ThinkCentre M52 8215, no AHCI

[ClarkC]

Trying to multi-boot Windows XP, Ubuntu, and Snow Leopard. Have an iBoot CD that boots and loads fine. When I load the Snow Leopard retail installation CD, it produces many screens of text, flashing by pretty quickly, and then shortly after a message about loading Darwin, the screen goes black. When I select the Safe Mode install, I get many more messages for a much longer time, but the final result is the same.

Some of the early messages are about not finding AHCI support. The BIOS is upgraded, but there is still no mention of AHCI anywhere in the BIOS that I can find. I do not believe that the ThinkCentre M52 8215 supports AHCI on its SATA hard disk.

This machine is an Intel P4 CPU. PCI Express x1 Radeon video card, disabled the on-board Intel video. Only 1GB of RAM. Has Windows XP and Ubuntu installed, but will tell the Snow Leopard installer to blow them away if I ever get that far, but cannot get that far.

Should I try to get a video of these messages so I can catch the ones at the end before the screen goes black? Or is it hopeless when your board does not support AHCI?

 

[totenkopf4]

Trying to multi-boot Windows XP, Ubuntu, and Snow Leopard. Have an iBoot CD that boots and loads fine. When I load the Snow Leopard retail installation CD, it produces many screens of text, flashing by pretty quickly, and then shortly after a message about loading Darwin, the screen goes black. When I select the Safe Mode install, I get many more messages for a much longer time, but the final result is the same.

Some of the early messages are about not finding AHCI support. The BIOS is upgraded, but there is still no mention of AHCI anywhere in the BIOS that I can find. I do not believe that the ThinkCentre M52 8215 supports AHCI on its SATA hard disk.

This machine is an Intel P4 CPU. PCI Express x1 Radeon video card, disabled the on-board Intel video. Only 1GB of RAM. Has Windows XP and Ubuntu installed, but will tell the Snow Leopard installer to blow them away if I ever get that far, but cannot get that far.

Should I try to get a video of these messages so I can catch the ones at the end before the screen goes black? Or is it hopeless when your board does not support AHCI?

ClarkC

yes you need to find out if your Hardware supports AHCI /HPET and SE power save. If you even get this working its more like you will be in 32 bit mode due to the P4 - also you should make a iBOOT 'LEGACY" cd - from downloads.


But if you dont know the AHCi status your better off seeing if it has standard connectors and what size is the MB in the chassis - Mini ATX etc - that way you could do a MotherBoard swapp out - if you did that you could get a Intel I3 sandy bridge w ram and sata drives sata dvd to replace the old hardware

 

[ClarkC]

The BIOS is updated, and there is definitely no AHCI support. This can be confirmed from the Lenovo web site, where they have even had trouble with Windows XP Rescue and Recovery due to the lack of an AHCI driver, and had to release a patch to the Rescue and Recovery utility to deal with it.

Given these facts, is there any hope of running Snow Leopard without a motherboard swap, as you suggested?