What I have:

XFX reference 5850
Core i5 750
Gigabyte P55-USB3 motherboard
320GB SATA HDD
External DVD drive, no burner.
500GB External HDD
4GB Flash Drive
OSX 10.6 RETAIL

Downloading:

Empire EFI
myHack
iAtkos S3 v2





Now, I've had 10.5.8 on my old laptop before I sold it, and at the time was familiar enough to do the basic trouble shooting on my own, but my shiny new desktop is a whole new beast, and I want to know where to begin. I need to be able to install this from an external HDD like I did with 10.5.8. I can see based on some posts @ insanelymac that the 5850 is now working, but there are a bunch of long posts full of people trying things that are way over my head, and I want to consolidate my questions into one area, right here. I would really like a link to a tutorial on what I should do to get 10.6.3/10.6.0 onto an external HDD and loaded to my desktop, and then another for getting my 5850 working @ full resolution. Many thanks to any who post something helpful!

Originally Posted by Elemental

iAtkos S3 v2

Now, I've had 10.5.8 on my old laptop before I sold it, and at the time was familiar enough to do the basic trouble shooting on my own, but my shiny new desktop is a whole new beast, and I want to know where to begin. 5850 working @ full resolution.

You should begin where it starts.

If you don't like to do troubleshooting then S3 v2 should be easy enough since you already had experience with OSX. May need correct boot option/flag to start the installer, and ext. hdd would be slower than int. if your interface is USB.
Your video card, ATI 5850 should be supported, but that would be after getting your SL up and running.

Originally Posted by ratvn

You should begin where it starts.

If you don't like to do troubleshooting then S3 v2 should be easy enough since you already had experience with OSX. May need correct boot option/flag to start the installer, and ext. hdd would be slower than int. if your interface is USB.
Your video card, ATI 5850 should be supported, but that would be after getting your SL up and running.

the 500GB external would be the installation media (if possible) because I have no DVD drive. the 320GB internal is where I would be installing the OS to.

Originally Posted by Elemental

the 500GB external would be the installation media (if possible) because I have no DVD drive. the 320GB internal is where I would be installing the OS to.

Alright. You don't need the whole whopping 500 GB as about 8 GB is sufficient.

Now, is ext. DVD a possible option for you? If not then it's just more work for you, maybe a lot unnecessary work, perhaps.

Originally Posted by ratvn

Alright. You don't need the whole whopping 500 GB as about 8 GB is sufficient.

Now, is ext. DVD a possible option for you? If not then it's just more work for you, maybe a lot unnecessary work, perhaps.

no, sadly, it's not. Lack of funds at the moment I don't really mind added work, if anything it'll help me learn a bit.

Originally Posted by Elemental

no, sadly, it's not. Lack of funds at the moment I don't really mind added work, if anything it'll help me learn a bit.

Yeah, I'm also in a desperate situation. Fully understood what it means.

You would need to restore the image/iso/dmg file to the ext. HDD/USB and make it bootable. Any OSX available? As that is the best/recommended method to use. Disk Utility or Carbon copy cloner is your truly friend.

Nope I have transmac installed (used it last time for 10.5.8) but no OSX available as I live ~30 miles from the nearest bit of civilization + have no vehicle atm.

Alright. Whatever mean you can get to restore the distro release to your ext HDD. Just do it as your last 10.5.8, and then you can start your SL installation from there.

Well, before when I used transmac I also had to modify (replace) some .mpkg files which I don't know the location of for SL, before expanding it to my HDD. _IF_ by some miracle I can snag an external DVD drive somewhere, is there anything else I'd need besides Empire EFI/ iBoot to boot the iAtkos S3? or would I even need that?

Nope. To date, none of those distro releases ever needs a bootCD to start, and S3 is one of them.