Hackintosh 10.5.5 Retail Rig - Starting at $305

[SpandexAssasin]

While we are on this topic, has anyone been able to match up their Hackintosh resolution with that of their HDTV. I can get it oh so close, but the sides are always cut off just enough to hide the menu bar at the top.

I did but I used SwitchResX to set my hack to the native resolution of my Plasma.

 

[DougoMan]

I did but I used SwitchResX to set my hack to the native resolution of my Plasma.

Thanks I'll give that a try.


In the mean time my Hack is once again incapable of going to sleep. I had a short in a USB drive which made its way down the USB cable and shorted out all my USB ports. And I think this may have affected the sleep function somehow. Man this sucks! Why is sleep so damn finicky?!

 

[volcs0]

I'm wondering if there is something wrong with my setup.
UD3P + Q6600 + 9800GTX, 10.6.1

I just got a HD video camera, and when I play the 1080i MP4 clips, Quicktime and VLC both stutter and can't handle the video. When I downsample it to 720p, they play fine. It doesn't seem to matter which hard drive I use - it still stutters.

Shouldn't this rig be able to play these clips easily?

My video card shows up in the profiler correctly. How else can I evaluate this?

 

[Kaido]

I'm wondering if there is something wrong with my setup.
UD3P + Q6600 + 9800GTX, 10.6.1

I just got a HD video camera, and when I play the 1080i MP4 clips, Quicktime and VLC both stutter and can't handle the video. When I downsample it to 720p, they play fine. It doesn't seem to matter which hard drive I use - it still stutters.

Shouldn't this rig be able to play these clips easily?

My video card shows up in the profiler correctly. How else can I evaluate this?

How much RAM do you have?

I have basically the same machine, albeit with an 8800GTX, and my 1080p (and higher) material play back fine. Perhaps a Snow bug? Try out your MP4 in Plex btw. Also do you have Perian installed?

 

[volcs0]

How much RAM do you have?

I have basically the same machine, albeit with an 8800GTX, and my 1080p (and higher) material play back fine. Perhaps a Snow bug? Try out your MP4 in Plex btw. Also do you have Perian installed?

I have 12gb RAM.

Plex actually works OK.

I will make sure I have latest Perian.

But I would expect VLC to work, no?

And when I import into Final Cut Express, they are choppy as well. Of course, they play in iMovie, but I'm pretty sure iMovie downsamples during the import process.

 

[Kaido]

I have 12gb RAM.

Plex actually works OK.

I will make sure I have latest Perian.

But I would expect VLC to work, no?

And when I import into Final Cut Express, they are choppy as well. Of course, they play in iMovie, but I'm pretty sure iMovie downsamples during the import process.

Yeah that's pretty odd. What kind of hard drive do you have?

 

[leglez]

Any good guides on making or modifying a DSDT? I am trying to use stellas app and follow lifehacker, but I have an ATI card instead of nvidia and it won't boot because of the DSDT I am guessing.

 

[Kaido]

Any good guides on making or modifying a DSDT? I am trying to use stellas app and follow lifehacker, but I have an ATI card instead of nvidia and it won't boot because of the DSDT I am guessing.

There's some overview stuff here:

http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=177497

You have to do a fair amount of research & testing to get things working with DSDT. But it's so much nicer & cleaner to do than what we used to do!

 

[Sophie424]

I'm interested in building a netbook/hack with an 11.5+ screen. Anyone have any first-hand experience, or any pointers to where to start looking, it would be much appreciated. Just thought I'd ask here since Kaido made my first hackintosh possible.

Thanks!

 

[mosslack]

I'm interested in building a netbook/hack with an 11.5+ screen. Anyone have any first-hand experience, or any pointers to where to start looking, it would be much appreciated. Just thought I'd ask here since Kaido made my first hackintosh possible.

Thanks!

The HP Mini 311 is working pretty good for me at the moment, there are 2 threads to check out, one being the project thread where all of the development stuff is being worked on and the other is a level 1 support thread. Check them both out and see what you think.

Project: http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=195381

Support: http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=195374

 

[Kaido]

I'm interested in building a netbook/hack with an 11.5+ screen. Anyone have any first-hand experience, or any pointers to where to start looking, it would be much appreciated. Just thought I'd ask here since Kaido made my first hackintosh possible.

Thanks!

The iiView A2 looks pretty good:

http://www.a2netbook.com/index.php

Netbooks are a tad too small for me tho :biggrin:

 

[volcs0]

Yeah that's pretty odd. What kind of hard drive do you have?

Samsung Spinpoint F1.

Is it possible that my gfx card has the wrong drivers (or sub-optimal) installed? Or would that result in much bigger problems?

 

[Kaido]

Samsung Spinpoint F1.

Is it possible that my gfx card has the wrong drivers (or sub-optimal) installed? Or would that result in much bigger problems?

It could possibly be that you have Snow installed. Can you try installing Leopard on a partition? That's a very odd problem. Your system is pretty much exactly what I have, which handles all kinds of HD fabulously.

 

[volcs0]

It could possibly be that you have Snow installed. Can you try installing Leopard on a partition? That's a very odd problem. Your system is pretty much exactly what I have, which handles all kinds of HD fabulously.

Videos played fine under 10.5.

I installed the latest Perian and removed everything else from /Library/Quicktime, but videos are still jerky under 10.6.

Any other thoughts?

This is what get-info says about the graphics card:

NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GTX DDL:

  Chipset Model:	NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GTX DDL
  Type:	GPU
  Bus:	PCIe
  PCIe Lane Width:	x16
  VRAM (Total):	512 MB
  Vendor:	NVIDIA (0x10de)
  Device ID:	0x0612
  Revision ID:	0x00a2
  ROM Revision:	3172a

 

[Kaido]

Videos played fine under 10.5.

I installed the latest Perian and removed everything else from /Library/Quicktime, but videos are still jerky under 10.6.

Any other thoughts?

This is what get-info says about the graphics card:

NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GTX DDL:

  Chipset Model:	NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GTX DDL
  Type:	GPU
  Bus:	PCIe
  PCIe Lane Width:	x16
  VRAM (Total):	512 MB
  Vendor:	NVIDIA (0x10de)
  Device ID:	0x0612
  Revision ID:	0x00a2
  ROM Revision:	3172a

Odd. So Leopard works, and Snow Leopard doesn't. I'm still on Leopard myself due to compatibility issues with Final Cut Pro plugins.

 

[volcs0]

Odd. So Leopard works, and Snow Leopard doesn't. I'm still on Leopard myself due to compatibility issues with Final Cut Pro plugins.

Well, I only noticed when I tried to play the full-HD clips from my new camera (A Sanyo XActi VPC-FH1a, BTW). Everything else plays well. But these high resolution 24 MBPs clips stutter under Snow Leopard.

Any other ideas are appreciated.

 

[tranquilweeks]

I'm still on Leopard myself due to compatibility issues with Final Cut Pro plugins.

Sorry if this is a stupid question, but is the latest version of the Leopard DS3L kit available anywhere? The LeopardSoup wiki is locked at the moment.

Or should I be waiting for the SL kit after Thanksgiving?

 

[Kaido]

Sorry if this is a stupid question, but is the latest version of the Leopard DS3L kit available anywhere? The LeopardSoup wiki is locked at the moment.

Or should I be waiting for the SL kit after Thanksgiving?

It'd be better to wait once things get wrapped up. DSDT is a much cleaner method for Hackintosh.

 

[Kaido]

Well, I only noticed when I tried to play the full-HD clips from my new camera (A Sanyo XActi VPC-FH1a, BTW). Everything else plays well. But these high resolution 24 MBPs clips stutter under Snow Leopard.

Any other ideas are appreciated.

Try transcoding the 1080p material into a different format, such as ProRes or something, and then play it back - LMK if it stutters.

 

[Kaido]

Consolidated my drives today. I had (3) spare 500gb 7200rpm SATA drives, so I decided to RAID them up for a nice, fast Video Capture & Storage drive. Results are pretty good:

http://img69.imageshack.us/img69/222/picture7r.png

1.5TB (1.36TB formatted), 226 MB/s Read & 178 MB/s Write, using OS X's Software RAID 0 (Striped) and my UD3P's onboard SATA ports. If you bought the drives new, that'd only be about $180 @ $60 a pop - pretty good for 1.36TB @ 226 MB/s, especially compared to an SSD! The SSD I was originally looking at was $355, the 120gb OCZ Vertex, but it shot up to $500. For that price, I could build TWO sets of these, or a giant 3TB array at probably over 300 MB/s, and still have enough spare $$$ to buy an extra 500gb drive lol.

It's not the safest setup - I could lose all my data if any single drive failed - but I have a backup system in place so I'm not worried about it. I'd rather have speed + hourly & nightly backup at the moment. And keep in mind these are old drives, probably about 80 MB/s each. My $79 Samsung F1 1TB hits about 110 MB/s on average, so an array of those would probably bring in even more speed.

I think ideally, I'd like a nice fast boot drive (like a 120gb SSD), then two arrays of 1TB drives (3TB + 3TB in RAID 0) so that I could do my two video drives again - one for capture, one for editing, and then back to the first one for encoded output. Then have the DVD drive on the 8th SATA port internally. At $79 a drive, that'd only be $560 for seven 1TB drives and LOTS of speed & capacity. Mmm, to be rich.

 

[tranquilweeks]

It'd be better to wait once things get wrapped up. DSDT is a much cleaner method for Hackintosh.

Thanks! Can't wait to see the next release.

 

[Sophie424]

The HP Mini 311 is working pretty good for me at the moment, there are 2 threads to check out, one being the project thread where all of the development stuff is being worked on and the other is a level 1 support thread. Check them both out and see what you think.

Project: http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=195381

Support: http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=195374

Thanks, Mosslack (and Kaido). I think I will give this a go.

One question -- the procedure seems to be (1) a boot-CD to get started, (2) swap out for 10.6 DVD to install SL, (3) boot-CD again, and continue boot off new SL HD (4) copy drivers etc. & install Chameleon onto HD. Do you think (1) and (2) can be done with the boot-CD and SL burned onto (large enough) USB sticks?

(I did ask there ... did not get a reply)
Thanks.

 

[mosslack]

Thanks, Mosslack (and Kaido). I think I will give this a go.

One question -- the procedure seems to be (1) a boot-CD to get started, (2) swap out for 10.6 DVD to install SL, (3) boot-CD again, and continue boot off new SL HD (4) copy drivers etc. & install Chameleon onto HD. Do you think (1) and (2) can be done with the boot-CD and SL burned onto (large enough) USB sticks?

(I did ask there ... did not get a reply)
Thanks.

Depends on where you ask, if on the project thread, those guys are trying to get things worked out and don't respond to support questions. If it was on the support thread then you may eventually get an answer.

I personally didn't like the EFI partition install method and just used /extra off root for my extension folder, etc. I used the NetbookBootMaker USB flash drive to install SL and then downloaded an install kit of kext from a guy named MowgliBook. He had a link to them but if you can't find it I will try for you. Let me know.

Mine has video, sound and wifi working, but not sure about sleep. I never use it. They are working to move as much as possible to the DSDT and have made great strides, but the people on the project thread use the EFI partition install method and until they come up with a better solution for that I will stick with what I've got. HTH

Edit: I believe they have an installer now, but I'm not sure it is on the CD. I think it is still separate. Check the first page of the project thread for more info on that.

Link to files: http://www.mediafire.com/MowgliBook

Download the HP/Compaq Mini 311 files.

 

[volcs0]

Anyone see this?

Zotac IONITX-A-U Atom N330 Dual Core 90-Watt PSU WiFi ITX Intel Motherboard
$116 at Amazon, free shipping

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B002BA5IHC

That would make a nice hack, I think.

 

[Ka0t1x]

I was looking at those a while back and because of something not being supported I abandoned the idea... However it looks as though someone installed SL on it based on the OSx86 Wiki (no link to guide though), if that's even a viable source.