EFI-X FAQ and Installation Primer

[Kaido]

rewriting, stay tuned!

 

[randomlinh]

this is getting more tempting by the day. it's a shame I just dumped a bunch of money into camera gear. That and I have a goal of quadcore under $1000 w/ a good 24" S-IPS panel (yes, a bit unrealistic)

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: randomlinh
this is getting more tempting by the day. it's a shame I just dumped a bunch of money into camera gear. That and I have a goal of quadcore under $1000 w/ a good 24" S-IPS panel (yes, a bit unrealistic)

You can do the quad for under a grand, but a good 24" S-IPS will probably cost you another grand alone lol.

My recommendation is the Gigabyte EP45-DS3R. On Newegg for around $130; there's actually a MIR so that it's $106.99 AR. Has everything.

 

[randomlinh]

Originally posted by: Kaido

Originally posted by: randomlinh
this is getting more tempting by the day. it's a shame I just dumped a bunch of money into camera gear. That and I have a goal of quadcore under $1000 w/ a good 24" S-IPS panel (yes, a bit unrealistic)

You can do the quad for under a grand, but a good 24" S-IPS will probably cost you another grand alone lol.

My recommendation is the Gigabyte EP45-DS3R. On Newegg for around $130; there's actually a MIR so that it's $106.99 AR. Has everything.

yeah, that monitor is a killer. I was actually shooting for under $600 for the system... sans case and OS X, already have those. It didn't seem possible especially w/ the price of this key. I'm almost tempted to do it for work, but I'm pretty sure that's frowned upon, heh.

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: randomlinh

Originally posted by: Kaido

Originally posted by: randomlinh
this is getting more tempting by the day. it's a shame I just dumped a bunch of money into camera gear. That and I have a goal of quadcore under $1000 w/ a good 24" S-IPS panel (yes, a bit unrealistic)

You can do the quad for under a grand, but a good 24" S-IPS will probably cost you another grand alone lol.

My recommendation is the Gigabyte EP45-DS3R. On Newegg for around $130; there's actually a MIR so that it's $106.99 AR. Has everything.

yeah, that monitor is a killer. I was actually shooting for under $600 for the system... sans case and OS X, already have those. It didn't seem possible especially w/ the price of this key. I'm almost tempted to do it for work, but I'm pretty sure that's frowned upon, heh.

Hackintosh would be frowned on, but afaik EFI-X is legit, just stick an Apple sticker from the Leopard box on your system, lol.

So far my experience with EFI-X has been positive. It's not perfect, but they are making steady progress, which is what I like to see. Here is a bug compilation:

http://forum.efi-x.com/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=234

The big 3 items for me are:

1. No Time Machine
2. No AFP/Bonjour on NIC
3. No Sleep

Time Machine is huge for me...I feel naked not having my backup running every hour. Currently sleep completely screws up your system and results in a CMOS Checksum Error and resets your BIOS. AFP works sporadically, but Bonjour does not work at all. That means I can't see my AFP File Server or see iTunes Shared Libraries. These are like, I dunno, big minor issues. I mean they're big issues, but compared to what EFI-X has done so far they're minor. I can plug in the EFI-X chip, install Leopard, and download updates straight from Apple without any effort at all. So all they need now is a major bugfix patch, which they said is coming in October.

 

[suklee]

Time Machine is huge for me...I feel naked not having my backup running every hour.

Do you backup to an external hard disk (USB/Firewire?) or do you backup to a separate partition? I haven't set up TM yet so was wondering what is a good approach.

 

[ViRGE]

Backing up to a separate partition would be a bad idea for reliability and performance reasons. It's a reliability problem since if the drive dies, the backups go with it. It's a performance problem because copying data from one partition to another requires constant drive head movements back and forth. If you are going to set up TM, have it back up to another drive, be it external or internal.

 

[suklee]

Thanks ViRGE. That's exactly what I needed to know...

 

[KeypoX]

Originally posted by: Kaido

Originally posted by: randomlinh

Originally posted by: Kaido

Originally posted by: randomlinh
this is getting more tempting by the day. it's a shame I just dumped a bunch of money into camera gear. That and I have a goal of quadcore under $1000 w/ a good 24" S-IPS panel (yes, a bit unrealistic)

You can do the quad for under a grand, but a good 24" S-IPS will probably cost you another grand alone lol.

My recommendation is the Gigabyte EP45-DS3R. On Newegg for around $130; there's actually a MIR so that it's $106.99 AR. Has everything.

yeah, that monitor is a killer. I was actually shooting for under $600 for the system... sans case and OS X, already have those. It didn't seem possible especially w/ the price of this key. I'm almost tempted to do it for work, but I'm pretty sure that's frowned upon, heh.

Hackintosh would be frowned on, but afaik EFI-X is legit, just stick an Apple sticker from the Leopard box on your system, lol.

So far my experience with EFI-X has been positive. It's not perfect, but they are making steady progress, which is what I like to see. Here is a bug compilation:

http://forum.efi-x.com/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=234

The big 3 items for me are:

1. No Time Machine
2. No AFP/Bonjour on NIC
3. No Sleep

Time Machine is huge for me...I feel naked not having my backup running every hour. Currently sleep completely screws up your system and results in a CMOS Checksum Error and resets your BIOS. AFP works sporadically, but Bonjour does not work at all. That means I can't see my AFP File Server or see iTunes Shared Libraries. These are like, I dunno, big minor issues. I mean they're big issues, but compared to what EFI-X has done so far they're minor. I can plug in the EFI-X chip, install Leopard, and download updates straight from Apple without any effort at all. So all they need now is a major bugfix patch, which they said is coming in October.

Thats depressing considering all of that works on a regular hack...

 

[randomlinh]

ouch, no Time Machine or Sleep? I can probably deal w/ my own backup routine, but damn. Maybe I won't go this route. Here's to hoping Apple finally introduces a freaking Mac non-pro.

 

[Kaido]

Bug list updated:

http://forum.efi-x.com/viewtop...=16&t=234&p=1097#p1097

Should I buy an EFI-X today?

Well, as of today...

1. Sleep does not work and resets your BIOS to "safe" settings
2. Time Machine does not work on non-primary drives (pointless if it's on the same partition as your boot drive)
3. AFP/Bonjour do not work for Networking

My big gripe is lack of Time Machine. Sleep isn't a dealbreaker and you can use a 3rd-party $8 Encore card to fix AFP/Bonjour, but running without backup is just crazy. imo what happened is simple:

1. They came up with a great product and set a release date
2. They overshot their release date but thanks to media/consumer pressure they released it early, not wanting to relegate it to vaporware status
3. They did so, figuring they could release firmware updates in the future that would fix the early problems

As much as I want to complain about this, all companies do this. I've worked for companies that do this. It's ridiculous, but it's just how the system works. Fortuantely EFI-X doesn't require a hardware upgrade, just a simple firmware upgrade which can be done easily anytime.

So should you buy an EFI-X chip now or not? Well...they have a lot of orders, so there's a few-week waiting period right now. The EFI-X guys said there is a major firmware update scheduled for release in October. My guess is, based on my above idea of the events that occurred, this will fix all of the issues that the first-gen release has. So it may be a good time to purchase an EFI-X chip because chances are you won't get your chip until after the 1.1.3 update is released, which should (hopefully) fix the majority of the bugs, especially the main ones.

The core product is solid - it does what it advertises, i.e. lets you install a retail Leopard DVD to your compatible PC. However, it has some bugs in the details like Time Machine and Sleep. However, those just need a firmware patch to fix. I think their programmers just needed more time to release the 1.1.3 firmware to get those details ironed out.

So I have mixed advice...on one hand, as of today, the details work pretty crappy. You can't backup your machine, you can't put your machine to sleep, etc. OTOH, the product is good and just needs some additional programmer, the first wave of which is coming out next month. Soooo...it's up to you. I can't make a good recommendation right now. If you're a tinkerer like me you may enjoy it, but in it's preset state I can't recommend it as a solid piece of hardware...but the next firmware update could (and probably will) change all of that completely. So I guess, stay tuned! 🙂

 

[EvilYoda]

Where did you buy your EFI-X from, since they still don't list a US distributor? I'm about to give the whole hackintosh thing another shot since the last working version I had HAD to be on a PATA drive which annoyed me, so I wiped it. I'd ideally like to install to an 8GB usb flash drive, but whatever, I have an extra 500GB laying around.

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: EvilYoda
Where did you buy your EFI-X from, since they still don't list a US distributor? I'm about to give the whole hackintosh thing another shot since the last working version I had HAD to be on a PATA drive which annoyed me, so I wiped it. I'd ideally like to install to an 8GB usb flash drive, but whatever, I have an extra 500GB laying around.

Their USA distributor is efixusa dot NET, not .com:

http://www.efixusa.net

Just make sure you have a motherboard, cpu, and video card on their compatibility list:

http://efi-x.com/index.php?opt...id=26&language=english

Don't bother buying an EFI-X board unless you have a motherboard etc. from their list. Also, legacy ports are NOT supported, which includes:

1. IDE/PATA
2. Serial
3. Parallel
4. PS/2

Of course you can get adapters for all of those if you need them (IDE to SATA adapter, Serial and Parallel cards, PS/2 to USB adapters). Easy enough workaround.

 

[EvilYoda]

I keep hoping that my mobo will pop up, but it hasn't - I think it's the Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3 (haven't had to think about it for a while).

I guess I'll resort to the software stuff again.

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: EvilYoda
I keep hoping that my mobo will pop up, but it hasn't - I think it's the Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3 (haven't had to think about it for a while).

I guess I'll resort to the software stuff again.

If it's older, don't expect it to show up. From what I gather, they don't care about older boards and legacy ports; they're trying to focus on current and future platforms. It's a bummer because my DS3L isn't supported 🙁

 

[EvilYoda]

Not a huge deal...hopefully everything'll be in good order when I build my new system after the new chipsets release this fall (Nehalem or IC7 or whateverthehell they're calling it). Being hackintosh compatible will figure largely into what hardware I purchase.