The Hackintosh Thread

[Kaido]

Protip: Keep a backup copy of all the software on your USB boot/install stick.

My 32gb just, ah, died

 

[mosslack]

Sorry to hear that. Hope you did have a backup. My 32 Gb flash drive is so slow I rarely use it these days as I have 3 much faster 16 Gb models.

 

[Kaido]

Sorry to hear that. Hope you did have a backup. My 32 Gb flash drive is so slow I rarely use it these days as I have 3 much faster 16 Gb models.

Yeah, it's just a small pain because you have to spend 30 minutes restoring Tonymac again, then another 20 minutes copying over tools (MAS ML, Master Image, and all the misc items). Plus I don't keep high-speed 32-gig sticks lying around, so I'll have to order another one. iirc this particular 32gb stick had made it through the washer within recent weeks, so it was probably only a matter of time before it croaked

Lifehacker has a good recommendation on a drive speedy drive, the Sandisk Extreme 32gb for $45:

http://lifehacker.com/the-sandisk-extreme-is-the-fastest-affordable-flash-dri-707359862

Unfortunately my other keyring 32gb stick is non-bootable, so I'll have to wait for the new stick to arrive before playing much more

 

[Kaido]

Found a nice app for testing LAN speeds:

http://www.helios.de/viewart.html?id=694-de

HELIOS LanTest - page is in German, but software is in English. Good luck downloading it, they don't make it easy There are many variables in LAN testing (target drive speed, network layout, traffic congestion, etc.), but it will at least give you a good idea if your speeds are up to par and if the connection is steady. I tested this one on another desktop with a slower mechanical drive via a shared folder with read/write access, still got in the 400mbps+ range:

http://i.imgur.com/n1hHLPA.png

 

[vailr]

Lifehacker has a good recommendation on a drive speedy drive, the Sandisk Extreme 32gb for $45:

http://lifehacker.com/the-sandisk-extreme-is-the-fastest-affordable-flash-dri-707359862

This one for $23.99 is speedy enough:
Mushkin Enhanced Ventura Plus 32GB USB 3.0 Ultra High Speed Flash Drive Model MKNUFDVS32GB
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820226367

 

[Kaido]

This one for $23.99:
Mushkin Enhanced Ventura Plus 32GB USB 3.0 Ultra High Speed Flash Drive Model MKNUFDVS32GB
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820226367

Yah, those are good, I have my retail 10.8.4 OSX installer on one of those :thumbsup:

I keep one for installing on Macs (DMG restored to USB via Disk Utility), one for Hackintosh desktops (Tonymac 10.8 checkbox), and one for Hackintosh laptops (Tonymac 10.8 + Laptop checkboxes). Plus another for Windows 7 64-bit Pro Retail Although now I'm testing my shiny new ISOstick, so I'm excited about that! I use an 8gb for Mac and an 8gb for the Tonymac Laptop stick, and then my 32gb for the Tonymac Desktop stick because that's the one I use the most & throw all my tools on.

 

[Kaido]

A really nice HTPC build with the D3P on Tonymac:

http://www.tonymacx86.com/user-buil...-ga-b75m-d3p-8gb-ram-hd-4000-os-x-10-8-a.html

 

[Shephard]

I don't know what is wrong with those people at Tonymac, but any mention of a nvidia chipset and you will be banned. Nvidia must have threatened to sue them.

 

[Kaido]

I don't know what is wrong with those people at Tonymac, but any mention of a nvidia chipset and you will be banned. Nvidia must have threatened to sue them.

They have some...interesting rules over there. Turns a lot of people off - a lot of friends have been banned from there. You really have to tiptoe around in your posts on their forums. I think mostly it stems from walking the line very carefully - they try to avoid anything that would get them in trouble, like pre-packaged ISO installers, developer previews (like of Mavericks), and so on. I mean really, the whole thing is a sham - you're building a Hackintosh when Apple's EULA expressly says not to - but there's a lot of gray area that hasn't been dealt with legally yet, so I understand where they are coming from.

On the flip side, they have a dedicated team there with regular updates, so it's worth the hassle imo. A lot of people don't like their "beast" system, but to me, that's been the whole point of Hackintosh all along - making it as easy as possible to get OSX running on non-Apple hardware so you could customize your Mac to your personal preferences. Aside from building a motherboard auto-detection system (similar to what EFI-X did), I don't think it could get much easier than Unibeast + Multibeast! It sure is nice to be able to throw together an OSx86 box on a weekend and not need a degree in Hackintosh to make it work :thumbsup:

 

[Zaap]

I mean really, the whole thing is a sham - you're building a Hackintosh when Apple's EULA expressly says not to -

That's not a law, that's a corporate edict. Punishable by... no right to customer service and support. Whoopidy. Samsung's EULA says I have to stand on my head and wear purple socks when I fire up one of their products, but I ignore that one too.

Meanwhile- software piracy and copyright infringement actually are illegal, which is exactly why TM bans discussion of those things. They're smart to do so.

 

[vailr]

Motherboard + Haswell CPU combo deal:
http://promotions.newegg.com/combo/13-2928/index.html
Example:
Intel Core i5-4670K + GIGABYTE GA-Z87X-UD4H for $349.98, less $10 credit towards a future Newegg purchase.
Offers expire 7/14/2013 at 11:59PM PDT.

 

[Zaap]

Meanwhile, as much as I love me some Hackintosh, I've gone over to the dark side lately! Check out my stable.

Well, the 13" MBA is my wife's but I'm the owner of a brand new retina MacBook Pro 15". I had no choice but to buy it per diem for a freelance editing gig I'm doing, so no, there was no waiting around for when-the-hell-ever Haswell rMBP's arrive.

The screen is outrageously good. I look at other displays now and my eyes hurt they look so blurry in comparison. A lot else about it: the non- upgradeability and purposefully baked-in obsolescence I hate. Still, it's a hell of a machine.

I ended up selling my ProBook 4530s Hackintosh to a friend. I miss it for all the fun tinkering I got to do with it: adding dual SSDs, upgrading the screen to 1080p and I was planning an i7 upgrade. My friend will carry on running Mountain Lion on it though, it runs it just as well as my legit Macs do.

My next major Hackintosh project will be upgrading my desktop Hack to a Haswell build as soon as TonyMac has a recommended build and there's full Haswell support. I may have gone over the the darkside for laptops, but not likely ever my desktop.

 

[mosslack]

That's not a law, that's a corporate edict. Punishable by... no right to customer service and support. Whoopidy. Samsung's EULA says I have to stand on my head and wear purple socks when I fire up one of their products, but I ignore that one too.

Meanwhile- software piracy and copyright infringement actually are illegal, which is exactly why TM bans discussion of those things. They're smart to do so.

Funny. As far as TM goes, best course of action if you go to their forum for answers is be polite. They may get snippy with you, but just remain calm and stay the course. The line, Thank you sir, may I have another? comes to mind.

I very rarely post on their forum, but I do use their tools.

 

[Kaido]

Tonymac's July 2013 Buying Guide:

http://www.tonymacx86.com/371-building-customac-buyer-s-guide-july-2013.html

Although apparently it hasn't really been updated, since it's still listing boards like the D3P, which have been discontinued

My personal preference for SSD's right now is Mushkin SATA-III drives: (good price, great performance, lowest failure rate of any of SSD brand I've used to date)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...ame=SATA%20III

My current choice for a case is the Antec VSK3000: ($29 mATX)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811129186

It's a cheap case both price-wise and build-wise, but it looks nice (looks better in person than in pictures actually), it's small, and it's easy to assemble. It will dent easily if you don't take care of it, but if you build it & leave it on/under your desk, it's a great little case. I've built 5 or 10 machines with it so far with great results. It also has a 3.5" bay for doing a built-in card reader.

Also, only Nvidia cards are listed in the Tonymac buying guide. I've been using FCPX the most lately and have had the bests performance from, surprisingly, ATI (AMD) cards. Right now I'm using an XFX 1GB ATI 6870 with great results. Although mostly discontinued, it is natively supported (no drivers or special system flags required) and does well in CINEBENCH, and really seems to churn through FCPX well. I'm not sure what the replacement would be, but it's a nice card to go with if you can find one!

 

[mosslack]

Speaking of ATI/AMD cards, I did my first ever build using one over the course of the last couple of days. It involves my first ever Hackintosh, a GA-945GCMX-S2 system which had been down for some time due to using it's parts for other systems. I finally managed to scrounge some RAM and bought a new CPU cooler for it, but the only video card I could come up with was a Radeon HD 5450 with 512 Mb RAM.

I had bought this card a year ago on a whim and had actually tried it in this very system before. At the time, I think I didn't set the BIOS up correctly as I could not get it to display even the BIOS screen. This time I set the BIOS properly and it worked.

I used the myHack installer to install Lion on the first partition and Mountain Lion on the second partition. Using -x -v I was able to install both, but could not get past the initial install.

Long story short, I now have Lion fully updated and working just fine and ML is working and updated, but I still don't have QE/CI. TIme to scour the net in search of answers.

 

[Zaap]

mosslack, did you try this: http://www.osx86.net/view/3043-ati_radeon_hd5450_with_full_qe-ci_support.html

And Kaido, have you checked all the ports on your 6870 with multiple monitors?

I'm very happy with the performance of my 6870 card, but it requires a custom ATIConfig setup in my boot.plist in order for all the ports (dual DVI, HDMI and display port) to work properly.

Also, I run into white-screen problems when installing Mountain Lion from scratch. (I have to do a work-around that's not a big deal, still I could do without it.)

I'd gladly ditch my 6870 for an nVidia GTX670 or GTX680 in a heartbeat. (Of course those cards cost 4x and 5x as much.)

 

[mosslack]

mosslack, did you try this: http://www.osx86.net/view/3043-ati_radeon_hd5450_with_full_qe-ci_support.html

Thanks, I will check it out. I was told by someone on HQ-A that the kext cocktail from this page would provide full res and QE/CI in 10.8.4:

http://www.osx86.net/view/3911-ati_hd_5450.html

10.7 worked fine by just adding the ATI5000Injector.kext to /E/E and setting graphics enabler to No.

 

[Kaido]

mosslack, did you try this: http://www.osx86.net/view/3043-ati_radeon_hd5450_with_full_qe-ci_support.html

And Kaido, have you checked all the ports on your 6870 with multiple monitors?

I'm very happy with the performance of my 6870 card, but it requires a custom ATIConfig setup in my boot.plist in order for all the ports (dual DVI, HDMI and display port) to work properly.

Also, I run into white-screen problems when installing Mountain Lion from scratch. (I have to do a work-around that's not a big deal, still I could do without it.)

I'd gladly ditch my 6870 for an nVidia GTX670 or GTX680 in a heartbeat. (Of course those cards cost 4x and 5x as much.)

I think I only tested up to 2. Did you get all 4 working at once??

For the white-screen install issue, I just hit the power button, wait a few seconds, and hit it again. It cycles it out. The weird thing is, pre-10.8.4, I didn't have that issue at all. Strange.

 

[mosslack]

Thanks, I will check it out. I was told by someone on HQ-A that the kext cocktail from this page would provide full res and QE/CI in 10.8.4:

http://www.osx86.net/view/3911-ati_hd_5450.html

10.7 worked fine by just adding the ATI5000Injector.kext to /E/E and setting graphics enabler to No.

Turns out it was as simple as adding the device/vendor id into the info.plist file as outlined here:

http://www.tonymacx86.com/graphics/62363-amd-radeon-hd5450-qe-ci-mountain-lion.html

I now have full resolution with QE/CI and it looks and works great!

 

[Zaap]

I think I only tested up to 2. Did you get all 4 working at once??

I've only tested 3 monitors at once (DVI, HDMI and display port.) Without the ATI frame buffer flag, only one output at a time works properly, and only via one DVI port. Without the frame buffer, display port doesn't work at all.

I basically tried framebuffer personalities for ATI 6xxx cards from this thread:
http://legacy.tonymacx86.com/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=46392

Until I found the right combo for my card. Basically, this:

<key>AtiConfig</key>
<string>Bulrushes</string>
<key>AtiPorts</key>
<string>4</string>

But this is exactly the sort of thing that's the reason this is likely my last-ever ATI card.

Meanwhile, the last systems I've built for others using GTX670 and 680 cards- everything worked perfect OOB, and icing on the cake is CUDA support.

I now have full resolution with QE/CI and it looks and works great!

Nice! Glad you got it working.

 

[mobilelover]

Waiting for the new mac Pro

 

[Kaido]

I've only tested 3 monitors at once (DVI, HDMI and display port.) Without the ATI frame buffer flag, only one output at a time works properly, and only via one DVI port. Without the frame buffer, display port doesn't work at all.

I've got a pair of 1GB XFX 6870's, one per Hackintosh right now. One is on HDMI, the other is on DVI. iirc I got two ports working (HDMI + DVI at the same time), but it's been so long I don't remember exactly. I still hate using dual monitors, even for video editing

 

[TheStu]

I've got a pair of 1GB XFX 6870's, one per Hackintosh right now. One is on HDMI, the other is on DVI. iirc I got two ports working (HDMI + DVI at the same time), but it's been so long I don't remember exactly. I still hate using dual monitors, even for video editing

My beef with dual monitors is that the sort of default set-up is to have them side by side, and I've never been crazy about that. At my old office, I had them mounted vertically, and I found that it worked a lot better. Since they were also different sizes, it allowed me to use them more discretely.

 

[Zaap]

I still hate using dual monitors, even for video editing

I'm the opposite- I haven't worked with a single monitor desktop system since the early 1990's, either at home or at work. I prefer no more than 2 though. (These days I keep a 10" tablet at my desk also for storyboards and scripts in pdf.)

Also, when editing with other people (directors, producers, co-editors etc.) it's crucial to have an easy way someone else can easily see the material. Everyone trying to squint over your shoulder at a single monitor would be a PITA.

Plus I just could never give up the space.

About the closest I could come to a single monitor system is one of these ultra-wide screen monitors: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16824005396

It still wouldn't beat just having 2 nice big monitors on the desk for me.

 

[mosslack]

Some of you may remember the bad times I've had with this system in the past. It finally got so bad I took the system apart and put the pieces back on the shelf. At the time, I was able to get Lion up and running, but problems with the ethernet driver and other things kept the system from functioning the way it should.

Recent events here at home have prompted me to put as many systems back together in running order for storage as I could. I've been told I'm gaining that packrat mentality of old again. LOL So, one by one I have been putting them all back together, ready to be put where they will be stored, hopefully a place where I am able to get to any one of them easily.

Naturally I saved the H55N-USB3 for last and during the last couple of days I have been working hard to figure out where I went wrong the first time. To that end, I am happy to report that this system is now fully functional and triple boots Lion, Mountain Lion and Windows 7. This includes USB 3 function in both Windows and OS X.

I won't go into details, but suffice to say the most difficult part was the initial install of Lion and then Mountain Lion on this system. Subsequent setup using MultiBeast was a breeze. Of course a lot more information is now available for this system which made my search easier. Thank goodness for Google!

EDIT: I believe I found the source for most of the problems with this system after I discovered it was running at 105° C! You can read that story here:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/155q_E9Lpmga8JTx1TseESyVIkXZHu0ameC57DK1l1GU/edit?pli=1