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Build a Perfect Mac for less than $250

MrFlooD

By MrFlooD,
in Tutorials (The Genius Bar)

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2twisty
2twisty
Posted
Posted

I can't imagine that a Core Duo would fail, when some of us are running Pentium Ds or the Atom CPU, which is like a Core Solo.

 

Just about every other Intel Processor works. I haven't built a Core Duo Hack thought, so I can't say with certainty.

 

I'm sure the HCL at osx86project.org would tell you.

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bibendum
bibendum
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Posted
I'm thinking of doing a similar build. Do any of you guys know if the intel dual core, not core2duo, will work with leopard?

I had a Pentium D running Leopard...

 

dunno why it wouldn't work, but why ask in this thread? - this build uses an Atom processor...

 

Patrick

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kens97sto171
kens97sto171
Posted
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I used a Sata Hard Drive and an IDE DVD Drive. However as discussed before, it should not matter.

 

Why use an IDE DVD drive.. the SATA drive is WAY WAY faster.. I put one in my buld and it worked just fine... It will burn a full ISO image to a disk in less than 5 min including the verify... a full Audio CD was about 1 min...with the verify. Definatly worth the extra $$ If there is a compatibility issue then that is a good reason..thou.

Just my opinion.

 

Ken

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De_Bilbao
De_Bilbao
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I can confirm one more successfull installation :) with the following setup:

  • Intel Intel D945GCLF motherboard (Insanely cheap with the built-in Atom 230 processor)
  • 2GB of RAM in one DIMM of Kingston Value PC5300 667 MHz DDR2
  • 160 GB SATA hard disk. Western Digital Scorpio series (8 MB buffer and 5400 rpm)
  • Pioneer DVR-KD08 slim DVD Recorder (IDE interface)
  • Noah CRS3988B-80 case with external 80 Watt power supply

To be honest the case is coing home, but I've built a caseless setup, with an old Pentium power supply and using a standard LG DVD recorder, so I'll post my results again with the finished project.

 

I followed the really instructive topic of devilhood in http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=39253 to setup a dual boot environment. Basically I've done the following:

 

- Booted from Windows XP Pro SP3 installation CD and start installation creating only one partition of 30 GB for XP.

- After finishing Windows install, ran diskpart to create a HFS+ partition of 120 GB for MacOS

- Booted from Kalyway 10.5.2 DVD and everything came installed out of the box, just next-next-next and you're done.

- Applied Kalyway 10.5.3 Combo Update using MrFlood instructions in the first message of this post

- Applied Apple Software Update 10.5.4 using the built-in updater in Leopard

- Applied the GMA950 fix to have all resolutions availble.

 

Everything was done in less than 90 minutes. Checked dual-boot and it works like a charm, at boot-time you just press F8 at the Darwin screen and you can select the OS you want.

 

I've installed lots of software, Apple officials iLife 08 and iWorks, Office 2008, Adobe CS3 Design Suite and even VMWare Fusion to setup a Windows XP virtual machine. Everything run smoothly and though it's not a benchmark breaker it's more than enough for what an average user needs.

 

I can say that this is an almost perfect setup and the only thing that is not running is the Restart option. I must power down the system but if I select restart it doesn't work.

 

Now I'm trying to test the new BOOT-132 loader method to run the install from the original retail Leopard DVD using the guide in http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?sho...113288&st=0 and I haven't been able to get the system up and running with any of the ISO version posted there. The modified one "generic.iso" does work but it doesn't boot. On the contrary, the original ISO boots OK but doesn't has the neccesary kexts so I made a mix from both and came out a new ISO that boots OK and let me start the installation from Leopard retail DVD.

 

But my PS2 mouse and keyboard doesn't work. The ISO I am using has ACPIPS2Nub.kext, ApplePS2Controller.kext, ApplePS2Keyboard.kext ApplePS2Mouse.kext and even ApplePS2Trackpad.kext but no way to get it running, so I plugged a USB mouse and restarted the process now with mouse control. It was late yesterday and I had to let the setup for monday, now with a USB keyboard too.

 

I have one question though regarding the partitioning of the disk. Installing from the original retail DVD doesn't let me choose the MBR partition made before, so I had to repartition the disk but selecting GUID and not MBR. If this is the only way to install original Leopard it sounds hard to get a real dual boot installation of XP, doesn't it?

 

By the way and after the initial tests of Leopard, I think that I'll be using this machine mostly with Mac OS X and eventually run some programs in Windows XP. What's the best today to acomplish this? Bootcamp? Parallels? VMWare Fusion? I would like to know because I'm trying to start next week the final install of Leopard.

 

And one more thing: Which method is best to get a full system backup with everything installed so it can be restored in case of emergency?

 

Thanks for your hard work, really appreciated :D

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MrFlooD
MrFlooD
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Why use an IDE DVD drive.. the SATA drive is WAY WAY faster.. I put one in my buld and it worked just fine... It will burn a full ISO image to a disk in less than 5 min including the verify... a full Audio CD was about 1 min...with the verify. Definatly worth the extra $ If there is a compatibility issue then that is a good reason..thou.

Just my opinion.

 

Ken

 

Simple really... I had a spare in a draw so it didnt cost me anything ;)

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AK2007
AK2007
Posted
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Is it possible to add 2 PCI cards to this board using a riser card? I have put in a NEC FireWire card but want to also put in a Gigabit Ethernet card so that it can be my network Time Machine backup box. Anyone using this with multiple PCI cards?

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n7myr
n7myr
Posted
Posted

can anyone (please) let me know if I will need to get anything else before I try and build this new system.

I ordered the D945GCLF mother board combo

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16813121342

also ordered LiteOn IDE DH-20A4P-04

Apex MI-100 mini ITX case

WD 1600AAJS 160gb 7200 SATA

Kingston 2gb 240-pin ddr2 667 PC25300 ram

 

I have made a dvd of Kalyway 10.5.2

since the hard drive is new I am guessing I will need to format it, and am not sure if I will need any other software besides what is on the dvd I have made. I am not going to have anything else on this hard drive, just Kalway

I have been reading this board for a few days now and have found lots of instructions but not real sure about the small details of getting started once the new hardware gets here.

 

It looks like there has been success with Kalyway on an MSI wind and who knows if I ever get this system built and running and can get a wind I might even get brave enough to try that. that would be loads of fun but think that is way above my head since I have never tried to build a system. guess you never know what you might learn untill you try.

seems I was told that is all a steer can do is try. hope I am up for it.

 

thanks very much to everyone that has posted good info here. seems I am spending all my time here reading and not getting anything else done around the house.

 

thanks again

 

old man in Wyoming

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AK2007
AK2007
Posted
Posted

n7myr you will need the 10.5.3 Kalyway Patch disc, should be able to find it in the same place where you found the 10.5.2 disk. Just follow the instructions in the first post, they are simple only choose the listed options, read the rest of the thread only if you have problems. There is another couple of files linked in the first post that you will need for the video fix, but you can download it from the new system after it is built.

 

The problem with doing this is that there is so much info its hard to know what is relevant and what is not.

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De_Bilbao
De_Bilbao
Posted
Posted

I bought the ASUS WL-138g V2 PCI wireless card.

Detected out of the box as an Apple Airport.

And it was really cheap.

 

So altough you're looking for 802.11n support, this goes up to 54 Mbps and works really wel for a nice price and install with no hassles.

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royco
royco
Posted
Posted

I got mine from Frys this weekend, have some other parts lying around so this would be a very cheap build for me. Also, everything fits well on one of those used-to-be-abundant IBM netvista cases. Good thing I still have 2 left. For $9 for those cases this build would hover around $120.

 

Will also get the ASUS WL-138G from Newegg.

 

Thanks!

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robstheman
robstheman
Posted
Posted

I built using this motherboard as well, using a 2 gig stick from Ultra, a 500 gig Western Digital HD, and a case combo package that Tiger Direct had on sale and walked out at $212....had everything up and running for a few weeks now and it's been absolutely perfect.

 

Use a Netgear USB stick for wireless, which has been perfect as well after downloading drivers. I couldn't be happier with how well this is running, and even the Tiger Direct guy seemed excited about the build after seeing which Mobo I was buying and asking me what I was using it for.

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lh99
lh99
Posted
Posted

I finally got my system working from a GPT/GUID disk. I followed Honda Boy's suggestions (upgrade BIOS to latest firmware revision and use Chameleon EFI), but the system still wouldn't recognize the drive as bootable. Not sure why this didn't occur to me before, but the partition needs to be marked active. I figured that GPT took care of this itself, but it doesn't. I'm guessing that the legacy MBR portion of the GPT partition needs to be marked as active in order for the BIOS to recognize it as bootable. Anyone have a better explanation? I'm not at all experienced with GPT, and have had a hard time finding useful information on the internet about it. Anyway, I just used fdisk to mark the first partition active using these instructions:

 

http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=22844#

 

and it worked on the first try. Fdisk only works with MBR, so it won't be able to correctly recognize any of the partitions on the disk. Just mark partition 1 active and cross your fingers.

 

So now the only issues I still have are the "hangs on reboot" bug and some kind of issue with sleep. My system enters and wakes from sleep just fine, but there's no difference between sleep and running in terms of power consumption aside from the hard drive spinning down. In sleep, the video freezes, but remains visible -- whatever was on the screen before sleeping is still there during sleep if the monitor is left on. Seems to me that the Northbridge is still powered, which would account for the display remaining on and the ~24 watt power consumption, it's rated at 20 watts if I recall. Maybe it's an issue with my BIOS settings...

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