Runing JaS Semthex 10.4.8 OSx86

I have been running the last JaS 10.4.8 DVD install for a few months now. It is great. I have any kernel panics. I am running Natit with a XFX GeForce 7300 Card with 2 Gigs of Ram, over a terabyte of hard disk space. I just love it. I built this Mac from Scratch last year and it still runs suberb.

Here are some of my notes for a month ago:

It the most unusual system that I ever put together.

This week, I made some improvements to DarthVader, my Intel Mac clone.

I added a Dual Display GeForce 7300 GT PCIe card like the ones in the MacPro's. Using a Dual Head Natit.kext v.02 to get dual displays working. Also added an inexpensive Dell E207 20" widescreen display with attached speakers. The display is clear and crisp. But you get what you pay for. Pixels might be over sharp. Darth is using a hacked 10.4.8 v8.8.1 kernel made by Mifki. For me building Darth is a fun hobby and don't wish it upon anyone unless you like messing around with Kext's and other innards of OSX. Darth's goal was to create a cheap usable Mac-like system for running Photoshop and Apple's Developer Tools to build Universal Applications. DVDs on Darth play really nice, especially with the built in sound bar directly below the screen.

Damage List:

Case,Intel D915GUX Mobo, 80 GB HD,1 GB, 16xDVDR, 3Ghz P4HT 64bit $500
Two WD 250 GB SATA HDs $200
Dell 2407WFP Monitor with Sound Bar attached speakers $300 (Got a great dell on it).
1 GB Additional RAM, Generic (installed it later this week) $088
PCIe 7300 GT Dual Display DVI Video Card $100
External 100 GB WD USB/FW HD. Upgraded from free drive to 250GB $040
External 250 GB Drive USB/FW ROCK Mobile HD $100
Dell Keyboard and Mouse $030
Dell 17" Display from rummage sale $040 (just stopped using it, 24" is all I need right now).
2nd 100 BT PCI Card (internal is 1GB Ethernet used with my G4) $040
End PC Noise FAN $035
USB 2.0 WiFi Card from Previous system FREE (went back to LAN, Ethernet,) going to sell this on eBay.
USB 1.1/Firewire Card from recycled system FREE
Wacom Tablet.. used from old system FREE
Estimated total $1475.00

It runs as good as many G5's on the Market. It is by no means a speed demon like the latest and greatest Xeon Macs. The MoBo is already a year old. But I would consider it a good Mid Range system that currently suits my needs and it has 1 Terabyte of storage. I am going to evenutally add another 20" widescreen monitor and trash my CRT. So, I started around the Mac Mini price gradually worked my way up to the 20" iMac range. Most of the parts were bought on eBay. It's still much cheaper than the bottom of the line MacPro, but it did require more effort to put together and configure than any normal Mac user would consider attempting. Nevertheless, it was a great learning experience and I know more now about Macs and PCs than I ever did.

Pros: cheap, Dual Display, Supports QE,CI, and QE2D Extreme, runs Tiger 10.4.8. 64bit enabled. 6 USB 2.0 Ports, 4 USB 1.1 ports, 2 Firewire 800 Ports. RAM is Expandable to 4 GB. No viruses.
Cons: It's not a Mac, may not run 10.5. Do it yourself means fix it yourself. Getting very good at both.

If you ever wish to take on a project like this. I highly recommended joining http://insanelymac.com. Also, if you want to chat with my, I am often on IRC at: irc.macspeak.net with the username: gt. Common rooms that I am in: kernel and clonetool.

Clonetool is my pet programming project. For far it's made a few dollars. I hope to earn enough money with CT for either a Mac Mini or a MacBook to fully support cloning Hard disks of any Mac or Hackintosh user. Clonetool, a command line based cloning utility, was started to fill a need for Hackintosh users. They didn't have a simple way to clone their OSX boot drive and allow it to boot with little user intervention. Clonetool today has been downloaded worldwide, from over 80 countries, and supports PowerPC and Hackintosh users. 75% of my downloads are from Hackintosh users. 25% are PowerPC users. With my next version, I hope to get Intel Mac users and bring it to a 50/50 split between real Mac users and Hackintosh OSx86 users. Clonetool Hatchery will be released by Easter and will support all Macs including Intel Macs and Hackintoshes and of course be more Mac like with a GUI.

I have not done much promoting of Clonetool, but was amazed how many downloads it gets. Each week my tiny homepage gets about 5000 visitors and Clonetool gets about 125 downloads per week. There are other cloning tools out there, but many of them haven't been updated in a while. I am hoping to close the gap and keep developing it. Cloning Mac hard drives is also a departure from my previous programming endeavors which were Prepress based and did not have much life outside of the work I do at my full-time job.

Happy New Year,

Goodtime
http://art5dog.com