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  • Inaugural Donation to Georgia Tech Library Archive’s Retrocomputing Lab

    Wendy Hagenmaier, Jason W. Ellis, and Jody Thompson next to Apple Performa 550 and iMac.
    Wendy Hagenmaier, Jason W. Ellis, and Jody Thompson next to Apple Performa 550 and iMac.

    Yesterday, I had the pleasure of making the first donation of three computers to the Georgia Tech Library Archives, which is launching its own Retrocomputing Lab for scholars and students to use. The Georgia Tech Library Archives is already well-known for its significant Georgia Tech Science Fiction Collection and other holdings.

    I met with Department Head Jody Lloyd Thompson and Digital Collections Archivist Wendy Hagenmaier to setup the three computers and talk about each machine’s provenance and current operation. We set the computers up on the right side as you enter the Georgia Tech Library Archives. This is a temporary location as the Archives makes plans for their use in Archives for the time being and possibly more in the future as part of the on-going Georgia Tech Library renovation project.

    Apple Performa 550 and iMac.
    Apple Performa 550 and iMac.

    From my personal collection–which I am having to cull before moving to Brooklyn for my new job at City Tech, I donated three computers: an Apple Performa 550 (1994), Apple iMac (1999), and Dell Dimension 4100 (2001). Before donating the computers, I refurbished each to be in as factory-fresh condition as possible.

    For the Peforma 550, I installed a PDS ethernet NIC and replaced the SCSI hard drive with one that was less noisy than its original one. Then, I installed Mac OS 7.6.1 and some software including the AfterDark Star Trek: The Next Generation screensaver and ClarisWorks, and utilities for working with files and disk images.

    For the slot-loading, DV iMac, I replaced the motherboard battery and performed a fresh install of Mac OS 9.2.1. The optical drive suffers from a weak ejection mechanism. I made sure that the bottom plastic bezel fit properly, but reseated it had no effect on improving the drive’s ability to eject discs correctly. I warned the librarians about this, and recommended buying an external, Firewire optical drive and using the paperclip ejection method in the meantime.

    Dell Dimension 4100.
    Dell Dimension 4100.

    For the Dell Dimension 4100, I installed a 3Com NIC donated by Mark Warbington. I installed Windows 98 Second Edition and painstakingly installed the drivers for the components in the Dell (this was a laborious process, because despite having the Service Tag number, some recommended drivers did not work on all of the components).

    I provided two sets of speakers–one for the Performa 550 (it’s internal speakers had stopped working about a year ago) and one for the Dell Dimension 4100. In the event of future hardware problems, I gave them spare AGP video cards, optical drives, a 3.5″ floppy disk drive.

    Also, I gave them some spare motherboards, controller cards, and hard drives that might be useful for displays in the Library.

    The Georgia Tech Library Archives have big plans for making digital archival work and learning an integral component of what they do. If you have functional and working computer hardware or software, you should consider donating it to the Georgia Tech Library Archives, or if you have technical skills for working on older hardware and software, you can donate your expertise and time, too. Contact Jody and Wendy by email or phone here: Georgia Tech Library Archives contact information here.

    Oct. 21, 2023 Update: Video link removed as it no longer exists.

  • Followup to Adventures with a CustoMac: Installing Mac OS X Mavericks on Asus P8Z77-V PC

    Mavericks installed on CustoMac. NB: MBPr on desk and PowerMacintosh 8500/120 on right.
    Mavericks installed on CustoMac. NB: MBPr on desk and PowerMacintosh 8500/120 on right.

    Last summer, I wrote about my experiences installing Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion on my Asus P8Z77-V and Intel i7-2700K PC here. What I neglected to say at the time was that an alarming number of creeping instabilities led me to ultimately abandon running Mountain Lion on my PC and return to Windows 7.

    I later learned that some of these instabilities were likely linked to a bad PSU and video card–both of which were replaced by the manufacturers under warranty (awesome kudos to Antec and EVGA). With the new PSU and video card, my PC returned to 100% stability under Windows 7. This made me wonder if I could try rolling out a Mavericks installation on my PC.

    Also, I wanted to use Mac OS X’s superior file content search technology and other third-party textual analysis tools in my research. I have a MacBook Pro 15″ retina (MBPr), but it lacks the hard drive capacity for my accumulated research files. The comfort that I feel in the MacOS environment and the need for lots of fast storage led me to turn my attention back to turning my PC into a CustoMac (aka “hackintosh”).

    This time, I wanted to streamline and simply my setup as much as possible and incorporate components that should work out of the box (OOB). Toward this end, I reduced my hardware configuration from this:

    • ASUS P8Z77-V LGA 1155 Z77 ATX Intel Motherboard (disabled on-board Intel HD 3000 video and Asus Wi-Fi Go! add-on card)
    • Intel Core i7 2700K LGA 1155 Boxed Processor
    • Corsair XMS3 Series 16GB DDR3-1333MHz (PC3-10666) CL 9 Dual Channel Desktop Memory Kit (Four 4GB Memory Modules)
    • evga 01G-P3-1561-KR GeForce GTX 560 Ti 1024MB GDDR5 PCIe 2.0 x16 Video Card
    • Antec High Current Gamer 750W Gamer Power Supply HCG-750
    • Corsair Vengeance C70 Gaming Mid Tower Case Military Green
    • Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus Universal CPU Cooler
    • Samsung 22X DVD±RW Burner with Dual Layer Support – OEM
    • Intel 128 GB SATA SSD
    • Western Digital Caviar Green WD10EARX 1TB IntelliPower 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5″ Internal Hard Drive – Bare Drive
    Using on-board video and no ASUS wifi card.
    Using on-board video and no ASUS wifi card.

    to this:

    • ASUS P8Z77-V LGA 1155 Z77 ATX Intel Motherboard (using on-board Intel HD 3000 video and removing Asus Wi-Fi Go! add-on card)
    • Intel Core i7 2700K LGA 1155 Boxed Processor
    • Corsair XMS3 Series 16GB DDR3-1333MHz (PC3-10666) CL 9 Dual Channel Desktop Memory Kit (Four 4GB Memory Modules)
    • evga 01G-P3-1561-KR GeForce GTX 560 Ti 1024MB GDDR5 PCIe 2.0 x16 Video Card (removed to simply setup and save power–who has time for gaming?)
    • Antec High Current Gamer 750W Gamer Power Supply HCG-750
    • Corsair Vengeance C70 Gaming Mid Tower Case Military Green
    • Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus Universal CPU Cooler
    • Samsung 22X DVD±RW Burner with Dual Layer Support – OEM
    • Intel 128 GB SATA SSD
    • Three Western Digital HDDs for file storage and work space. 
    IoGear GBU521 and TP-Link TL-WDN4800 from Microcenter.
    IoGear GBU521 and TP-Link TL-WDN4800 from Microcenter.

    Also, I added two new components that were recommended from the TonyMacx86 Forums:

    • TP-Link 450Mbpx Wireless N Dual Band PCI Express Adapter (TL-WDN4800). It works in Mavericks OOB.
    • IoGear Bluetooth 4.0 USB Micro Adapter (GBU521). It works in Mavericks OOB.
    DSC01487
    ASUS’s Wi-Fi Go! card works great in Windows 7, but it caused problems with my Mavericks installation.

    As noted above, I physically removed my 560 Ti video card, because I wanted to simply my setup for installation purposes. Also, I removed the ASUS Wi-Fi Go! add-on card, because despite disabling it in BIOS, the Mavericks installer seemed to hang on a wi-fi device while attempting to set its locale (a setting that determines what radio settings to use based on the country that you happen to be in). After I removed the Wi-Fi Go! card, I had a nearly flawless Mavericks installation process (NB: removing the Wi-Fi Go! card required removing the motherboard, turning it over, removing a screw holding in the Wi-Fi Go! card, turning the motherboard over, and unplugging the Wi-Fi Go! card).

    These are the steps that I used to install Mavericks on my PC:

    1. Follow TonyMac’s Mavericks installation guide for making an installation USB drive and installing Mavericks.
    2. Following installation of Mavericks, boot from your USB drive, select your new Mavericks installation drive, arrive at the desktop, and run Multibeast.
    3. Select these settings in Multibeast:
      1. Quick Start > DSDT Free (I left all pre-selected options as-is. Below are additional selections that I made.)
      2. Drivers > Audio > Realtek > Without DSDT > ALC892
      3. Drivers > Disk > 3rd Party SATA
      4. Drivers > Graphics > Intel Graphics Patch for Mixed Configurations
      5. Drivers > Misc > Fake SMC
      6. Drivers > Misc > Fake SMC Plugins
      7. Drivers > Misc > Fake SMC HWMonitor App
      8. Drivers > Misc > NullCPUPowerManagement (I don’t want my machine to go to sleep)
      9. Drivers > Misc > USB 3.0 – Universal
      10. Drivers > Network > Intel – hank’s AppleIntelE1000e
      11. Customize > 1080p Display Mode
      12. Build > Install
    4. Repair Permissions on Mavericks drive from /Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility
    5. Reboot
    6. Run Chameleon Wizard (this will fix a problem that you might have with connecting to the App Store)
    7. Click SMBios > Edit > Premade SMBioses > choose MacPro 3,1 > Save
    8. Reboot
    9. CustoMac should now be fully operational!

    In order to arrive at the above instructions, I read a lot of first hand experiences and third party suggestions on TonyMac’s forums. I owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to the amazing community of CustoMac builders who take the time to share their thoughts and lessons and equally so to the tool-builders who create amazing software including UniBeast, Multibeast, and Chameleon Wizard!

    I would suggest that you remember that there is not always one path to a successful build. I distilled a lot of posts into my successful build. Your experience with similar hardware might take a different path. Reading others experiences and trying their suggestions experimentally can lead to your own successful discoveries. Thus, I took the time to try out different configurations of hardware until settling on the stripped down approach with on-board video and OOB networking gear. I tried several different installations: a failed Mavericks installation with kernel panics (Wi-Fi Go! card installed and wrong Multibeast configuration), a successful Mountain Lion installation (barebones and correct Multibeast configuration), and a successful Mavericks installation (detailed above).

    Obviously, MacOS X can run on a wide range of PC hardware given the correct drivers, configuration information, etc. Apple could do great things if only Tim Cook and others would think differently and move beyond the tightly integrated hardware-software experience. Apple’s engineers could do great things with building better operating systems that adapt to a person’s hardware. Given the chance, they could challenge Microsoft and Google with a new MacOS X that is insanely great for everyone–not just those who can afford to buy new hardware.

    Now, back to using some of the tools that I use in my research on a computing platform that I enjoy: