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mthguy
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Going to give hackintosh a try...

Thu Jun 11, 2009 6:48 pm

alright, i have decided to take the plunge into the hackintosh world. from a little quick browsing i have found that my hardware seems to be fairly well supported. i am running:

Pentium E5200
Gigabyte EP45-DS3R
8GB DDR2
Sapphire HD 4850
WD Caviar Green 1TB

I have purchased a retail DVD of 10.5.6

I want to be prepared as possible when the time comes to install the software. I would like to use EFI to help avoid issues with updates and the like. i am a little bit concerned about weather i can get my ATi 4850 supported. if anyone can point me in the right directions for things to look out for to help make this work with a minimal amount of modification that may break when i update to 10.5.7 or later. I have a spare usb drive hanging around that i would be able to use as a permanent attachment to the back of my computer, i noticed something called EFI-X which doesn't seem to be much other than a USB drive. I have heard of people being able to boot directly from thier drive and having time-machine working. this would be optimal if at all possible. sleep would be nice, and SOUND is a must. I really appreciate your help. I just want to make it throught the install the first time with as few (unforeseen) problems as possible.
Mathematics is not a language, it’s an adventure. Most mathematics is done with a friend over a cup of coffee, with a
diagram scribbled on a napkin. As Gauss once remarked, “What we need are notions, not notations.”
 
derFunkenstein
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Re: Going to give hackintosh a try...

Thu Jun 11, 2009 7:17 pm

you just need the 10.5.7 update to get the drivers for your 4850, and you'll need to use OSX86Tools to write the EFI strings. You should be fine.

If you don't know what that second one is, check out the InsanelyMac.com forums.
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mthguy
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Re: Going to give hackintosh a try...

Thu Jun 11, 2009 7:25 pm

thanks, so would i want to write the EFi strings with windows before i start my install or could i install osx first?
Mathematics is not a language, it’s an adventure. Most mathematics is done with a friend over a cup of coffee, with a
diagram scribbled on a napkin. As Gauss once remarked, “What we need are notions, not notations.”
 
derFunkenstein
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Re: Going to give hackintosh a try...

Thu Jun 11, 2009 7:28 pm

You'll have to write them inside OS X. Be prepared to boot up with the -x flag the first time or three, until you get your strings written. With a Radeon 3850, I had to boot in safe mode or else I couldn't get to the desktop. But you'll use the OSX86Tools app within OS X to write EFI strings. The strings are written either to a custom com.apple.Boot.plist on your EFI partition, or in the System folder somewhere - that depends on your boot loader and whether or not it supports booting from the EFI partition.
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mthguy
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Re: Going to give hackintosh a try...

Thu Jun 11, 2009 7:46 pm

Is there a particular bootloader to look for that does support that?
Mathematics is not a language, it’s an adventure. Most mathematics is done with a friend over a cup of coffee, with a
diagram scribbled on a napkin. As Gauss once remarked, “What we need are notions, not notations.”
 
derFunkenstein
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Re: Going to give hackintosh a try...

Thu Jun 11, 2009 7:59 pm

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mthguy
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Re: Going to give hackintosh a try...

Thu Jun 11, 2009 8:09 pm

my 4850 has a VGA port a HDMI and a DVI, i use the DVi for my monitor, and i was wondering would my HDMI port be functional with the 10.5.7 support for my HDTV?
Mathematics is not a language, it’s an adventure. Most mathematics is done with a friend over a cup of coffee, with a
diagram scribbled on a napkin. As Gauss once remarked, “What we need are notions, not notations.”
 
derFunkenstein
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Re: Going to give hackintosh a try...

Thu Jun 11, 2009 9:07 pm

That I couldn't tell you - my 3850 doesn't have an HDMI port.
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mthguy
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Re: Going to give hackintosh a try...

Thu Jun 11, 2009 9:32 pm

Thanks a lot for all the help. I really appreciate the help, TR is my favorite tech site, and i am really glad i have gotten into the forums.

I will update this post with details once i finally take the dive. maybe turn this into a guide.

Again, thank you.
Mathematics is not a language, it’s an adventure. Most mathematics is done with a friend over a cup of coffee, with a
diagram scribbled on a napkin. As Gauss once remarked, “What we need are notions, not notations.”
 
mthguy
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Re: Going to give hackintosh a try...

Sun Jun 14, 2009 10:31 am

okay, so, from what i have gathered, i need to burn a boot-132 CD in order to get my leopard disk to initially boot so that i can use the disk utility to format my HDD to HFS+ in GUID to get my EFI partition. then i want to install leopard onto the formatted disk. switch the leopard DVd for Boot-132 Cd and then reboot then switch back to leopard DVD and boot into OSX. from here i write my EFI partition and add my Kexts to the EFI area so that when i install chameleon2RC1 i can use that to run all of my modifiers at boot. once that is done i simply reboot without any disk in the drive? is any/all of this right? am i going to run into any major issues using this?

Is it possible to do this without burning any CDs or DVDs, my burner just broke, so all i have is my DVD-ROM on IDE, will this work? or do i need to newegg a DVD+RW SATA drive? I have heard that the IDE bus isn't supported.

I have a 1GB USB flash drive, could i use that in place of the BOOT-132 CD? If so, how do you make a USB drive bootable?

As always any help is good help, and greatly appreciated.
Mathematics is not a language, it’s an adventure. Most mathematics is done with a friend over a cup of coffee, with a
diagram scribbled on a napkin. As Gauss once remarked, “What we need are notions, not notations.”
 
derFunkenstein
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Re: Going to give hackintosh a try...

Sun Jun 14, 2009 11:09 am

You MIGHT be able to create a Boot132 flash drive, but I've never tried. If you can't burn a disc, that's what I'd start looking for.
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Forge
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Re: Going to give hackintosh a try...

Sun Jun 14, 2009 1:19 pm

derFunkenstein wrote:
You MIGHT be able to create a Boot132 flash drive, but I've never tried. If you can't burn a disc, that's what I'd start looking for.


If you make a USB key with boot-132, it needs to also have the Leopard DVD copied onto it as well. It's a limitation of the way BIOS works, if you don't boot off a CD, it's not included in the list of BIOS-bootable drives.
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derFunkenstein
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Re: Going to give hackintosh a try...

Sun Jun 14, 2009 1:56 pm

Oh, so you'd need like an 8GB flash drive before it's even possible.

But if you have a hard drive in a USB enclosure, would it work the same way?
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Forge
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Re: Going to give hackintosh a try...

Mon Jun 15, 2009 2:34 am

derFunkenstein wrote:
Oh, so you'd need like an 8GB flash drive before it's even possible.

But if you have a hard drive in a USB enclosure, would it work the same way?

Yes.
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mthguy
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Re: Going to give hackintosh a try...

Mon Jun 15, 2009 8:46 am

So, if i rip the image of the leopard CD onto an external HDD connected via usb with a BOOT_132 partition then extracted the image as the only contents of the drive that might work?
Mathematics is not a language, it’s an adventure. Most mathematics is done with a friend over a cup of coffee, with a
diagram scribbled on a napkin. As Gauss once remarked, “What we need are notions, not notations.”
 
Forge
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Re: Going to give hackintosh a try...

Mon Jun 15, 2009 2:32 pm

mthguy wrote:
So, if i rip the image of the leopard CD onto an external HDD connected via usb with a BOOT_132 partition then extracted the image as the only contents of the drive that might work?

http://www.google.com/search?btnG=1&pws ... n+boot+USB

First link USB + Boot-132, second link same, but with Chameleon instead of boot-132.

You have a lot of Google time ahead of you, lots of reading you should do.
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mthguy
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Re: Going to give hackintosh a try...

Mon Jun 15, 2009 9:59 pm

Thanks for the link (i guess i am just lazy sometimes). I am just one of those people that reads so much in a particular place that when i don't see what i am looking for i don't stop to think that i should just google it and kind of start again. oh well.

by the way what limits the bootloader on a USB drive from loading a DVD or another HDD? i see you said it was a BIOS limitation, but what exactly?

Also, most of the guide i have found either assume i already have a working Mac/hack or that i can burn a BOOT-132 CD, but i was curious are does anyone know of a way to format a HDD into HFS+ / GUID with the EFI partition from windows or linux? because i was thinking that i might be able to format a HDD and install the bootloader and kexts into the EFI partition prior to booting the Leopard DVD. then using the bootloader in the EFI to load the Leopard DVD, the later OSX. it seems that there would be some sort of utility for windows that would allow read/write access to a HFS+ partition. or at least a Linux package. i guess i should google it. anyway, if you know of anything let me know.
Mathematics is not a language, it’s an adventure. Most mathematics is done with a friend over a cup of coffee, with a
diagram scribbled on a napkin. As Gauss once remarked, “What we need are notions, not notations.”
 
derFunkenstein
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Re: Going to give hackintosh a try...

Tue Jun 16, 2009 7:49 am

From what I've read, the limitation is that an optical drive is not given a boot device number unless you boot from it to start with. I didn't really think about that when I first recommended a flash drive, but once Forge mentioned you had to copy the Leopard disc to the drive, it kinda rang a bell.
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mthguy
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Re: Going to give hackintosh a try...

Tue Jun 16, 2009 8:31 am

well i guess i might as well just pony up and buy a new DVD-/+RW i have just been putting it off for a while now anyway. should just about any SATA drive work? or are there particular models that are friendlier with OSX than others?
Mathematics is not a language, it’s an adventure. Most mathematics is done with a friend over a cup of coffee, with a
diagram scribbled on a napkin. As Gauss once remarked, “What we need are notions, not notations.”
 
derFunkenstein
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Re: Going to give hackintosh a try...

Tue Jun 16, 2009 8:36 am

Pretty much anything should work. I grabbed the cheapest SATA burner on Newegg, which at the time was a LiteOn 20x DVD-RW model.
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mthguy
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Re: Going to give hackintosh a try...

Tue Jun 16, 2009 9:11 am

Great, sounds good. Hopefully I can get one pretty quick here, so I can dive into this. I am getting anxious. Alright I will keep everyone posted.
Mathematics is not a language, it’s an adventure. Most mathematics is done with a friend over a cup of coffee, with a
diagram scribbled on a napkin. As Gauss once remarked, “What we need are notions, not notations.”
 
Airmantharp
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Re: Going to give hackintosh a try...

Tue Jun 16, 2009 3:22 pm

I'm going to follow this; I'd like to give OSX a try sometime.
 
mthguy
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Re: Going to give hackintosh a try...

Tue Jun 16, 2009 3:50 pm

I hope that i can write up a fairly easy to follow guide, and at very least chronicle my pitfalls, so that everyone who want to give it a try can at least do so knowing what to expect.
Mathematics is not a language, it’s an adventure. Most mathematics is done with a friend over a cup of coffee, with a
diagram scribbled on a napkin. As Gauss once remarked, “What we need are notions, not notations.”
 
spartus4
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Re: Going to give hackintosh a try...

Wed Jun 17, 2009 2:55 pm

If you don't want to have to deal with all of the extra things need to run the retail disk you can use iPC 10.5.6. Before I got my iMac I had it running on an Intel DP35DP motherboard with a 4850 on the vanilla kernel and it ran perfectly. I don't know much about installing the retail version on none Apple hardware, but it seems like a lot of work when you can just use the altered versions out there. They have all of that stuff done already.
 
derFunkenstein
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Re: Going to give hackintosh a try...

Wed Jun 17, 2009 3:00 pm

Altered versions are difficult to update, though. You can't go to 10.5.7 with iPC without doing alot of extra work. It IS easier to install though. It's a toss-up. Prefer a little extra work at the beginning and being able to update straight away, myself, but everyone's different.

If you're not going to be using this Mac install for real work, there's nothing wrong with getting your feet with with iPC.
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spartus4
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Re: Going to give hackintosh a try...

Wed Jun 17, 2009 3:34 pm

derFunkenstein wrote:
Altered versions are difficult to update, though. You can't go to 10.5.7 with iPC without doing alot of extra work. It IS easier to install though. It's a toss-up. Prefer a little extra work at the beginning and being able to update straight away, myself, but everyone's different.

If you're not going to be using this Mac install for real work, there's nothing wrong with getting your feet with with iPC.


That isn't so. When I was running iPC with the vanilla kernel I was able to use the normal update process. It is when you use the mod'ed kernels that thing become difficult.
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derFunkenstein
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Re: Going to give hackintosh a try...

Wed Jun 17, 2009 4:45 pm

Hmm...that hadn't been the case previously. Maybe things have changed.
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mthguy
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Re: Going to give hackintosh a try...

Thu Jun 18, 2009 3:41 pm

Maybe i will try that iPC, either way i am waiting to get my new SATA DVD+RW, should arrive tomorrow, hopefully i can get it installed and running then, burn a BOOT-132 disk, and an iPC disk and have a bit of fun tooling around with them.

for those of you that have a hack up and working, are there any noticable stablity issues? my brother-in-law has a full version of the final cut studio 2 HD that i am going to install then i can dop some serious editing. anyway. i was just wondering if it is a good primary OS, or if i should plan on using vista primarily and just use leopard when needed.
Mathematics is not a language, it’s an adventure. Most mathematics is done with a friend over a cup of coffee, with a
diagram scribbled on a napkin. As Gauss once remarked, “What we need are notions, not notations.”
 
derFunkenstein
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Re: Going to give hackintosh a try...

Thu Jun 18, 2009 4:52 pm

Ignoring your casual software piracy, I use Leopard almost exclusively on this machine (not that it gets a whole lot of use anymore, but I used it as my only OS for about a month). It is a dream. No stability issues with the machine or the overclock.

But please [please] please buy the Apple software you put on it - or else you're just another datapoint for an excuse as to why they haven't made it officially supported.
I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.
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mthguy
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Re: Going to give hackintosh a try...

Thu Jun 18, 2009 5:05 pm

I have bought the Retail 10.5.6 disk from an apple store. and if i ever were to use final cut professionally or in a way other than recreation i most certainly would buy it form the apple store as well, as it is i figured it wouldn't be a big deal to borrow the DVDs from my brother in law. I in no way approve of piracy, and as far as the iPC goes, i figure that if i bought the DVD then it really doesn't matter how i get it working. i mean hell, it is pretty much illegal simply to install it on my PC anyway (at the very least it is skirting the fringe of legality, apple sticker or no). I just can't stand windows anymore, it is a stale environment that i simply don't like, not to say anything for (or against) it's merit as an OS. i use Linux for my servers and lightly as a development platform. i used to own an iBook and i fell in love with the way you move around in OSX and the way that things are presented. not to mention the snazzy graphical extras. I would buy another apple in a heartbeat if i could afford it. right now this is what i got, and i figure that i can have the next best thing to a mac in my hack.

anyway, thats my 2bits. not to seem aggressive or defensive.
Mathematics is not a language, it’s an adventure. Most mathematics is done with a friend over a cup of coffee, with a
diagram scribbled on a napkin. As Gauss once remarked, “What we need are notions, not notations.”

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