See below for edits. Last edit: 4/15/2009
(Apple OS X Leopard [10.5.0] Retail Disk)
http://preview.tinyurl.com/2qjjst – (10.5.2 Combo Update)
http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=91755 – (Graphics)
http://rapidshare.com/files/153774218/Archive.zip – (Sound, install with Kext Helper)
woot!!
Ok, so I know you are going to want to know what I did exactly, and while I am not 100% certain what worked and/or why, here is what you need to know.
First things first, here are my specs:
Intel QX6850 Quad-Core Extreme 3.00 GHz processor
nVidia GeForce 8800GT
Gigabyte P43-ES3G motherboard
- ALC888 Audio Codec
- LAN is, um idk
- go Google my motherboard for specs
Ok, now to start, I am using Robin’s Boot-132 boot disk, which allows me to load into the retail OS X (10.5.0) disk. This is important because for obvious reasons the retail disk won’t load all on its own, it’s meant for Mac hardware. I had to set my hard drives to be in ACHI mode in order for the OS X disk to see them. If I didn’t do this the disk simply wouldn’t see the hard drives. Hopefully I can change this, because to get back into Windows I need this setting off. I’m sure you can see why this is annoying!
So now that I have the retail disk loaded, I install OS X like normal, as if it were a Mac. Just partition a hard drive with the partition utility found on the disk, and partition it as Journaled. There are lots of guides about how to do this. Just know that my motherboard and processor combination had no issues installing OS X. I didn’t have any hangs or anything. The whole process was in very low resolution but whatever, can’t expect miracles.
So after I have OS X installed on the hard drive, I still have the issue of getting to it. I just used the Boot 132 cd again, only this time I didn’t use (9f) as my device to boot to, I used in my case I think 80 for the default hard drive. The boot loader can see the name of the drive so if the name matches what you named the drive when you partitioned it then you know you selected the right hard drive number here.
I have 3 internal hard drives that total 4 partitions, and an external hard drive. In my various attempts to do this it has ranged from 80 to 84 for the number that corresponded with the right hard drive.
But now that the drive is selected, just boot into it. If everything is ok you should still be good. Now for me a lot worked out of the box. Although the resolution was low, it still displayed a default resolution, so that was good enough. Audio didn’t work, but lan did, so I could go on the internet instantly to download the files I needed.
The first thing I did was download the update to get from OS 10.5.0 to 10.5.2. This is a combo update, and you can Google it, or you can click the link I have up top.
This did basically nothing from my perspective. Even though this update is supposed to have drivers for my 8800GT, it didn’t work. Still low res. Also audio still doesn’t work. But at this point it is 10.5.2 and that’s good. More up-to-date so that’s a win.
At this point I wanted to get my resolution working so I followed the instructions to the letter found on the link I posted up top. I had to hand-write the instructions on paper to know what to type when I logged in as single user mode.
At this point after I restart, booting from the CD didn’t work for me anymore, so I tried booting straight from the hard drive, and somewhere along the lines it put in a boot-loader. I tried booting with the -f flag (so I could implement the changes I just made), and viola! Graphics work!
(In case you were wondering how the CD failed me, if I tried to boot off the CD at this point, I would get the gray Apple logo just great, but when it was time to log in my monitor turned off. It sounded like my computer was churning, so maybe something was on that CD that conflicted with the drivers I just installed, but whatever it was, the CD was out)
Now I have internet, and graphics, next I need sound. This was horribly pesky to fix.
Basically, I tried everything. If you Google ALC888 you can see like 8 different solutions. What I did in the end is use the kext’s located at the link listed up top and installed them with Kext Helper. It worked!
To be fair I tried so many things first, so I don’t know specifically what put it over the top. I tried every other way I could find to get the audio working that didn’t involve me going into terminal (the only solutions I tried were packages or txt files I used with another program).
And now, I am at the point where I can type my results and display them here for you.
Whoo!
I know I haven’t gone into so much detail as I could have, but I am honestly tired of thinking about what works and what doesn’t. I am really only able to tell you what I did, I can’t tell you why certain things work and others don’t. At least you now know my motherboard and other important things about my system.
I couldn’t find any other posts anywhere regarding my motherboard, so I am posting this: GA-P43-ES3G works!!
FINALLY. WIN. 
EDIT (4/15/2009)
Ok, so now I have gotten my computer all the way up to 10.5.6, so yeah, win.
Here’s what I did:
I went to apple.com and downloaded each update from 10.5.3 to 10.5.6. I did NOT download the combo updates, just the updates that took me from the previous version to the next version. I think combo updates (since they are for bringing something as low as 10.5.0 to whatever version I downloaded) I both didn’t need that, or want it. Plus it saved bandwidth and download size.
After I had gotten it to 10.5.2, I used this guide to update my computer to 10.5.3.
After using that guide, I got to 10.5.3 with relative ease. After the requisite restart I searched and found out I didn’t need to do anything to update to 10.5.4 or 10.5.5. I did it in steps still though, and once I updated to 10.5.4 and restarted with no problems, I did the same with 10.5.5.
At this point I had gotten through almost all of them with very little effort all things considered (which is great). After looking some more I found out 10.5.6 should be the same thing. After I installed it and restarted, I had an issue. (Gasp!)
After I restarted I thought it had failed (I was restarting in verbose mode just to see what was going on with each restart), and I noticed it had the same “MACH_REBOOT” message that I was presented with following the 10.5.3 update. This felt reassuring to me, so I simply hard rebooted in verbose mode, and viola! OS X Leopard all up-to-date.
So that one guide listed was basically all I needed. And now you know. I should post my specs on the OSx86 wiki page now…
End EDIT (4/15/2009)
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