[Guide & Software] Complete Intel Bad Axe 2 Walkthrough with Software

[Team Scream]

Does anyone else get a lockup when you click the new Eject icon in the menubar in 10.5.2? Sometimes I click on it...and it just freezes. Then I can't access Disk Utility, shutdown properly, yada yada yada.

 

Sauce,

Assusming that I have in fact successfully installed pc_efi_v8 i can tell you that my system is running exceptionally well.

Aside from the lack of success getting a SUperDuper clone to boot, the OS is rock solid stable, everything works fine (sans the audio input and additional SATA).

All of the major applications I use are working perfectly, sleep, wake, shutdown etc all work flawlessly and without and concerns whatsoever.

 

The eject icon works fine and actually gives me a choice of which drive to eject when I select it as I have 2 DVD drives installed on this machine (both IDE)

[Maconvert]

Hello Everyone,

 

 

 

Can someone recommend some good (preferably cheap or free) backup software what will let me make a perfect backup image of my Hack Pro’s hard drive?

 

 

 

I don’t plan on building my Hack Pro until I finish my night school course (end of April), but, unless there is a complete and functional hacked Leopard 10.5.2 DVD ISO available around that time, I am going to have to follow Weaksauce’s 10.5.1 install guide and then upgrade to 10.5.2. If I go that route, I’m going to want to make a nice reliable image of my 10.5.1 install before I attempt the upgrade to 10.5.2.

 

 

 

However, regardless of whether a 10.5.2 ISO is available by then, I’m still going to want a good drive imaging application anyway, for when Apple updates past 10.5.2 and then breaks something else.

 

I can’t fault Apple for this though.

 

I have a funny feeling that Apple wants to continue to make things somewhat challenging for the OSx86 community, but not impossible.

 

The more people that get exposure to Leopard, the more people that will fall in love with the operating system and the way Apple does things.

 

The bit of hassle that comes with each update will just make it more likely that people will finally break down and buy an actual Mac.

 

 

 

Anyway, keep up the great work everybody.

 

I look forward to your replies (regarding the backup software).

 

 

 

Cheers!

[weaksauce12]

Sauce,

Assusming that I have in fact successfully installed pc_efi_v8 i can tell you that my system is running exceptionally well.

Aside from the lack of success getting a SUperDuper clone to boot, the OS is rock solid stable, everything works fine (sans the audio input and additional SATA).

All of the major applications I use are working perfectly, sleep, wake, shutdown etc all work flawlessly and without and concerns whatsoever.

 

The eject icon works fine and actually gives me a choice of which drive to eject when I select it as I have 2 DVD drives installed on this machine (both IDE)

 

Yeah mine sometimes does but more often than not it locks up...very strange. Maybe I should try IDE mode instead of AHCI...

 

So far with the new Netkas non-vanilla kernel and SMbios27, the majority of my problems have disappeared. I'm quite pleased!

 

Update 1: Switched to IDE mode from AHCI. Looking good so far, no lockups...

 

Update 2: Got sleep working, had to switch from ACPI S3 to S1. I remember Stella had mentioned this on his new board, so I gave it a shot and it worked! So Netkas kernel + SMbios27 + IDE mode + S1 = happiness :censored2:

[weaksauce12]

Updated the original post. It has some more info and it looks visually more organized:

 

http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=76014

 

Status Update:

 

1. Good day today - lots of bugs fixed!

2. Working on EFI v8 release

3. Fixing bugs for the foreseeable future

4. Outlined Rev 2 of the Guide (EFI v8 version)

5. Commencing R&D for Rev 2 once EFI v8 bugs are fixed

 

The EFI v8 install is getting very close to being perfect. Many thanks to Lorne, Dense, Stella, and all the others who have been helping me out, both here on the thread and elsewhere. 10.5.2 has given me a lot of headaches but progress is being made on a weekly basis. I've put together my super guide outline for the next update and will start writing documentation after the EFI v8 + 10.5.2 bugs get ironed out.

 

I need your input!

 

I am toying with the idea of releasing the next guide as a video rather than a printed guide. Chime in and let me know what you think. The Terminal commands in the next release will be extremely limited, so it will be easy to follow in a video format. If I do a video, it will focus on the entire range of the Bad Axe 2 - choosing and building a system, patching and installing Leopard, tweaking the install with updates, patches, and so on, and setting up dual-booting, cloning, backing, and overclocking. Basically an A-Z guide for our boards, assuming everything works out with EFI v8. Either way the new guide will be a considerable time investment for me and I am only going to do either a video or a written guide so as to avoid redundancy. The written guide would be 20-50 pages long (very detailed with screenshots and whatnot) while the video would probably be about 10 minutes long.

 

So please reply - written or video guide?

[Team Scream]

Updated the original post. It has some more info and it looks visually more organized:

 

http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=76014

 

Status Update:

 

1. Good day today - lots of bugs fixed!

2. Working on EFI v8 release

3. Fixing bugs for the foreseeable future

4. Outlined Rev 2 of the Guide (EFI v8 version)

5. Commencing R&D for Rev 2 once EFI v8 bugs are fixed

 

The EFI v8 install is getting very close to being perfect. Many thanks to Lorne, Dense, Stella, and all the others who have been helping me out, both here on the thread and elsewhere. 10.5.2 has given me a lot of headaches but progress is being made on a weekly basis. I've put together my super guide outline for the next update and will start writing documentation after the EFI v8 + 10.5.2 bugs get ironed out.

 

I need your input!

 

I am toying with the idea of releasing the next guide as a video rather than a printed guide. Chime in and let me know what you think. The Terminal commands in the next release will be extremely limited, so it will be easy to follow in a video format. If I do a video, it will focus on the entire range of the Bad Axe 2 - choosing and building a system, patching and installing Leopard, tweaking the install with updates, patches, and so on, and setting up dual-booting, cloning, backing, and overclocking. Basically an A-Z guide for our boards, assuming everything works out with EFI v8. Either way the new guide will be a considerable time investment for me and I am only going to do either a video or a written guide so as to avoid redundancy. The written guide would be 20-50 pages long (very detailed with screenshots and whatnot) while the video would probably be about 10 minutes long.

 

So please reply - written or video guide?

 

I vote for a written guide with pics.

A video in high quality so that viewers could actually see the bios screens and what not will have to be hosted privately if you want high quality.

That brings up hosting and associated costs.

A youtube version will be flash video and not very clear which could cause more tech support posts (asking you for clarification) than you probably have time or desire to cover.

A printed version lends itself to edit(s) much easier than a shooting a new part for the video, re-edit and re-post/host.

 

Good pics/screen grabs all bundled together nicely with your fancy penmanship can live out in the ether for decades cost free basically.

[alamoa]

Updated the original post. It has some more info and it looks visually more organized:

 

http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=76014

 

Status Update:

 

1. Good day today - lots of bugs fixed!

2. Working on EFI v8 release

3. Fixing bugs for the foreseeable future

4. Outlined Rev 2 of the Guide (EFI v8 version)

5. Commencing R&D for Rev 2 once EFI v8 bugs are fixed

 

The EFI v8 install is getting very close to being perfect. Many thanks to Lorne, Dense, Stella, and all the others who have been helping me out, both here on the thread and elsewhere. 10.5.2 has given me a lot of headaches but progress is being made on a weekly basis. I've put together my super guide outline for the next update and will start writing documentation after the EFI v8 + 10.5.2 bugs get ironed out.

 

I need your input!

 

I am toying with the idea of releasing the next guide as a video rather than a printed guide. Chime in and let me know what you think. The Terminal commands in the next release will be extremely limited, so it will be easy to follow in a video format. If I do a video, it will focus on the entire range of the Bad Axe 2 - choosing and building a system, patching and installing Leopard, tweaking the install with updates, patches, and so on, and setting up dual-booting, cloning, backing, and overclocking. Basically an A-Z guide for our boards, assuming everything works out with EFI v8. Either way the new guide will be a considerable time investment for me and I am only going to do either a video or a written guide so as to avoid redundancy. The written guide would be 20-50 pages long (very detailed with screenshots and whatnot) while the video would probably be about 10 minutes long.

 

So please reply - written or video guide?

 

A PICTURE IS ALWAYS BETTER THEN A THOUSAND WORDS BUT A QUICK (2PAGES) STEP BY STEP GUIDE WOULD MAKE ME VERY CONFORTABLE DURING INSTALLING TIME.

 

IN SHORT: VIDEO WITH A PRINTABLE SHORT LIST THAT IS MY VOTE

[bigvalboa]

I agree with Team Scream, and if hosting is an issue i could supply some space.

 

Regards,

Bigvalboa

[weaksauce12]

I vote for a written guide with pics.

A video in high quality so that viewers could actually see the bios screens and what not will have to be hosted privately if you want high quality.

That brings up hosting and associated costs.

A youtube version will be flash video and not very clear which could cause more tech support posts (asking you for clarification) than you probably have time or desire to cover.

A printed version lends itself to edit(s) much easier than a shooting a new part for the video, re-edit and re-post/host.

 

Good pics/screen grabs all bundled together nicely with your fancy penmanship can live out in the ether for decades cost free basically.

 

HD video hosting isn't a problem; Vimeo offers free hosting for videos up to 720p (it'd like Youtube for HD):

 

http://www.vimeo.com/

 

A Video Tutorial + Quickstart Guide is probably the best option. I don't mind writing the guide, but it's evident from a lot of posts in this thread that some people simply don't read everything offered. I've repeated answers to the same questions over and over again, answers that already existed in the written guide. A video is easy to watch, so I think there would be a lot less support required if people could just sit down and watch how to do it. I have 3 major sections planned out:

 

1. Hardware: Selection, Building, and Testing

2. Leopard: Patching, Installing, and Post-Install

3. Extra Features: Backup and Cloning, Dual-Booting, and Overclocking

 

So my task list becomes:

 

1. Finalize EFI v8 install (no bugs)

2. Do R&D (test OCing, dual-booting methods, etc. etc.)

3. Create video

4. Create final package & distribute

 

Sounds more fun than writing a 30-page guide

 

Status Update:

 

1. S1 sleep is weird. The CPU & case fans don't turn off. I'm not exactly sure what actually is turned off - just the hard drives? Anything?

2. My RAID clone still won't boot. I can clone to a single drive and boot that, but not a RAID set anymore. I guess 10.5.2 broke that for the SI3132 chips.

[knyte2]

I think the video idea is a cool one, though Im up for whatever works into Sauce's schedule.

 

Will the new BA setup be a vanilla kernal?

[weaksauce12]

I think the video idea is a cool one, though Im up for whatever works into Sauce's schedule.

 

Will the new BA setup be a vanilla kernal?

 

Vanilla? Most likely not. It's not a big deal though; I'm running a modded kernel now and can still download updates from Apple (as long as they don't change the kernel, iirc), you just have to add 10.5.2 yourself first. Also, all of my apps install without any hitches (CS3, Office, etc.). So really there's no downsides to have a modded kernel. One of the things I am waiting for is a newer Netkas kernel, apparently the current one only supports S1 sleep and not S3 (S1 is about the same as putting the display to sleep lol).

[Team Scream]

Vanilla? Most likely not. It's not a big deal though; I'm running a modded kernel now and can still download updates from Apple (as long as they don't change the kernel, iirc), you just have to add 10.5.2 yourself first. Also, all of my apps install without any hitches (CS3, Office, etc.). So really there's no downsides to have a modded kernel. One of the things I am waiting for is a newer Netkas kernel, apparently the current one only supports S1 sleep and not S3 (S1 is about the same as putting the display to sleep lol).

 

Sauce,

 

That is really odd that your setup wont sleep properly. Both of my main hackintosh's sleep without issue, they have slept for 24 hours without me touching them, and everything is shut down, fans, hard drives display etc. and a simple mouse click brings them to life.

 

Maybe we should compare bios settings and see what the issue is? You may be correct in that your modded card is causing the problem but it can also be USB devices. In S3 mode the system continues to supply 5v to the USB buss so that a mouse click will bring it back to life.I have no idea what takes place in S1 suspend/sleep. I will try to copy all of my bios settings and post them up for you guys to pool over and maybe there is a common thread there somewhere?

 

That being said, my P5K-VM system wont wake from sleep properly but it will go into sleep no problem, and when I try to bring it back from it's nap, nothing works well, it requires a hard reset and then i just don't let it sleep when it is on.

 

One other thing worth noting is that the bitchen Apple keyboard...you know the aluminum Mac Pro keyboard....the $49.00 version? Well I bought one, and while it is nice and small and bitchen....it wont work during post so if you need to hit F10 to boot to whatever partition you choose, you have to use a different keyboard which is a bummer, other than that it works perfect.

[weaksauce12]

Sauce,

 

That is really odd that your setup wont sleep properly. Both of my main hackintosh's sleep without issue, they have slept for 24 hours without me touching them, and everything is shut down, fans, hard drives display etc. and a simple mouse click brings them to life.

 

I'm using an entirely different approach to EFI v8; my results are perfectly in line with the method I'm using, apparently. Don't apply what I say to your install until I release my guide...hehe.

[apooo]

Hi weaksauce12,

 

did u try the apple ahci? did it work? did you press F8 and -f at startup?

 

apooo

[tuukka H]

S1 is the most power-hungry of sleep modes. All processor caches are flushed, and the CPU(s) stop executing instructions. Power to the CPU(s) and RAM is maintained; devices that do not indicate they must remain on may be powered down. This mode is often referred to as Power On Standby or simply POS, particularly in BIOS configuration screens. Some newer machines do not support S1; older machines are more likely to support S1 than S3.

 

From wikipedia.. So dont use S1.. Its like no sleep at all.. But there must be something very big problems in your configuration.. I think that its the graphics drivers maybe..

 

To be honest why do you use the unvanilla kernel?

[weaksauce12]

Hi weaksauce12,

 

did u try the apple ahci? did it work? did you press F8 and -f at startup?

 

apooo

 

Yes I used it, no it didn't work for me. Also, the files contains errors - whoever edited originally made some errors in it...it's strange that it works at all...

 

@ tuukka H, again don't worry about it. I'm using a different EFI v8 approach that requires me to use the non-vanilla kernel. The latest Netkas kernel breaks S3, so I have to use S1, which is pretty much useless.

[GoofyHouse]

Hi WeakSauce 12!

I did really enjoyed your instruction guide how to install Leopard on Bad Axe II. I would prefer a written guide over a video guide, just because then I can make some notes on the paper. I do not really prefer a video guide because you need a working computer, to watch the steps how to do it. Your instruction guide with EFI 5.2 was pretty good!

GoofyHouse

[theotherone]

Ok thanks theotherone,

can you tell me how to prepare this disk that I am going to use as the clone?

Do I set it up as GUID or MBR to make it a bootable clone?

Or are you suggesting that I need to have a woking install of Leopard on yet another hard drive to be able to restore using SuperDuper?

 

My deisre is to have a good clone of my main boot drive with all of my applications installed and registered so that in case I screw something up, I can boot (to something) and restore the cloned image to a fresh drive and be back up and running with minimal hassle.

 

I keep a good working clone of my XP drive for this very reason, all of my applications are installed, registered and ready to go so that at any time I can pop in the cloned drive and never miss a beat.

For that reason I keep all of my working files (video, images, project backups) on a seperate drive so getting back to work after a failure is almost painless.

The of course I just reformat the failed drive and clone that to the (now) working drive and viola, I have another perfectly good clone on the shelf in case of emergency.

 

Trust me, this has saved me so many hours and I have had to use this method on 2 occasions in the past.

I will never comit a machine to my work environment unless I have that kind of redundancy built in now.

On XP there is nothing better or easier than XXClone.

 

@weaksauce: As for the guide i have no special preference, i will use whatever you came up with.

 

@Team Scream: Sorry, i'm late! With 10.5.1 i simply made a backup with superDuper and can startup with that disk without problems, i used this behaviour for 10.5.2 and it worked too..., but,....i never (at least with 10.5.2) used a freshly formatted HD to clone to, so on my HDs there are EFI 8 from an older install and so the cloning and booting from the clone works. After your message i tried with a freshly formatted HD and your'e right, without installing EFI befor- or afterwards and making the partition bootable there is no booting. Not a big deal for me since installing efi is a matter of a few minutes and i'm back in the game. So, for now you have to clone to a HD where you have already a working efi 8 installed, after that cloning with SuperDuper 2.5 worked, maybe weaksauce have some better way in his new guide.

 

After my latest messages i fiddled some more with my RAID-Controller. There was 7 Discs on the RocketRAID 3520, one raid 0 with 2 raptors and (4 x 500 GB and 1 x 750 GB) as raid 5. What i have done now is simply removing the 750 GB disk without warning from the raid 5 where the controller immediatly told me that my raid was in "critical" state. So i added a fresh 500 GB disk as a replacement for the 750 GB Disk and the controller immediatly began the resilvering which tooks several hours but went without problems. Finally i added another 500 GB disk to the raid 5 so that i have now 6 x 500 GB = 2,5 TB as raid 5 (migrating from the 2 TB raid to the 2,5 TB raid 5 took nearly 2 days, but i can work while migrating...). The remaining 2 Raptors are in raid 0 and are only used for systemfiles and critical programs, all user-files are on the raid 5.

 

While i'm at it i too destroyed my raptor raid 0 and copyed a SuperDuper backup to it, added efi 8 and again was able to boot from it without problems.

 

After all that, i'm having issues with my rig: Heat! With 9 HDs, 2 SuperDrives and the Q6600 overclocked to 3,0 GHz my system simply shut off without warning today and wan't post again with 3 GHz! So i'm back on my feet now with 2,4 GHz...

 

So, i'm desperately looking how and where i can feed fresh cool air to my rig from. There is an unused chimney nearby where i could maybe build a tunnel....;-).

 

Maybe i altogether remove the 8 RAID-HDs, but i have to find a separate case for them maybe with his own powersupply and the possibility to get them working much cooler.

 

But there is also the idea to make finally the move to the new X38BT from Intel and the bigger case from Lian-LI, but together with the new DDR3 RAM this isn't cheap either but it would be the most elegant solution. As long as i can get good money on ebay for my BadAxe...

[WIGS]

Sauce,

 

That is really odd that your setup wont sleep properly. Both of my main hackintosh's sleep without issue, they have slept for 24 hours without me touching them, and everything is shut down, fans, hard drives display etc. and a simple mouse click brings them to life.

 

Maybe we should compare bios settings and see what the issue is? You may be correct in that your modded card is causing the problem but it can also be USB devices. In S3 mode the system continues to supply 5v to the USB buss so that a mouse click will bring it back to life.I have no idea what takes place in S1 suspend/sleep. I will try to copy all of my bios settings and post them up for you guys to pool over and maybe there is a common thread there somewhere?

 

That being said, my P5K-VM system wont wake from sleep properly but it will go into sleep no problem, and when I try to bring it back from it's nap, nothing works well, it requires a hard reset and then i just don't let it sleep when it is on.

 

One other thing worth noting is that the bitchen Apple keyboard...you know the aluminum Mac Pro keyboard....the $49.00 version? Well I bought one, and while it is nice and small and bitchen....it wont work during post so if you need to hit F10 to boot to whatever partition you choose, you have to use a different keyboard which is a bummer, other than that it works perfect.

 

 

 

 

Team scream any news on posting your Bios settings I am also having problems with sleep I am looking to compare our settings and hopefully I can fix this last remaining bug.

Thanks in advance

[bibendum]

FWIW, I don't like the idea of a video guide - I can print out a text-based guide and step by step thru it. If it's a video guide, I need (first a working computer), then watch it, and take hand notes for when I'm working on the computer and not online.

 

Patrick

[Team Scream]

Team scream any news on posting your Bios settings I am also having problems with sleep I am looking to compare our settings and hopefully I can fix this last remaining bug.

Thanks in advance

 

Your wish is my command:

 

Just remember...DO NOT ASSUME THAT YOU CAN USE THE SAME PROCESSOR OVERRIDES THAT I AM USING.

I am water cooled and have killer memory installed.

This SYSTEM IS OVERCLOCKED.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[WIGS]

Your wish is my command:

 

Just remember...DO NOT ASSUME THAT YOU CAN USE THE SAME PROCESSOR OVERRIDES THAT I AM USING.

I am water cooled and have killer memory installed.

This SYSTEM IS OVERCLOCKED.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thank you Team scream looks like I have almost got sleep going it kind of goes into snooze rather than deep sleep the fans are still going I think the hard drives are off and the graphics card but that is all. I am not sure what setting turns off the fans but I have the speed controlled from a thermal strip does this make a difference? I am guessing that you don't have this issue running on water? Is anybody else having the same problems ?

I had many things different in my bios but changed them to the exact same as Screams pictures, so some progress is better than none thanks again.

[bibendum]

Dude - if you're gonna quote someone - delete the pix - no need to post everything TWICE...

 

Patrick

[weaksauce12]

Just FYI to the BA2 group in general:

 

I'm going AFK for awhile to focus on fixing some of the major problems that the BA2 has and for getting the next guide up to speed. Please direct all questions to this thread for now. I would estimate 1-2 months to get everything in order (problems solved, guide/video script written, etc.). There are some good things in the pipeline for us, assuming the problems I'm working on are truly fixable. I'm taking a slightly different route than what has been posted on the thread.

 

Stay tuned!

[Chrismo]

Hi,

After reading a a zillion posts here I went out and bought a Badaxe2KR motherboard and Q6600 CPU.

So far it's been drivng me crazy. I cant find the kalyway bootable file you reference called "Format & Make Bootable HD for Leopard.iso"

 

I've checked the "bay" but cant find it. Should I use the kaly10.5.1 disk instead? The GUID EFI doesnt seem to work.

 

Also, I updated my bios to the latest version, but now see that you reccomend the 2809 version. Is that one better?

 

Thanks!

Chris

[gu3d3s]

Hi All,

 

finally I made my BadAxe2 to function all Intel and Marvell SATA ports,

now my system this perfect one

 

Together annex my installer for the KEXT, twirls it and for security,

install and before the BOOT, repairs the DISK permissions, delete all caches and

make the 1# BOOT w/ F8 -v -f

 

Today is one day happy for me....

 

weaksauce12, if you to want can place this KEXT in its guide of instructions of the BadAxe2

 

Enjoy!!!

 

EDIT: Running Leo 10.5.2 + EFI8 All kexts is Vanilla , only DSmos.kext is "alien"

EDIT2: I see 5 Marvell ports, but in board only have 4!!!??? the e-sata control 2 ports?

HMBT_Marvell_88SE61XX_installer.zip