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Build a Perfect Mac for less than $250


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You may be right. Hmmm.

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i must say, this tutorial rules. Everything worked out of the box as he promised.

 

I will be picking up my ASUS WL-138g V2 soon for wifi needs.

 

Any tutorial on how to get it to boot without the kalyway dvd in the drive?

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I have got the board for just about $70 shipped, and installed it in an old IBM NetVista FlexATX case together with all the left over parts. OSX installed smoothly (thanks, MrFlood).

 

However, I have one issue which is very annoying. Is there any way to get USB hot swappable 100% of the time instead of needing to reboot just to get an U SB thumb drive recognized? It seems that it works sometime but not all the time. Or, is there any rule/pattern?

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Also, the mouse pointer acts funky after coming out from the sleep mode. When I move it through the Finder menu on the top of the screen and try to pick an item (say Shut Down or anything), it gets wobbly and jumps around instead of going straight at where you want to point it to. I have got 10.5.3 update installed. It does the same with USB or PS/2.

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If I let my unit sleep, I have to reboot to get Ethernet working again. Therefore, I have Sleep turned off. USB devices need to be plugged in before boot to insure recognition. On a rare ocassion, a Thumb drive will be recognized if plugged in while the computer is running.

 

I can boot without the DVD in the drive.

 

My System is Kalyway 10.5.2, and I have no plans to update since everything is working to my satisfaction the way it is.

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2772 = Trouble?

 

00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation 945G/GZ Express 
Integrated Graphics Controller [8086:2772] (rev 02) (prog-if 00 [VGA])

2772 usually means graphics problems, such as having to use a framebuffer from 10.4 and graphic glitches. Can anyone confirm?

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hey guys,

 

I'm a pretty big noob when it comes to creating computers, are there any micro atx or ATX mobos that would work with this? 'cus what I can do seems pretty limited at the moment!

 

Thank you!

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Okay, I did it...

 

I put one of these in a G4 Cube case... I started with a dead cube, purchased for $70 bucks that contained a DVDROM drive, took it apart, used a rotozip to cut off the heatsink and to cut a hole in the bottom to put the I/O plate in, but I didn't plan for the fact that the I/O plate is not centered on the board, so I cut away too much... ARG!

 

The board was just too wide to nestle between the top and bottom plates, so I used a pair of bolt cutters to nick a notch in the plates that actually holds the board in place.

 

This is powered with an external brick via a 90W picoPSU and uses the existing drive mount to hold the sata HD along with the existing topload DVD drive.

 

I had to run a pair of wires out the bottom to an external power switch, but... everything works except sleep... shoulda stayed at 10.5.3, I guess...

 

$102 Board and 1 gig of ram at Frys with tax

$50 160gig SATA HD

$50 PicoPSU package

$70 Cube case w/DVD drive.

------

$272 total...

 

not bad.

 

My daughter's 450Mhz G4 Cube XBenches at 28. This Atomic Cube's score is 49... wish it had a DVI out.

 

I'll upload some pix if anyone is interested...

 

Patrick

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MRFLOOD

 

Can you let me know if the dvd drive is generic supported under leopard ?

Thank you.

 

I am using an old Pioneer that is supported under leopard. I am unsure if the drive listed would show up as generic or Supported.

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Nice little project. I followed the instructions and everything works except as has been noted already (restarting, hot plug USB, etc.).

 

Someone said that msiwindosx86.iso installs 10.5.4 and restart works with it, so I tried it. It's true, restart works, and so does sleep, along with apparently everything else that also works in Kalyway. (I did find something odd: after resuming from sleep, my usb keyboard double-strikes the left two columns of keys, if I type "a" or "s" then I get "as", if I type "q" or "w" then I get "qw" etc. Maybe it's just my keyboard.) Furthermore, it seems like msiwindosx86.iso boots faster than Kalyway. I don't think the spinning dial on the gray apple screen completes more than 3 laps before the desktop appears.

 

It had only 800x600 graphics, so I followed that part of the original instructions (2 graphics kexts using kext helper) to get full resolution. I ran software update to bring everything else to speed, and sleep and restart still work.

 

Upon first installing I saw About this Mac report a 4 GHz Core Solo but now it is reporting 1.6 GHz Core Solo.

 

There are fewer steps to install using msiwindosx86.iso because the 10.5.3 combo update and then software update to 10.5.4 aren't needed. Really, I just booted the DVD, partitioned the drive as MBR, and installed it with no changes in the customize option. Afterward, I installed the two graphics kexts.

 

Perhaps msiwindosx86.iso should become a preferred method for installing on D945GCLF?

 

Some additional notes for anyone interested in the D945GCLF:

 

1) Intel has published a specification update for the motherboard to document its power requirements at http://download.intel.com/support/motherbo.../e4751702us.pdf . To sum it up, it needs 75 watts of power. Many power supplies intended for mini-ITX motherboards have only 60 watts.

 

2) The motherboard needs 20-pin ATX power and 4-pin 12V (yellow and black) power, i.e. it's ATX12V 2.0. Many mini-ITX power supplies don't include the 4-pin 12v power wire and you'll need an adapter to get 12v from a molex connector.

 

3) If your power supply is ATX12V 2.2 with 24 pins and you can't detach the extra 4 pin appendage, don't worry, because the D945GCLF motherboard has room beside the 20-pin socket to plug in the 24-pin. You can see on the layout of the motherboard that they had planned for 24 pins but they didn't need it. (My understanding is that the 4 additional pins are for the PCI Express bus, which this motherboard doesn't have, but Intel has more mini-ITX motherboards on the way using newer chipsets like G33 and they will have PCI Express.)

 

4) As has been noted, the heatsink/fan on the Northbridge chip is quite tall (taller than the back plate) and it will not fit in some mini-ITX cases. For $6 you can get a shorter heatsink at http://www.logicsupply.com/products/lf_heatsink . I haven't tried it, but Logic Supply offers it to solve this specific problem.

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Good to read about your build. Thanks for the info about msiwindosx86. I might have to try it. I downloaded the 2 graphics kexts and the kext helper but have not yet tried them. I need more info about how to install them. My fixed resolution is 1024 x 768, which is fine for me now except I cannot put the monitor to sleep. I turned off computer Sleep, because when awakening, the Ethernet no longer works thus requiring a reboot.

 

I built this Atom computer last month, and I am impressed with it. I used a full size case with a 500 watt power supply. Installed Kalyway 10.5.2 on the ATA HD, and it works good without any updates. I formatted as MBR with one partition HFS+ and the other FAT32. I am wondering if I can install Windows XP Professional on the FAT32 partition now. I know that the instructions said to install Windows first.

 

Next, I installed a larger SATA HD, unplugged the ATA HD, formatted the SATA as GUID and installed Kalyway 10.5.2. The installation was successful, and the computer booted fine. I shut the computer down, plugged in the ATA HD and booted. I was not given a choice of which HD to boot from. It just booted from the ATA HD. The SATA HD shows on the Desktop, but the System folder is no longer "Blessed". What is up with that?

 

Why did you use MBR instead of GUID? Are you planning to install Windows?

 

Did you create the msiwindos86 ISO DVD using a Mac or a Windows computer?

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Tried the MSIWIND disk...

 

It fixed two problems!!!

After video fixes installed (from first post) IPhoto slide show now works!! (caused kernel panic before video fix installs).

 

Confirmed that reset works but coming out of sleep I still get the DVD drive going crazy (seeking and when ejected it doesn't stay open). Also my keyboard has keys that stick and repeat after wake from sleep. It does sleep and come out but as noted not usable.

 

Didn't end up being fewer steps though due to all the "missing" applications not bundled with the MSI... disk.

 

Kudos to the suggestion though -- I like having IPhoto fulling working and the reset fully function again is nice.

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Installing the graphics kexts is easy. Look in the GMA950 Extensions folder and drag AppleIntelGMA950.kext and AppleIntelIntegratedFramebuffer.kext onto the Kext Helper app icon. Then give it your admin password and click Easy Install. When that is done, reboot.

 

I used MBR because the instructions at the start of this thread said to be sure to use MBR. I have no plans to install Windows. I've tried GUID and it worked only after marking the partition active.

 

I burned msiwindosx86.iso to DVD using Nero in Windows.

 

With sleep and restart working, it is so close to being flawless. The only issues I've found are:

1) Ethernet connection's DHCP does not renew after resuming from sleep

2) No microphone input

3) Inserted USB devices are not recognized until reboot

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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

 

 

I am having the same problem with my logitech wireless keyboard if it is plugged in when it it booted. If I unplug it and move it to a different port all seems to work. Any one have a fix for this. I am going to put a hub on it for now and see if that makes any difference.

 

Digid

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I am having the same problem with my logitech wireless keyboard if it is plugged in when it it booted. If I unplug it and move it to a different port all seems to work. Any one have a fix for this. I am going to put a hub on it for now and see if that makes any difference.

 

What version is your BIOS? Version 0095 may fix it. Intel's release notes say:

Added workaround for issue where “Power surge on hub port” message appears intermittently.

 

Version 0099 was recently released. I've installed it and it had no ill effect that I can detect.

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