Any of you using OSX86 / hackintosh?

I've bought new hardware for it and awaiting parts.

 

A little background info; Apple switched to Intel CPU's (for financial/stock reasons from what I read) so because of this, people are now able to install OSX (even the latest ~ snow leopard) on normal PC's, however it's unstable unless you get the right hardware.

 

I decided this because I don't like vista or windos 7 & I hear windows 8 is coming in 2012. I don't want to go down the linux route as the adobe suite isn't supported.

 

Windows xp doesn't support any more than 3.5/3.8gb of ram so in the coming few years lots of people will reach a bottle neck and the least shit OS from what I can see is osx.

 

The popular m-audio 2496 sound card is supported under OSX with hacked drivers so it's looking good even for audio.

i used ideneb 10.5.7 then grabbed their 10.5.8 combo update - both on demonoid. no idea about snow leopard. only problems i really had were my gfx card quietly squealing and having to find an older kext to get firewire working properly. when win 7 came out, though, i found i preferred it, so that's what's on my computer now.

 

oh, bundled with the hacked isos will be a pile of drivers, so get familiar with your chipsets, and fixes so you can do things like shut your computer down. up to you if it's worth bothering with.

Edited January 11, 2010 by futuregirlfriend

  On 1/11/2010 at 7:26 PM, futuregirlfriend said:

oh, bundled with the hacked isos will be a pile of drivers, so get familiar with your chipsets, and fixes so you can do things like shut your computer down. up to you if it's worth bothering with.

I've done a good amount of research and selected components that work almost flawlessly with osx. The only things I am aware of that do not work are the LAN port (which I have no intention of using) and the on board graphics card, which I have a replacement for.

How much does this hardware cost you all in all?

  On 1/11/2010 at 7:47 PM, Ivan Lennovitz said:

How much does this hardware cost you all in all?

It was part of a system upgrade. I'm hoping to sell my current computer for about £75/£100.

 

Intel Pentium Dual Core E5300 2.6GHz £50.94

Gigabyte GA-G41M-ES2L G41 £36.83

Nvidia GeForce 8400 GS £40

total £127.77

 

I've excluded the ram & hd as those weren't specifically needed for osx.

I was thinking about doing this Hackintosh business when I upgrade my desktop. Let us know how it works out.

  On 1/11/2010 at 7:53 PM, joshier said:

  On 1/11/2010 at 7:47 PM, Ivan Lennovitz said:

How much does this hardware cost you all in all?

It was part of a system upgrade. I'm hoping to sell my current computer for about £75/£100.

 

Intel Pentium Dual Core E5300 2.6GHz £50.94

Gigabyte GA-G41M-ES2L G41 £36.83

Nvidia GeForce 8400 GS £40

total £127.77

 

I've excluded the ram & hd as those weren't specifically needed for osx.

Wow, that’s almost free compared to the £1.400 I payed for my MBP. Then again, it’s a laptop.

Does Hackintosh support any laptops by any chance?

Here's a good friendly resource for all things Hackintosh (no offense to the x86 website):

 

http://lifehacker.com/search/Hackintosh/

  On 1/11/2010 at 8:22 PM, Ivan Lennovitz said:

  On 1/11/2010 at 7:53 PM, joshier said:

  On 1/11/2010 at 7:47 PM, Ivan Lennovitz said:

How much does this hardware cost you all in all?

It was part of a system upgrade. I'm hoping to sell my current computer for about £75/£100.

 

Intel Pentium Dual Core E5300 2.6GHz £50.94

Gigabyte GA-G41M-ES2L G41 £36.83

Nvidia GeForce 8400 GS £40

total £127.77

 

I've excluded the ram & hd as those weren't specifically needed for osx.

Wow, that’s almost free compared to the £1.400 I payed for my MBP. Then again, it’s a laptop.

Does Hackintosh support any laptops by any chance?

Some, however limited support - see my original post for the osx86 wiki.

  On 1/11/2010 at 7:17 PM, joshier said:

Windows xp doesn't support any more than 3.5/3.8gb of ram so in the coming few years lots of people will reach a bottle neck and the least shit OS from what I can see is osx.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_XP_Professional_x64_Edition#Windows_XP_Professional_x64_Edition

  On 1/11/2010 at 9:21 PM, eugene said:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_XP_Professional_x64_Edition#Windows_XP_Professional_x64_Edition

Windows xp has very few drivers.

I would recommend going Windows 7 64-bit if you want the performance increase.

 

OS X Snow Leopard is 64 bit as well.

  On 1/11/2010 at 9:21 PM, eugene said:

  On 1/11/2010 at 7:17 PM, joshier said:

Windows xp doesn't support any more than 3.5/3.8gb of ram so in the coming few years lots of people will reach a bottle neck and the least shit OS from what I can see is osx.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_XP_Professional_x64_Edition#Windows_XP_Professional_x64_Edition

 

complete pain in the arse, buggy/scarce drivers and basically useless.

there is also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_Address_Extension but no-one ever bothered coding for it.

 

the amount of people switching to 64-bit when upgrading to win 7 is a LOT, which is a good thing

http://lifehacker.com/5442807/are-you-running-a-32+bit-or-64+bit-operating-system

then again, it is a poll of lifehacker readers

Edited January 11, 2010 by kaini

i spent forever trying to install most of the available distributions but i gave up because it became extreamly fussy.

Yeah, installed it now. it takes a bit of time.

 

Basically, the process is:

 

1. get correct hardware

2. install empire efi, then replace cd with snow leopard dvd

3. install chameleon boot loader so you don't need the empire cd each time

4. install drivers (or kexts) for additional hardware (like audio/graphics/mouse etc)

5. tweak any bits necessary, for my situation it didn't like my cd rom drive very much and has trouble un-mounting, though I rarely use it.

 

To sum up, it's fucking slick, shuts down in seconds, update works flawlessley, it was a doddle to install both the graphics card, audio driver & mouse (microsoft one). It's shit hot at the moment and it only took a couple hours to work the basic stuff out. (tip: kext helper b7 installs kexts/drivers for you so you don't need to dick about in the temrinal). It hasn't crashed once, however I haven't put it through much, yet.

 

but how's the subterranean lair coming along?

Thought I'd come back to the thread..

 

My windows xp install fucked up inevitably, despite me doing piss all (it just wouldn't start one day) so for the past 3 or so days I'm having to use my osx hard drive and I've basically tweaked it even more and I'm now to the point where I'm happy with 90% of things.

 

For example, I managed to remap my keyboard keys so CTRL really is CTRL using DoubleCommand http://doublecommand.sourceforge.net/ I've got used to the different mouse acceleration and a couple other things like midi keyboard working fine in ableton n that. So yeah, it's pretty sweet.

 

one of the best things is probably how quick it is. I mean, it feels slightly sluggish compared to xp in some applications because I think its not so good at 2d hardware acceleration, but as for multi tasking and memory management, it is top notch.