After six attempts, I've slimmed the installation to about 10-15 minutes.
My Hardware:
- Intel D5400XS Motherboard
- Intel QX9775 Core2 Extreme CPU's @ 3.2GHz
- BFG 8800GT 1G Video
- Two 2G Buffalo DDR2 Fully Buffered 800MHz DIMMs
- 36G Raptor SATA drive (oldie but still kickin)
- GH20NS10 SATA DVDR
- Two Scythe Katana 3 Heat Sinks
- NZXT case and Earthwatts 750W Power Supply
Step by Step (perhaps TOO granular but hey, I'm a tad OCD)
1. Acquire (however you deem fit
) the XXX Install iso and burn it to DVD2. Boot XxX DVD and when the installer comes up, select the Disk Utility and reformat/partition the Hard Drive using GUID and one partition. **THIS WILL WIPE YOUR HARD DRIVE** If you're not familiar with the Disk Utility, try formatting a few hard drives or USB keys to get a feel for it. If you're a PC guy it's operation will start to make sense. Try hitting that option button.
3. Once the drive is formatted, quit Disk Utility and go back to the installer. When you get to the actual install part, just before it starts to write to the hard drive you'll see the customize button at the lower left. Click the customize button and choose the following:
- KextHelper
- EFI Studio
4. Install OSX and let your machine reboot.
5. Install the sound driver.
- Download both the AppleHDA Patcher 1.16 and the codec (text file) to your desktop from here:
http://www.projectosx.com/forum/index.php?...p;hl=skulltrail
- Drag the codec file on top of the HDA Patcher icon (don't run the HDA patcher by itself). Use version 1.16 because 1.20 doesn't work with this particular driver.
- Once it completes, you can reboot or go directly to the next step
6. Install the video driver.
- Open EFI Studio (under Applications/Utilties) and select your video card, hit the Add button then hit the "write com.apple.Boot.plist" button
- In my case I had an Invidia 8800GT 1G and EFI Studio worked fine. If EFI Studio doesn't work and you have an nvidia card, you should give the nvenabler.kext a try. You can find nvenabler here:
http://www.projectosx.com/forum/index.php?...mp;hl=nvenabler
- Download the nvenabler.kext onto your desktop. Open Kext Helper b7 from your Applications/Utilties folder. Drag the nvenabler onto the Kext Helper Window, enter your password and hit EASY install.
7. Reboot
That's it! You should have Audio, Networking, USB and video after you reboot - and 8 Cores @ 3.2Ghz (minimum unless you overclock)
Unfortunately, I haven't been able to figure out how to get the thing to properly shutdown. I've tried a number of different DSDT, SMBIOS, OpenHaltRestart options during install/customize but to no avail.
RESET
If you choose reset from the apple menu, the machine blanks out the video and just sits there. I know that no reset has actually happened because the PCI POST display on the skulltrail motherboard says 00 which means everything is booted and fine.
SHUTDOWN
If you choose shutdown, the OS will actually close itself but instead of powering off the machine, the machine will actually restart. Workaround: Choose shutdown and the machine will reset. When you see the BIOS initialization screen come up, just hit the power button and your machine will shut off safely.
Miscellaneous notes:
This motherboard takes a while to pull itself up from it's bootstraps so be patient:
- Boot time from power up to first initialization of video: approx 20 seconds
- Boot time from power up to Darwin/F8/Chameleon screen: approx 38 seconds
- Boot time from power on until OSX comes up: 55 seconds
