[Update] With the upgrade to 10.5.8 the sleep mode breaks. There is currently only a fix for Voodoo kernels but not the plain Vanilla ones. Very annoying this is. Maybe I’ll have to re-install.

[Update 2] I have re-installed to 10.5.6 because that gives me sleep and Atom 330 Hyperthreading. I’ll then wait & see what Snowleopard brings…

As I said in post 1 I got my first inspiration from here:

http://www.osnews.com/story/21564/Building_a_Hackintosh_Apple_Can_t_Sue_You_

Basically the interesting part being able to use the standard OS install. I pretty much followed the instructions on that page. But here I’ll also give some additional hints that might make your life a little easier.

So with a USB stick, a freshly burnt boot-132 CD and the Mac OS X Leopard DVD (10.5.0) I ventured to my new Atom powered sleek SilverStone Mac (or do I call it a PC?). Before I started though I had deleted all partitions off the hard drive so that the Mac OS X installer would not have any issues trying to delete Linux or Windows partitions. This I did with a Live boot CD running Ubuntu 9.04. The Partition Editor under the System menu did the trick.

That done I inserted the boot-132 disk and started the HTPC. As promised it came up with a prompt and after exchanging the DVD the new OS was happily installing. Note to partition the drive correctly before installing though.

The install took about an hour. Create your user & stuff and you’re ready to reboot. You will still need the boot-132 CD to start into your partition until you have installed the bootloader Chameleon.So reboot now and see what happens.

*TaDa*

You have your first OS X start! Probably you’ll only see a 1024×768 resolution but that’s 100% OK.First install the 10.5.7 combo installer from Apple. You might run into a system crash when you reboot. This is due to problems with hyperthreading (HT) on the Atom CPUs. This is probably due to the processor not being interpreted correctly but I did not yet figure a way of fixing that. Maybe someone out there has a clue. To get it running you therefore have to turn off hyperthreading in the BIOS.

Now start executing all those steps in the link above. You’ll need to install Chameleon, Kexts and the other goodies. One thing the documentation sort of misses is the fact that you manually have to set the Mac OS partition to be active if none of the tools has done that for you. Details for this can be read-up here.

Should you have more than one partition the boot manager will also come up every time to ask you where to boot from. If you don’t want that read up here how you can change on the boot loader. For me it were the entries…

<key>Kernel Flags</key>
<string>rd=disk0s2</string>
<key>Timeout</key>
<string>4</string>

…in the com.apple.Boot.plist file.

One thing to note with the Intel D945GCLF2 board is, that the Realtek NIC is not fully 100% supported and the above description does not mention that. Get the Kext from here and install it with the OSx86 tool. All networking now works like a charm.

Finally repair disk permissions and install

If you have done all of the above you should be able to recreate this screen:

The important detail being…

If you do have the good fortune of having a SilverStone case with a display you will now need to get the display to work. the easiest way I found is by using the linked installer for LCDproc from here:

http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/lofiversion/index.php/t83598.html

I also recommend Plex for the movie experience (or just stick to FrontRow for now). Perian is also a valuable asset to have for those video codecs. XSlimmer (see below) can also help with cutting down the space used by applications a bit.

The set-up has now been running a couple of days and I’m very happy. Two things remain to be done:

1. I need to get 5.1 audio to work. So far no luck (or figure out a way for the on-board digital out to work)
2. Find a way to activate the buttons and volume controller from the SilverStone case.

Although the latter is not that important to me. I’m content and am totally amazed at how well this has worked. The Atom is also a lot faster than I would have expected. It probably isn’t as fast as a Mac Mini but then I wouldn’t have expected that but it is a heck of a lot faster than my 1.42Ghz Mac Mini I had before (even with a 250GB 5400RPM drive upgrade!).

So the experiment was a success and I can now attack the final little nigglies.

First we need to put all the hardware together. Well…actually we first need to take it apart. The case that is. And that then looks something like this:

The case has lots of space and the mainboard can be easily accommodated. You really start to wonder if you can put two Atom boards in here….

The power supply (PSU) that came with the case has a whopping 450W which is about 4-5x what I’ll probably need. And although it is a high quality-low noise dual fan PSU it still contributes quite substantially to the noise level. I will definitely be looking for a fan-less supply in the sub 200W class. If someone has any ideas where to get these please let me know. At the bottom of the case you can also see two additional fans that can be connected up to a mainboard. They are nice and quiet and turn at about 1700RPM. For this PC though they are just not necessary.

So next step is to get the mainboard in…

Now that definitely looks like a waste of space! And if I can redo that PSU I can really fit two.

The board fits nicely and is no problem getting in but as you can see above I have a hydra problem. LOTS and LOTS of cables to connect. Since I haven’t built a PC for years now (at least nothing later than a Pentium III) I was surprised how much more cabling there is.  So here’s the shot with all cabling and drives in:

I know this isn’t the cleanest of cabling but this is kinda a first attempt.So maybe I’ll visit this again at some latter point.

One thing to mention though is the Intel mainboard fan. It’s there to cool the chip-set and not the CPU! This is THE most commented on feature of this board. Why pair a 4W processor with a 20W+ chip-set?! And the fan is annoying. It is loud and should be replaced. I’ll have a look if I can tunnel one of the back fans to it. They’d be perfect and do a quieter job of it.

Up top you can see the installed DVD drive and the HDD on the right. There’s still lots of space left for more goodies. And the final product….

Looks good and is just what I wanted. A lot bigger than the Mini but hey, this is something totally different. The next challenge is installation and getting all the fancy stuff to work. The old DVD player will also lose it’s place once I get 5.1 sound to work. On the lower left corner you can already see the blue power light. I tested the whole hardware installation with a Ubuntu Linux Live CD.

Noise levels are low but perceptible when the room is quiet. Running are the mainboard fan and the two fans from the PSU. When anything is playing the noise level gets easily drowned out. If I can re-jig the mainboard CPU and install a fan-less PSU the noise level should be less than that of the Mac Mini.

My HTPC hardware is now all working and ready for the next phase. See Part 3 in the next days.

Since I have a Mac OS X Leopard family license with two licenses left unused I thought this might really be a good idea. If it is legal I’m not sure (am no lawyer). I do know though that Apple earns on average $2000-$3500 from us every year in software and hardware. I think that warrants me going a little astray for the fun of it.

In the end I just love the tinkering. I think it’s the same genes that are responsible for grown men to play with toy trains.

So what did I do…. firstly I had to get all the components.

1. Intel Atom 330 Motherboard D945GCLF2 (from Paradigm PCs in Wellington – not the cheapest but reliable & quick)
2. 1GB Ram DDR2-5300 (had that already)
3. WD 250GB 7200RPM HDD (had that already)
4. Pioneer DVD-RW DVR-110D (had that already)
5. SilverStone LC16M HTPC case with a Task 450W low noise PSU

The SilverStone case was a stroke of luck. I got it cheap off TradeMe and it was exactly the thing I was looking for. Eventually the hard drive will be exchanged for a 1-2TB drive(s) but I am waiting for the big drives to come down in price a little and for this experiment to work before spending more money. So far I have now spent just over NZ$400 for the set-up.

The  Intel D945GCLF2 mainboard with its dual core 1.6Ghz Atom 330 processor is a sweet little thing. It definitely has its drawbacks. It only has Intel GMA950 integrated graphics, 2GB ram max, only 2 SATA ports, only one PCI expansion slot, no Firewire and the chipset could be more efficient. But it is very compatible with Mac OS X, has a plethora of USB ports (4 x front & 4 x back), is available and is dirt cheap. My research on the Internet said that it definitely wouldn’t do 1080p. Since our TV is 720p/1080i only I wasn’t too worried.

I would have liked to get one of the new Atom + Nvidia ION chipset mainboards but there’s none to have in NZ for a while and their compatibility with Mac OS X isn’t proven yet. I also anticipate them costing NZ$350 and more.

So by last Friday I had all the parts sitting right in-front of me.

(LtR: DVD, HDD, Mainboard, RAM and USB stick)

and the case…

And I must say the case is absolutely divine. It is just the right size. Has space for (at least) 6 hard drives and can be fitted with fans left-right and center. It is solidly built and the front is really nice aluminum. So I set about setting it all up. It would be a challenge to get all the switches, display and other gadgets to work under OS X.

More tomorrow….

I started out with an older PC I still had around a DELL Optiplex GX260. It has a P4 1.8Ghz with 512Mb ram and an 80Gb HDD fitted. The board has a Intel 845 chipset with integrated graphics.

1. Get your spanking new OS X Leopard DVD and treat it to the BrazilMac patch
2. Since the P4 1.8Ghz is SSE2 only you will now have to do soem kernel acrobatics and install an SSE2 compatible kernel.
3. Now format HDD and install
4. Reboot PC and install some more kernel patches
5. Install some more dodgy patches to files
6. Hunt for more dodgy drivers….
7. Mac OS X is working ….well sort of.

It runs all the apps I tried but it definitely has stability issues. I couldn’t get my network card to work although it is the same the MacPros use. The graphics card would only do 1024×768 (Leopard only has drivers for the Intel chipsets above and including 915). And when you booted you needed the Leopard DVD in the drive.

So all in all not that successful. Although I have to say I was impressed that it worked at all! I never thought it possible at least not on an old crappy machine as this DELL was. The speed was amasingly fast and responsive and even the desktop effects worked well. I learned a whole LOT about how Leopard works and what clever guys those Apple developers really are (and of course those Open Source tid bits!). But I also learned that as nice as hacking like that is it is still no replacement for a mac by a long shot. You wouldn’t use this on a productive system it is just too unstable. And to be honest, who would go and try and replace Apples gorgeous hardware?

So now I’ll kill the partition and use the PC for the second best thing after Mac OS X. Install Ubuntu (again) or gOS or Xubuntu or Suse or …. well an OS that works on this hardware.

[Update] The Dell now runs this Webserver on Ubuntu.

[Update] This post seems to attract quite some attention. So if you have any inputs on how to get Leopard running on such a machine feel free to leave some hints in the comments.