Held together with tape - asus lga p5ql-em

[samandliam]

samandliam's - 'Held together with tape' Build:
Core 2 quad 8200 - asus-P5QL-EM - 4GB RAM - 8500 GT


The 'held together with tape' build​

Components

Apple OS X Snow Leopard @ Apple Store
Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard - Apple Store (U.S.)


Already Owned


ASUS P5QL-EM LGA 775 Intel Micro ATX Intel Motherboard
no loner available

MSI - NX8500GT-TD512EH - GeForce 8500 GT 512 MB DDR3 PCI-E 2.0 Graphics Card - no longer available

Intel Core 2 quad 8200 2.33GHz LGA 885 95W Quad-Core Processor
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002KQ5KDY

Pioneer DVD-r drive - no longer available

4GB (2 x 2GB) Kingston 240-Pin DDR2 800 - no longer available

TP link -WN851N - wireless N PCI card
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833704040

Antec p180B ATX Tower Computer Case - no longer available

Microsoft - Keyboard Mouse (keyboard PS2) - couldn't find a site carrying it

2 x Samsung 500GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152305

Samsung 24" monitor and old 19" monitor

Cooler master 600w power supply, model number unknown - (can't make out the number under all the dust)


Comments

1. Context
I have been reading up on building a customac for quite some time. I have agonised over specs and compatibility, build type and features and finally decided to just instal on my existing machine.

This trusty old machine was overdue for a refresh as has survived a few issues in recent times and was due for a new outfit. The incidents the computer has survived:

- coffee tipped into the top exhaust hole (GPU stained but kept on going)
- front usb ports ripped out by dancing 4 y/old (don't sit back from computer with keyboard and usb extender if you have children)
- dying RME multiface soundcard
- numerous flavours of linux
- WINDOWS 8 trial version - one word - NEVER​

2. Making a start
Christmas was good to me this year. You know you are loved when your partner buys you a new monitor and a retail copy of Snow Leopard for Christmas, even though she believes you are mad for spending so much time 'playing' on the computer. That said, her business is online and there is always a computer running on her desk an imac is planned in the new year.

I downloaded all of the appropriate tools from the downloads page http://www.tonymacx86.com/downloads.php?do=cat&id=3. Tools required for my build as follows:

- iBoot 3.3.0 (burnt to disk)
- Kextbeast
- Multibeast - Snow Leopard 3.10.1​

I also added the DSDT editor from olarila - http://olarila.com/forum/ and a copy of CCC that I had lying around.

I put these on a USB stick and put them aside for later use and a PDF of the iBoot Multibeast processes.

3. False starts
I proceeded to disconnect all odds and ends from the computer except the keyboard, mouse and GPU.

Hard drives already setup as AHCI and have been running that way for a year or so.

I switched off unused items in the bios, no need for audio, firewire. Turned it off. Is that required? No, but I do it habitually on computers. Maybe I heard it was good practice sometime in the eighties and never stopped? Can't remember why but thought I would add this for sport.

Run iBoot - EBIOS errors, some light reading required.

After ascertaining possible error with the bios, I ran the ASUS bios tool in win 7 and it would not connect to the net. Download bios and run from desktop, failed. Reinstalled ASUS bios tool ran new bios. Forgot I had the capacity to change the bios pic so hastily added a new starry sky pic. Presented in all its glory in 800*600 format, oh well. Messing round with the bios problem was the longest part of the installation. That being said, boot time improved after new bios 0805 installed (new in 2010 - WOW).

4. The Main Game
Run iBoot from disk.

Insert steps here ->

Snow Leopard installed at 10.6.3, all pretty good at this point but a few things to fix:

- Wireless not working
- keyboard not working​

Working:

- GPU works OOB second monitor attached and settings updated - samsung @ 1080p, other at 1280*1024.
- pretty much everything​

5. TP Link - WN851N (Success)
I found that there was a fix to get the card to work as follows:

Your final destination is:
/System/Library/Extensions/IO80211Family.kext/Contents/PlugIns/AirPortAtheros21.kext/Contents/Info.plist

You need to use "show package contents" at the IO80211Family.kext and then again at the AirPortAtheros.kext. Once you open the Info.plist you will see the DEV ID that looks like the following if you use TextWrangler:
<array>
<string>pci106b,0086</string>
<string>pci168c,1c</string>
<string>pci168c,23</string>
<string>pci168c,24</string>
</array>

Add the string pci168c,29 and see what happens after reboot.[/centre]

To allow this to occur copy the kext onto your desktop, amend, save changes, run kextbeast - done.

6. Keyboard (Success)
Make sure before you run multicast to check that you do not have a PS2 keyboard installed, I did not and had to borrow one to type passwords etc to run MultiBeast.

My settings:

- Easybeast
- Rebuild Caches
- Repair Permissions
- PS/2 keyboard
- Realtek gigabit
- Instant menu
- Mac pro 3.1 definition​

7. Updates and Finalization
I have updated now to 10.6.8 and run all of the updates and everything works except sleep.

Working:

- audio via m-audio usb which worked OOB so not using onboard sound.
- apple store working
- wireless
- ethernet
- all drives showing
- multi-boot working
- dvd
- geekbench for Mac OS X x86 (32-bit) 5260​

Not Working:

- wake from sleep, but as I have disabled sleep anyway, as that is not a priority for me.​

8. Summary
Thanks to TonymacX86, a wonderful resource and helpful community. The process was very smooth and forced me to fix existing problems with Bios. The boot process is now considerably quicker after setup and computer running really well

 

[samandliam]

An update on my build added an old bluetooth adaptor which is working 100% as well.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Bluetooth-2-0-USB-Dongle-100M-Range-/290826106102?pt=US_USB_Bluetooth_Adapters_Dongles&hash=item43b69634f6