Robot.Floss

In my Prescott v Northwood run down of OSx86, I tried almost every distribution except for iAtkos. At the suggestion of a reader, I obtained a copy, and viola – the installer and the OS worked. Of course, Murphy’s law dictates that of course iAtkos would work, because it was the only flavor I didn’t try an installing. However, I’m a bit disappointed in the outcome. Whereas I managed to get Kalyway to recognize all of the hardware with perfection, iAtkos looked at the same hardware and turned in to a snob.

iAtkos didn’t recognize the on-board sound, the built in LAN, the WiFi card, or my graphics card. It did recognize that my machine has USB ports, but that didn’t begin to make amends in our relationship. The WiFi and graphics card epic failures resulted because iAtkos made an executive decision and decided that the machine didn’t have any PCI slots. Needless to say, I didn’t have time to fight a bitter battle with iAtkos before I headed to SF, and I had to leave the lovely but crippled OS-X installation, in my home state until a later date.

Though I’m pleased that iAtkos worked (to a degree), it left much to be desired. On the other hand, each distribution can’t please all of the computers all of the time.

Popularity: 5% [?]

Background Story:
In preparation for my move to San Francisco, I’ve had to start selling some of my excess computers, because I can’t justify bringing 9 desktop PCs to a city where a studio apartment will be between 400 and 500 square feet. Since I have four GX-270s, I sold the 2.8ghz GX-270 that I had been using to run OS-X. I took out the OS-X harddrive, installed Windows XP Pro (a legal copy – the new owner has his own legal license key for the OS), and sold the machine. Why? Because I figured that I could put the OS-X harddrive in one of my other GX-270s without any problems.

Being a computer tech, I should have known to test my theory first. After completing the sale, I returned home, put the OS-X harddrive in my 3.0ghx GX-270 and viola! It failed to boot. By failed to boot, I mean it resets the machine. So, I ventured over to a friends house (he has a 2.8ghz GX-270 and a 3.0ghz GX-270) to test OS-X. The 2.8ghz machine ran OS-X fine, but the 3.0ghz machine failed.

Experiment:
In an attempt to discover why the GX-270s with 2.8ghz Prescott chips have no problem with OS-X, and why the GX-270s with 3.0ghz Northwood chips won’t boot OS-X (from either a harddrive with OS-X already installed or from any of the available installers) I performed the following test:

Prescott 2.8ghz machines use the Dell Computer Corp 0Y1057 motherboard.
Northwood 3.0ghz machines use the Dell Computer Corp 0DG284 motherboard.

If you’d like to compare specific information between the processors you can check out the side-by-side Northwood v Prescott screenshots.

Machine #1 – Prescott – 2.8ghz
Step 1.) Booted the machine with its normal XP harddrive. Viola. No problems.
Step 2.) Swapped the harddrive with the OS-X harddrive. Machine booted without problems.
Step 3.) Tested the Kalyway 10.5.1 and 10.5.2 install DVDs. Machine had no problems with either.

Machine #2 – Northwood – 3.0ghz
Step 1.) Booted the machine with its normal XP harddrive. Viola. No problems.
Step 2.) Swapped the harddrive with the OS-X harddrive. Machine failed to boot.
Step 3.) Test the Kalyway 10.5.1 and 10.5.2 install DVDs as well as the Leo4All, Leo4Allv2, and Jas. All DVDs and the harddrive failed to boot the installation or OS. By fail, I mean the Darwin Bootloader comes up, but when the installer is launched the following text appears on the screen followed by an immediate reset of the machine:

“Using SMBIOS table found at 0×0 (hex value here)
Using ACPI RSDP revision 0 found
Starting Darwin/x86″

I believe my experiments this weekend show, that though both motherboards use the same chipset and southbridge…

The 0Y1057 (Dell’s motherboards for the Prescott) have the following LPCIO: “SMSC EMC2700P”
The 0DG284 (Dell’s motherboards for the Northwood) have the following LPCIO: “”

In the end there are two differences:

The LPCIOs are different.
The Prescott chips support MMX, SSE, SSE2, and SSE3.
The Northwood chips support MMX, SSE, SSE2, but not SSE3.

However, I’ve found instance on the forums of people with OS-X running fine on either chip. The Prescott supports MMX, SSE, SSE2, and SSE3, whereas the Northwood supports MMX, SSE, SSE2, and NOT SSE3. In theory this should not make a difference because the OSx86 projects should work on any chip that supports SSE2 or SSE3 (both do not have to be supported). That leaves the culprit to the LPCIOs.

Bottom line:
GX-270s with Northwood chips and the 0DG284 motherboard cannot run OS-X. This is after overall testing on two Prescott machines and five Northwood machines.

To make sure this is the actual case, I’ve ordered a Prescott chip (which should arrive in the next few days) to test in the 0DG284 motherboard. I’ll post the results once the new chip arrives.

Popularity: 22% [?]

Since setting up OS-X on my PC, I’ve had little interest in using XP. And the binary fate that controls the digital universe decided to reinforce my OS-X use by smiting the power supply of my XP machine. I love OS-X, and as I get more comfortable with each aspect of the operating system, I’ve kept track of the things I like and dislike.

Dislike:

• The behavior of the Home and End keys is terrible on Macs if you’re used to Windows. In general though, I feel that the Home and End keys must take the user to the end of the current line. Command + Home/End should take a user to the top of bottom of a document. Even Linux follows this pattern.
• There is no real maximize button in OS-X. Yes, there is a green button that makes the window bigger, but programs never are truly maximized. There needs to be a nice blue button to the right of the green button that forces a program to use every last pixel of available screen real estate. There are times a user doesn’t want to see anything else.
• Application windows can only be resized from the bottom right hand corner. On more than one occasion I’ve used programs that had a height the went well beyond the bounds of the screen. Thankfully, Spaces allows you to effortlessly move application windows from any point to correct this, but it isn’t an intended behavior.
• When a file is selected, pressing the Enter button allows one to rename the file. This should open or launch the file. Poor behavior choice for the Enter key.
• Menu bars are supposed to be easy to access, but for some ill reason Apple has chosen to make the user press Ctrl + F2. They’ve made an affair of one button, in to an affair of two buttons, and there is no reasonable explanation.
• For keyboard shortcuts, the position of the Command button is better than Window’s use of the Control button. But it means when switching between the two operating systems, I’m constantly hitting the short cuts for the the other OS. There needs to be a key emulation option that switches this behavior.

Love:

• I’ve never had a problem with the Windows Taskbar (not counting Vista), but something about the OS-X dock makes me blissful. It is simple and well designed without being over the top.
• The ability to lock system settings. This is great, because if you’re logged in it means another person can’t edit your system preferences without knowing your password. No longer is your system subject to the whims and plots of co-workers, roommates, or housemates.
• The built in GUI utilities, such as ping, trace route, and disk utilities, make life much easier for tech support. Password recovery from the CD is great. And the disk utility is top notch – allowing you to image, partition, and even securely erase hard drives.
• The ability to boot from the CD, or the network, or a target drive, or a thousand other potential options is great. If there is a combination of hardware you want to boot from, OS-X supports it.
• The theme is well thought out. Microsoft had the correct idea with Vista, but then went too far. Vista is the Circus de Soleil, while Leopard is a gorgeous Monet.
• Spaces are great. Extra desktop space is great, and the fact that transitions between the spaces are seamless adds to the experience. Also, adding extra desktops has never been so easy. Click the add row or add column button, and viola.
• Dashboard’s beauty is that you never have to look at it you chose so, unlike Vista which forces everything to be in sight. While you’re waiting for the long installation to complete or process to finish compiling, you can spent your time watching Panda Cam, exploring Wikipedia, playing poker, and getting weather updates.
• Bringing a Windows machine in and out of sleep takes as long as shutting the system down and booting it up. But Apple has made sleep such an effortless action, that sleep is an option that is viable. I find it fun.
• Built in Spellcheck. Enough said.
• Installing programs is rarely more complicated than dragging and dropping an icon. And the process is much more uniform than the thousands of countless installers of Windows programs. A standard look, feel, and behavior for normal OS tasks is a must have.

Other Things:

• The way the mouse moves. At first I disliked the way the mouse moved. Now I love it, because it borders on giving the feeling of tactile feedback.
• The Mighty Mouse, though pretty, is a horrendous little mouse. The trackball is two small, and often staff I encounter who have a MM are unaware that it has both a left and a right click, due to the complete lack of visual clarification.
• Also, the Mighty Mouse is based on more of a lever than button design. Since the top edge of the mouse is curved, any excess cord that brushes the mouse will block clicking action.

Popularity: 4% [?]

In the previous tech review, I’d attempted to upgrade my Hackintosh from 10.5.1 to 10.5.2 using instructions from the InsanelyMac forum. I knew the instructions most likely would not work, but you never learn if you don’t experiment. After the failed 10.5.2 update, I reinstalled my 10.5.1 setup and got everything situated once again.

Before I attempted a second upgrade, which used a modified version of the 10.5.2 installer called kalywayUpdCombo10.5.2.pkg, I threw a second harddrive in to the machine. One of the most beautiful aspects of OS-X is how well the system utilities are designed. If you boot from the installation CD, you can use the Disk Utility to make a backup image of a harddrive. So, I backed up my new installation, and proceeded with these instructions, which worked perfectly.

The only thing the instructions don’t mention is that the kalyway_10.5.2_kernels.mpkg.zip file you’ll search for is only a few megabytes in size. It is roughly 6 megabytes. At first I was suspicious that the torrent was valid because of the small file size.

According to the instructions, when you make the final reboot of your system, the screen will boot up to the Apple logo and then appear blank for several minutes. For some users this down time has been a few seconds to a few minutes. The GX270 took about 30 seconds, if even that. But it was still a nerve racking 30 seconds.

Once I finished the update I even applied the graphics update without any problems and then I imaged the installation to the backup harddrive.

Popularity: 6% [?]

I attempted the 10.5.2 update using a guide I found on the InsanelyMac forums. The update broke the installation, and nothing seemed to bring the installation back from the dead (including single user mode/etc). While reinstalling OS-X on Sunday I discovered a bug in the installer. If you leave the installer running eventually the computer will kick in to a power save mode, which will crash the installer. The simple solution is to move the mouse around every few minutes.

I’ve downloaded the Kalyway 10.5.2 ComboUpdate and will attempt it later this week. In the mean time I’ve slapped a second hard drive in my hackintosh and made an image of my installation. This will save on re-installation time, which I think will occur fairly often as I start to play more aggressively with the OS.

On a side note, one of the things I love about Mac’s is how they are designed for sleep. On a windows machine putting a machine in to sleep and waking it up takes about as long as just powering the machine on and off. But sleep on a Mac is almost instant, and I’ve found it takes care of some of my KVM woes (such as if I lose the mouse for some reason).

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Ever since Jeff found out I installed OS-X 10.5.1 on an extra PC I have, he’s been patiently waiting for me to post a RobotFloss update. So, without further adieu, here I’m granting him his wish.

Kalyway:
Ever since Apple switched to Intel chips, gaggles of geeks have been working to bring OS-X to PCs. In the past few months a lot of progress has been made. No longer do you need to sacrifice a virgin to the Binary god of Goats.ce or offer yourself to the will of Steve Jobs. Now you only have to download the wonderful Kalyway boot DVD, which a person can easily find on bittorrent.

Preparation X:
Before I proceeded with the installation, I headed over to the OSx86 Project and made sure all of the hardware in my Hackintosh would be compatible. Originally, I had intended to use an old GeForce 3 (AGP) as the graphics card, but for some reason OS-X hates that card. I actually tried to launch the Kalyway installer with the GeForce 3 in the machine, but the installer quickly died. So, here are the specs of my Hackintosh, affectionately named U91, because I like submarines:

• Dell GX270 (with new motherboard)
• 2.8GHZ Intel Pentium Processor
• 2GB of Ram
• Buffalo wireless card (Atheros based, I believe)
• CD/DVD
• Gigabyte 128MB AGPx8 GeForce 5200 (with VGA, DVI, and TV-out)

Installation:
The Kalyway boot DVD is a modified version of the OS-X boot cd with a customized installer. It lets you select the vanilla drivers you’ll need to install in order to get OS-X running smoothly on your PC. The installation doesn’t work perfectly on all machines. For some machines, you still need to edit BIOS settings or possibly tweak a few files after installation to get everything running perfectly.

To keep thing simple, I decided to not create a dual booting machine. Later I’ll do an OS-X/Ubuntu/XP installation, but since I have a heap of extra computers there is no need for me to do that. All in all the installation has 3 major steps:

1. Format the hard drive.
2. Select the appropriate custom drivers.
3. Let the OS install.

I made a nice slide show of the process with detailed notes.

I couldn’t have asked for a smoother installation. OS-X made out to be best friends with the computer’s integrated sound card, integrated ethernet, Buffalo wireless card (PCI), and all the USB ports. The only issue I experienced, was that OS-X didn’t like the GeForce 5200 graphics card and decided to limit screen resolution to a nasty 1024×768.

I resolved the graphics issue with a great program called NVinject, which enables support for almost any NVidia graphics cards available on the market. I’d wager that odds are you’re going to need NVinject, especially if you want dual display support and such to work.

Two graphics issues still remain on my Hackintosh. First, at 1440×900 the edges of programs, dialog boxes, and scroll bars suffer from what looks like the bad static on an old VCR. There are little vibrating waves and flickering dots. Second, is that on various resolutions there are ghosted images of the cursor or any open window that results in several “shadows” coming from the right hand side of the object. None of the display settings seem to correct these problems.

Earlier this week the 10.5.2 update for Leopard came out. I’ve not yet attempted to apply the update though, but it can be done successfully. However, it can also break your installation. So, until I feel like I have an abundance of time to use on a possible reinstallation or a great tutorial comes out, I’ll be putting the update off for a week or two.

Next weekend’s post will be about the things I like and dislike about OS-X, and what in the world a person should do once they have installed OS-X. Oh, and I’ve also posted a few screen shots of my desktop and such.

Popularity: 8% [?]