Posted by Ub3rG33k on Aug 27, 2009 in
Apple A couple of years ago I discovered, it was possible to run the mighty Mac OSx operating system on hardware that wasn’t Apple.
As the versions of Mac OSx have come out, newer of the custom install disk have been released, the community has grown, and custom drivers have been written for the non-Mac hardware.
Over the last 2 years, I’ve tried multiple disk and had varied success….however, I’ve finally cracked it ! Last week, using the disk iATKOS_v7, and after 6 attempts, I was finally able to install, and run Mac OSx version 10.5.7.
The issue that I’ve had over the past couple of years, is that Apples tend to run on the Intel based chipset and processors, but as you can see from the below, my machine couldn’t be much further from a mac specs. Having an AMD Processor and ATI motherboard was the probable cause for my 2 years of failing.
Current Machine Spec.
AMD 6000+ Processor
4Gb Ram Memory
1 x 500Gb Western Digital Drive (SATA)
2 x 250Gb Western Digital Drives (SATA)
1 x PIONEER DVD-RW DVR-112 (IDE)
ATI HD2900 1Gb PCI-e Graphics
Asus M2R32-MVP :-
Onboard AL1988 SoundCard
ATI SB580 Chipset
Marvell Yukon 88E001 Gigabit Network Controller
Peripherals
Acer AL2216W Monitor
Acer AL1916 Monitor
Logitech G15 Keyboard
Razer CopperHead Mouse
I had to switch out the DVD drive, as this caused problems with earlier version of the DVD, where I would get a kernel panic while trying to initialize the setup.
Anyway, back to the success story. The iATKOS_v7 DVD booted like a charm and took me into the setup, went into the Disk Utilities and Erased my drive to Mac OS Journal
Back to the installer, next, next, next and Customize.
On the working attempt I selected
Voodoo kernel 9.7.0
AMD Chipset Drivers
Azalia Audio drivers
that was it.
The previous attempts, I used the ATI Video drivers, the Marvell Yukon Network drivers, but no joy.
Once the install had finished, I was presented with the standard OSx welcome screen, entered my name. Due to having no working network card, I had to manually enter my details, as these would have otherwise been populated with the associated details on my apple account, after these Tada ! MAC OSX Desktop.
The video was only in 1024×768 and the was no network but we were getting there.
Downloaded the Marvell Yukon Driver from here, and followed the instructions
Downloaded the ATI HD2900 from here and followed the instructions.
Restarted, and I had full working gigabit network, and my 22″ Widescreen monitor running at 1680×1050 and 19″ monitor running at 1280×1024 !
As I was feeling brave, I decided to click on the Software update version, it downloaded and installed all the updates, and even took me to version 10.5.8 !
To get the LCD working on the Logitech G15 Keyboard, Logitech are kind enough to provide Mac Software found here , As my keyboard is a Microsoft UK layout, the ” and the @ were in the wrong place, so downloaded the Microsoft British driver from here
Finally, I couldn’t get used to the acceleration Apple implement to their mouse drives, and wanted to have the old boring 1:1 ratio, no matter how fast I moved my mouse, I found a little util called SteerMouse, which can be downloaded from here
All in all, that’s it, I now not only have my MacBook Pro, I also have a fully working Mac Pro.
Below is a list of useful software I’ve found
Adium for all your instant messenger needs
MenuMeters for all your monitoring needs
NeoOffice, a Mac only version of Open Office
Skype, mac version
Hope this was of some help to somebody.
Tags: acer, amd, amd chipset drivers, amd processor, Apple, ati, ati video drivers, audio drivers, chipset, Controller
Peripherals, copperhead, couple, custom, custom drivers, disk, drive, DVD, gigabit network, hardware, iATKOS, kernel panic, keyboard, logitech, mac, mac hardware, Mac OS, mac os journal, Mac OSX, Mac Pro, Mac Software, mac specs, machine, machine spec, Marvell, marvell yukon, memory 1, mighty mac, mouse, Network, network controller, network drivers, pioneer, pioneer dvd, razer, razer copperhead, success, version, welcome screen, Yukon
Posted by Ub3rG33k on Feb 19, 2009 in
Microsoft 
I’ve decided to give Windows 7 another go, as there have been a few driver updates. This time in changed my SATA2 drive to Native mode instead of AHCI, and the install went flawless.
Once up, Windows downloaded 5 updates, and had 4 additional drivers for my Bluetooth dongle, Marvell 88E8001 Gigabit LAN, ATI 2900 Graphics card, Razer Copperhead gaming mouse.
The spec of my machine is as follows
ASUS M2R32-MVP
AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+
4Gb OCZ 6400 Memory
ATI 1Gb HD2900 XT PCI-e
1 x 500Gb Western Digital SATA2 Drive
2 x 250Gb Western Digital SATA2 Drives
1 x Pioneer 112 DVD-RW (Again wiped out the Pioneer 212 SATA drive as this again caused issues)
Onboard ADI 1988A Soundcard (Wiped out the SoundBlaster Xtreme Gamer sound card, don’t ask !)
Acer AL2216 Monitor
Acer AL1916 Monitor
Razer Copperhead Gaming Mouse
Logitech G15 Gaming keyboard
Creative 5.1 Surround speakers.
Windows 7 now works fine, with the new driver updates, and the download of the Logitech G15 driver and utility, everything seems smooth. I did however have a problem where every 5 minutes or so, Windows would give me a BSOD with a tdx.sys error message, however after a little bit of googling, it seems Windows 7 has a problem with AVG Free anti-virus.
Granted I was only up and running for a few hours last night, but I did a little bit of testing.
Steam, worked fine, all games apart from World of Goo seemed to work ok, apart from all games being at a status of “Download Started…”
Warcraft worked fine, infact better than fine, I saw an increase of over 20 frames per second.
Itunes, worked flawlessly
Left 4 Dead work, and worked very well, without a glitch
Gadgets I’ve tried, and worked.
WhetherBug
Multi Meter (D)
Network Meter v2.1
GMail Checker
Utorrent Gadget
Now this is running fine on my main machine, I will create further blogs as I decide if I love/hate Microsoft’s latest operating system. So far I think it’s quicker, uses resources better, is stable, however it’s still early days.
I would like to point out that I have a lot of 720p content on my NAS drive, and without installing any video or audio codec, it played the videos straight out of the box, very impressive
Tags: 112, 1988a, 2900, 4, 7, acer, adi, ahci, al1916, al2216, amd athlon 64, amd athlon 64 x2 6000, asus, ati, Beta, bluetooth dongle, bsod, card, copperhead, dead, digital, Download, drive, driver, driver updates, fine, free anti virus, g15, gaming, gaming mouse, gigabit lan, googling, graphics card, itunes, LAN, left, logitech, logitech g15 gaming keyboard, M2R32, machine, Monitor, mouse, mouse logitech, MVP, native mode, pioneer, problem, razer, razer copperhead, sata, soundblaster, soundcard, steam, tdx, tdx.sys, warcraft, Western, windows
Posted by Ub3rG33k on Feb 3, 2009 in
Microsoft
I’ve now been using windows 7 beta on my spare machine for a couple of weeks, and it pains me to say, I’m impressed. It’s rock solid, and not fallen over once.
The machine I’m running it on is a Dell Vostro 220 that I bought toward the end of last year.
The Spec is as follows
2Ghz Core 2 Duo
2Gb Ram
2 x 150Gb Sata Hard Drives
ATI 3450 256Mb Dedicated Graphics
Onboard sound
All driver I’m using are in inbuilt Windows drivers, apart from the ATI drivers which are beta.
I’m currently running, Tversity, Utorrent, MKV2VOB, Imgburn, Epson CDprint. Now granted I’m not really pushing it, well apart from the Vob encoding, and the Tversity encoding, but it’s worked flawlessly since I installed it on the 21st Jan 2009.
Taking the above into consideration, I decided to ghost my hard drive on my main gaming PC, and install it on the main drive, big mistake !
Now I will be honest, my machine isn’t the best example of a standard machine, as I’ve had a number of issues with it. There is nothing phyically wrong with it, hardware wise, it’s just have had some (Microsoft hates ATI, and ATI can’t write drivers for toffee issues)
The spec is as follows
AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+ Dual Core CPU
4GB DDR2 5400 OCZ Memory
Asus M2R32-MVP SB600 chipset Motherboard
1 x Pioneer 212 DVD-Multi Drive
1 x WD 500Gb 7200 Hard Drive
2 x WB 250GB 7200 Hard Drive
ATI 2900HD 1Gb Video Card
Now the initial problems I had were with the installation, As I have a SATA DVD drive the AHCI doesn’t like working, however I was able to crowbar the operating system on, this worked ok, however the system paused every couple of seconds, and the hard drive light lit up like a Christmas tree.
So based on this, I put the hard drives into IDE Native mode, and reinstalled, and this fixed the pausing problem.
Driver support….well apart from ATI, NONE ! I know the software is in beta stages, but Geeez, didn’t manufacturers learn thier lesson from the Vista release, I remember waiting for months for Soundblaster to release stable drivers, I ended up taking my XFI card out and using the onboard card instead.
The ATI drivers were Video only, so I have no motherboard drivers, which mean much slowness. I attempted to use the Vista drivers, nope, forget it, just hung. I found that any vista drivers I tried, just made the system hang (fair enough, they ain’t for Windows 7)
I tried to run a few games with the current machine, and they run bad. If they would run at all, they were slow and choppy.
Now I do understand, that the majority of the issues are driver related, so I’ll keep an eye on these and retest at a later date.
As an operating system, I actually can’t wait for it to come out, it’s what Vista should have, and hopefully everybody will forget Vista even happened (kinda like Windows ME).
I like the way the Widgets are no longer on the windows sidebar, I love the preview Window when you scroll over the bottom bar, like the management of the taskbar menu.
Will update when more drivers are available, but at the moment a 2 thumbs up
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