Build a Perfect Mac for less than $250

[Khan_Man]

Hi, this is a great little build. Just fired mine up today and it works quite well. Xbench is about 50 but it feels better than that. Just thro in a firewire card and U're rawk'n. 10.5.2 fired up perfectly. Upgrade to 10.5.3 went very well with MrFlooD's research and advice (and linked files). Thanks MrFlooD and all involved. Great stuff.

 

I'll report more as I get more moved in.

 

Has anybody tried booting Tiger or specificly 10.4.9 Uphuck v.1.3?

 

Khan

[ToGr82B4Gotn]

I have a small computer repair shop, and I have been using these boards for my customers who want cheap dependable PC's.

 

I just built one with a 500 gb sata drive and used iAtkos 4 dvd, vanilla kernel...

 

Works GREAT!!!!!

[macspc]

I just bought the Intel Mini Itx board. I plan on building my own case so I have a question on hardware. I would like a slot load DVDrom. I found some apple versions that are available on various sites that are less expensive. Will these work in this mini ITX board? It looks like they have the regualr IDE connector but I am dumbfounded to how they are powered up. I can't see the power connector in the picture. Anyone have any ideas?

[DiaboliK]

I just bought the Intel Mini Itx board. I plan on building my own case so I have a question on hardware. I would like a slot load DVDrom. I found some apple versions that are available on various sites that are less expensive. Will these work in this mini ITX board? It looks like they have the regualr IDE connector but I am dumbfounded to how they are powered up. I can't see the power connector in the picture. Anyone have any ideas?

 

thats an older drive that takes less power so it gets power from the ide cable. (keep in mind its a apple drive, they like to mess with the power, take the macbook air superdrive for example.)

 

nowadays you have an adaptor just like it but it has a 4pin berg connector to supply power to the drive.

they also come in various flavors from ide or fdd ribbon cables or usb.

 

-D-

[Khan_Man]

Hi again,

 

Results 45.24

System Info

Xbench Version 1.3

System Version 10.5.3 (9D34)

Physical RAM 2048 MB

Model MacPro3,1

Drive Type ST340016A ST340016A

CPU Test 28.26

GCD Loop 61.62 3.25 Mops/sec

Floating Point Basic 18.64 442.87 Mflop/sec

vecLib FFT 22.95 757.03 Mflop/sec

Floating Point Library 35.60 6.20 Mops/sec

Thread Test 50.47

Computation 44.38 899.04 Kops/sec, 4 threads

Lock Contention 58.49 2.52 Mlocks/sec, 4 threads

Memory Test 73.22

System 67.17

Allocate 97.28 357.25 Kalloc/sec

Fill 84.92 4129.13 MB/sec

Copy 44.23 913.63 MB/sec

Stream 80.47

Copy 77.46 1599.83 MB/sec

Scale 77.30 1596.97 MB/sec

Add 87.01 1853.49 MB/sec

Triad 80.87 1729.92 MB/sec

Quartz Graphics Test 65.22

Line 58.43 3.89 Klines/sec [50% alpha]

Rectangle 59.37 17.73 Krects/sec [50% alpha]

Circle 52.24 4.26 Kcircles/sec [50% alpha]

Bezier 60.30 1.52 Kbeziers/sec [50% alpha]

Text 143.31 8.96 Kchars/sec

OpenGL Graphics Test 84.38

Spinning Squares 84.38 107.04 frames/sec

User Interface Test 30.84

Elements 30.84 141.55 refresh/sec

Disk Test 38.06

Sequential 56.19

Uncached Write 52.81 32.43 MB/sec [4K blocks]

Uncached Write 65.04 36.80 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Uncached Read 40.95 11.98 MB/sec [4K blocks]

Uncached Read 80.26 40.34 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Random 28.78

Uncached Write 9.92 1.05 MB/sec [4K blocks]

Uncached Write 60.13 19.25 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Uncached Read 81.45 0.58 MB/sec [4K blocks]

Uncached Read 107.79 20.00 MB/sec [256K blocks]

 

using a Seagate pata 40 gig drive. I basically raided the junk pile.

 

 

I downloaded the files from:

http://www.apple.com/quicktime/guide/hd/cornell.html

 

the 480p was pinned @ 30 fps

the 720p was about 15 fps

the 1080p was about 10 fps

 

iTunes visualizer full screen hovered around 38 fps dropped to 27 a peaked @ about 40 fps.

 

Ripping to 160kb/s mp3 at about 13x (didn't matter much position on disc).

 

Khan

[kionez]

Hi hall, i just finished to build my little hackintosh...

 

Motherboard: D945GCLF

PSU: PicoPSU 90W + external 12V brick

HD: Seagate 80G 7200

CD: A slim CD\DVD burner found in a broken laptop.

 

 

Everything works fine, i installed Kaliway 10.5.2, then upgraded to 10.5.3 and finally updated via software to 10.5.4 relase, as written in MrFlooD post.

 

I'm using a USB kebyoard and a USB mouse, but it notify me a strange error:

 

"A USB device is currently drawing too much power. The hub it is attached to will be deactivated."

 

There's someone who knows a fix for that issue?

 

thanks in advance

[jjumper]

...a strange error:

 

"A USB device is currently drawing too much power. The hub it is attached to will be deactivated."

 

There's someone who knows a fix for that issue?

 

thanks in advance

 

I had this problem and found that the board was shorting out to the case. I took a piece of the static package the motherboard came in and slid it under the board then re-installed in case...

Solved that problem. Look on your case and see if you have little black spots or if you have leads on the bottom of the board that seem very long.... Hope this helps.

[trbd]

Just a HUGE thanks to all the hints and tips on this thread. Got my budget Mac all up and running without too many issues. (apart from swearing for ~30 minutes not realising I was using an old tiger DVD instead of the leopard one I thought was in the drive).

I also had the USB overvoltage issue, although it was intermittent. I've just tried some anti-static sheet between the case and motherboard and it seems to have done the trick.

 

Couple of piccies:

 

[Koplimi]

Trbd I really like your case. Whats the maker and model?

[trbd]

It's a Serener GA-L01 (I think!). Got it off eBay (there was a guy selling around 20 of them) for £60 + P&P and that included the 90W (I think) power supply, PCI riser, laptop hard drive converter etc etc.

 

USB problem has come back, so looks like that may be something else. The motherboard is definately well away from the bottom of the case, and after OSX "disables" the USB root hub, I can still use all of the 4 ports on the back. I'm guessing this might mean it's a problem with the header for additional ports maybe?

Are other people having this issue as well?

[maccompaq]

All 6 of my USB ports work.

[n7myr]

twice mine has said the usb is drawing too much power and the header will be shut down.

but the usb all still seam to work. It has not done this in a couple of days now, and it ran for about a week before it ever said this

[maccompaq]

I have a 500 watt power supply, so I have a large reserve of power for all ports and anything else.

[ryudo423]

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.

 

 

i bought this same one and i cant get it to work please help anyone that knows how to!!! it is not detecting airport...ps i havnt updated to 10.5.4 yet cuz i don have internet... if that makes a difference thanx!!

[kionez]

Thanks for the reply...

yesterday i've done a BIOS upgrade to 0095 (my motherboard bios version was 0034) using an ISO image that you can found on: http://www.slimmit.com/go.asp?76Z

 

I use my new mini hackintosh for about 2 hours with USBkeyboard and USBmouse, without any warning about USB that drawing too much power... i don't know if it is fixed, you can try to upgrade your bios and then report here if the usb power error is gone.

 

Anyone has experience on sleep & reboot? I read on this forum that everything should work fine, but i can't resume from sleep.. and if i do a reboot, it closes everything and then hangs...

 

Another issue, is there a temperature monitor that works? I try a couple of sw but they shows me 13 degrees C, that is impossible....

 

thanks

 

k.

[trbd]

Just reading the ReleaseNotes for that BIOS update and one of the fixes is:

 

• Added workaround for issue where “Power surge on hub port” message

appears intermittently.

 

Sounds like the problem some of us are having, cheers Kionez.

 

Sleep and reboot work fine on mine but I am still on 10.5.3. I think if you update to 10.5.4 it stops sleep + reboot working properly.

[Khan_Man]

I tried running this thing fanless for a few minutes. with fan = 42 deg, without fan = 63. I moved the fan over to the other pin block (system fan I think Intel calls it). The bios lets U knock back the fans speed to 50%. This is much quieter, chipset is still cool and stable.

 

Khan

[trbd]

Yeah I tried the fanless thing, even without the top of the case on. Definately a no-go.

 

I also had to move the fan from the top to the side of the heatsink, as it wasn't getting enough airflow with the top of the case on and was getting quite warm.

I had it running all last night and it seems a LOT cooler, so might be worth trying if anyone else is overheating with the top of thier case on.

 

 

That BIOS update seems to have sorted the USB issue as well. Delighted

[kionez]

Sleep and reboot work fine on mine but I am still on 10.5.3. I think if you update to 10.5.4 it stops sleep + reboot working properly.

 

I confirm that there's some problem with sleep+reboot if you upgrade to 10.5.4, i'm reinstalling everything to 10.5.3 and i wait to find a solution..

 

Someone use a PS2 Keyboard\Mouse? I can't get it working..

[trbd]

I've got a PS2 keyboard and it works fine out of the box but I'm using a wired USB Microsoft Optical Mouse.

 

I've not tried with a PS2 mouse though.

[maccompaq]

I have used both a USB keyboard and mouse, but I prefer using the PS2 keyboard and mouse. The mouse I am referring to is a Logitech optical mouse with a USB connector. Logitech included a PS2 adaptor with the mouse. The mouse seems more responsive when plugged in to the PS2 port.

[kionez]

I'm using 10.5.4 and kernel 9.2.0 shipped with Kalyway installation, reboot works.. but I found an interesting topic: http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=117359 , now I'm at work but this evening I'll test on my installation and I will report the results here

 

EDIT: Now with kext linked before and AppleACPIPS2Nub_Mouse of Chun-Nan i have vanilla 9.4.0, reboot and PS2Mouse... I can't resume from sleep, but I'm still searching a solution

Edited August 5, 2008 by kionez

[TeddyTed2T]

Ok so everything has been running good with my Intel D945GCLF board for 2 weeks now. Only complaint I have is the video, for example if I go on youtube and play a video in full screen it is very choppy. Also it seems while surfing the internet it is very fast for a few minutes and then it starts to go really slow on both Firefox3 and Safari, and was wondering if anyone with this board has the same issue.

[maccompaq]

I have the same mobo, 2GB RAM and a huge 500 watt power supply for a small system. Installed is Kalyway 10.5.2, and I have decided not to upgrade any further, because it works great the way it is. I can play streaming HD TV programs at full screen with no skips or stutters. Had I not experienced it for myself, I would not have believed it.

 

When the dual core Atom comes out next quarter, I am definitely going to incorporate it into another computer, keeping this one, of course.

[TeddyTed2T]

I wonder what can be wrong. I can even play a youtube vid without being choppy at full screen?