN I will do a public release. I know some are probably groaning right now but its for the better. I don't like to let things lose without a proper testing.

:)
~pcwiz

What's the difference between the X1600 drivers and the ATI X1000 71c2 driver? My X1600 AGP and PCI-E have this ID. Are the drivers based on 10.5.5 drivers?

Just include the AppleNforceATA that is included in so many other releases in to the booting extensions. This should allow the SATA DVD drive to read. re-kextcache from the Extensions for the mkext (or don't include a working mkext... like so many other distros).

naquaada,

Do you want me to upload the packages so you can check it yourself? :)

nfoav8or,

I have ICH9 SATA and I can certainly add that kext, but do you think adding an nForce kext will solve the ICH9 sata problem? I'm ignorant of the ways of the nForce :P

Note to InfiniteMac staff: I know you guys mean well but some people from InfiniteMac have been coming to my site and posting links in the comments to InfiniteMac forum. I usually don't mind but when someone posted in the one and only iPC OSx86 blog to come discuss it at the infinitemac forum that struck me as pretty weird. So I know you guys mean really well and I would love partnership between PCWiz Computer and infinitemac but try not to post links on pcwizcomputer.com too too much, if that makes any sense :P

Thanks!!

haha... sorry... didn't realize you were working with a different chipset for your board... didn't read it too well; just applied my own approach for my board. ok.

can you show a few screenshots of what your system profiler looks like when you are in Software>Extensions when using your everyday hacintosh? Then we can see what extensions are needed by your system...
(or use kextstat in Terminal)


Also, to add to what you are saying about your website for others to read...
<stepping onto soapbox>
Don't go around advertising this site to the extreme that you blatantly step on other people's feet in the process. Yes we love to have new people come here and learn how to do this for their own system. We want people to get excited about the possibility of using OS X on a PC (esp AMD in our case). Just don't do it by being disrespectful.

I know I use PCWiz's site and forum. He has an awesome site that I recommend you look at his link (without a link) above. Great advice and great software.

Just be aware of who's site you are at and show respect.

'nough said. <stepping down from soapbox>

@pcwiz: Yes, this would be cool. Does it work on 10.5.3 or should I install iDeneb 10.5.5 first?

BTW: Could there be sometimes a way to change the audio sampling freuqency from 48000 Hz tow 44100 Hz?

nfoav8or,

I'll get the kextstat output and post it up here, thanks for the tip :)

naquaada,

Hold on a sec while I boot back into my OS X install and I will upload the 71c2 and x1600 package in a zip and pm you the link.

PM sent to naquaada :) Here is my kextstat output:

The only relevant entry in there in terms of SATA is AppleIntelPIIXATA which is the SATA driver for ICHx chipsets that my computer uses. And that kext is already in the Extensions.mkext for my DVD's boot so I don't see why I get "Still waiting for root device". What I am gonna do now is put in the extensions.mkext from the Jas 10.5.4 dvd and see if that boots the dvd properly. If it does, then at least I have a frame of reference to what to do.

AWESOME! I just switched in the kernel and extensions.mkext from the JaS DVD into mine and it booted perfectly!

NICE!... it could just be that the mkext wasn't properly created. Oh well now right!

Great to hear you got it working. Can't wait to try it!