Hackintosh 10.5.5 Retail Rig - Starting at $305

[MBony]

Originally posted by: Kaido
Local buddy ordered a G31M, so I'll have a chance to test my new kit this weekend!

We should start a Hackintosh User Group, haha. How's NEHUG sound? (New England Hackintosh User Group)

I think there should be some sort of subforum for this at AT. I know we could go to somewhere like InsanelyMac, but not everyone here goes other places. That would also keep things more organized instead of putting everything (or most things) into this thread.

 

[cgates]

Originally posted by: Kaido

The Nvidia 7300GT video card works great (1080p-capable) and is $26.99 at Geeks.com: (one DVI, one VGA)

This card sounds like its been tested inside and out, so I'll just go with it. Thanks

 

[mosslack]

Originally posted by: cgates

Originally posted by: Kaido

The Nvidia 7300GT video card works great (1080p-capable) and is $26.99 at Geeks.com: (one DVI, one VGA)

This card sounds like its been tested inside and out, so I'll just go with it. Thanks

I used the Gigabyte 7200 GS (256 Mb), which is basically the same card on several of my Hacks and it works great. That is what I bought for the G31 also.

 

[Jack Flash]

Alright I'm getting tired of my jumbo sized Antec 300 and want to get a tiny Micro ATX case but will need a Micro ATX board. What is the equivalent mATX for my EP45-UD3P (Only need 1 PCI-E 16x)

 

[mosslack]

Originally posted by: Jack Flash
Alright I'm getting tired of my jumbo sized Antec 300 and want to get a tiny Micro ATX case but will need a Micro ATX board. What is the equivalent mATX for my EP45-UD3P (Only need 1 PCI-E 16x)

I'm not sure I follow what you want. There is no way you are going to find a mATX with all the features of the UD3P crammed on it. If you just want a mATX hack, then the one that Kaido is currently working on would be a good one to try. My GA-945GCMX-S2 works fine also. Give us a little more to go on Jack!

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: mosslack

Originally posted by: cgates

Originally posted by: Kaido

The Nvidia 7300GT video card works great (1080p-capable) and is $26.99 at Geeks.com: (one DVI, one VGA)

This card sounds like its been tested inside and out, so I'll just go with it. Thanks

I used the Gigabyte 7200 GS (256 Mb), which is basically the same card on several of my Hacks and it works great. That is what I bought for the G31 also.

Got a link?

 

[mosslack]

Originally posted by: Kaido

Originally posted by: mosslack

Originally posted by: cgates

Originally posted by: Kaido

The Nvidia 7300GT video card works great (1080p-capable) and is $26.99 at Geeks.com: (one DVI, one VGA)

This card sounds like its been tested inside and out, so I'll just go with it. Thanks

I used the Gigabyte 7200 GS (256 Mb), which is basically the same card on several of my Hacks and it works great. That is what I bought for the G31 also.

Got a link?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16814125095

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: mosslack
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16814125095

Nice! I'll start recommending this for the low-end builds since the 7300GT has all but disappeared off the face of the earth

 

[mosslack]

Originally posted by: Kaido

Originally posted by: mosslack
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16814125095

Nice! I'll start recommending this for the low-end builds since the 7300GT has all but disappeared off the face of the earth

Yep, the 7200 was gone for awhile, but NewEgg restocked and now they seem to plentiful once again. Oh BTW, for anyone interested I now have the Neutrino setup to dual boot (Vista x32 and Leopard) off the single HD and it works quite well using EasyBCD. Keep on hackin'...

 

[volcs0]

Originally posted by: Kaido
I don't know of any PCI video cards that are Hackintosh-compatible.

Kaido - is this still true? Even if the PCI-E version of the card is compatible, is it unlikely to work in a Hackintosh?

I'm looking to install onto this Foxconn box I just received today. I'd like to up the video from the onboard GMA950, if possible. But it only has PCI.

Any thoughts?

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: volcs0

Originally posted by: Kaido
I don't know of any PCI video cards that are Hackintosh-compatible.

Kaido - is this still true? Even if the PCI-E version of the card is compatible, is it unlikely to work in a Hackintosh?

I'm looking to install onto this Foxconn box I just received today. I'd like to up the video from the onboard GMA950, if possible. But it only has PCI.

Any thoughts?

Best I can say is check the InsanelyMac Wiki:

http://www.insanelymac.com/osx86db/

PCI Express is the standard. PCI video cards are old, old, old. I've heard of some AGP cards working. I mean, maybe there's some PCI video cards that work, but you'll have to do some digging and perhaps post in the video section on the InsanelyMac forums. I wouldn't rule it out, I've just never personally heard of anyone running a PCI video card on a Hackintosh

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: mosslack

Originally posted by: Kaido

Originally posted by: mosslack
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16814125095

Nice! I'll start recommending this for the low-end builds since the 7300GT has all but disappeared off the face of the earth

Yep, the 7200 was gone for awhile, but NewEgg restocked and now they seem to plentiful once again. Oh BTW, for anyone interested I now have the Neutrino setup to dual boot (Vista x32 and Leopard) off the single HD and it works quite well using EasyBCD. Keep on hackin'...

Nice! Care to share an updated Mini Tutorial with the rest of the class?

 

[mosslack]

Originally posted by: Kaido

Originally posted by: mosslack

Originally posted by: Kaido

Originally posted by: mosslack
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16814125095

Nice! I'll start recommending this for the low-end builds since the 7300GT has all but disappeared off the face of the earth

Yep, the 7200 was gone for awhile, but NewEgg restocked and now they seem to plentiful once again. Oh BTW, for anyone interested I now have the Neutrino setup to dual boot (Vista x32 and Leopard) off the single HD and it works quite well using EasyBCD. Keep on hackin'...

Nice! Care to share an updated Mini Tutorial with the rest of the class?

No problem, but it's a little long for this thread. Peter Haas is mostly responsible for getting the Neutrino working under OS X so I can combine his guide with mine for dual booting and post a link here a bit later.

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: mosslack
No problem, but it's a little long for this thread. Peter Haas is mostly responsible for getting the Neutrino working under OS X so I can combine his guide with mine for dual booting and post a link here a bit later.

I'll be posting the new thread this month, so if you want to add it there that'd be great!

So I'm pondering the future...right now the upgrade path is Chameleon 2.0. But we have an interesting development...pretty much everything but SLE Kexts can be loaded onto the USB stick! You can still install Chameleon 2.0 to the hard drive, but it also works as a bootloader from a USB stick.

So, let's say you buy a UD3P or ES2L, a USB audio stick, and a PCI Ethernet card - your Mkext bundle + customized Boot Plist can be tossed on the USB stick along with Chameleon 2.0 (EFI bootloader). Essentially this acts like an EFI-X chip - all the Hackintosh drivers + the bootloader are on the USB stick, with the hard drive being 100% clean. Absolutely bone-stock. Plus it supports all kinds of fun themes, which is great!

What do you guys think about that? Going back to the USB stick method, but this way you can keep your hard drive Hackintosh-software free?

 

[mosslack]

Originally posted by: mosslack

Originally posted by: Kaido

Originally posted by: mosslack

Originally posted by: Kaido

Originally posted by: mosslack
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16814125095

Nice! I'll start recommending this for the low-end builds since the 7300GT has all but disappeared off the face of the earth

Yep, the 7200 was gone for awhile, but NewEgg restocked and now they seem to plentiful once again. Oh BTW, for anyone interested I now have the Neutrino setup to dual boot (Vista x32 and Leopard) off the single HD and it works quite well using EasyBCD. Keep on hackin'...

Nice! Care to share an updated Mini Tutorial with the rest of the class?

No problem, but it's a little long for this thread. Peter Haas is mostly responsible for getting the Neutrino working under OS X so I can combine his guide with mine for dual booting and post a link here a bit later.

As promised, here is the link to the combined guide for the Neutrino. BTW, Kudos to Kaido for the Wind kit mentioned in this guide. It is from his tutorial on the Wiki.

http://groups.google.com/group/hq-a/files

The file is named Neutrino combined guide

 

[oso2k]

Is the new tutorial gonna showcase a board that supports 16GB?

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: mosslack
As promised, here is the link to the combined guide for the Neutrino. BTW, Kudos to Kaido for the Wind kit mentioned in this guide. It is from his tutorial on the Wiki.

http://groups.google.com/group/hq-a/files

The file is named Neutrino combined guide

Nice, thanks! Good job!

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: oso2k
Is the new tutorial gonna showcase a board that supports 16GB?

The UD3P supports 16gb (several working kits already available). It's hideously expensive though :Q

Edit: You'd be better off waiting for 10.5.7 + native Core i7 support, since a 12GB DDR3 kit is cheaper than a 16G DDR2 kit by like $200, plus you can upgrade to 24GB later on when kits become available.

 

[DarkAmeba]

Originally posted by: Kaido

Originally posted by: mosslack
No problem, but it's a little long for this thread. Peter Haas is mostly responsible for getting the Neutrino working under OS X so I can combine his guide with mine for dual booting and post a link here a bit later.

I'll be posting the new thread this month, so if you want to add it there that'd be great!

So I'm pondering the future...right now the upgrade path is Chameleon 2.0. But we have an interesting development...pretty much everything but SLE Kexts can be loaded onto the USB stick! You can still install Chameleon 2.0 to the hard drive, but it also works as a bootloader from a USB stick.

So, let's say you buy a UD3P or ES2L, a USB audio stick, and a PCI Ethernet card - your Mkext bundle + customized Boot Plist can be tossed on the USB stick along with Chameleon 2.0 (EFI bootloader). Essentially this acts like an EFI-X chip - all the Hackintosh drivers + the bootloader are on the USB stick, with the hard drive being 100% clean. Absolutely bone-stock. Plus it supports all kinds of fun themes, which is great!

What do you guys think about that? Going back to the USB stick method, but this way you can keep your hard drive Hackintosh-software free?

Sounds great to me!!!! Good use for my crappy old 512mb drives!

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: DarkAmeba

Originally posted by: Kaido

Originally posted by: mosslack
No problem, but it's a little long for this thread. Peter Haas is mostly responsible for getting the Neutrino working under OS X so I can combine his guide with mine for dual booting and post a link here a bit later.

I'll be posting the new thread this month, so if you want to add it there that'd be great!

So I'm pondering the future...right now the upgrade path is Chameleon 2.0. But we have an interesting development...pretty much everything but SLE Kexts can be loaded onto the USB stick! You can still install Chameleon 2.0 to the hard drive, but it also works as a bootloader from a USB stick.

So, let's say you buy a UD3P or ES2L, a USB audio stick, and a PCI Ethernet card - your Mkext bundle + customized Boot Plist can be tossed on the USB stick along with Chameleon 2.0 (EFI bootloader). Essentially this acts like an EFI-X chip - all the Hackintosh drivers + the bootloader are on the USB stick, with the hard drive being 100% clean. Absolutely bone-stock. Plus it supports all kinds of fun themes, which is great!

What do you guys think about that? Going back to the USB stick method, but this way you can keep your hard drive Hackintosh-software free?

Sounds great to me!!!! Good use for my crappy old 512mb drives!

I'll post a mini-guide later once I've got it all figured out, if you want to try it out. Basically you'll need Mkext-only equipment, so you'll need a PCI Ethernet card (that doesn't use the R1000.kext, which is SLE-only) and I would suggest getting USB audio (at least for the DS3L, which uses a hard drive-based patch). That all the drivers are either plug-and-play, or in the Mkext file, which we can load from the USB drive.

The only thing that really irks me about the USB drive is that I haven't found a way to prevent it from mounting at boot, so the icon shows up on the desktop. I gave it a nice name and a pretty icon, but still...just a tiny tiny tiny bit annoying lol

 

[mosslack]

Originally posted by: Kaido

Originally posted by: mosslack
No problem, but it's a little long for this thread. Peter Haas is mostly responsible for getting the Neutrino working under OS X so I can combine his guide with mine for dual booting and post a link here a bit later.

I'll be posting the new thread this month, so if you want to add it there that'd be great!

So I'm pondering the future...right now the upgrade path is Chameleon 2.0. But we have an interesting development...pretty much everything but SLE Kexts can be loaded onto the USB stick! You can still install Chameleon 2.0 to the hard drive, but it also works as a bootloader from a USB stick.

So, let's say you buy a UD3P or ES2L, a USB audio stick, and a PCI Ethernet card - your Mkext bundle + customized Boot Plist can be tossed on the USB stick along with Chameleon 2.0 (EFI bootloader). Essentially this acts like an EFI-X chip - all the Hackintosh drivers + the bootloader are on the USB stick, with the hard drive being 100% clean. Absolutely bone-stock. Plus it supports all kinds of fun themes, which is great!

What do you guys think about that? Going back to the USB stick method, but this way you can keep your hard drive Hackintosh-software free?

I'm not sure that Chameleon 2.0 is ready for prime time. Since using it a bit I've found several instances where it doesn't work, the Neutrino for one. However having it on the USB stick might make the difference, I'll try it with that and see how it works. I can tell you it doesn't work to boot an OS X install on a 16 Gb stick. Of course having that actual install on a HD might make a difference there. Worth looking into.

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: mosslack

Originally posted by: Kaido

Originally posted by: mosslack
No problem, but it's a little long for this thread. Peter Haas is mostly responsible for getting the Neutrino working under OS X so I can combine his guide with mine for dual booting and post a link here a bit later.

I'll be posting the new thread this month, so if you want to add it there that'd be great!

So I'm pondering the future...right now the upgrade path is Chameleon 2.0. But we have an interesting development...pretty much everything but SLE Kexts can be loaded onto the USB stick! You can still install Chameleon 2.0 to the hard drive, but it also works as a bootloader from a USB stick.

So, let's say you buy a UD3P or ES2L, a USB audio stick, and a PCI Ethernet card - your Mkext bundle + customized Boot Plist can be tossed on the USB stick along with Chameleon 2.0 (EFI bootloader). Essentially this acts like an EFI-X chip - all the Hackintosh drivers + the bootloader are on the USB stick, with the hard drive being 100% clean. Absolutely bone-stock. Plus it supports all kinds of fun themes, which is great!

What do you guys think about that? Going back to the USB stick method, but this way you can keep your hard drive Hackintosh-software free?

I'm not sure that Chameleon 2.0 is ready for prime time. Since using it a bit I've found several instances where it doesn't work, the Neutrino for one. However having it on the USB stick might make the difference, I'll try it with that and see how it works. I can tell you it doesn't work to boot an OS X install on a 16 Gb stick. Of course having that actual install on a HD might make a difference there. Worth looking into.

Hmm, good to know - I was thinking about ordering a 16gb USB stick (~8gb for a Leopard ISO + a partition for Chameleon 2 - easy restore/install if needed).

Yeah I don't really want to release anything guide-worthy until it's out of beta, but it sure is fun to tinker with

 

[mosslack]

Originally posted by: Kaido

Originally posted by: mosslack

Originally posted by: Kaido

Originally posted by: mosslack
No problem, but it's a little long for this thread. Peter Haas is mostly responsible for getting the Neutrino working under OS X so I can combine his guide with mine for dual booting and post a link here a bit later.

I'll be posting the new thread this month, so if you want to add it there that'd be great!

So I'm pondering the future...right now the upgrade path is Chameleon 2.0. But we have an interesting development...pretty much everything but SLE Kexts can be loaded onto the USB stick! You can still install Chameleon 2.0 to the hard drive, but it also works as a bootloader from a USB stick.

So, let's say you buy a UD3P or ES2L, a USB audio stick, and a PCI Ethernet card - your Mkext bundle + customized Boot Plist can be tossed on the USB stick along with Chameleon 2.0 (EFI bootloader). Essentially this acts like an EFI-X chip - all the Hackintosh drivers + the bootloader are on the USB stick, with the hard drive being 100% clean. Absolutely bone-stock. Plus it supports all kinds of fun themes, which is great!

What do you guys think about that? Going back to the USB stick method, but this way you can keep your hard drive Hackintosh-software free?

I'm not sure that Chameleon 2.0 is ready for prime time. Since using it a bit I've found several instances where it doesn't work, the Neutrino for one. However having it on the USB stick might make the difference, I'll try it with that and see how it works. I can tell you it doesn't work to boot an OS X install on a 16 Gb stick. Of course having that actual install on a HD might make a difference there. Worth looking into.

Hmm, good to know - I was thinking about ordering a 16gb USB stick (~8gb for a Leopard ISO + a partition for Chameleon 2 - easy restore/install if needed).

Yeah I don't really want to release anything guide-worthy until it's out of beta, but it sure is fun to tinker with

Yeah, it's gonna be a killer when it's good to go, if I have some free time I will do some more testing with the 16 Gb stick. I really wanted a bootable stick with an image of the install DVD on it, but never could get it to work. I'm sure there is a way to do it, but apparently I'm not smart enough to figure it out.

I know you know what I'm talking about, but time is my problem, never enough of it.

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: mosslack
Yeah, it's gonna be a killer when it's good to go, if I have some free time I will do some more testing with the 16 Gb stick. I really wanted a bootable stick with an image of the install DVD on it, but never could get it to work. I'm sure there is a way to do it, but apparently I'm not smart enough to figure it out.

I know you know what I'm talking about, but time is my problem, never enough of it.

Yeah that's the same idea I was going after...Newegg has 16gb sticks for like $30, so it's no-brainer to load the Chameleon bootloader, drivers, and a Leopard ISO onboard (using partitions, with the restore feature). Super-easy reinstall anytime you want, especially since with Chameleon 2.0 keeps all the drivers on the USB stick, so you'd just do a pure-stock, vanilla retail Leopard install on your hard drive.

Yeah I hear you on low time...I get in snippets of time to post here and on Twitter, but I really need a few straight days off to get things wrapped up. Finals start Monday and end the 16th, I'll try to fit some guide work in between them

 

[mosslack]

Originally posted by: Kaido

Originally posted by: mosslack
Yeah, it's gonna be a killer when it's good to go, if I have some free time I will do some more testing with the 16 Gb stick. I really wanted a bootable stick with an image of the install DVD on it, but never could get it to work. I'm sure there is a way to do it, but apparently I'm not smart enough to figure it out.

I know you know what I'm talking about, but time is my problem, never enough of it.

Yeah that's the same idea I was going after...Newegg has 16gb sticks for like $30, so it's no-brainer to load the Chameleon bootloader, drivers, and a Leopard ISO onboard (using partitions, with the restore feature). Super-easy reinstall anytime you want, especially since with Chameleon 2.0 keeps all the drivers on the USB stick, so you'd just do a pure-stock, vanilla retail Leopard install on your hard drive.

Yeah I hear you on low time...I get in snippets of time to post here and on Twitter, but I really need a few straight days off to get things wrapped up. Finals start Monday and end the 16th, I'll try to fit some guide work in between them

I was all ready to give it a go so I bought mine at Walmart and paid about $45 for a SanDisk Cruzer micro. I thought I had it figured out at one time, but then got the dreaded you need to restart message. I even tried using the boot 132 to do the actual boot and put the install on a partition on the stick, wouldn't boot that way either. There has to be a way though.