Hack Pro Mod

[shaanky98]

I have connected the network ports as well. I used the onboard ethernet and an old ethernet card which I modified a bit, it can only be seen from inside the case

here it is


then the two female ethernet connectors glued together



a view from the inside, here I removed the parallel, serial and VGA ports from the motherboard to create room for the network socket



finally view from outside with one port in use.

[aquamac]

Really nice job, very impressed. Do you have all the front panel working too?

[shaanky98]

Yes! @aquamac all the front panel ports are fully working, thanks to you,

[amantheboy08]

shaanky98 is saw your airport is detected what card are you using.

[shaanky98]

May 8, 2008 2:02:43 GMT amantheboy08 said:

shaanky98 is saw your airport is detected what card are you using.

I am using TP-Link TL-WN650G Wireless

[danielmramos]

I have been reading the thread that you all had on insanelymac.com. Obviously this is the place where you all do most of your posting, so I guess I will start following here. First of all let me just say WOW! I have been wanting to build a hackintosh for a while now, but I have been doing my homework. I think it is very important to be well informed before starting a project such as a hackintosh. Frankly being a long time Mac user I find what you all are doing with Mac Pro cases as the holy grail of hackintosh projects. I don't know if the post on the other board have been looked at, but I have found a fairly inexpensive source for Mac Pro cases in the U.S.A.

www.dvwarehouse.com/Apple-Case-for-Mac-Pro-922-8000-----NEW-p-35381.html

That is the best price I have found anywhere. Now, I have also been trying to find a motherboard that would be good for a Mac Pro hackintosh. I do not know what the maximum dimensions of the motherboard space is in the Mac Pro case; however, it is quite plain that the only form factor that works is Micro ATX. Originally I wanted to use an Asus P5K3 Duluxe WiFi motherboard for my hackintosh project. It includes WiFi and an onboard RAID 0 or ! controller that work in OS X. I have not been able to find anything readily available in a Micro ATX format that would give me somewhat equivalent functionality. I suppose from your previous posts that I can use a PCI WiFi card; however, onboard RAID would certainly be nice. I am of the opinion that RAID 1 and a time machine backup is necessary for a secure and stable hackintosh. Here are some possibilities that I have explored.

GA-965GM-DS2
GA-965GM-S2
Asus P5B-VM

The GA-965GM-DS2 and GA-965GM-S2 are almost impossible to find for sale online in the U.S. and the S2 model was ridiculously overpriced where I was able to find it on amazon.com for $118. The P5B-VM is discontinued. The Asus P5E-VM HDMI is a nice Micro ATX motherboard, but it only has raid supported by the intel chipset. It is stated as being the Intel Matrix Storage Technology which supports RAID 0, 1, 5 and 10. I do not know if the RAID chipset RAID functionality has been made to work in OS X.

I guess if worse comes to worse I can always set up a software RAID 1 array.

So, could you guys point me in the right direction or give me a few pointers?

Thanks

[aquamac]

Hi Daniel,

Welcome to aquamac forums. The fact that you need to use a MATX board in the Mac Pro case is as you point out rather annoying. The only full size board projects I have seen involved cutting away part of the upper shelf and loosing 2 of the HDD bays.

I have been wondering for a while if it would be feasible to cut a slot out of the upper shelf to let the last slot in the motherboard slot through, but still keep the hard drives. Next weekend I will offer up a full size ATX in an empty Mac Pro case to see if I think this is possible. I am also troubled by the fact that there is no MATX board out there that has more than 1 x16 PCIe slot.

As for raid, the MATX board that most of us here have used is the Gigabyte G33M-DS2R. When I set the Sata to raid in the bios it almost works, I find the disks work with Software OSX raid (but for that you might as well leave them set to AHCI), but not with hardware Raid it-only sees one of the disks in Disk utility.

I have a Asus P5K3 Deluxe that is working nicely in OSX in a Quicksilver case , are you saying that you can set that to Hardware Raid and boot from it. That would be amazing!

I looked at the Asus P5B-VM a few times as it seems to be quite similar to the Gigabyte G33M-DS2R. Looks like a good board for a MATX.

[danielmramos]

Aquamac, there was a post on insanelymac.com where a guy stated that he was using the hardware raid off of the jbm363 controller for raid 0. He said that all it took was a jumper setting. I will look up the post to give you the link. I am sure I might be able to find it again.

Concerning setting the motherboard to AHCI or RAID, well I found this interesting snippet on the AHCI wiki.

Many SATA controllers can enable AHCI either separately or in conjunction with RAID support. Intel recommends choosing RAID mode on their motherboards (which also enables AHCI) rather than the plain AHCI/SATA mode for maximum flexibility, due to the issues caused when the mode is switched once an operating system has already been installed.[2]


Interesting

[shaanky98]

danielmramos Those mac pro cases from DV, do they come with any extras (i.e front fans) or just bare, do you know?

[danielmramos]

Shaanky, I haven't contacted the company to see what it is that is included in the product they are selling; however, it does list an Apple part number, so I imagine that you would be purchasing specifically that particular part from Apple. I haven't checked an Apple source to see what that comprises. Does anybody have access to a complete Apple tech manual on the Mac Pro?

[shaanky98]

I think this will help with the part numbers


I got this from here

[danielmramos]

Darn, well I guess that would mean that it is strictly the shell with none of the yummy internals. I guess that would make this quite a bit more expensive than I thought. Hey, a friend of mine has an old G3 Blue and White tower that he is not using. He is willing to give it up to a hackintosh project. Do you all think I should do the G3 case instead? From what I have read it requires much less modification and up front expense. I am not the most experienced modder.

Thanks

[shaanky98]

I don't know about the G3.
Its only that my first mod was a G5 case and it came out nice and the person who bought it from me is loving it till today, I miss it as well
I think I love the aluminum, I really think there isn't much work if you avoid the part where you have to cut the case. I love the way Aqua did his, I know for sure if I were to cut mine I would do great damage and probable end up buying another case.
My mission during this project is/was to come up with a Hackint0sh that looks like an original Mac Pro inside and outside.
I have a G5 case which I am working on as well, right know.

[shaanky98]

Aquamac! did you change your psu from this

to this


or you used only the the cover. Do you know of a place I can buy a damaged Mac Pro PSU. I only want the cover.

[aquamac]

Ha Ha,

I only used the cover, but not from the PSU. It is actually a DVD cover that I cut down in length very carefully. It is fixed to the side of the PSU case. I have not been able to find a PSU cover.