Click here to manage subscription
Snow Leopard 10.6.4 update just came out for some security reasons and the Tonymac86 already has a guide to install retail Snow Leopard 10.6.3 including upgrade. So I tried it and it worked well with our MSI X58 Platinum i7 920 + EVGA 8400GS. This is the procedure following the guide on that website. Things that are needed to install. This is the easiest way without downloading any distro or borrow a working mac computer... existing system + $29 SL10.6.3 + $30.00 8400 GS graphic card that supports all QE_CI_CL, full functional fast system with updated OS.
1. Snow Leopard retail $29 10.6.3 disk.
2. iBoot_support.iso cd from Tonymac86 website (download and burn to a cd, I use Imgburn).
3. Evga GeForce 8400 GS or Zotac 8400 GS 512Mb PCIe x16.
4. 1 Hard drive for this Snow Leopard OS.
5. Downloaded 10.6.4 update combo from Apple (above link).
6. USB mouse (needed) and key board (extra) if you have PS2 mouse and keyboard already in case the kexts are not loaded correctly.
Boot from the iBoot_supported cd, hit F11 to select the first boot device or select from the bios.
After loading the iBoot_supported cd, when the iBoot screen shows up, eject the cd and place the...
Read More »
Category: OSX86 | Posted by: ltooz | Add comment | Viewed: 472 times |
So, when we want to dual boot windows & mac OS x, the way I preferred to do it is to load windows first, use windows partition to create 2 partitions, a bigger partition is for windows NTFS and only 100-200GB for Mac OSX because Mac OS can transfer files from/to NTFS and not the other way around. If 1TB hard drive, I would use 800GB for windows & 200GB for MacOSx.
After windows installation is done or if we already have windows installed already, then use storage management in windows vista or 7 to shrink the disk about 200GB and make it active and even format it (ntfs or fat32 doesn't really matter). I'll post the screenshots of how to do this if I can find them.
Download EasyBCD1.7.2 to make a boot menu for this windows os first. I found it easier to fix the boot sector after the Mac OS installation. Assuming everything went fine with the MAC OS X installation, when we reboot, either the screen is black with a dos cursor or a black screen with windows warning that can't find boot records. Either way, we need the windows install disk (assuming we have an installation disk...
Read More »
Category: OSX86 | Posted by: ltooz | Add comment | Viewed: 826 times |
If the video card has QE/CI/CL turned on correctly, all these things will work.
Screenshot will take pictures and put on the Desktop, if NOT, nothing.
Screen Recording in Quicktime will work without error OSStatus -182 (in 10.6.3 only)
FrontRow will work without just a black screen.
VLC player will play movies without a black screen with audio only.
iMovie will execute without any problem.
Video with everything working on 10.6.3
Category: OSX86 | Posted by: ltooz | Add comment | Viewed: 891 times |
Finally, I can use the Snow Leopard 10.6.3 that I bought from Amazon. The only problem that I couldn't get it to work with QE/CI/CL is the graphic card. Bought a $33.00 GeForce 8400 GS and everything works perfectly on VGA but NOT on DVI using ATY_init.kext. In order to get the DVI to display we need to install a patched NVInject.kext and ATY_init.kext. The combo kexts for this video card. Later I found a cheaper card EVGA GeForce 8400 GS for $15 after rebate and works great too.
There are tons of ways to install Snow Leopard, but none of them is o
n the retail 10.6.3. The bottom line is that we need a working OS X, use that to install the vanilla kernel from the disk itself. The only thing we need is to show all hidden files and access the OSinstall.mpkg and install it from there. This original OSinstall.mpkg only installs on GUID partition which is not dual bootable. If we need to dual boot, we have to get a patched OSinstall.mpkg and OSinstall to do it. The installation is painless, no patching required since we have the DSDT.aml from the old OS X and all the kexts...
Read More »
Category: OSX86 | Posted by: ltooz | Add comment | Viewed: 934 times |
When Gateway id5822u laptop went on sale for $399, I got one for my wife to use. It has great specs for the money, the I3 & I5 are available now for about $300.00 more which I don't really need. Core 2 duo T6500 @2.1Ghz, 4Gb DDR3, 500Gb hard drive, LED screen, 15.6" wide screen, eSata, webcam, microphone, sd/mmc, multi DVD drive, HDMI output, 1366x768 resolution... Anyhow, I try to install dual boot with windows 7 & mac os x just for experimenting.
SET SATA in BIOS to AHCI, it seems to work better for dual boot using EasyBCD1.7.2
Hit F2 to get into bios to set 1st boot to CD/DVD
Partition the 500Gb to 405GB + 50Gb (11Gb was reserved for restoration from Gateway). Install Windows 7 on 405Gb partition. Set both partitions as primary and format them.
The dvd drive doesn't read dvd very well, but I got it down, it takes too long to spin and read. I had to wait until it finish spinning before I start installing the iDeneb 1.6 distro.
At the welcome screen, click utilities and select disk utilities
Erase 100gb partition to Mac OS Extended (Journaled).
Customizing the installation:
![]( "more good stuff selected=")
1. Default Chameleon 2.
2. Kernel Qoopz9.8.
3. AHCI fix + ICH fix
4....
Read More »
Category: OSX86 | Posted by: ltooz | 1 Comment | Viewed: 904 times |
So, after we installed the OS X, we need the boot flag of CPUS=1 or CPUS=2 to actually boot into the OS without Kernel Panic. We need to patch the DSDT. There are so many ways and programs that people used on the internet that work. I followed this way and it worked for me.
DSDT_Patcher1.0.1e needed.
DSDT Patcher Gui needed.
Place both of the unzipped folders on the Desktop. Follow the instructions here.
When it's done, just exit.
cd Desktop/DSDT_Patcher1.0.1e
Open DSDT_Patcher1.0.1e folder and click the DSDT_Patcher icon, a terminal will open, just follow the picture, click any key, then select 0 for Darwin and hit enter.
nano Debug/dsdt.dsl
Delete all the Alias lines
Ctrl+o to save, enter to save the file, Ctrl+x to close nano.
Run the Patcher.
./DSDT\ Patcher Debug/dsdt.dsl
Run again until the file dsdt.dsl doesn't exist anymore.
./DSDT\ Patcher /Debug/dsdt.dsl
copy dsdt.aml to /DSDT.aml, "cp dsdt.aml /DSDT.aml"
We may have to use "sudo cp dsdt.aml /DSDT.aml" and enter password if needed.
Reboot and we don't ever have to type cpus=1 any more and all the cores will be enabled.
Category: OSX86 | Posted by: ltooz | Add comment | Viewed: 858 times |
Since many of my friends who don't work for big corporations use Apple computers, I think it's time for me to try a new OS. I'm not the kind of guy just go out and buy a over priced MAC just to try it out. Yes, $29 for a retail Leopard 10.6.3 which I can't use for now since it's too new for my hackintosh (non-mac hardware running mac osx). If with the specs of my computer, Apple would charge at least $2k for it. I don't even know if they build Intel I7 yet, the last time I looked, it was still core 2 duo which I used 2 years ago. Yes, they don't need the best hardware because they have the best OS for their system. Well, now I know why macs are so expensive.
I made an experiment: Leopard OS X on my i7 and all I can say is WOW!!!
It's very fast and has very nice features even running at 32 bit.
The graphics is running at 1920x1080 on my ACER 24" LCD. The $15 airlink101 150n AWLH6070 is downloading @ 2.5Mbs which I have never seen my windows did that. All the browsers are blazing fast because...
Read More »
Category: OSX86 | Posted by: ltooz | 1 Comment | Viewed: 1061 times |
I'm doing some research to install Mac OS on PC hardware. I like to learn a new exciting operating system, this one may well be the dominating OS in the future, especially for $29 to try.
Click here for video installation
Well, I tried over the weekends and nothing worked. I have 3 PCs, 1 with Gigabyte MA690G-S2H and 1 with i7 920. I'm trying it on the netbook acer oa751h and it hangs at the install. Need to read more and do more research. It's extremely blurry on the Internet about this thing. Instead of bookmarking, I put the link that I read on here for easy access.
darwin boot loader options
solve waiting for root device
what to do when hackintosh keep rebooting after installation
How to install Kext
Have some laughs on youtube about anti-PC
Have some laughs on anti-mac
Got my Snow Leopard in 5 days from Amazon
So it wasn't 10.6-10.6.2 which they have patches to run on the internet. I had to use some other distro to install the older version and hope the new 10.6.3 patch will come soon.
We need iDeneb 1.6 & iAtkos v7 distro combined to get it working.
My MSI X58 Platinum i7 920 is not supported anywhere on the internet...
Read More »
Category: OSX86 | Posted by: ltooz | Add comment | Viewed: 1430 times |
My MSI X58 Platinum has an Esata port but I haven't had a chance to use it until I bought an external 1TB Toshiba with both esata & usb2.0 connections. Well, it took a while for me to get the esata to work with windows 7 by enable the bios. Anyhow, I was amazed how fast the Esata mode compares to USB mode. The pictures tell it all.
USB 2.0 MODE
eSATA Mode
Category: HTPC | Posted by: ltooz | Add comment | Viewed: 1399 times |
Sometimes one of our friends email address got hacked and the hacker uses the email account to spam all the contacts, ours happened to be in the list, we need to block the email, this is the way to do it in yahoo mail.
Login the yahoo mail and click the "options" on the upper right corner
Classic look
Mail plus look
Options screen for both version
Click the spam, enter the email address which we want to block and click add then "Save Changes", we will say goodbye to our friends' email address.
Cheers,
Louis
Category: SOFTWARE | Posted by: ltooz | 1 Comment | Viewed: 1721 times |
Shadowbox is a pop-up scripts that display overlay very nicely for many web applications. Since I already implement the plugin for NucleusCMS system, I created 2 html pages for shadowbox.
Shadowbox version 3.01
Shadowbox version 3.02
Cheers,
Louis
Category: SOFTWARE | Posted by: ltooz | Add comment | Viewed: 1926 times |
Everytime we re-install windows, we need to install drivers all over again, we can't find the drivers cds sometimes. It does take time to download and time consuming if we don't have high speed internet. Now windows 7 files are so big, it came in a dvd but it's only 3.4GB, we can put an extra 1 GB of additional files in one DVD for usage. The problem is that if we copy all the files to a folder and burn to a data DVD, it may not be bootable. Bootable means we can boot from the bios setting, and not setting up from a running windows operating system. There are tons of how to make bootable dvd, usb on youtube or internet, this is how we did ours by using information collected on the net.
1. Create a folder in "C" drive and copy all the windows 7 files into it. Add all additional files if you want up to 4.3GB. We add all device drivers, itunes, adobe flash, firefox... anything we need for running our computer. We create a DVD that includes our X58Platinum motherboard drivers folder.
2. We need to download oscdimg.exe to create dvd bootable iso image. Put...
Read More »
Category: SOFTWARE | Posted by: ltooz | 1 Comment | Viewed: 1742 times |
Well, it's Christmas and what would someone who loves to make videos, music wants from Santa this year?
.JPG)
Yes, the new and improved i7 860, Gigabyte P55A-UD3, Corsair 4GB 1600 dual CMX4GX3M2A1600C9, 700W OCZ, Antec 300 case, Seagate 1TB, Pioneer SATA DVD drive.
Antec 300 case: The PS is on the bottom instead of the top which makes cabling a little less organized. It's a nice and sturdy case for $49.00
The big 120mm fan in front (options) is very nicely caged.
.JPG)
.JPG)
Dual 120 mm fans top and back for maximum air flow.
.JPG)
The main parts of the system, i7 860 ($229 @ microcenter) running @ 2.8GHz compares to i7 870 @2.93GHz for $598. We will clock well over the 2.93Ghz. Why i7 860 and not i5 750? The difference between the 2 are $80.00, 4 cores with hyper threading and 4 cores with none. For advanced video encoding, 4 extra threads would be helpful. Normal video encoding like dvd, we only use 4 cores no extra threads. Since Santa was generous, we got the i7 860.
.JPG)
The main board is the most important part of the system if we want to oc the CPU. We decide to get the new version of P55 which has...
Read More »
Category: HTPC | Posted by: ltooz | Add comment | Viewed: 2388 times |
I always thought everyone who surfs internet would know about browsers, but amazingly many of the people I know, who would get the fastest computers for surfing the internet, and would stay up there for hours, months, years and still don't know what a browser is or anything but internet explorer. No wonder internet explorer is the most targeted browser by the mean and savvy hacker because many people who surf the internet only know the "e" icon and nothing else. Well, I don't know much about security on the internet, but I always tried new stuff, and this is for firefox which is the most popular BROWSER beside the almighty (nagger) "e".
I only know of 4 browsers which they're all nice, Opera actually has the most features but it doesn't support CSS3 like the primitive ie6,7,8. For viewing all the websites that contain the newest scripts and technologies, firefox, chrome or safari should be used. Firefox is the most popular browser in 2009, although majority of businesses only support ie.
Firefox
firefox & shadowbox pop-up
Chrome
Chrome & Shadowbox
Safari
safari & shadowbox
Opera
Opera & Shadowbox
All browsers installations are the same and easy, not like ie8 (asking tons of questions, tons of updates, if it's the...
Read More »
Category: SOFTWARE | Posted by: ltooz | Add comment | Viewed: 2435 times |
Believe it or not, most people feel that it's better to pay than to get something fixed for free and they don't even try the free one. We understand that MS stuff are known to be flawed in many ways, but we did try the MSS (Microsoft Security Essentials) and they did work. One of my friends computer were infected with tons of virus, on the screenshot you can see the porn pictures icons keep popping up on the desk top. We down loaded the MSSuseful, installed it and it does work, the McAfee on the system tray is just sitting there looking pretty while other viruses and adwares popping up all over the place.
We leave it at resident in the systray
And when it's in action
This one does monitor changes very well. We even turn off the annoying Windows 7 UAC.
Category: SOFTWARE | Posted by: ltooz | 1 Comment | Viewed: 2309 times |
Windows 7 came out and we got our ultimate to try out with the Media Portal 1.0.2. We've been using v1.0.0 and windows XP for almost 2 years now. It's been reliable and solid with B&W1080 skins. My motto, if it doesn't break, don't fix it, but there's no V1.0.0 exists and when we need to re-install media portal to a new hard drive, we need to go through the internet and V1.0.1 & V1.0.2 are the only version available. Both of these version requires .net 2 or .net 3.51 to install, and windows 7 has it all. The only thing it still needs is directx_aug_2008. Just download it, extract to a folder, excute before the installation, it would save sometimes. The windows 7 and remote wonder works natively in windows mode which causes skipping when navigate up/down or even execute. We need this remote_x10 driver esepecially for this remote to work with media portal. B&W1080 up with V1.3.
Movingpictures plugins goes to V0.7.5 which loads coverart worse than the V0.7.2. I got more blank coverarts than ever before with the same movie names? If you can get a V0.7.2 from somewhere, get it, or email me for one if you're...
Read More »
Category: MEDIA PORTAL & WINDOWS | Posted by: ltooz | 6 Comments | Viewed: 3293 times |
There are many free software out there to convert videos to flash video format like flv or swf for the website. I like the software SUPER the best. This is the way I set up and convert an hd movie 1280x720 recorded by my Panasonic camera. Well, first we need to install the program, then launch it. There are tons of settings, but for blogs or website, I use 560 or 600 width dependent upon the body of the blog, my blog body will take 600px. I use H.264/AVC video codec/AAC LC audio. Set the bitrate @ over 1k for better quality. The frame/sec = to your original video.
Next, we select the video that needs to be converted, "right click" somewhere in the screen, a list of all actions will come up, and we select the add multimedia file(s), the "s" means we can load many files and it will convert them in batch.
Browse for the folder and files
Next, we need to specify output folder for these flvs videos. "Right click" anywhere on the screen, select output file saving management.
We will select the first one which is the same folder as the original videos for easy access and remembering.
Now, we're...
Read More »
Category: VIDEOS ENCODING | Posted by: ltooz | Add comment | Viewed: 2219 times |
Setting a server for all HTPCs in the house to access data.
HTPC SERVER
Category: HTPC | Posted by: ltooz | Add comment | Viewed: 2037 times |
How I build my HTPC
HTPC AMD x2 GA-690GM
Category: HTPC | Posted by: ltooz | Add comment | Viewed: 1986 times |
It's been 10 months since I had my i920 setup. It's been so reliable and lightning fast. I don't know how AMD is going to survive with Intel fast and energy efficient I920 & the new I5, anyhow, this pdf is how I built and set up my computer. The base is 2.67GHZ, we OC it to 3.67GHZ. It's been stable and solid with all heavy duty video encoding.
***** We hate rebates and there it is... BFG Tech is stiffing us the $20.00 rebate on the PS due to missing UPC at the time of receipt. They would not let us to supply it afterward because we cut out the part# bar my mistake. The best is to stick with brand names product with companies that care about customer service instead of buying from the hole in the wall company like BFG Tech*****
Our recommendation is stay away from BFG Tech for any rebates!!!!
After spending average of 12+ hours of shrinking blu-ray to 1920x1080 mkv and avchd dvd using the old E4300 (@3ghz), we decided to try the i7 platform. There are tons of reviews on i7 and its x58 motherboards on the internet. We took a chance to buy an oem...
Read More »
Category: HTPC | Posted by: ltooz | 1 Comment | Viewed: 1771 times |
