Nekochan Net

I'm in the midst of installing Leopard 10.5.1 (a legit copy at that) on an AMD-based Dell (yes, a Sempron-based PC and not a mac)
and while the patches (allow the OS as well as the installer to not only work on a PC but on a PC with an AMD processor) are allowing the installer to boot up, I'm having troubles doing the install.
When I come to the screen that says "specify an install location" I get an empty window and I am assuming that this is because the only drive in the system (an 80GB SATA drive) is not properly formatted and partitioned so I try and erase the disc but for the last half hour it has been stuck on "creating Partition map" with the HDD activity light constantly lit.
Has it hung or is it normal for the disk utility to take forever to erase a hard drive? I have never worked with Leopard before so I'm totally lost.
Also, just so you know I'm doing this on that Dell Dimension C521 I found in the trash a few months ago as I find it useless under Ubuntu and not worth my time to run XP or Vista.

EDIT: The operation timed out.
Okay, I'm stuck now as I can't go any further unless I have a good disk and I know that drive works as before this it was running something else.

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<-------- A very happy forum member.

OT: Why was the C521 useless under Ubuntu? Which version?

The latest version (8.something). I couldn't get the graphics to work with a resolution in excess of 800X600)

EDIT: Also, can we try and not get ourselves derailed?

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<-------- A very happy forum member.

That's ubuntu. I have a monitor thats a dell 19" trinitron (p991) and it only will do anything other than 800x600 if you turn the monitor off when x is starting. I have another that is a dell 17" trinitron (idk what the model # is, could look if needed) and ubuntu thinks that running it at 1600x1200 is a good idea (so each character is a millimeter high)

Tried different drivers, different video cards, different systems, etc. It's just ubuntu doesn't like those monitors.

gentoo has no problem with those monitors, btw.

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"InfiniteReality Graphics - Power Through Complexity"

Unless you're choosing one of the "secure" erase options, this is normally a very quick process. Assuming that the internal cables are good quality, I'd be wondering if there isn't something on the motherboard or the ATA subsystem that isn't supported by Leopard.

If you have a spare external USB or Firewire drive, I'd try installing on that. If successful, you might be able to clone the external drive over to the internal one. (Either SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner will do the trick. The latter has a tutorial on its website that details the command line backup procedure that it automates.)

Hmm, well the board is covered in Nvidia chipsets if that is any help.
I got an idea. I'll go see if the partition Manager in Ubuntu can create HFS (or is it HFS+?) partitions.
If I can premake the partitions I should be okay as the installer is at least detecting the controller and the drive.

EDIT: Even better, I have a G5 in the shop that is having its PSU recapped. I'll just finish repairing the PSU and then put it back together with the drive from the Dell inside the mac.
Then I'll use my Leopard cd to boot to the installer, repartition the drive appropriately (one partition type works on PowerPC macs, another works on Intel macs) and then pop the drive back in the dell and see what happens.

EDIT: That worked.
I am now continuing with the install. If everything works out, I should be in the green.

EDIT: It hung again. >_>
After selecting a disk it verifies the disc and then starts calculating the approximate time it will take to do the install.
Then it does nothing.

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<-------- A very happy forum member.

You'll probably want to visit http://www.insanelymac.com/ - AMD is far and away the least ideal platform to frame a Hackintosh on. It's not something I'd even bother with, personally - you're just asking for problems.

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Twitter: @neko_no_ko
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Check the Zephyroth distro for OSX86 on AMD.

However, honestly... if you have a machine that is not Vista or Linux-worthy, OSX will be orders of magnitude harder to get going in said machine.

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That was what prompted my first comment to pentium. I was surprised to hear that he found Ubuntu to be useless on a C521, since it flies on my similar E521. If he had a speed issue under Ubuntu on the C521, then I would have suggested that he had faulty hardware or a major misconfiguration somewhere. A C521 should be able to run Ubuntu well, and, given enough RAM, it should be passable for Vista Basic with entry level Aero features enabled (though XP would be a better fit). Since it seems to be video resolution failure, I'll go with generic Linux video configuration flakiness and the usual "make sure that the BIOS and all subsystem firmware is up to date, yadda yadda."

Actually, I'll still offer the BIOS update advice - it's been revved several times since the C521 came out, and several of the updates have been pretty significant.

There is a sticker that says it is Vista and XP compatible but I don't have a copy of Vista and I'm saving my last XP install for something else.


Well I assume that with a little tweaking Ubuntu would of run fine but I already have another linux box I work on and this thing only uses low profile cards so all the cards in my current box would be useless.
It be better if I just used this system to try and load something else on it.


Hmmm, I'll have to look into this. Maybe it will work after a bios update.

EDIT: Well the only bios update listed only fixes USB compatibility and sadly, it also requires you to be running windows in order to do the flash (no floppy-based flashing? D: ).

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<-------- A very happy forum member.

Well that made my life easier.
The installer is done and the system restarts however I can't go further due to a problem.
Because Leopard was designed for a mac, Your average pc BIOS will not have the slightest idea on how to boot Leopard from the hard drive.
Does this sound like a job for something like Grub? I can mess around with the HFS+ partition as well as 100 some odd megs of FAT partition space that is also on the drive using a ubuntu Live cd and since the installer and the partitioner work fine now, It also would not be a bother if I had to go repartition the drive and try again.

EDIT: it works better when you actually add the loader into the Master Boot Record. >_>
Okay, I'll try again.

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<-------- A very happy forum member.

It's no good.
While I can get the installer to work flawlessly, actually booting Leopard from the hard drive is driving me crazy.
Either it does not, it does start but requires a little kickstart with the dvd in the drive or starts, loads a little and then I get in a nasty cycle where I am being told to restart the computer to continue, only to restart and get the same message over and over again.

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<-------- A very happy forum member.

Why not skip Leopard and just try the Darwin layer?

That is uncharted ground for me.
I'll keep playing with this for the rest of the day.

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<-------- A very happy forum member.

As Neko suggested, InsanelyMac would be a much better place to look for help on this.

Failing that, I'm assuming you actually have the bootloader installed at this point (it's usually a script on the install DVD). Boot with "-s -v" flags to see if you can force it into single-user, and the "-v" will, of course, give you verbose output so you can maybe see where it's dying. I seem to recall having problems with OSX86 on an Inspiron 520, and I gave up on it with AMD processors (this was 10.5.0, though, so I imagine things are better), but I believe it was related to the SATA controller and AHCI.

It's also entirely possible that whichever DVD you grabbed doesn't have the kexts for nForce chipsets (or they weren't picked during the "Customize Install" phase).