Intel Transition Developer Kit - information needed

archive.org might help with some larger pics:

http://web.archive.org/web/20050722084029/http://www.thinksecret.com/news/0506intelmac.html

http://web.archive.org/web/20060427015913/http://www.appleinsider.com/article.php?id=1146

comatory said:

Is it true you cant go past 10.4.3 on these?

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Yes, 10.4.1 and 10.4.3 were the pre-release versions of Tiger for Intel, intended for the DTK machine, which was pretty much just a standard PC in a G5 case.

The Intel version of 10.4.1 at least is pretty useless apart from for historical interest, as it can't run any Intel/Universal apps except those that come with it (or presumably that were produced at the time with the version of Xcode provided for use with the DTK) - I still have a copy of the "Deadmoo" VM (which was made from the DTK's OS) and running any app that works on later Tiger versions just crashes instantly unless it is specifically set to run in PPC emulation mode.

10.4.4 was the version that shipped on the grey discs with the first Intel iMacs ie the first official release of OS X for Intel, which have Apple's EFI firmware instead - you could presumably get 10.4.4 and later versions onto the DTK if you treated it as a "Hackintosh" ie installing it as you would on a non-Apple machine, but not by installing it in a "supported" manner.

The DTK is very rare as the deal was that you were borrowing it from Apple for the fee of $999 and they wanted it back afterwards, and they gave you a free Intel iMac if you returned it promptly - I don't know if pretty much all of them got returned because of the free iMac and you could have got away with keeping it though, or if Apple chased them up until they got them back - a few have surfaced since though, so they didn't get every single one back.

The card in the PCI Express slot wasn't a dedicated video card, it was an adapter to allow the onboard graphics to use DVI - merely using the slot as the electrical mechanism. It's called an "ADD2" card. If you plug one of these in, the onboard chipset detects it, and routes DVI signal to it.

The motherboard was made by Intel, and is basically a customized version of their D915GUX motherboard. (Customized to fit in the Power Mac G5 chassis, along with some other customizations for Apple.)

A friend at Intel worked on the board during its development, and he had zero idea who it was for until a couple years later, when more details on the board came out, and I had him look up the (obviously-Intel) manufacturing part number. It was very locked-down, and came with a Pentium 4 at 3.6 GHz, which was the highest-end processor it was capable of running. (In theory it could have run a Pentium-D dual-core CPU with a BIOS upgrade, but no such BIOS upgrade was ever made.)

It did not have Apple's custom EFI interface, so it cannot boot any stock version of OS X, only the versions made for it. (Well, you could use "Hackintosh" methods, of course, just like any other PC of equivalent specs.)

comatory said:

Wow thanks guys, this helps a lot! I can be more specific in some regards - I really find interesting the possibility to install Pentium-D CPU inside even though its not possible. Does this mean that there was an upgrade to this kind of motherboard that enabled this?
Because I looked up the specs and there is no mention of it. Also I did research on chipsets because there was a information that Kit contained either GMA900 or 800, so that means there should be two motherboards, one with 915 chipset and the other one 925X (GMA800 version) - which would also mean you could put Extreme Edition Pentium in there.

Anyway if someone has any more info it would be great, still you gave me fresh info that I didnt find anywhere online so thats cool. Any possibility your friend at Intel has any documents or information that he could release?

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The DTK uses the Intel 915 chipset. Some 915-based motherboards did receive BIOS upgrades to support the dual-core Pentium-D Processors. The DTK did not. You cannot install any processor into the DTK higher than the included Pentium 4 3.6 GHz. Yes, the same base motherboard may have gotten a BIOS upgrade to support higher - but it would be silly to 'break' a DTK by trying to force a wrong BIOS on to it and install a faster CPU. Even the fastest Pentium Extreme Edition (the 965) is slower than the initial CPU the first Intel iMac came with. (I replaced a Pentium Extreme Edition 965-based desktop with the original 2.0 GHz Core Duo MacBook Pro. It was faster in every way. I later replaced the Extreme CPU with a Pentium Dual-Core at 2 GHz (based on the Core 2 Duo CPU, but smaller cache.) The computer got faster, while drawing less power at load than the Extreme CPU drew at idle.