Apple Development Transition Kit
It would be interesting to see one of these hackintoshed. I don't know if I've ever seen it, and this is maybe the third or fourth to roll around on the site.
In part because they were never really meant to stay in circulation once January 2006 hit and the iMacs and MacBook Pros were available, newer releases of Mac OS X don't very easily work on them. It's a very neat find, nevertheless.
In part because they were never really meant to stay in circulation once January 2006 hit and the iMacs and MacBook Pros were available, newer releases of Mac OS X don't very easily work on them. It's a very neat find, nevertheless.
Yes, but those are niche crazy hacked up boards for crazy people. Apple very likely just adapted a reference Intel one, but from the look of it, just put their branding and serial number on a stock Intel one and called it a day. That's definitely not Apple EFI, after all.
I remember at one point reading what OS X version officially depreciated these machines; it was quite an old version (The retail version of Leopard?), so while it might be "fun" to try to put a more modern version on it I suspect you will have to treat it the same as if it were an equally old generic PC and, indeed, "hackintosh" it. (I can't imagine the rest of the hardware being good for anything past Snow Leopard, or possibly Lion, anyway.)
In any case I would personally stay *far* away from upgrading the CPU; while I sort of snicker at "prototype collecting" I do imagine the surviving DTK's are going to be at least somewhat collectable and so far as I'm concerned it's *way* too easy to screw up LGA775 sockets to risk it. Is the board's form factor standard mini-ATX or is it "super proprietary"? If you *really* must try to put Yosemite on it I'd say *carefully* pull the original board and keep it nice and safe.
In any case I would personally stay *far* away from upgrading the CPU; while I sort of snicker at "prototype collecting" I do imagine the surviving DTK's are going to be at least somewhat collectable and so far as I'm concerned it's *way* too easy to screw up LGA775 sockets to risk it. Is the board's form factor standard mini-ATX or is it "super proprietary"? If you *really* must try to put Yosemite on it I'd say *carefully* pull the original board and keep it nice and safe.
The back is a classic Power Mac G5, but with "blocked" connector (optical audio, modem, Wi-Fi), with a cache
It's from eBay
Yep, it's a P4 660, i have changed the cooling system, because it was broken when i receive him.
It's a i925 chipset, and Core 2 Duo and Pentium D (generally dual core) will not work, i'm waiting for a CPU to test, but i have no hope. Officialy, there is only a CPU faster : P4 670 (3,8 GHz).
I've had one of these for a few years as well... some notes I've taken:
Motherboard is a custom short run (BARRACUDA) from Intel based on the D915GAGL platform.
Board options included are Gigabit Lan, iee1394, and TPM.
TPM is pre-programmed with the keys required to decode Finder and other Apple encrypted binaries.
BIOS is an early reference bios, but with Apple quiet boot splash screen.
The case is a modified PowerMac A1177 without the partition in the air deflector.
The Power Supply is the official G5 power supply, but with an interposer to convert to ATX+4 power.
The Motherboard is extended past the MATX form factor to meet with the Apple ports on the G5 case.
It is mounted on a frame that then attaches to the G5 board mounts, as G5's are not ATX compliant.
There is a populated (but cable not provided) header for VGA on the back of the board.
Video out is DVI-D only by way of a standard ADD2-N card, but while retail ADD2 cards are identical, those with VGA options do NOT work.
Presumably connecting the VGA header will yield via video using the onboard chipset, and the collision of the external VGA on an ADD2 and the onboard prevents the system from booting properly.
Unsurprisingly, dumping the DTK bios and installing it to a RETAIL D915GEV/D915GUX/D915GAV/D915GAG will work perfectly, and if you apply the decryption patch to the marker disc, no additional means are required to install and use it just as you would a real DTK.
Because the system is BIOS based (and a P4), there are very few upgrade paths (beyond 10.4.3 8F1111) for the system if you plan to run OS X without a full fledged chameleon or similar install.
other _OLD_ photos of mine while i was fixing some issues from a poor shipping job:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/defor/sets/72157624223360933
Motherboard is a custom short run (BARRACUDA) from Intel based on the D915GAGL platform.
Board options included are Gigabit Lan, iee1394, and TPM.
TPM is pre-programmed with the keys required to decode Finder and other Apple encrypted binaries.
BIOS is an early reference bios, but with Apple quiet boot splash screen.
The case is a modified PowerMac A1177 without the partition in the air deflector.
The Power Supply is the official G5 power supply, but with an interposer to convert to ATX+4 power.
The Motherboard is extended past the MATX form factor to meet with the Apple ports on the G5 case.
It is mounted on a frame that then attaches to the G5 board mounts, as G5's are not ATX compliant.
There is a populated (but cable not provided) header for VGA on the back of the board.
Video out is DVI-D only by way of a standard ADD2-N card, but while retail ADD2 cards are identical, those with VGA options do NOT work.
Presumably connecting the VGA header will yield via video using the onboard chipset, and the collision of the external VGA on an ADD2 and the onboard prevents the system from booting properly.
Unsurprisingly, dumping the DTK bios and installing it to a RETAIL D915GEV/D915GUX/D915GAV/D915GAG will work perfectly, and if you apply the decryption patch to the marker disc, no additional means are required to install and use it just as you would a real DTK.
Because the system is BIOS based (and a P4), there are very few upgrade paths (beyond 10.4.3 8F1111) for the system if you plan to run OS X without a full fledged chameleon or similar install.
other _OLD_ photos of mine while i was fixing some issues from a poor shipping job:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/defor/sets/72157624223360933
Unfortunately, 10.4.1 is extremely finicky regarding the supported hardware: the Intel GMA900 and GMA950 chips are effectively the only GPUs supported with graphics acceleration.
It's also important to point out that 10.4.1 doesn't support the final revision of the Intel binary format that eventually shipped with the first Intel Macs back in 2006: it's got a custom binary format that is specific to 10.4.1 and 10.4.2, so no modern program (even if 10.4 compatible) will run on it, with the exception of PowerPC binaries which should be correctly translated via Rosetta. The only Intel software that can run on 10.4.1 is the software that Apple provided bundled with OS X (and very early versions of Xcode for Intel).
On a side note, if you do choose to install a more recent version of OS X on a different partition, you should be able to install 10.4.3 (which is still a developer release) without problems: that version is recent enough so that it should be capable of running real programs and also has a better hardware support, notably for ATI graphic cards (nothing fancy, though, you're pretty much stuck with ATI Radeon 9600 and similar devices). You can have a better picture of what's supported on both systems here and here. Note that these lists were compiled with hacked versions of OS X in mind, but since the Apple DTK uses a customized version of an otherwise standard BIOS (and not Apple EFI like all the Intel Macs that shipped later) I see no reason why these graphic cards shouldn't be supported out of the box.
It's also important to point out that 10.4.1 doesn't support the final revision of the Intel binary format that eventually shipped with the first Intel Macs back in 2006: it's got a custom binary format that is specific to 10.4.1 and 10.4.2, so no modern program (even if 10.4 compatible) will run on it, with the exception of PowerPC binaries which should be correctly translated via Rosetta. The only Intel software that can run on 10.4.1 is the software that Apple provided bundled with OS X (and very early versions of Xcode for Intel).
On a side note, if you do choose to install a more recent version of OS X on a different partition, you should be able to install 10.4.3 (which is still a developer release) without problems: that version is recent enough so that it should be capable of running real programs and also has a better hardware support, notably for ATI graphic cards (nothing fancy, though, you're pretty much stuck with ATI Radeon 9600 and similar devices). You can have a better picture of what's supported on both systems here and here. Note that these lists were compiled with hacked versions of OS X in mind, but since the Apple DTK uses a customized version of an otherwise standard BIOS (and not Apple EFI like all the Intel Macs that shipped later) I see no reason why these graphic cards shouldn't be supported out of the box.
Your best bet truly is to image the drive that came with it (unless you also got whatever installation media Apple shipped with it) and then put a new drive in to install some other version of Mac OS X with hackintosh techniques. The version you install really doesn't matter if you're just going to hackintosh it, and at that point, you may even have more luck with a better video card, unless it is, as noted, a board with a PCIe slot that only supports the ADD2 card.
If you can get 10.8 or newer on it, that's what I'd personally recommend running, but 10.4.11, 10.5.8 or 10.6.8 (or possibly 10.7.whateverthelatestversionwas) may end up working best with the integrated graphics.
As always, I personally recommend against hooking a machine running a non-current version of Mac OS X to the Internet, for reasons. It would be a great darknet machine or if you just feel like having an install party, a platform to play with as many different versions of Mac OS X as possible.
General DTK question: has anybody looked at operating systems other than Mac OS X on them? Windows 7, 8.1U1 or 10TP would probably do really well on this thing, especially if the Pentium 4 CPU in it has HyperThreading and you can get 2 or more gigs of RAM in it. (915 chipset should happily run 3 or 4 gigs.)
If you can get 10.8 or newer on it, that's what I'd personally recommend running, but 10.4.11, 10.5.8 or 10.6.8 (or possibly 10.7.whateverthelatestversionwas) may end up working best with the integrated graphics.
As always, I personally recommend against hooking a machine running a non-current version of Mac OS X to the Internet, for reasons. It would be a great darknet machine or if you just feel like having an install party, a platform to play with as many different versions of Mac OS X as possible.
General DTK question: has anybody looked at operating systems other than Mac OS X on them? Windows 7, 8.1U1 or 10TP would probably do really well on this thing, especially if the Pentium 4 CPU in it has HyperThreading and you can get 2 or more gigs of RAM in it. (915 chipset should happily run 3 or 4 gigs.)
In re piracy links:
Please don't. especially Mac OS X itself and OS X-era software. All of that stuff is stuff you know is actively being developed, and most of it's still actively being sold, and you can't even feign ignorance of details like the fact that Adobe owns the Aldus intellectual property.
My only advice on that front at the moment is that you individually use search tools to see if you can find any resources.
Please don't. especially Mac OS X itself and OS X-era software. All of that stuff is stuff you know is actively being developed, and most of it's still actively being sold, and you can't even feign ignorance of details like the fact that Adobe owns the Aldus intellectual property.
My only advice on that front at the moment is that you individually use search tools to see if you can find any resources.
That's something I'd definitely look into.
Not specifically to run a different operating system, but because Windows and DOS have plenty of utilities to dump the BIOS of a machine, while I don't think OS X has any (because it doesn't use BIOS at all). It'd be interesting to look at it and see exactly what's different (and also keep it for archiving: we're already lucky enough that these machines survived at all, since they were supposed to be returned to Apple, if something goes wrong and the motherboard dies this software is gone forever).
The BIOS is a custom one based on the intel reference bios for this board series. It pre-dates the "retail" board used in the D915GXX series by a little bit (no surprise there as the board and TPM were pre-programmed by Intel for apple.
The Installer for this system was fully leaked in the early days of "hackintoshing"
Look up "Marker-Tiger.dmg"
This will be the unmatched copy of the install disc designed for the encryption keys stored in the TPM.
Upgrading the bios will not actually prevent any of the 10.4.x Marklar builds from working, but you'll loose the pretty boot screen and some of the System Profiler text.
I've done a bit of experimentation with the DTK bios on non-DTK D915GXX boards and vice-versa- just dropping in the actual bios chip from one of those boards.
There is NO matching consumer SKU for the combination of TPM, Firewire, and Gigabit in the 915 boards, but the board in the DTK IS a D915GXX series board, just with a custom form factor from Intel. NO other differences.
Also, the ADD2 support is very limited, but I have run other PCI cards off the board, simply never played with display cards.
The Installer for this system was fully leaked in the early days of "hackintoshing"
Look up "Marker-Tiger.dmg"
This will be the unmatched copy of the install disc designed for the encryption keys stored in the TPM.
Upgrading the bios will not actually prevent any of the 10.4.x Marklar builds from working, but you'll loose the pretty boot screen and some of the System Profiler text.
I've done a bit of experimentation with the DTK bios on non-DTK D915GXX boards and vice-versa- just dropping in the actual bios chip from one of those boards.
There is NO matching consumer SKU for the combination of TPM, Firewire, and Gigabit in the 915 boards, but the board in the DTK IS a D915GXX series board, just with a custom form factor from Intel. NO other differences.
Also, the ADD2 support is very limited, but I have run other PCI cards off the board, simply never played with display cards.
There are 3 install discs that were issued by apple to DTK owners:
Mac OS X 10.4.1 8B1025
Mac OS X 10.4.1 8B1099
Mac OS X 10.4.3 8F1111
All of these have been patched in various forms, but for a DTK, the more original, the better.
I spent quite a while sorting the mess out a few years ago when I got my DTK, the results of which are below:
ORIGINAL DISCS (iso and dmg are identical, just different container):
6671b06db57db94bebffdd2cffc2c78e marklar-tiger.dmg
e78fe52e30a1f8c5b29d4b7932a16c5e marklar-tiger.iso
daf72f000bd860360ae494d915058af6 10.4.3_8f1099_for_dtk_userdvd.dmg
e7d86fefb4b5155890addbf7fae19398 10.4.3_8f1099_for_dtk_userdvd.iso
3665735d1b651b5a4ad15ca59ab40142 macosx_10.4.3_8f1111_for_dtk_userdvd.dmg
f086fa1cdd01013c9787dfd1e92c2078 macosx_10.4.3_8f1111_for_dtk_userdvd.iso
I've as of yet, been unable to find the 8F1111 build in unmodified form, but the following will work fine on a DTK as it simply has the TPM encrypted files pre-decrypted (Finder et al.):
macosx_10.4.3_8f1111_for_dtk_userdvd (wesleypatch_8f1111_v1.1).iso
Mac OS X 10.4.1 8B1025
Mac OS X 10.4.1 8B1099
Mac OS X 10.4.3 8F1111
All of these have been patched in various forms, but for a DTK, the more original, the better.
I spent quite a while sorting the mess out a few years ago when I got my DTK, the results of which are below:
ORIGINAL DISCS (iso and dmg are identical, just different container):
6671b06db57db94bebffdd2cffc2c78e marklar-tiger.dmg
e78fe52e30a1f8c5b29d4b7932a16c5e marklar-tiger.iso
daf72f000bd860360ae494d915058af6 10.4.3_8f1099_for_dtk_userdvd.dmg
e7d86fefb4b5155890addbf7fae19398 10.4.3_8f1099_for_dtk_userdvd.iso
3665735d1b651b5a4ad15ca59ab40142 macosx_10.4.3_8f1111_for_dtk_userdvd.dmg
f086fa1cdd01013c9787dfd1e92c2078 macosx_10.4.3_8f1111_for_dtk_userdvd.iso
I've as of yet, been unable to find the 8F1111 build in unmodified form, but the following will work fine on a DTK as it simply has the TPM encrypted files pre-decrypted (Finder et al.):
macosx_10.4.3_8f1111_for_dtk_userdvd (wesleypatch_8f1111_v1.1).iso
