Case Boyle

OSx86 is pretty fuckin neato.

Well, after some late night slaving and a good cup of coffee this morning, I’ve started on my way to understanding OSx86 a bit more. I mentioned in my last post that I would be tinkering with it soon. I’m currently using the iPC distro - which worked ten times better than the iDeneb distro (sorry, but seriously: iDeneb seemed dated. Apparently there was no possible way of accessing a SATA drive during boot.)

So, I figure I may as well document a bit of what I goofed around with for about 8 hours. First off, the system specs.

CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 (2.4GHZ Dual-Core, AM2)
Motherboard: Biostar TF7050-M2
RAM: 2GB DDR2 (the damn type still escapes me)
HDD: 250GB Western Digital SATA 7200RPM
Video: BFG nVidia GeForce 7950GT OC 512MB

So, let me start by saying that I’m surprised that OS X is even working with my motherboard. As far as I could tell by my countless searches on the topic, I’m in a very small number of users who have done this (maybe the first? I’m not after titles here, though). Here’s how it all went down:

For the most part, the first two or three hours were spent on and off playing Street Fighter and trying various ways to allow Disk Utility to work with my HDD. Firstly, it wasn’t reading the drive at all. Then, I got it to recognize the drive - unfortunately, it wouldn’t format the drive. Wouldn’t partition it. Nada. After a while, I caught some info regarding having the SATA controller working in AHCI mode. Now, considering one thing that I don’t like Biostar is for having horrible in-box documentation, and a not-exactly-so-easy-to-find copy of it online. So, I didn’t even know the TF7050-M2 supported AHCI. Learn something new every day. So after some dicking around, I finally got to getting the drive formatted, and actually getting around to, you know, installing.

First install went smooth, then I had a little kernel panic error. Realizing I had forgotten to select about 5 kexts (think of them as OSx86’s equivalent of a driver, loosely) that I knew I was more than likely going to need, I went back and just did a fresh install. Sure, I could have installed the kexts through OS X already, but that’s not the inefficient way, now, is it? ;]

I’m currently waiting for that very same fresh install to finish up. I’ll edit and add more when I’ve more thoroughly put the OS through its courses. Provided that the OS can stand up on its own, I may be using OS X on my desktop for a web development environment - because Coda is just too damn nice.

UPDATE: Things are pretty nice right now. Just about everything works, except for a couple of problems.

(I’m going to hunt around for some more information, but if someone possibly reading knows a solution about this, I’d be pretty grateful for any info.)

1) My CD-ROM isn’t detected.

Apparently, the system can’t see my old ATA DVD burner. It’s a Lite-On, and I’m looking at figuring out the model tonight or tomorrow. It could also be a motherboard/chipset problem. I’m also going to try and discern my motherboard model and try a couple of alternate kexts, too (if I can find them). From what I know right now (thank ioreg for the info):

(This may or may not be the motherboard info - however, I’m guessing it is, as I tracked down a few forum posts that involved linux that the model apparently listed in this info from ioreg is the same thing as my Biostar TF7050-M2.)

o N68PA-M2T  <class IOPlatformExpertDevice, registered, matched, active, bu$

| {

|   “IOBusyInterest” = “IOCommand is not serializable”

|   “IOInterruptControllers” = (“io-apic-0”)

|   “IOPlatformSerialNumber” = “Unknow”

|   “clock-frequency” = <0008af2f>

|   “version” = <”5.0”>

|   “product-name” = <”N68PA-M2T”>

|   “serial-number” = <6e6f7700000000000000000000556e6b6e6f7700000000000000$

|   “IOInterruptSpecifiers” = (<0900000005000000>)

|   “model” = <”N68PA-M2T”>

|   “manufacturer” = <”BIOSTAR Group”>

|   “IOPlatformArgs” = <00f0ba000090730048d0ba0000000000>

|   “name” = <”/”>

|   “compatible” = <”N68PA-M2T”>

| }

2) My sound doesn’t work.

From what I can discern, my onboard audio on my TF7050-M2 (which has a nVidia chipset - I presume it works with my model, considering I’m using the onboard USB and network interfaces with no problem.) is using some form of either Realtek or Conexant audio. I’ve tried installing AC97 kexts to no avail, and I also can’t seem to find the Azalia audio kext. Also, inconveniently, I apparently cannot download from the InsanelyMac forums, even when I’m logged in. So, when I come across something that could potentially be my solution, I end up with nothing anyway. Also, for some bonus info: the sound is apparently detected by the system, according to good ol’ ioreg. It’s reading as an Azalia-compatible device, apparently? (Remember, I’m new to the OSx86 thing):

From ioreg:

+-o AZAD@7  <class IOPCIDevice, registered, matched, active, busy 0, $

| |   |   {

| |   |     “IOPCIResourced” = Yes

| |   |     “IOInterruptControllers” = (“io-apic-0”,”IOPCIMessagedInterrupt$

| |   |     “IOName” = “pci10de,55c”

| |   |     “subsystem-id” = <0c820000>

| |   |     “IODeviceMemory” = (({“address”=18446744073676128256,”length”=1$

| |   |     “class-code” = <00030400>

| |   |     “IOPowerManagement” = {“CurrentPowerState”=2}

| |   |     “revision-id” = <a1000000>

| |   |     “IOInterruptSpecifiers” = (<1700000007000000>,<0f00000000000100$

| |   |     “assigned-addresses” = <1038008200000000000002fe000000000040000$

| |   |     “built-in” = <00>

| |   |     “acpi-device” = “IOACPIPlatformDevice is not serializable”

| |   |     “device-id” = <5c050000>

| |   |     “vendor-id” = <de100000>

| |   |     “acpi-path” = “IOACPIPlane:/_SB/PCI0@0/AZAD@70000”

| |   |     “subsystem-vendor-id” = <65150000>

| |   |     “name” = “pci10de,55c”

| |   |     “reg” = <003800000000000000000000000000000000000010380002000000$

| |   |     “compatible” = <”pci1565,820c”,”pci10de,55c”,”pciclass,040300”>

| |   |   }

Now, the confusion comes in because I’m wondering if this is my onboard TF7050-M2 audio, or my PCI Turtle Beach Riviera. I can’t seem to find two sound card related entries in ioreg after poring through it all. I’m wondering if my onboard isn’t being detected, or vice versa. I know my PCI is working, as both my video card and PCI FireWire 400 card are detected and working.

If anyone knows anyway to fix all this up, please let me know? Leave a comment, or contact me.
I’ll post more info on my current OSx86 setup sometime soon.

Final Edit: Well, as of this point, with what I’ll be using my desktop for, I’ve decided I’m going to skip on OSx86 for now. Maybe down the road, when hardware support is possibly better, I’ll get into using it. However, OSx86 is a good learning experience to fiddle around with, for those of you who are into that kind of thing (as I am). If you have the spare time and the hardware to do it on, I’d recommend toying around with OSx86. I would have loved to use it as the primary OS on my desktop, but at this point, it looks like I’ll be setting it up with my original plan of dual-booting Windows 7 and Ubuntu 9.10 - Windows 7 for average day-to-day stuff, gaming, and video streaming work; and Ubuntu for my programming and testing shenanigans.

However, if anyone does know the answers to questions I asked earlier in this article relating to my hardware, please do let me know. I can always manage the spare 15 - 20GB to throw OSx86 on.