Key Our Cars

Just wanted to pass along some information I gleaned while trying to build a hackintosh with a Dell C521 with an NVidia card.  It took a long time and a lot of rebuilds to get a fully functional device and most of it was trial and error so I thought I’d share.

I ended up trying EVERY distro of 0sx86 out there before I found the right combination of things to get a 10.5.8 working edition.

To sum up – I started with iDeneb 10.5.5 as the base.  This was the ONLY build higher then 10.4 that would even install.  All the rest of them give me the gd “Still waiting for root device” error that’s so prevelent.  I tried using external DVD, external HD, etc. to get around this error but to no avail. The Dell BIOS prevents me from changing the drive compatibility settings and the hardware doesn’t have an IDE connector which prevented me from trying those options.

So I installed with 10.5.5 using the following patches – AMD Fix,  9.0.2 Speedstep, AppleAzalia sound, the ATA Test (the one that’s labled use this if your SATA drive doesn’t work), the AppleBMC440 network driver.  This gives me a working 10.5.5 system.

Next up was trying to get a 10.5.7 or 10.5.8 system.  This failed miserably with every distro, iDeneb, Kalyway, XxX, iATKOS, 10.5.6, 10.5.7, 10.5.8 they all failed to even start the install because of the Still waiting for root device.

So tried to upgrade in place.  Again, failure.

Finally I did manage to get it working and this is how -

Get a 10.5.5 install working (as described above).

Start osx86tools and backup the extensions, don’t close it!

Run the iDeneb 10.5.8 combo update.  don’t restart!

Restore the extensions you just updated.

Now restart.

This worked for me, fully working video, lan, DVD, sound.

I installed the iPhone SDK without any problem and was able to make a quick app and run it in the iphone emulator.

It restarts and shutsdown without hanging as well.

It won’t though recognize USB memory sticks without a reboot.  Not a huge deal for me so I’m not going to bother with it right now.

The only thing I haven’t as of yet gotten working at all is a Zyxel G-202 usb wireless that I have laying around.  But this is a problematical for everyone from what I hear.