My "hackintosh" project

June 18, 2008 @ 09:57 PM
NathanP

Post: 254

Join Date: Nov 2006

Location: San Francisco, CA

Geekbench 2 Scores: Link



Been using it for 2 weeks now daily, without any real issues. Zero kernel panics. *knocks on wood*

Transferred the music from my external to the internal of this desktop, was previously using my Macbook Pro. Updating the music on my 160GB iPod, and iPhone. Transferred and processed over 2,000+ Raw Images with Aperture, side note I almost shit myself how much faster it was on this hackintosh vs. my Macbook Pro.

The only difficult part of this project was getting Leopard to take advantage of the graphics card, Nvidia 8800GT 512MB.

This desktop effectively put my Macbook Pro to rest/living room use.

Now all Apple needs to do is quit being a dick and offer a mid range desktop, better than the highest iMac and not quite Mac Pro status.

This project was relatively simple, especially if you have a desktop built within the past year. If anyone is considering doing the same thing, and needs to be pointed in the right direction hit me up.
June 18, 2008 @ 10:59 PM
TyraCute

Post: 2279

Join Date: Nov 2006

long live osx86

where did u download it...help me in that direction please thanks =)
June 18, 2008 @ 11:00 PM
TyraCute

Post: 2279

Join Date: Nov 2006

btw link to background?
June 19, 2008 @ 02:42 AM
NathanP

Post: 254

Join Date: Nov 2006

Location: San Francisco, CA

Pirate Bay, Kalayway 10.5.2

www.keusta.net/blog/index.php/2007/04/03/326-sketch-collab-feat-emilie-decrock-coloriste-master
Bah, now that I looked at it some more I can see I need to clean up the wallpaper a bit more! Ugh, haha.


I found a lot of help on this forum as well forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?
June 19, 2008 @ 05:00 AM
magneticman

Post: 4052

Join Date: Jun 2006

Location: NW London

I almost shit myself how much faster it was on this hackintosh vs. my Macbook Pro.


Yet another example of apple not giving customers their money's worth? It's an interesting project though, how is it compared to running a hacked osx on windows?
June 19, 2008 @ 05:01 AM
New Money

Post: 5482

Join Date: Jul 2007

Location: NYC/LI

interesting indeed...
June 19, 2008 @ 08:50 AM
healthytext

Post: 323

Join Date: Mar 2008

Location: Inner-City Blackvill...

Nice. I'm going to put a system together pretty soon (with some of the same parts as your build as far as I can tell) but I completely forgot about this possibility. Will you be dual booting in the future?
June 19, 2008 @ 10:31 AM
NathanP

Post: 254

Join Date: Nov 2006

Location: San Francisco, CA

Yet another example of apple not giving customers their money's worth? It's an interesting project though, how is it compared to running a hacked osx on windows?


Yes and no, Laptops will always have that premium price compared to desktops. The laptops are definitely worth every penny they sell them for, there iMac's on the other hand... Is a desktop with mobile internals. You buy laptops knowing the only probable "upgrades" you can ever do them is a larger hard drive and memory, but with that you get the portability factor.

Not sure I understand the second part of your question, "how is it compared to running a hacked OSX on windows?" If you meant how does Hacked OSX compare versus Windows...

I was never able to find a copy of Adobe CS3 for Windows that was updateable through adobe. I found one for OSX.
Trillian for windows sucks ball's compared to AdiumX.
Redundancy across multiple disk is much more time consuming on windows, because of a lack of good software. IMO, Raid set up's are still costly and more difficult to maintain. Time machine seriously made all the "effort" worth it, especially when you've got thousands of pictures and a sizeable music library. Carbon Copy Cloner, is a free application that creates bootable disk images. I've lost a lot of pictures and music through a hard drive failure in the past, and several times through stupidity.

If you're talking about benchmarks, from the looks of Geek Bench it looks like performance is similar compared to Windows... My choice for running OSX is merely software based.

Nice. I'm going to put a system together pretty soon (with some of the same parts as your build as far as I can tell) but I completely forgot about this possibility. Will you be dual booting in the future?


I'm dual booting with Windows Vista Ultimate right now on a separate drive... I just "ejected" it so you can't see it on my desktop. Enabling AHCI in the bios turns all the drive icon's into the orange hot swappable icon.
June 19, 2008 @ 12:38 PM
Electric Devil

Post: 1044

Join Date: Jul 2006

Location: Hell/Satan's ward

LOL and i was just messing with OSx86 2 minutes ago and here sombody makes a thread about it.Im using Leo4all and i was trying to reinstall it to a bigger hard drive (going from 10gig to 30gig) but i guess theres something going with it.
June 19, 2008 @ 01:54 PM
magneticman

Post: 4052

Join Date: Jun 2006

Location: NW London

no i meant running an emulated osx, i would have though that setup would utilise specific hardware better but not sure so i was asking.

I just set up RAID (striped) the other day, but for my media, it's really fast going throught my shit but i can't be sure til i try it on my system disc, and im not gonna bother, probably get a raptor or something comparable.

Also, when you mentioned the Adobe thing are you talking about a pirate copy or a hacked .exe copy? I've updated mas. coll. numerous times via adobe updater on xp with a proper serial, if you need one pm me, just in case.
June 19, 2008 @ 03:13 PM
NathanP

Post: 254

Join Date: Nov 2006

Location: San Francisco, CA

no i meant running an emulated osx, i would have though that setup would utilise specific hardware better but not sure so i was asking.

I just set up RAID (striped) the other day, but for my media, it's really fast going throught my shit but i can't be sure til i try it on my system disc, and im not gonna bother, probably get a raptor or something comparable.

Also, when you mentioned the Adobe thing are you talking about a pirate copy or a hacked .exe copy? I've updated mas. coll. numerous times via adobe updater on xp with a proper serial, if you need one pm me, just in case.


I haven't seen a Windows box running a virtual image of leopard, so I can't really answer that. I did try Ubuntu and XP through Parallels (VM Software), but it was unable to utilize the graphics card within the virtualized environment. As far as I can tell, Geekbench and xBench was able to utilize the hardware and was nearing scores "almost" comparible to a Mac Pro (Running on a Quad Core).

www.primatelabs.ca/blog/2008/06/mac-performance-june-2008/

So long as this machine remains the way it does, I don't think I'll ever go to a raid set up. Time Machine, to be completely honest, is really ingenious.

I think the issue with Adobe for me on a Windows Box is finding a suitable install that allows updating via Adobe Updater. I was having the same issue under OSX till I was hooked up with a good installer.
July 12, 2008 @ 01:26 PM
NathanP

Post: 254

Join Date: Nov 2006

Location: San Francisco, CA

Just a quick little update, if anyone else is doing this and is having trouble using iTunes Sharing or using programs like Eyeconnect to stream music from the hackintosh to the ps3 let me know!

Finally got that shit working, now it's most definitely like a legit mac! Even did the leopard "upgrade" to like 10.5.4 through system update.
August 7, 2008 @ 11:26 AM
NathanP

Post: 254

Join Date: Nov 2006

Location: San Francisco, CA

Quick update, after a software update I had thought the bonjour service had broke! It seems that the problem was actually the Eyeconnect software.

I've fined tuned my memory settings, which had seemed to be the culprit to some kernel panics! Especially while gaming or doing anything cpu/memory intensive (e.g. hard gaming, ripping/encoding dvd's, imovie, aperture, lightroom).

I got my entire photo library of raw's, all my divx movies, mp3 collection all on the hackintosh now and all _mostly_ accessible through my ps3! I'm definitely glad to say everything just works. Though that can change with any software update! Now that I've become dependant on it, I'll be more cautious with updates. As of today, all of it's software is current. So I'm happy!
August 7, 2008 @ 03:31 PM
imtheman

Post: 1759

Join Date: May 2008

I'm pretty good with computers but your levels and levels beyond me.. I'm not too used to any apple products other than the iPod, so I'm wondering, what exactly did you do??
It may seem like a dumb question to some, but really, is this somekind of suped-up apple laptop, desktop, etc?? Looks & sounds good though?!!
August 7, 2008 @ 03:37 PM
malaujai

Post: 512

Join Date: Feb 2006

what mobo are you running?

i'm on a p5k-deluxe...
August 7, 2008 @ 06:36 PM
YTheLastMan

Post: 135

Join Date: Oct 2007

Location: Montreal

I'm pretty good with computers but your levels and levels beyond me.. I'm not too used to any apple products other than the iPod, so I'm wondering, what exactly did you do??
It may seem like a dumb question to some, but really, is this somekind of suped-up apple laptop, desktop, etc?? Looks & sounds good though?!!


You don't need to have a whole lot of knowledge, there are guides out there and this shit is pretty straightforward. It's not the same as a real mac though, don't get it twisted.

Still a decent option, going to run OSX when I get my Lenovo S10, as an alternative to my Macbook Pro.
August 11, 2008 @ 10:37 PM
NathanP

Post: 254

Join Date: Nov 2006

Location: San Francisco, CA

You don't need to have a whole lot of knowledge, there are guides out there and this shit is pretty straightforward. It's not the same as a real mac though, don't get it twisted.

Still a decent option, going to run OSX when I get my Lenovo S10, as an alternative to my Macbook Pro.


A lot of the "fine-tuning" I had to do was mainly under the bios. My memory was giving me kernel panics cause the timing was all fucked up so it was a lot of trial and error. Other fine tuning was going about linux/unix forums and searching for fixes to hardware/drivers. Where certain parts of my computer wasn't generic enough to be on the main OSx86 forums. For the most part it was spending several hours just googling the shit out of unix errors.

The guides are GREAT starting points, but that's all they are... Starting points. To get everything working properly you need to troubleshoot it.

Most of the things I had to do would be comparable to an older windows computer booting in dos and doing command line. Except with mac you're using shell commands.

Right now I've been using my Hackintosh more frequently than my 17" Hi-def 2.6ghz MBP, meh been a while since I actually used it now :/
August 11, 2008 @ 10:52 PM
STNDRD

Post: 1119

Join Date: Aug 2007

Location: Chicago

What is this? I'm confused.
August 12, 2008 @ 08:21 AM
Dorfmeister

Post: 578

Join Date: Dec 2007

What is this? I'm confused.


I give thanks to the OP, this hackintosh project has gotten me interested in this stuff. I just ordered a Dell XPS M1350 and I'm going to do this. Looks very interesting.

Hackintosh is a way to run OSX on a PC. Officially, you can run XP on a Mac, but not the other way around.

Benefits: Lower price than a real Mac (I purchased an XPS for $1200 fully loaded), you get the Stability of OS X and it's FUN!!!

I'll be grabbing iAtkos off of Demonoid soon and I will get on this project as soon as my notebook comes in. Seriously, I'm f'ing excited. I feel like I'm in nerd heaven... lol. We'll see how it turns out.
September 26, 2008 @ 10:48 AM
NathanP

Post: 254

Join Date: Nov 2006

Location: San Francisco, CA

Quick update, I just updated to 10.5 through system update... Just had to delete a file and now it's running legit. Anyways still zero kernal panics here, well since I stopped tweaking with my memory timings and went a little easier on the cpu over clocking razz

I just recently started dual booting cause of a few windows only apps -.-" Downloaded this app called MacDrive (I'm at work right now so i'm not 100% the name of it) but it allows me to view my hackintosh drive + time machine... So I can still get access to my music/files while i'm under Vista.
January 14, 2009 @ 05:21 PM
pnsho

Post: 6871

Join Date: Jan 2007

Bump this for interest.


My computer's pretty old/crappy, so I doubt I could do this hackintosh project. How's everything going so far? And pics?
February 26, 2009 @ 11:58 PM
NathanP

Post: 254

Join Date: Nov 2006

Location: San Francisco, CA

Bump this for interest.


My computer's pretty old/crappy, so I doubt I could do this hackintosh project. How's everything going so far? And pics?


I've read of some cats running on old ass fucking compaq pentium 2's or some shit like that. So I wouldn't doubt that it would work on your system.

www.insanelymac.com is the forum I used when I initially worked on the project. I'll upload screenshots, found out/learned a handful of things along the way.

Updated:



P.S. I hate the new imageshack advertisements >.>

I'm pretty good with computers but your levels and levels beyond me.. I'm not too used to any apple products other than the iPod, so I'm wondering, what exactly did you do??
It may seem like a dumb question to some, but really, is this somekind of suped-up apple laptop, desktop, etc?? Looks & sounds good though?!!


When I had originally started this project, there was very little support to my specific set-up. The most I had to do when I first put it together was search the web for drivers, and fixes not surprisingly most of them came from linux open source community's when people were trying to run specific distro's on their set ups.

The most difficult process was getting the graphics card to work properly with the system. From 10.5.2~10.5.4 somewhere in-between it destroyed the hardware acceleration, which I wouldn't have known unless I looked at the System Profiler. After I found the solution which was to manually grab the efi-string from the graphics card then paste code (that seemed like 2000+ characters) into some more code, etc etc, it was all chill.

I mean it seems that the Hackintosh OSx86 community is a lot larger than it was last year, and there is so much more support for a variety of hardware now that almost any desktop should be able to run it.

The 2 most popular distro's of leopard seem to be ideneb and iPC. If you have a relatively new computer at least ~2 years old, your shit is probably supported. They at least require the basic knowledge of your desktop components from chipset to network card, etc.
February 27, 2009 @ 06:17 PM
pnsho

Post: 6871

Join Date: Jan 2007

Nice nice. I'm probably gonna be buying a MBP for college, either way, and leave my current computer to my brother.

On another note, info on wallpaper?
March 2, 2009 @ 01:22 AM
NathanP

Post: 254

Join Date: Nov 2006

Location: San Francisco, CA

Nice nice. I'm probably gonna be buying a MBP for college, either way, and leave my current computer to my brother.

On another note, info on wallpaper?


Lost the link to both of them, I think I linked the first one in the beginning of the thread, when I have time I'll link the 2nd one, I found it through deviantart's section for wallpaper.
June 3, 2009 @ 11:44 AM
keusta.net

Post: 1

Join Date: Jun 2009

Link to the graffiti Background
Yo NathanP
here is the link to my background, it's free for non-commercial use only smile

Link to the page : keusta.net/blog/index.php/2007/04/03/326-sketch-collab-feat-emilie-decrock-coloriste-master
Link to the full size image : keusta.net/blog/images/graffiti/sketches/colab/sketch_color_big

Sorry i cant make a link (25 post needed)
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