Dual Xeon + QuadroFX 4800

[rickyelizondo]

Hey guys!

Second post here, let me begin by saying I've extensively searched through this and other forums for a basic answer to my compatibility question and I'm still a little unsure of whether or not my machine is hackintoshable. I hope that's a term.

My specs are as follows:

SYSTEM	DELL PRECISION T7500 TOWER WORKSTATION
PROCESSOR	2 x INTEL XEON SIX CORE X5660 2.8GHz
MEMORY	48GB DDR3 ECC REGD MEMORY
HARD DRIVE	1 x 1TB 7.2K SATA 3.5"" HARD DRIVE
VIDEO CARD	NVIDIA QUADRO FX4800 1.5GB VIDEO CARD
RAID CONTROLLER	Integrated LSI 1068e SAS/SATA 3.0GB/s controller supports host-based RAID 0 or 1
NETWORKING	Integrated Broadcom 5761 Gigabit Ethernet controller

From what I understand, a lot of the compatibility has to do with the motherboard, but I've been unable to figure out what motherboard this computer has. I understand that OEM PC's have their own motherboards, but I'm unsure what this ultimately means for me.

Second, as far as the two processors, I've found a number of threads that describe varying degrees of success, but most are from 2 years ago and don't really go in much detail. Looking at the users that were posting them it doesn't look like they are active, hence my current post. I wouldn't go so far as to call myself knowledgeable with command line but I am fairly efficient with computers and I do basic stuff in the terminal frequently, so if it's more or less a matter of doing things of that sort to get it to work I am sure I could manage with some guidance. I've also been researching ktexts and have saved up some commands (I'm assuming these go in somewhere during the bios boot prior to the OS?) that I've found, but at this point I'm still mostly navigating in the dark.

Lastly, the graphics card. I've seen a number of posts where people are using this card, but I'm unsure if it should work out the box or if I have to disable it while installing the OS and then enabling it once it works. If this is the case, could anyone point me in the right direction of accomplishing this?

If anyone has any pointers as to whether I could get this system working with a reasonable amount of work (I'd rather not have to take out the second cpu as that is something I have no experience with) I would greatly appreciate it!!

 

[rickyelizondo]

An update on this:

Since I wasn't able to find a simple y/n for compatibility I decided to go ahead and try it and well just about everything that could have gone wrong went wrong (Even my flashdrive died), but it has been way too much fun. I think I should have a better chance with a new flashdrive and avoiding some past mistakes.

I was reading about different bootloaders and chameleon seems to support my graphics card by default. The issue is the drive I created with that bootloader's install application does not get recognized on my PC, while the Unibeast one does but hangs at the apple screen and then goes black. Is there a way, I thought for instance copying the kexts from the extras folder of the chameleon drive to the chimera one might accomplish this, that I can pass on that native graphics support? I tried different boot flags at the Unibeast screen with no luck.

I suspect it is my graphics card that is the issue here, but I was unable to find a port to directly connect to the onboard graphics either on the back of the PC or the motherboard itself, or a way to force enable them on the bios.

 

[rickyelizondo]

Update 2:

Now with a fresh thumb drive. I'm still getting stuck at the apple screen. I booted with -v and a different combination of flags, graphics enabler, pciroot or something like that, as well as others, but I always get stuck in the same place (bluetooth transporter).

I followed a guide to remove bluetooth kexts from my install drive but that just means it now gets stuck at DSMOS has arrived.

I do see that it is loading "NVDANV50Hal.kext", so I'm assuming this means my graphics card is getting recognized? I came across this thread that details adding the device ID to a the nvidia kext:

http://www.tonymacx86.com/graphics/40875-nvidia-device-ids-2011-developer-list.html

But given that it is in fact loading the kext I mentioned above, I'm unsure if I need to do what that thread is suggesting. The card is a few years old, surely by now it should be compatible otb with mavericks? Or is that train of thought incorrect?

I also read in a different thread that 2 cpus similarly work in mavericks 10.9.3 otb, but I haven't been able to confirm it so it could also very well be that this issue is related to the 2 cpus.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.