Hackintosh Blog

My affair with Apple and the entire ecosystem that is Apple started at the same time that Vista came along and made my life a living hell.

After a windfall and as a joke to my work colleagues, a white macbook was purchased with a rather modest spec.  Going from windows XP to Mac felt like a backward step at the time, where was all the gloss and bouncy colors that Windows XP had?  What about features like Aero and the funk that was Vista, in short Leopard looked antiquated and simple.

Simplicity was the saving feature of the Mac and how I ended up coining the phrase “it just works”  Programs feel more focused, not as cluttered as window counterparts but, as always, that’s subjective to the user.

Tech moves on and the Macbook starts to feel antiquated and then the discovery of hackintosh comes along, hooking me into a world of Kext editing, frustrating “waiting for root device errors” and searching for kexts for an ageing motherboard.

Thoughts on a hackintosh.

Apple hardware can be thought as being over priced, however, there is a lot that it can do out of the box that a PC can’t but this isn’t the place for a fanboi Apple vs PC argument.  This is the place where I get the following accomplished

Snow Leopard Installed on my PC
Updated to Latest version
Working Sound, Network (both Wired and WireLess)
Full working graphics with acceleration.

So far..

Bios Settings.
From what I gather, turn off all advanced features just to get things rolling and then turn them back on after a sucessfull install.

Settings the hard drives to AHCI, putting the DVD on IDE master and a HDD on sata1 seems to be the best way to get things moving.

Pre Install Software.

iBoot is a boot loader that fools the snow leopard dvd into thinking that it’s a mac (verrryy simplified I know but that’s me all over)

The best site for help has been tonymacx86 where downloading iBoot starts the inital loading process.

Insert CD, wait for chameleon screen, take out disc,  put in snow leopard, press f5, wait for icon to change and then pray you get to the installation screen 😀

Update 8th May 2011

-configure sata as [AHCI]

-CPU configuration :
C1 support [Disabled]
CPU TM Function [Enabled]
Vanderpool technology [Enabled]
Execute Disable Bit [Enabled]
Max CPUID Value limit [Disabled]
Intel Speedstep [Enabled]

-Suspend Mode : [Auto]
-Repost Video on S3 Resume [Disabled]
-ACPI 2.0 Support [Enabled]
-ACPI APIC Support [Enabled]
-Front Panel audio : [HD audio]
-J-Micron Pata/Sata Controler : [Disabled]
-VIA 1394 [Enabled]

 

So far I have a vanilla install of Snow Leopard Running on my Asus P5k-e/WIFI AP motherboard

What works so far

Graphics with Quartz and Accelleration 😀
On board Ethernet
On board Wifi
10.6.7 installed

Left to do..

Sounds.. arrggh
Work out what I need to install of multibeast.
Get sleep to work.

 

Update 12th June 2011

Disaster strikes this week as my computer has decided to die, whilst not die completly but severely overheat due to a water cooling pump failure. The rig boots but displays nothing on the screen, I even hear the beeps from when the computer starts to boot up.

I am actively looking now to start testing lion but it seems that the last few years technology has moved on with computer parts and I haven’t leaving me behind wondering what the best setup for this project is. If anyone reading this can suggest a rock solid setup for me please get in touch so I can continue this project. Also if you have any relevant links for this area please let me know and I will gladly swap links back with you.