So I decided to ditch Vista from my PC’s triple boot setup and put OS X in place of it. Basically what I wanted was to use Aperture on my desktop because it was dog slow on my Macbook Pro.

Now that the installation was a success, it would be perfect for graphics editing in general (Apple always did graphics better… with the exception of graphics performance in gaming)

So now I’ve got 2 XPs (one for work, another for my Digital Audio Workstation), and OS X for heavy duty photo editing via Aperture and probably general use now that I’ve experienced just how fast it is.

Video anyone?

Note to self

Just in case I plan to go through this again.

1. Use following BIOS settings:
   Enable AHCI
   Set timing to 64-bit
2. Use SATA hardware
   This is connected to #1; IDE/SATA combinations may find issues especially when you set the BIOS to AHCI. In my case, an IDE CD-ROM drive won’t boot the Leopard DVD properly when you’ve got AHCI. Getting an SATA drive solved this.
3. Install non-OSX OSes (multi-boot or not) first.
4. For every applicable Windows installation, set the NIC’s WOL (Wake On Lan) setting to Enable via Device Manager
   This is specific to my motherboard AFAIK; Windows does funny things with the LAN chipset during logout that makes OS X not detect a connection to the card.
5. Use Kalyway Leopard 10.5.2 DVD, and make sure you set these (specific to my configuration)
   Graphics Driver: NVinject-320
   LAN Driver: RealtekR1000
   Kernel: kernel_9.2.2_kabyl (could probably use kernel_vanilla_922 or default kernel_9.2_sleep)
   For the rest, you can use whatever is set by default
6. Disable sleep timer
   While it does hibernate gracefully. When coming back, milage varies; sometimes it recovers without a hitch sometimes it recovers then after a few minutes, hangs. So just kill the auto-sleep timer. It’s a desktop anyways, you don’t have to hibernate it.
7. Do not install system upgrades!
   Stick to software upgrades that don’t touch the kernel - lest you want to risk bricking the system.

Food for thought

I personally prefer having the Darwin Bootloader (DBL) handle the booting options, because it has the benefit of being totally independent of other OSes without having an issue, simply make the partition active again (should there be other OS reinstalls after) and it just works.

The only caveat is that it hardcodes the DBL code to the total OSes made at the time you installed OSX. So right now I have 3; If I decide to put in a 4th one, I think the new one wouldn’t register in the DBL - which is why it’s always best to install OS X last.

Also, since multi-windows installations handle booting options a different way, even if I’ve got three options (Windows, Windows, OS X), only the first works for booting windows - then It’ll take you to the Windows bootloader, where you can choose between the two installations you have of Windows.

With that in mind, it’s worth trying to only create and install One partition for Windows (leaving an unused chunk for later), then install Windows, install OSX that way you only get two options. Then create a third partition and install another Windows there - if my logic serves me right, then you’ll have two choices in the DBL, but if you select the Windows partition you’ll now see the 2 windows partition. This is all just OC-ness I guess.

post updated on July 31, 2008 @ 12:56PM