I dont know if I'd mess with it. Definitely swap hard drives to save that current install.

I have the DVD to reinstall it

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.

What does the back look like? Is it properly designed for the board or completely hackintosh'd?

The ADP2,1 gets me - is there a first revision?

Man that's cool. I was working for Apple when the Intel transition was announced (totally upended my business for a while!), and I *really* wanted one of these - I knew they'd be a crazy collectible before long. May I ask how you came to own this one?

Is that CPU socketed ? If it is I wonder if the CPU can be upgraded.

Likely a Socket 775 based machine with PCIe. Wonder if a Pentium D or even a Conroe 65nm Core2 will work in these. The latter depends on the chipset, if its a 915/925/955, its stuck with Netburst toaster CPUs.

It says DDR RAM, and the timeframe is 2005 (and probably earlier. Much earlier, if the Marklar history is anything to go back) so I'm leaning towards an early 9xx chipset. Sorry kid, no Core 2 for you.

Likely a 915 chipset then. Just because it only has DDR doesn't rule out Core2 though, ASRock still sells boards with the older 865G(!) that can take Core2Duo chips.

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 think if you really want to push it, you can put 10.6 on it (provided you appropriately patch it), but you'll likely need a modernish GPU to get it working!

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.

CelGen said:

What does the back look like? Is it properly designed for the board or completely hackintosh'd?

Click to expand...

The back is a classic Power Mac G5, but with "blocked" connector (optical audio, modem, Wi-Fi), with a cache

Huxley said:

Man that's cool. I was working for Apple when the Intel transition was announced (totally upended my business for a while!), and I *really* wanted one of these - I knew they'd be a crazy collectible before long. May I ask how you came to own this one?

Click to expand...

It's from eBay

madmax_2069 said:

Is that CPU socketed ? If it is I wonder if the CPU can be upgraded.

Click to expand...

Yep, it's a P4 660, i have changed the cooling system, because it was broken when i receive him.

NJRoadfan said:

Likely a Socket 775 based machine with PCIe. Wonder if a Pentium D or even a Conroe 65nm Core2 will work in these. The latter depends on the chipset, if its a 915/925/955, its stuck with Netburst toaster CPUs.

Click to expand...

IPalindromeI said:

It says DDR RAM, and the timeframe is 2005 (and probably earlier. Much earlier, if the Marklar history is anything to go back) so I'm leaning towards an early 9xx chipset. Sorry kid, no Core 2 for you.

Click to expand...

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).

It'd be nice if we can see pictures of the back and slots.

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

Hi, 

Many news : i can't boot on a USB drive (no option on the BIOS) and can't use a real graphic card : i have tested with many GPU and i have no screen.

Just photos.

I wouldn't attempt any upgrades to it besides possibly a SCSI card and maxing the ram out.

It would however be nice if you could dump the BIOS and store it somewhere for safekeeping.

Are you trying PC graphics cards or Mac?

The machine could have one of those gimped PCIe slots that only take SVDO ADD2 cards. Otherwise being BIOS based it should take standard PC video cards.

Likely the firmware and OS X doesn't support the GPU.

Just give up on upgrades. Nothing will be supported, it'll reduce the value of being original, and these weren't meant to be upgraded.

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.

markyb86 said:

Are you trying PC graphics cards or Mac?

Click to expand...

I have tested with classic PC card (old and new) and graphic card from Mac Pro (who works on PC and on Mac). I'm waiting for a PCIe x1 card and a PCI card.

Sherry Haibara said:

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.

Click to expand...

The problem : i can't find 10.4.3.

I have found a torrent (can i speak about that here ?) but with only 99,94 %... and the other are patched, i don't know if it's work.

I'm fairly confident that I have the correct version of 10.4.3 for Intel on my NAS LaCie... I'll report back.

Thanks haplain! It's supposed to be build 8F1111. It was once very popular, but like almost every torrent I know, it died many years ago. Back then, I don't think people saw the historical value of keeping a copy of that file, it was only used for hacking.

I deffinatley have a copy of that around (i'm not going to post a link here as per the rules though)

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.)

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.