The Hackintosh 101 Thread

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: Zaap
Kaido and others,
What's your take on the recent news that Apple is finally suing Psystar?

Boy is that a loaded question! I have mixed feelings on the subject. On one hand, Pystar has really spread the word about the availability of Hackintosh systems. With more people comes more development. They have even released a better Ethernet driver for the Realtek R1000. On the other hand, they have also brought the smack down from Apple, who previously tolerated the quiet Hackintosh community. No one was making waves before, no one was selling a product before. Apple mostly ignored us. My concern with the publicity and lawsuit is that Apple will make it much more difficult for us to run Leopard on non-Apple x86 systems.

I am hoping, like you, that this will force Apple's hand in the mid-range market. I would LOVE to see a PowerCube v2 that supports multiple drives and interchangable, upgradble video cards. Game developers are just itching to get into the Mac gaming market, but Mac's gaming offerings stink - you can't play high-end 3D games on the Mini (starting at $599) because of the integrated graphics, so you'll need at least an iMac. And if you want a serious gaming card, you'll need a Mac Pro ($2800 + good video card). The 13" Macbook is the same as the Mini as far as integrated graphics go, so you have to spend at least $2000 for the 15" MacBook Pro. In other words, gaming is horrendously expensive for Mac users.

Not only that, but a lot of people are getting into digital photos and videos, especially HD videos. Personally I don't want an iMac - there's only room for one drive and I like having my own (single) LCD monitor! A Shuttle-sized Mac would be perfect - you could have a full-sized DVD drive, a boot drive, a scratch drive, and an internal Time Machine drive, along with your own monitor. That would definitely boost Apple's external LCD sales too! Also like you mentioned, if Apple released something like this, it would pretty much destroy Hackintosh sales...you could get a real Mac for a few hundred more with quality hardware and 100% compatibility.

The problem with Apple is Steve Jobs. He's a wonderful marketing machine, but he also rules the roost with his ego. Apple could be #1 if Steve Jobs decided that Mac computers didn't have to be priced in the "elite" category. Imagine this...

$299 Mac Mini (combo drive)
$399 Mac Mini (super drive, plus keyboard/mouse)
$699 Cube 2 (Shuttle-style) "Mac Pro Lite"
$799 MacBook Air
$999 MacBook
$1499 MacBook Pro

The Mac Mini could be an inexpensive entry-level Mac that is as affordable as a Dell. The Shuttle-style computer would run $700, the same as a nice Gateway for gaming and video editing. The MacBook Air would be the "laptop for the masses" - Internet, Email, Word Processing - easy to carry and inexpensive. The next step up would be the 13" MacBook, which supports 4 gigs of RAM, hard drives up to 500-gigs, Firewire for video editing, and a built-in DVD drive. Then there's the 15" MacBook Pro, which might even be better priced at $1299 or $1399. Seriously - your average college student doesn't want to drop two grand just for a 15" notebook (or a hundred or two less with the student discount).

Can you imagine if Apple did this? They'd jump from #3 to #1 in a heartbeat! People would even buy Macs just to run Windows on them using Boot Camp! For $300 - $400, every mom would have a Mac Mini as her kitchen PC. EVERYONE would have a MacBook Air. Gaming Shuttle-style Macs and 15" laptops would be affordable. I'd also like to see a Drobo-style RAID NAS for Time Machine backups and an iTunes server.

Anyway, I'm curious to see what will happen with Apple and the Hackintosh scene. Software is extremely difficult to make unhackable (read: near-impossible); the iPhone 2.0 software is already jailbroken and Snow Leopard 10.6 has already been cracked to run on standard x86 hardware, so we're good for at least the next 6 months! But yeah, I do hope this points Apple in the right direction as far as a mid-level desktop goes.

 

[tornadog]

I got everything working of the bat except usb hotplugging. When I plug in a usb flash drive, it does not recognize it till I reboot. I saw a stickie on insanelymac with a fix but that didnt work for me. Anybody has some suggestions?

I played my first few games on the mac(Empires at War and Warcraft 3) and both worked without issues.

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: tornadog
I got everything working of the bat except usb hotplugging. When I plug in a usb flash drive, it does not recognize it till I reboot. I saw a stickie on insanelymac with a fix but that didnt work for me. Anybody has some suggestions?

I played my first few games on the mac(Empires at War and Warcraft 3) and both worked without issues.

What is your hardware and software setup?

 

[tornadog]

e2160 on gigabyte ga-p35 d3sl rev 2.0 mohterboard and msi 8400gs videocard, onboard sound and lan running kalyway osx 10.5.2

 

[Zaap]

Originally posted by: Kaido
The problem with Apple is Steve Jobs. He's a wonderful marketing machine, but he also rules the roost with his ego. Apple could be #1 if Steve Jobs decided that Mac computers didn't have to be priced in the "elite" category. Imagine this...

$299 Mac Mini (combo drive)
$399 Mac Mini (super drive, plus keyboard/mouse)
$699 Cube 2 (Shuttle-style) "Mac Pro Lite"
$799 MacBook Air
$999 MacBook
$1499 MacBook Pro

The Mac Mini could be an inexpensive entry-level Mac that is as affordable as a Dell. The Shuttle-style computer would run $700, the same as a nice Gateway for gaming and video editing. The MacBook Air would be the "laptop for the masses" - Internet, Email, Word Processing - easy to carry and inexpensive. The next step up would be the 13" MacBook, which supports 4 gigs of RAM, hard drives up to 500-gigs, Firewire for video editing, and a built-in DVD drive. Then there's the 15" MacBook Pro, which might even be better priced at $1299 or $1399. Seriously - your average college student doesn't want to drop two grand just for a 15" notebook (or a hundred or two less with the student discount).

Can you imagine if Apple did this? They'd jump from #3 to #1 in a heartbeat! People would even buy Macs just to run Windows on them using Boot Camp! For $300 - $400, every mom would have a Mac Mini as her kitchen PC. EVERYONE would have a MacBook Air. Gaming Shuttle-style Macs and 15" laptops would be affordable. I'd also like to see a Drobo-style RAID NAS for Time Machine backups and an iTunes server.

I think you hit the nail on the head! A lot of food for thought!

If Apple did this, the Mac market would go ballistic, like you say. If the $699 Cube 2 actually featured just a few common features of other modern era desktop computers: upgradeable socket 775 processor so you could drop in anything from the standard Core2Duo to a full on Quad Core Extreme, decent amount of RAM, a much-expanded range of (standard!) video cards, and full sized hard drives, it'd kill most any need for a Hackintosh as you could finally get a realistic mid-range from Apple. It's not like that's such a far-fetched idea, Apple made PowerMac mid-range computers for years.

And you're right, just about everybody would be all over a $799 MacBook Air. Personally, I'd love a design that wasn't so crazy-thin, and just more functional and cost-effective so it could actually be $799, which in the real world outside MacLand isn't by any means unreasonable.

There have been several times in the past when I felt Apple wasn't being realistic for the times, and then BAM! they surprised me by dropping the old and going for newer/better. IE: the move from G5 to Intel being the best example. Right now, I personally think they're missing the boat on a HUGE mid-range market that's not comp illiterate enough to want weak, anemic limited designs, but something a bit more modern, yet isn't ready to throw down boatloads of cash for a decently spec'd MacPro. But maybe they'll turn around and surprise me and come out with a mid-range solution (which as you've outlined would require the "low-end" be priced as exactly that) and blast the doors off the barn once again.

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: Zaap
I think you hit the nail on the head! A lot of food for thought!

If Apple did this, the Mac market would go ballistic, like you say. If the $699 Cube 2 actually featured just a few common features of other modern era desktop computers: upgradeable socket 775 processor so you could drop in anything from the standard Core2Duo to a full on Quad Core Extreme, decent amount of RAM, a much-expanded range of (standard!) video cards, and full sized hard drives, it'd kill most any need for a Hackintosh as you could finally get a realistic mid-range from Apple. It's not like that's such a far-fetched idea, Apple made PowerMac mid-range computers for years.

And you're right, just about everybody would be all over a $799 MacBook Air. Personally, I'd love a design that wasn't so crazy-thin, and just more functional and cost-effective so it could actually be $799, which in the real world outside MacLand isn't by any means unreasonable.

There have been several times in the past when I felt Apple wasn't being realistic for the times, and then BAM! they surprised me by dropping the old and going for newer/better. IE: the move from G5 to Intel being the best example. Right now, I personally think they're missing the boat on a HUGE mid-range market that's not comp illiterate enough to want weak, anemic limited designs, but something a bit more modern, yet isn't ready to throw down boatloads of cash for a decently spec'd MacPro. But maybe they'll turn around and surprise me and come out with a mid-range solution (which as you've outlined would require the "low-end" be priced as exactly that) and blast the doors off the barn once again.

They did it with the iPhone - from $600 to $199 within a year. Anyone with even a minimum-wage job can afford an iPhone now, if they really want it. Apple is poised to capture the marketplace...it's all about pricing. Sadly, there's no way they'd ever do it, haha.

Uncle Steve said some new products are headed our way...I'm curious as to what they are. I know he loved the Cube, so it's likely he IS bringing in a Mac Pro "Lite" kind of machine. The rumor mill has been saying there will be a gaming Mini for quite some time now...and now that Macs are more popular than ever, there are a lot more people who wants to play games on them. My guess is that they'll also bring out some new LCDs, possibly a new HD iSight, and some laptop refreshes (Count of Montecristo chip or whatever the heck it's called and a redesign on the Pro laptops, plus an LED screen in the 13" MacBook).

 

[fyleow]

..

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: fyleow

Originally posted by: Kaido
I'm running 10.5.4 with the latest updates and the Vanilla kernel on my Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L board and it runs real nice. I have Final Cut Pro, iLife, iMovie, Office 2008, and other apps all working extremely well. I'm quite happy with it :thumbsup:

How'd you do the .4 upgrade? There hasn't been one released by kalyway afaik

It works without patching. However, it installs a Vanilla kernel, which breaks Restart/Shutdown on the Gigabyte DS3L. The new guide has software to fix those things in the download package:

http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=112708

 

[KaOTiK]

Anyone know how well if at all an Intel S5000PSL motherboard works? Didn't see anything in the wiki and didn't come up with much at all googling.

Curious if anyone has tried or knows of someone that has. My MBP isn't cutting it for some Final Cut Pro work anymore, taking to long now so looking to throw osx on a partition just for that.

 

[Modelworks]

Everything worked fine for me except some of the usb ports. I kept getting overcurrent notices. Even though there was nothing plugged into the ports. Otherwise it worked great.

I wish apple could see the potential for OSX. Just drop the EFI bios requirement and let us x86 people install OSX without jumping through hoops. It is going to happen anyway. I would not even ask that they support the installations. Just do it as a 'your on your own' type thing.
They could start a whole new market.

xbench score was 172.4
Hardware that I used for the install.
Abit AB9Pro
4GB ram
E4500 cpu overclocked to 3.3Ghz
EVGA 8800gts 640MB video
Seagate 250GB SATA formatted just for mac.
Samsung DVDR burner SATA

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: Modelworks
I wish apple could see the potential for OSX. Just drop the EFI bios requirement and let us x86 people install OSX without jumping through hoops. It is going to happen anyway. I would not even ask that they support the installations. Just do it as a 'your on your own' type thing.
They could start a whole new market.

At the very least, I too am hoping that it will force Apple's hand in the mid-range market. We need inexpensive machines with built-in Time Machine backups...all these people buying HD camcorders with SD cards could really use something like that. I hope they bring back the Cube...I'm still rocking my G4 model

 

[scootermaster]

Originally posted by: Kaido

Originally posted by: Modelworks
I wish apple could see the potential for OSX. Just drop the EFI bios requirement and let us x86 people install OSX without jumping through hoops. It is going to happen anyway. I would not even ask that they support the installations. Just do it as a 'your on your own' type thing.
They could start a whole new market.

At the very least, I too am hoping that it will force Apple's hand in the mid-range market. We need inexpensive machines with built-in Time Machine backups...all these people buying HD camcorders with SD cards could really use something like that. I hope they bring back the Cube...I'm still rocking my G4 model

Nothing is going to force Apple's hand, much less something like Osx86.

C'mon guys, I've said it before and I'll say it again: Stevie isn't just doing this for shits and giggles. It's not like he wakes up in the morning and says "you know what? I know this could make me another three hundred million dollars, and expand Apple's market penetration by 15%, but I'm just really not into this whole mid-range market thing because I want idiots with messenger bags at coffee shops to feel special owning a Mac".

Steve knows what he's doing. The Apple board knows what it's doing. Trust me. And if you don't trust me, trust the share price. There is a very, very, VERY good reason Apple positions its products they way it does. This shit isn't linear; you can't just say "well, gee whiz, who wouldn't want one!?" and then watch the profits soar.

But the lawsuit has nothing to do with Hackintosh. Hackintosh will likely only ever be fought -- if even that -- on a software level; i.e. patches and updates that "break" them. Apple has better things to do than worry about hackintoshes. In fact, honestly, they have better things to do than worry about Pystar. It's more of a media "affrontery" that they're worried about than actual loss of revenue. Think about it: How much do Apple's lawyers cost? (Answer: Lots). How much are they to recover from Pystar (Answer: Nothing). How much revenue are they really losing from people who buy/bought one of those machines (Answer: Not much). They're just doing it so they can seem in control and not let such a blatant affrontery stand by unopposed.

Anyway, deep down, I'm sure you guys know all this shit, or maybe it just makes you feel better to pine away for something that's not likely to happen any time soon. But just don't sit there thinking that somehow because Steve doesn't do what you want him to do, he's somehow "missing out" and otherwise costing his shareholders money. Trust me, he's smarter than all of us. He knows what he's doing.

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: scootermaster
Steve knows what he's doing. The Apple board knows what it's doing. Trust me

...

Trust me, he's smarter than all of us. He knows what he's doing.

Reality Distortion Field Alert! ALERT! ALERT! ALERT! :Q

 

[Zaap]

Ahh RDF!

I dunno.

It seems that years ago, all these same arguments were made about IBM, which ironically, was trying to do exactly what Apple has succeeded in doing- have a hardware monopoly.

And of course they were smarter than everyone else too. Certainly that silly upstart company, heck, what was the name? Compaq or something like that? No body wants a clone, there's no market for them. Only genuine IBMs will sell. There was even some silly guy selling computer parts out of a dorm room somewhere with the nerve to think he could take on Big Blue. Feh. Dell, I think was the name. Nothing to worry about, everyone will always pay a premium for the IBM name, and the 'clones' won't even be making PCs in 2008...

...or the other way around.

 

[scootermaster]

Originally posted by: Zaap
Ahh RDF!

I dunno.

It seems that years ago, all these same arguments were made about IBM, which ironically, was trying to do exactly what Apple has succeeded in doing- have a hardware monopoly.

And of course they were smarter than everyone else too. Certainly that silly upstart company, heck, what was the name? Compaq or something like that? No body wants a clone, there's no market for them. Only genuine IBMs will sell. There was even some silly guy selling computer parts out of a dorm room somewhere with the nerve to think he could take on Big Blue. Feh. Dell, I think was the name. Nothing to worry about, everyone will always pay a premium for the IBM name, and the 'clones' won't even be making PCs in 2008...

...or the other way around.

The Apple sitch and the IBM sitch are so different I shouldn't have bothered wasting these twenty words mentioning it.

 

[Zaap]

... or however many the first go around.


I always find it interesting and related in a way when people dismiss the "a couple guys in a garage somewhere, taking on X giant know-it-all company whom they are beneath the notice of!"

Yet that's pretty much where so many truly radical and interesting computing developments we now take for granted has actually come from, including Apple's own origins.

By the way, I don't really disagree with you. Apple (not just the almighty Steve) does know what it's doing, and they aren't really hurting for profits. And of course, no they aren't really worried about anyone building Hackintoshes. (DIY consumers that is).

But I do believe they aren't capitalizing on a real market in the mid-range, but that is probably 100% by design also. It's not that it wouldn't be profitable, it's just something they aren't interested in perusing, and I can totally see why. Why mess with what works so well now, and is already insanely profitable?

Still, Apple always manages to surprise, and come out with something people weren't expecting, and it has proven it can radically switch course, even to the dismay of some of its more rabid fans, so who really knows?

 

[K6IIIFan]

Zaap,

I have a GA-G31M-S2L and could not find ALC662 drivers per your install instructions nor does there seem to be a fully working solution for the chip. Any thoughts?

 

[Zaap]

Whoops, sorry about that K6IIIFan.

If you installed from Leo4Allv3, and installed the extra apps, go to your applications folder and fire up InVisibles. (Otherwise you can download it). Click Visible on the dialogue. Put in the Leo4All DVD- now all files on the disk are visible. Navigate to System/Installation/Packages/Audio. Launch the AzaliaAudio.pkg, and it will install the drivers. Open InVisibles again, and click invisible to hide hidden files again. Repair permissions and restart.

Please keep me posted if this works for you.

I need to update my guide to merely check off the Azalia Audio drivers at initial install for that board. I believe the AppleHDA patcher should work too- I have to do some tests next time I build with that board.

 

[K6IIIFan]

Zaap,

Thank you for the quick response. I followed your instructions, but received a dialogue after the reboot saying the ktext was improperly installed and could not be used. Additionally, I installed the AppleDHA ktext included in your archive.zip.

Thing is, I checked all the audio drivers at initial install, so Azalia should have been in there, correct?

 

[Zaap]

Originally posted by: K6IIIFan
Zaap,

Thank you for the quick response. I followed your instructions, but received a dialogue after the reboot saying the ktext was improperly installed and could not be used. Additionally, I installed the AppleDHA ktext included in your archive.zip.

Try this- copy the Azalia kext out of the system folder, to your desktop. (Should be in System/Library/Extensions/) Delete it from the system folder- will require a password.

Use kexthelper to install the azalia kext- this will write the correct permissions.

Again, repair permissions with disk utility, and restart.

This is just a shortcut to setting the kext permissions with the terminal- (chmod, chown, root wheel and all that).

If it still doesn't work, try deleting the AppleHDA kext you installed, as it may conflict.

Thing is, I checked all the audio drivers at initial install, so Azalia should have been in there, correct?

This may have either created a conflict, or actually installed none of the audio drivers as sometimes the entire category checked just defaults to nothing. It's best to install only what's actually needed- not that it's your fault, since I left that step out.

Again, please let me know how things go.

 

[K6IIIFan]

Zapp,

Just did a re-install and checked only the Azalia driver... audio worked like a charm at first boot. Rocking a fully operational OSX 10.5.4 install! Thank you for your help!

 

[Zaap]

Awesome! Glad it worked for you!

 

[K6IIIFan]

Zapp,

Will boot camp work for a dual boot to XP, or do I have to use a more hackish solution?

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: K6IIIFan
Zapp,

Will boot camp work for a dual boot to XP, or do I have to use a more hackish solution?

Boot Camp won't work on a Hackintosh; check out the Genius Bar at Insanely Mac - there are plenty of dual-booting tutorials.

 

[Zaap]

What Kaido said.

I'd also add, check out the Multi Booting and Virtualisation forums at IM too.

For a quick and dirty dual boot, install OSX on one hard drive, and then add another for XP. (Un-attach or disconnect from power the OSX drive when you setup Windows, or make sure that the drive for Windows is set as the prefered boot drive in the BIOS- otherwise XP will treat the OSX drive as C: and write the bootloader to it, rather than its own drive.)

When you have a working XP install, re-connect the OSX drive. You can hit F12 at boot, and you should see a boot menu- most Gigabyte boards have this feature. From here, you can select which hard drive (or any other bootable device) to boot from- your original OSX, or XP.

Some things to keep in mind- XP won't see the OSX drive, and the Mac can only read but not write to an NTFS XP drive. (Personally, I like to keep the Mac from throwing ._ files all over my Windows drives anyway.) If you want to share files across both systems locally, create a DOS formatted partition as a shared drive, or install MacDrive/Paragon NTFS for direct cross-platform file access.

This is of course a the "unglamorous" way of dual booting, but it works fine, especially if you don't reboot into the other OS's all that often.

There are many different methods that are more polished, but require a bit of a guide beyond the scope of a mere post here.

You CAN have OSX and Windows boot off the same drive- it gets more complicated because once you install XP after OSX MBR install, the XP bootloader overwrites the MBR. The XP bootloader can't be made to boot OSX, so OSX seems to be 'lost'. You then need a third partition/install of Linux (easy from a LiveCD) to overwrite the MBR again with the GRUB bootloader, which can be easily made to boot all 3 OS's from a graphic panel at start up.

My own preferred method is to still keep OSX on its own drive, with a tiny 2nd partition or free space of just a few MB. I then tri-partition a second drive for Windows/Linux (PCLinuxOS, or Ubuntu) and a shared DOS volume. I install OSX, remove the drive, then install XP, then Linux, format the DOS shared partition, then put the OSX drive back. I boot into Linux, and format the tiny 2nd partition on the first drive to Linux ext3 format. I copy a small file found on the Leo4Allv3 disk called boot_v8 to that tiny Linux partition. I then edit the GRUB bootloader to point to that partition and boot_v8 file under a "OS X LEOPARD 10.5.4" heading. Of course, the bootloader will already have entries for Linux, and Windows XP. Whichever OS I prefer, I move to the top of the list to set as default, or set as default from Linux's control panel.

On boot, with the XP/Linux drive as the default boot drive, the GRUB menu is now able to boot all 3 OS's. In the event anything happens with the XP/Linux drive, OSX's drive is also still fully bootable on its own, since it was never touched.


Lastly, if you only need XP on occasion for light applications, Parallels works wonderfully. The convergence mode is truly a thing to behold, as XP or Vista apps will run 'transparently' right alongside OSX apps, and the OSes share drives and resources. I use it all the time for things like DVDshrink, PSPad, and a few other much-needed Windows apps that I don't want to bother rebooting fully into Windows to use.