[HowTo] Building my first OSx86 box...

[Hitesh]

Although "sku" numbers are different, they have the same specification, so they are effectively the same drive. Perhaps one is a revision of the other, or such.

 

While we are the subject of hard drives, I want to say one more thing about why people should not buy Raptors.

 

Drive speed is not determined by RPM alone, but rather angular velocity. Angular velocity is RPM times the distance from the center of the disk spindle. While RPM and magnetic data density are constant, the angular velocity varies as the drive head moves across the platter.

 

This means that a slower RPM hard drive, like the 7.2K RPM Hitachi, is actually faster than a 10k Raptor when the Hitachi is reading near the outside edge of the disk and the Raptor is near the inside edge of the disk. Since Raptor are so much smaller, 36 GB or 76 GB, it is much better idea to just get a 250 GB and partition it, as partitioning starts at the edge of the disk and proceeds inwards.

 

So, if you want fast disk access, just get a 250 GB and make the make the first partition small like say 36 GB. Your performance from that partition will easily beat a 36GB Raptor and of course you will have an extra 200 GB to work with for about the same price.

 

I usually set up my disks with several small "high partitions", like 20 GB each, first, so they are near the edge of the disk, for operating system installation, applications, important data, and then have some larger slow partitions, last so they are near the center of the disk, for media files like movies and my music library.

 

Thnkz bofors i should say lovely tutorial ....im out tomm to buy a 250 gb hitachi ..also i checked out on the different sku's you got but its basically the same drive with both the numbers written on them

 

http://geek.pricegrabber.com/search_techsp...asterid=8451346

 

i hope it helps speed up my xbench results !!

 

also if theres anything else i should know before buying it let me know '. or anyother hard drive better than this one .

[RiceTea]

The Hitachi Deskstar T7K250 is a fine drive, maybe the Maxtor MaxLine III or the cheaper Diamond MaxPlus 10, both with 16 MB cache, are slightly faster in some tests. Hard to tell whether that´s significant.

[bofors]

The Hitachi Deskstar T7K250 is a fine drive, maybe the Maxtor MaxLine III or the cheaper Diamond MaxPlus 10, both with 16 MB cache, are slightly faster in some tests. Hard to tell whether that´s significant.

 

Regarding the Maxline III and DiamoandMax 10, it should be noted that only some of them are SATA II (3.0 Gbps), which is the critical issue here:

 

http://www.maxtor.com/_files/maxtor/en_us/..._data_sheet.pdf

http://www.maxtor.com/_files/maxtor/en_us/..._data_sheet.pdf

 

I have good experiences with Maxtor before and would certainly consider the DiamoandMax 10. Given that all of these drives themselves are too slow to saturate even SATA I in steady operation (but I do not know what happens at the disk edge), it appears that the SATA II advantage appears come from short bursts of data in the drive cache. This means increasing the drive cache from 8MB to 16MB might help here, but I do not know and the tests I have seen indicatate that it has little affect on SATA I performance.

 

also if theres anything else i should know before buying it let me know '. or anyother hard drive better than this one .

Basically, you want to get the cheapest SATA II 250 GB hard drive you can find. The Hitachi T7K250 or Maxtor DiamondMax 10 are both fine. Other choices should be fine too, just make sure you are getting an SATA II interface (3.0 Gbps).

[g_gonzo99]

Hi,

 

I've been reading along for the last couple of weeks and thought it was time to share my experiences! First of all though, a big thank you to bofors for sharing his experiences and to everyone else that has made this thread (and the whole board) such a fantastic source of information.

 

The box I'm running is a mix of purpose bought parts (motherboard and RAM) and other parts that I'd already bought for a Windows box which got divereted to this project

 

The box itself was built in about two hours, and OSX was running about an hour later. I originally used the 10.4.3 DVD and added the jas patches. It's been running fine since built (about two weeks) and everything worked out of the box - audio, LAN, Firewire, QE/CI. Yesterday I used the Myzar 10.4.5 DVD to upgrade the system (took about 20 minutes), and the only thing I had to do was replace the AppleHDA.kext file to get sound working.

 

I can report that the NEC 3550 DVD Writer works with no patching required.

 

So far (touch wood) I've not seen any kernel panics or had any significant problems. The only issue I have had a couple of times has been the system not shutting down properly and I've had to power off. This doesn't seem to have caused any other problems.

 

I'd read in a few places that some people had problems with the Apple DVD player, but it worked for me from the start. I watched 3 full DVD's with no issues. Not sure if it has any significance (can't see why it would) but I'm in Region 2 as far as DVD's are concerned.

 

I'm usually a Windows user so other than playing with an iMac in my local computer store I can only make a comparison against using Windows rather than a Mac. The system feels at least as quick as my XP machine ( a 3.0Ghz P4 with 2GB RAM) and in side by side tests I'm not noticing any difference in the time it takes to load up the Macromedia apps I use regularly (in fact Flash loads faster on the Hackintosh), and there's no real difference in the load time for CS2 apps. Photoshop feels as responsive as it does on my Windows box, although I've not tried any major filtering activities.

 

Under 10.4.3 I was getting 65 to 67 in xbench, and that went straight to 72.08 when I installed 10.4.5. I have no idea why this is, and didnt expect it!

 

I tried disabling Beam Sync and that pushed my xbench result up to 87.82, but did horrible things to my display! If I moved any windows about, they distorted at a point about a third of the way down the screen. I've switched it back on and am happy enough with the performance for now. (I'm using a 19" Samsung flat panel that's about 2 years old).

 

I switched from IDE to AHCI today and my HD is now recognised as a 'proper' SATA drive running at 3.0 Gigabit. It made no difference to my xbench results and so far I haven't noticed any difference myself. Like some others here the Random disk writes in xbench are awful (9.40 for the 4k blocks test). If anyone has any suggestions for improving this, please let me know!

 

I am absolutely sure though that I will never go back to Windows!

 

 

 

Gonz

 

 

PS. I bought a very G4'esque case, a Suntek Vivid (in iPod white of course!)

[bofors]

So far (touch wood) I've not seen any kernel panics or had any significant problems.

I have had no system instability on 10.4.5 yet in about three days of uptime which medium use. I will be running both cores under full load for extended periods of time, like eight hours straight, in a few days.

The only issue I have had a couple of times has been the system not shutting down properly and I've had to power off. This doesn't seem to have caused any other problems.

Hmm... I have not had that problem, you might want to try using Disk Utiity to repair the permission on your OS X installation and see if it helps.

 

I'd read in a few places that some people had problems with the Apple DVD player, but it worked for me from the start.

Apple's DVD Player did not work for me in 10.4.3, but does great in 10.4.5.

 

I tried disabling Beam Sync and that pushed my xbench result up to 87.82, but did horrible things to my display! If I moved any windows about, they distorted at a point about a third of the way down the screen. I've switched it back on and am happy enough with the performance for now. (I'm using a 19" Samsung flat panel that's about 2 years old).

I am not sure if this the same you are describing, but with or without Beam Sync. enabled, if I quickly "shake" a window horizontally, I can see some distortion about a third of the way down. I attribute this to limits of the GMA 950, as I do not see this on my PowerMac G5.

 

For the record, I am running with Beam Sync. enabled. In a few weeks, when I know how stable 10.4.5 is, I will try turning it off to see if it has any impact on system stability.

 

I switched from IDE to AHCI today and my HD is now recognised as a 'proper' SATA drive running at 3.0 Gigabit. It made no difference to my xbench results and so far I haven't noticed any difference myself.

As discussed here, the speed improvement from AHCI is nominal at about 5%:

 

http://forum.osx86project.org/index.php?sh...5&hl=AHCI&st=35

 

Like some others here the Random disk writes in xbench are awful (9.40 for the 4k blocks test). If anyone has any suggestions for improving this, please let me know!

I am kind of wondering what the story with this particular Xbench test is, I mean that I do not think it is scaled right. Does anybody actually get a 100 here?

 

I am absolutely sure though that I will never go back to Windows!

This is very typical, once people start using Macs they dislike Windows. I actually switched to Windows for a few years before OS X came out.

 

I bought a very G4'esque case, a Suntek Vivid (in iPod white of course!)

 

 

This is an interesting case, it has a handle and a very Apple-like style. However, I would pass on the floppy bay and hidden IO ports on the case front (I want them exposed). Anyways, here is a review:

 

http://www.enscape.net/index.php?pg=1&id=110

[Hitesh]

i still havent received my hard drive ....anyways advice me on buying a Graphics card for my board ..which is fully compatible with macosx .. coz im bored of not watchin movie and i want to dual boot this machine with windows on another hard drive and run my HTPC .. so basically i need a graphics card compatible with both

[bofors]

I do not understand what the problem is, the GMA 950 should be fine for watching movies.

 

My advice is to hold off on buying a graphics card until the driver situation is resolved, otherwise I would probably look at some ATI x1600's.

[Hitesh]

I do not understand what the problem is, the GMA 950 should be fine for watching movies.

 

My advice is to hold off on buying a graphics card until the driver situation is resolved, otherwise I would probably look at some ATI x1600's.

 

alright then i guess ill hold on to it untill some nice drivers turn up

[g_gonzo99]

I am not sure if this the same you are describing, but with or without Beam Sync. enabled, if I quickly "shake" a window horizontally, I can see some distortion about a third of the way down. I attribute this to limits of the GMA 950, as I do not see this on my PowerMac G5.

I've just tried this with Beam Sync on and off and I don't get this problem. With Beam Sync on there is no distortion at all, with it off the distortion is always at the same point about a third of the way down the screen. I don't have access to another monitor here but next week I'm taking my box over to a friends so I'll try it with his monitor and see what happens.

I am kind of wondering what the story with this particular Xbench test is, I mean that I do not think it is scaled right. Does anybody actually get a 100 here?

I'm confused as to how it seems I'm only getting 9% of the performance of the baseline spces in xbench. What sort of results do you get on your G5?

This is an interesting case, it has a handle and a very Apple-like style. However, I would pass on the floppy bay and hidden IO ports on the case front (I want them exposed).

I don't have a floppy drive installed, but may put one in later; the only reason we still use floppies in my household is because my girlfriend's Uni wants stuff submitted on them. I guess hidden IO ports come down to needs and tastes. I rarely (but occasionally do) use them so I like having them tucked away!

[92GTA]

Hello guys! I just read this entire thread! GREAT info!

 

I plan on buying now I think the same D945GNTLKR you guys are. Also the D 920 too!

 

I do have a couple of concerns. First off, am I correct in reading that for some unknown reason the GMA 950 boards have a tiny bit of glitching that the GMA 900 does not? However there are no 945 boards with GMA 900 right? Also the audio jacks on this mobo are reversed but working right?

 

Also I'm going to be using the image:

 

MaC.OsX.10.4.5.Universal.Install.DVD(INTEL_AMD_SSE3_SSE2).iso

 

Can anyone comment on that image? I installed it on another system but due to hardware issues for audio and networking, I'm buying the D945GNTLKR and building a system just for OS X.

 

Thanks!

 

bofors, when are you going to post a step-by-step for installing the 10.4.5 image onto your hardware so people like me can follow and have everything working?

[bofors]

I'm confused as to how it seems I'm only getting 9% of the performance of the baseline spces in xbench. What sort of results do you get on your G5?

On the stock the 250 GB Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9, I get a score of 22.9 in a partion near the middle of the disk for the Random Uncached 4k block Write test. For my high speed RAID, which adds a 74GB Raptor, with both partition at the fast edge of the disks, my score almost doubles to 39.88. So, there is pretty much no way that Xbench scales it's reference system to 100 on this test.

[bofors]

First off, am I correct in reading that for some unknown reason the GMA 950 boards have a tiny bit of glitching that the GMA 900 does not?

I have not heard this before and I do not think there is any glitches with the 950 either.

 

Also the audio jacks on this mobo are reversed but working right?

That's right, the audio comes out the wrong port in the back, you have to the 10.4.3 AppleHDA.kext (which is available by PM'ing me) and I believe that nobody has got the front audio jacks working at all.

 

MaC.OsX.10.4.5.Universal.Install.DVD(INTEL_AMD_SSE3_SSE2).iso

 

Can anyone comment on that image?

I would assume that is Myzar's pre-patched 10.4.5 which is running great on my box, the only issues are that it incorrectly labels the CPU as being 4.0 GHz lacking SSE3 (note OSx86 is not emulating SSE3 though, so these are purely cosmetic issues).

 

EDIT: That is not Myzar's and apparently has some issues.

 

bofors, when are you going to post a step-by-step for installing the 10.4.5 image onto your hardware so people like me can follow and have everything working?

There is really nothing to it. Myzar's pre-patched 10.4.5 works great. The only things I have done special are adding the 10.4.3 AppleHDA.kext to get the audio working and changing the apple.com.Boot.plist so the machine starts up clean: no timer and no junk is displayed.

[StickyDigits]

MaC.OsX.10.4.5.Universal.Install.DVD(INTEL_AMD_SSE3_SSE2).iso

 

The only issue I had with this build is that it does not support SATA drives. I suppose I could have manually replaced the drivers on the iso and fixed the permissions but I also had the MYZ iso on hand, and that version (with the 2 extra patches applided) works fine with my SATA drives so I did not bother.

 

As far as the video off a GMA950, i don't understand your comment about glitches. As far as I can see at this point it's near perfect except for 60 hertz refresh at higher resolutions.

 

My ATI X1600 really does not compare to the GMA950. Artifacts, no resolution control and no control over refresh rate. I hope someone figures out how to emulate the EFI ATI driver that initalizes the card one of these days. Good luck with your build.

[bofors]

The only issue I had with this build is that it does not support SATA drives. I suppose I could have manually replaced the drivers on the iso and fixed the permissions but I also had the MYZ iso on hand, and that version (with the 2 extra patches applided) works fine with my SATA drives so I did not bother.

 

So you are saying the "MaC.OsX.10.4.5.Universal.Install.DVD(INTEL_AMD_SSE3_SSE2).iso" is not Myzar's pre-patched 10.4.5?

[Bearcat]

So you are saying the "MaC.OsX.10.4.5.Universal.Install.DVD(INTEL_AMD_SSE3_SSE2).iso" is not Myzar's pre-patched 10.4.5?

This is not the myzar dvd. It is another one that came after, but a number of reports indicated it didn't work to well on amd processors, and the sata issue described above was unknown to me, at least.

 

I used the myzar dvd, with no changes other then fixing the devid for network and replacing the AppleHDA, and it has been rock solid.

[bofors]

I used the myzar dvd, with no changes other then fixing the devid for network and replacing the AppleHDA, and it has been rock solid.

 

Likewise, I have been up for about five days on Myzar's 10.4.5 and have had no system instability whatsoever. However, I want to give a few more weeks before I declare victory of my minor problems.

[92GTA]

Ok, guys I got ahold of the better Myzar release and I'll go ahead and order the D945GNTLKR with a D 920!

 

Thanks for the help and the great thread! I'm sure I'll be back, lol.

 

Thanks! Alex

[StickyDigits]

So you are saying the "MaC.OsX.10.4.5.Universal.Install.DVD(INTEL_AMD_SSE3_SSE2).iso" is not Myzar's pre-patched 10.4.5?

 

The checksums do not match, so I assumed it was a diffrent build from the MYZ iso. I did not try to apply Myzar's patches to it -- Those 2 patches were also issued to fix some SATA issues. Which version did you use for your build?

[bofors]

I used "Mac OS X 10.4.4/5 osx86 Patched Bootable DVD" posted by "Goatsecx74" on the ThePirateBay.

 

The file downloaded is "MacOSX_10.4.4DVDPATCHED_Myz.iso".

 

I believe that is Myzar's pre-patched 10.4.5.

[stelriah]

I used "Mac OS X 10.4.4/5 osx86 Patched Bootable DVD" posted by "Goatsecx74" on the ThePirateBay.

 

The file downloaded is "MacOSX_10.4.4DVDPATCHED_Myz.iso".

 

I believe that is Myzar's pre-patched 10.4.5.

 

is regular DDR ram compatible with the board you are using?

[92GTA]

is regular DDR ram compatible with the board you are using?

 

No

[bofors]

is regular DDR ram compatible with the board you are using?

 

Furthemore, the Pentium D and DDR RAM (not DDR2) seem to be mutually exclusive. The Pentium D works with the 945 chipset which does not support DDR. On the other hand, DDR RAM works with the 915 chipset but that does not support the Pentium D.

 

Now, I want to say something about partion format. Do to the installation guides, a lot of people seem to think that OS X requires Journaled HFS+ (Mac OS Extended) formating. This is false. Specifically, journaling is an option that hinders performance, I do not use it.

[92GTA]

Absolutely correct, it's only for faster files searching. I don't think it has anything to do with the HD retriving information faster by knowing where it is at any better. NCQ in the hardware does that.

 

In addition I think I personally am going to format UNIX and try and installed OS X on that because Vista "suppossedly" will recognize all *nix partitions for file access with the given persmissions. Hopefully that works...

[bofors]

Absolutely correct, it's only for faster files searching. I don't think it has anything to do with the HD retriving information faster by knowing where it is at any better. NCQ in the hardware does that.

Umm.. I am not sure if you understand what "journalling" is here.

 

When you enable journaling on a disk, a continuous record of changes to files on the disk is maintained in the journal. If your computer stops because of a power failure or some other issue, the journal is used to restore the disk to a known-good state when the server restarts.

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107249

 

In addition I think I personally am going to format UNIX and try and installed OS X on that because Vista "suppossedly" will recognize all *nix partitions for file access with the given persmissions. Hopefully that works...

 

Perhaps it will, but HFS+ is generally recommended over UFS (Unix File System) for OS X, there are some differences.

[92GTA]

K, I'll stop talking now then

 

Thanks for correcting me and posting details so at least I learned something