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Snow Leopard on a Sun Ultra 20


CharlieFoxtrot

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I am attempting to install Snow Leopard on an older Sun Ultra 20 Workstation.  The hardware is an AMD processor with an nforce4 chipset.  I have upgrated the processor to an FX-60 and 4G ram.  The issue has to do with setting the BIOS to that AHCI setting.  This chipset does not seem to give me the option to set that in the BIOS setup screen.

 

When I try to boot the OSX86 CD, it just sits there and does not attempt to boot.

 

 

The question is, does anyone have experience with this particular piece of hardware?  Is there possibly something I may be missing.  If it cannot be done, I will just stick with Linux on this box.

 

 

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Now that's what I call challenge! :D

 

1st of all, only real Mac systems can boot OS X CDs/DVDs directly, non-Apple systems require a bootloader.

2nd, Apple never used AMD CPUs in their products; as such, AMD-based platforms require special kernels to boot OS X.

 

Now the question for you to resolve is whether a past or present AMD-oriented bootloader would boot on that x86 Sun workstation. Try Nawcom's ModCD. If that does not even boot, stick to Unix/Linux OS.

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Ok, so I was not clear in my first post.  I have downloaded the OSX86 ModCD, which is loads and gives me a boot loader screen.  When I attempt to install Snow Leopard from this page, it gets a kernel panic and stops.  I'm not clear on what the screen is tell me to do exactly. 

 

From all I can tell this must be an ASUS motherboard.  The BIOS is Sun, but it's a Phoenix BIOS.  All the hardware I have attempted to use, has worked flawlessly.  So, for me If we simply view this as any other AMD based computer with an nforce4 chipset and Nvidia graphics...  We should be set.  I cannot set the AHCI settings, but they may already be defaulted to that.  It's hard to get information from Oracle at this point. 

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You don't necessarily need AHCI to install Snow Leopard...

 

You say you get a KP; what does it show in the error message?

 

I know of issues with nVidia graphics cards on AMD machines (at least for ML), so you may be in the presence of something similar.

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Are you using a Snow Leopard retail DVD and if so, which version is it? 10.6.0? 10.6.3?

 

I can't recall ever seeing any reference to EVOreboot on any of my previous "standard" ModCD+retail SL 10.6.3 DVD utilisation. But maybe you're using a USB key with a restored image of SL and some tuning with kexts in /Extra.

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I have a fresh retail copy, just purchased 10.6.3.  The ModCD OSX86 was recently downloaded and burned to a CD.  That is what I am booting off. 

 

It appears to me that once the ModCD bootloader is activated, it never attempts to read the Mac DVD.  In fact, If I don't use the Mac DVD at all, I get the exact same results.  I have not modified anything in the /extra directory.

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After I figured out what was going on, thanks for the tip, I was able to install Snow Leopard.  It seems to run great on there.  I do have some lingering issues however. 

 

1. My ethernet card is showing disabled.  It works when I use the ModCD as a boot loader, but when I boot from the Chameleon boot loader, it does not discover it. 

 

2. My audio does not seem to be working either.

 

I know if I'm looking at the installation article, it says for the nforce chipset there are some things I need to set, I'm not clear on where that happens.

 

Thanks for all the help, this is going to an awesome setup!

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