Hackintosh 10.5.5 Retail Rig - Starting at $305

[Tude]

Kaido, great job and thanks with all of your help last week. Mine is working great, inc. all updates, except for problems with my wireless pci card (USR5417) that usually works OOB as a 3rd party Airport. It works fine if I boot in safe mode or using -f at the boot prompt. Does using the -f do anything with all of the kexts loaded from the USB stick? It seems to work fine, but just want to make sure the -f isn't going to mess me up in the long term.

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: Tude
Kaido, great job and thanks with all of your help last week. Mine is working great, inc. all updates, except for problems with my wireless pci card (USR5417) that usually works OOB as a 3rd party Airport. It works fine if I boot in safe mode or using -f at the boot prompt. Does using the -f do anything with all of the kexts loaded from the USB stick? It seems to work fine, but just want to make sure the -f isn't going to mess me up in the long term.

-f is just a fix or basically flushes the cache. You can do it every time you boot with no issues. That's odd that it works in safe mode or with -f, I'll dig into this and see what's up.

 

[KeypoX]

Originally posted by: Kaido

Originally posted by: leglez

Originally posted by: KeypoX
ok couple problems i am having.

1. In my bios i dont have the option in priority for USB-hdd, only have my two harddrives shown in there.
2. When i booted to the installer DVD it locked up at the apple screen. Also after i used the boot cd and type fe. It said some error about 5 times then finally went to the installer where it locked up. Maybe this is a bad burn i dunno. I will mess with this later

But do you have anyclue why i dont see usb-hdd under priority. I can set it up as first boot device though. Wanna get this thing working im gonna try to use a different retain disk, the 10.5.4 one. But i think problem one is gonna effect me right?

A couple of people are having this same problem including myself. I am going to be talking with Kaido later today over AIM to see if he can find the problem.

Yeah I'm wondering if something got screwed up in the download, I'm testing the download on a spare stick later to see if it works. Otherwise I'll just put up a quick Youtube video on how to do it or something.

Hmm i tried formatting this time as fat32. Then i ran the sys command pointed at it I drive in my case. I figure that makes it look like a bootable drive? Then i copied the files to the root of the drive. Still cannot be seen in the bios. Im using a sansa cruizer mini 512mb and the bios knows this as it reports it right after the bios screen. I will try another flash drive and see.

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: KeypoX
Hmm i tried formatting this time as fat32. Then i ran the sys command pointed at it I drive in my case. I figure that makes it look like a bootable drive? Then i copied the files to the root of the drive. Still cannot be seen in the bios. Im using a sansa cruizer mini 512mb and the bios knows this as it reports it right after the bios screen. I will try another flash drive and see.

Oh I see, you need to point the syslinux command to your USB drive, not your hard drive. We don't care about making the hard drive bootable, the only thing we are worried about is making the USB stick bootable so that it can act as the bootloader. You can double-check that the linux bootloader is installed correctly by popping your USB stick into a Mac; you'll see a file called "ldlinux.sys" with a lock icon in the lower-left corner of the gray icon (it's hidden in Windows).

 

[KeypoX]

Originally posted by: Kaido

Originally posted by: KeypoX
Hmm i tried formatting this time as fat32. Then i ran the sys command pointed at it I drive in my case. I figure that makes it look like a bootable drive? Then i copied the files to the root of the drive. Still cannot be seen in the bios. Im using a sansa cruizer mini 512mb and the bios knows this as it reports it right after the bios screen. I will try another flash drive and see.

Oh I see, you need to point the syslinux command to your USB drive, not your hard drive. We don't care about making the hard drive bootable, the only thing we are worried about is making the USB stick bootable so that it can act as the bootloader. You can double-check that the linux bootloader is installed correctly by popping your USB stick into a Mac; you'll see a file called "ldlinux.sys" with a lock icon in the lower-left corner of the gray icon (it's hidden in Windows).

yeah i did I: is my usb drive. Does it matter if the label is in caps "BOOT132"? Mine is in caps.

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: Kaido

Originally posted by: Tude
Kaido, great job and thanks with all of your help last week. Mine is working great, inc. all updates, except for problems with my wireless pci card (USR5417) that usually works OOB as a 3rd party Airport. It works fine if I boot in safe mode or using -f at the boot prompt. Does using the -f do anything with all of the kexts loaded from the USB stick? It seems to work fine, but just want to make sure the -f isn't going to mess me up in the long term.

-f is just a fix or basically flushes the cache. You can do it every time you boot with no issues. That's odd that it works in safe mode or with -f, I'll dig into this and see what's up.

Looks like the card isn't that reliable:

http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=111873

It might work with Kalyway and other distributions because of the modded 80211 kext. You can try pulling it out and installing it if you want. My recommendation? Just get a new card:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISA...0093892674#description

 

[KeypoX]

So i booted to the USB drive (still missing in priority) and i get error.
Can not find kernel: linux

Is it 100% necessary for it to be seen in the boot priority?

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: KeypoX
So i booted to the USB drive (still missing in priority) and i get error.
Can not find kernel: linux

Is it 100% necessary for it to be seen in the boot priority?

Yes, if it doesn't show up, then it's not formatted right. Taking a look at it now on my computer.

 

[KeypoX]

ok so i looked up syslinux http://syslinux.zytor.com/wiki/index.php/SYSLINUX and thought the usage was wrong. As you didnt -m -a -d / i: would point to the root of i: for the cfg file. I also tried putting it in syslinux dir and using -m -a -d /syslinux i:

but still not working for some reason but its doing work i can see it happen despite it being fast... maybe its my thumb drive...

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: KeypoX
ok so i looked up syslinux http://syslinux.zytor.com/wiki/index.php/SYSLINUX and thought the usage was wrong. As you didnt -m -a -d / i would linke would point to the root for the cfg file. I also tried putting it in syslinux dir and using -m -a -d /syslinux i:

but still not working for some reason but its doing work i can see it happen despite it being fast... maybe its my thumb drive...

Should be:

cd /desktop/boot132/bootloader/win32
syslinux -ma h:

That's it. Then copy over the files from the bootloader folder. Are you copying the contents of the "Copy to USB" folder to the USB driver, or are you copying the folder? Only the contents need to be dumped to the root of the USB drive.

 

[leglez]

Hey Kaido I could mail you the flash drive I am attempting to use if you wanted and that way you could have it hands on and see if you could get it to work. If you want to just send me a PM and we could do something. Just let me know.

 

[Stiganator]

If you get 5 EFI errors during install that is ok. I have it all working 100% with my P35-DS3L. Good stuff Kaido.

The one thing I couldn't get was the overclock. I set the FSB to 334, but my mobo reset itself back to 266 on reboot. Do I need to change some setting in the bios to prevent that, I didn't see anything that was obvious.

Edit: My Q6600 is a G0 step, so it should be good at overclocking.

 

[Kaido]

For those of you with issues, try just formatting to FAT, not FAT32. Here's a short, small video overview:

http://www.mediafire.com/?shar...b950e1d2db6fb9a8902bda

Sorry no audio, still working on the final video.

 

[leglez]

Ok confirmation FAT works. If you tried FAT32 before and it didn't try FAT, it worked for me. I added it to the first on the boot order, but it still didn't show up in the boot priority. So even if it doesn't show up in priority try it anyways and it might still work.

 

[leglez]

Hmm running into another problem now. It installed OS X fine, booted to the desktop, and I deleted the leopard partition and expanded the main partition. I then installed the 10.5.5 update, and restarted and now at the apple loading screen it freezes.

 

[MBony]

Is there any issue with using a single 400gb hdd and partition it out to 2 200gb. One for your system files and one to use for Time Machine?

 

[leglez]

As far as I am aware that is possible, but then if your drive fails you lose your backup so there isn't really a point in using time machine then that I can think of.

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: MBony
Is there any issue with using a single 400gb hdd and partition it out to 2 200gb. One for your system files and one to use for Time Machine?

Originally posted by: leglez
As far as I am aware that is possible, but then if your drive fails you lose your backup so there isn't really a point in using time machine then that I can think of.

Yeah, that's basically it. Technically you can do it, but it's not a good idea because if your hard drive dies, you not only lose your installation but also your Time Machine backup. FYI, Time Machine does two functions:

1. Incremental Backup
2. Full System Restore

So it lets you go "back in time" to find older files that you may have changed or deleted, and it also lets you do a full system restore. For example, if your boot drive dies but you still have your Time Machine backup, you can simple re-install Leopard and at the Leopard setup screen (after the Intro Video), use Migration Assistant to restore your Time Machine backup and all of your apps, files, settings, etc. will be copied over. So it's definitely a good idea to keep it on a separate drive! IMO this is the #1 reason for using Leopard - Time Machine is the best backup system ever!

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: Stiganator
If you get 5 EFI errors during install that is ok. I have it all working 100% with my P35-DS3L. Good stuff Kaido.

The one thing I couldn't get was the overclock. I set the FSB to 334, but my mobo reset itself back to 266 on reboot. Do I need to change some setting in the bios to prevent that, I didn't see anything that was obvious.

Edit: My Q6600 is a G0 step, so it should be good at overclocking.

What kind of EFI errors did you have?

Start out small with overclocking; go to like 2.5ghz first and check temps & stability. I recommend using Windows to test overclocking, there are a lot of utilities like Superpi and whatnot that will help you stress-test your system.

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: leglez
Ok confirmation FAT works. If you tried FAT32 before and it didn't try FAT, it worked for me. I added it to the first on the boot order, but it still didn't show up in the boot priority. So even if it doesn't show up in priority try it anyways and it might still work.

Changed the OP to say use FAT, not FAT32.

That is still weird - it should show up in Boot Priority. It needs to be #1 in Boot Priority to load properly. I've tested this on 3 different memory sticks on my end without problems, this is an oddball problem.

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: leglez
Hmm running into another problem now. It installed OS X fine, booted to the desktop, and I deleted the leopard partition and expanded the main partition. I then installed the 10.5.5 update, and restarted and now at the apple loading screen it freezes.

Please run Memtest86+ for a few hours; you'll need 6 passes with Zero errors for fully-functional memory:

http://www.memtest.org/

Download and burn the ISO to CD, then boot up to the CD and let it run. If you get ANY errors, then you have a bad stick of RAM somewhere.

 

[harshk]

Cool, I will try that. thanks.

 

[Sophie424]

Rough guess when the updated/more detailed guide might be up? My stuff should be arriving in the next few days, and I might wait for the new guide as I'm still nervous about doing this.

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: Sophie424
Rough guess when the updated/more detailed guide might be up? My stuff should be arriving in the next few days, and I might wait for the new guide as I'm still nervous about doing this.

This covers the core, the only additional stuff I'm writing up is how to use Time Machine, how to use SuperDuper, etc.

What more do you want to know? I can answer any questions you have

 

[KeypoX]

Originally posted by: Kaido
For those of you with issues, try just formatting to FAT, not FAT32. Here's a short, small video overview:

http://www.mediafire.com/?shar...b950e1d2db6fb9a8902bda

Sorry no audio, still working on the final video.

hey thanks for the vid. I did do that exact procedure. Also i can view that file ldlinux.sys in windows. By clicking view operating system files under folder options.

gonna restart and see if it works now... does it matter which usb port?