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A few questions before I attempt this.


Aydos
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Hello. I have always wanted to try out a hackintosh. After reading the new Lifehacker guide on doing this from yesterday at http://lifehacker.com/5672051/how-to-build...ight-easy-steps I thought that I would actually give this a try.

 

I work in IT and I love to tinker with things. I currently dual boot Win7 and Ubuntu. I mainly use the Ubuntu and rarely have to boot into the Win7 drive. I am an avid gamer and I just game via, however most of the games I play have native Mac clients.

 

I have a few questions before I attempt this.

 

1. How hard is dual booting? I have an extra 80gig 7200RPM sata drive laying around and I want to try it out on that. I noticed in the guide it says unhook any other drive you have. Does it load the other drive into the bootloader when you hook it back up?

 

2. I was checking online about what hardware you can and cannot run and it brought up some questions. I have an EVGA X58 Motherboard, i7 920, with 6 gigs of Dominator Triple Channel DDR3 Ram, EVGA Nvidia 275GTX, Linksys 54gs wireless card, and I do not remember what brand SATA DVD Burner ( I think a Samsung). I noticed on my google searches people have hackintoshes with my mobo, but On the hardware list here I do not see a section for EVGA.

 

Can anyone confirm that the EVGA X58?

 

3. Once installed can I just use the Nvidia.com drivers for my vid card that are for OSX?

 

4. What do I have to prepare or do differently from the lifehacker guide with my set up to get this running?

 

Thank you in advance for any help. I know my way in and out of Windows, I am pretty good with Linux, and now I just want to add Mac OSX to my list of OS that I know like the back of my hand. If it will not work with my gear I am going to pass for now, because i am not willing to build a new PC at this time and I do not think I will ever buy anything that says apple on it other than the OS.

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1. You are already dualbooting! :) It is better to have a separate HDD for each OS. In that case a single OS failure will not affect other OSs. Also it is much more flexible system management-wise. So go for it.

Does it load the other drive into the bootloader when you hook it back up?
Yes, it does.

 

2.

but On the hardware list here I do not see a section for EVGA
So what? The chipset is more important then the brand.

 

3. Yes you can (provided that there are any). But anyway some additional measures must be used in order to make a GPU work.

 

4. Can not comment on this...

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1. You are already dualbooting! :) It is better to have a separate HDD for each OS. In that case a single OS failure will not affect other OSs. Also it is much more flexible system management-wise. So go for it. Yes, it does.

 

2. So what? The chipset is more important then the brand.

 

3. Yes you can (provided that there are any). But anyway some additional measures must be used in order to make a GPU work.

 

4. Can not comment on this...

 

 

Awesome thanks. It response to your reply (boy that sounds weird), what would I need to get to make my EVGA x58 mobo work.

 

Also I looked at the drivers section on nvidia.com and there are mac OSX drivers for my card. What additional measures would have to be made ?

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if you use the searchbar or look in the wiki tab you will find what you are looking for http://wiki.osx86project.org/wiki/index.php/HCL_10.6.0#eVGA

 

it also depends on if you want to run leopard or SL. nvidia DRIVERS should work out of the box as for wireless cards and other add ons look in the wiki. the most important part of the build is the MObo. theres no use buying one if it doesnt work. GIgabyte is also a very trusted brand that is almost 100% compatible out of the box

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Hello. I have always wanted to try out a hackintosh. After reading the new Lifehacker guide on doing this from yesterday at http://lifehacker.com/5672051/how-to-build...ight-easy-steps I thought that I would actually give this a try.

 

I work in IT and I love to tinker with things. I currently dual boot Win7 and Ubuntu. I mainly use the Ubuntu and rarely have to boot into the Win7 drive. I am an avid gamer and I just game via, however most of the games I play have native Mac clients.

 

I have a few questions before I attempt this.

 

1. How hard is dual booting? I have an extra 80gig 7200RPM sata drive laying around and I want to try it out on that. I noticed in the guide it says unhook any other drive you have. Does it load the other drive into the bootloader when you hook it back up?

 

2. I was checking online about what hardware you can and cannot run and it brought up some questions. I have an EVGA X58 Motherboard, i7 920, with 6 gigs of Dominator Triple Channel DDR3 Ram, EVGA Nvidia 275GTX, Linksys 54gs wireless card, and I do not remember what brand SATA DVD Burner ( I think a Samsung). I noticed on my google searches people have hackintoshes with my mobo, but On the hardware list here I do not see a section for EVGA.

 

Can anyone confirm that the EVGA X58?

 

3. Once installed can I just use the Nvidia.com drivers for my vid card that are for OSX?

 

4. What do I have to prepare or do differently from the lifehacker guide with my set up to get this running?

 

Thank you in advance for any help. I know my way in and out of Windows, I am pretty good with Linux, and now I just want to add Mac OSX to my list of OS that I know like the back of my hand. If it will not work with my gear I am going to pass for now, because i am not willing to build a new PC at this time and I do not think I will ever buy anything that says apple on it other than the OS.

 

EVGA X58 link

 

You should get it working, but not sure what rev.X you might have, but you can edit and use the DSDT as a template for your own board if its not specifically the one posted.

Edit your very own DSDT

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Ok I am going to try and read through all of this and see if I can figure it out. If I have anymore questions I will post them here after a little more searching.

 

Ok I am going to try and read through all of this and see if I can figure it out. If I have anymore questions I will post them here after a little more searching.

 

This is all new to me so I will have to learn about DSDT I am unfamiliar with it.

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Ok I watched that life hacker video and I noticed that they drag and drop some extra extensions files they provide into the extra extensions folder on the hard drive. This is before they put in the kexts for the Ethernet and sound on the mobo.

 

Are those extra extensions generic to do on all hackintoshes or was that specific to that one mother board ?

 

I understand that the step after that was some hard ware specific kexts but I am not sure what the first files were for from extra extensions. I also know that I will need the kexts for my wireless card and what not.

 

Thank you again.

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Also, since I have a Nvidia 275GTX and nvidia does make drivers for this card for mac, will my HDMI audio work? I currently in my Win7 and Ubuntu 10.04 set up have HDMI out to the monitor and will use the speakers on my monitor when i want to play something for someone, but plug my USB headset in most of the time which switches off the HDMI audio until I unplug. I confirmed my headset does work with Mac and is one of the recommended ones for people with macs.

 

Also anyone have a clue about my above post ? I want to make sure I have everything good to go before I try this. I already bought the OSX disc with wishful thinking. :D

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Bah I I mis spoke earlier. Nvidia.com does not have a drivers for my card. They have Mac drivers for 285GTX not the 275.

 

The problem is I mainly game. It just so happens all the games I play have Mac versions and you can get the mac version if you have the PC version.

 

I am not a mac expert (which is why I am wanting to do this), but in Windows and Linux if you run the generic driver games lag like mad. I am not sure if that is the case here, but I know that I like have high FPS.

 

If doing a hackintosh with my card wont work well for gaming then I am gonna have to pass at this unfortunetly.

 

Please feel free to answer any of my above posts. I can atleast use it for learning purposes and boot into windows or linux to game I guess.

 

I feel bad I am the only one posting in my post.

 

Thank you.

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I have seen this around the forums, but no one has said where or how you do this. I am great with Windows and Linux, but and utter noob with Macs. That is why I am going to dive head first in and use this so I that I can learn all that I can learn from having to using this as my main OS. It worked for Linux.

 

I have also seen people say something about an EFI string and I am not sure on this either.

 

I just know that in Windows and Linux if you do not have the drivers or you have generic drivers you usually dont get all of your resolutions and your frames per second in a game are usually garbage. I love to game so I do not want to take a hit on this.

 

This is for my own curiosity and to help me in my IT career by knowing all OS.

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SleepEnabler.kext this kext is specific to the SL install so you need to make sure you have the correct one. 10.6.1 or 10.6.2 and so on or you will KP. I don't use it personally sense only my screen's go to sleep and Im constantly on. Its not needed if your intent is not to get sleep working. Overclocked so don't ever plan for powermanagment. I have this patched in my DSDT so don't use that either NullCPUPowerManagement.kext but it matters a lot if your not patched up.

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FakeSMC.kext

NullCPUPowerManagement.kext

SleepEnabler.kext

UpstreamDisable.kext

 

and there is something in there that says .DS_Store that is not in one of the above mentioned folders.

FakeSMC is SMC but the fake one (emulator) :D It is an Apple specific feature, that is not used in PC. So it has to be emulated AFAIK. Please correct me if I'm wrong. A must have with Snow leopard.

 

NullCPU... is used to prevent some power management functions from running, those preventing system from crash. A must have for vanilla not capable CPUs. Though some patched kernels and Chameleon boot loader versions have the same build in feature. Therefore the above kext might not be needed (I have AnV kernel on leo and it works without any disabler).

 

SleepEnabler - enables the sleep feature to work (properly) if it doesn't work. Probably provides some more functions. Not sure about this. AFAIK in some cases sleep feature may be fixed via DSDT (please correct me if I'm wrong).

 

UpstreamDisable - Don't know...

 

Some more info on kexts.

 

.DS_Store

 

...but in Windows and Linux if you run the generic driver games lag like mad...
Same with OS X or even worst...

 

There is a list of Nvidia cards that are known to work. 275 is in there. So it work... Don't know if HDMI audio works though.

GraphicsEnabler=Yes
Is a feature of Chameleon boot loader (as well as of any boot loader based upon it). This option is if set to "Yes" enables the full GPU acceleration without any additional steps. This option is set via com.apple.Boot.plist file usually found in /Extra.

 

However sometimes it doesn't work properly. Then you should try using an EFI string or a graphics enabler/injector. EFI string is a hex value inserted in the appropriate place inside the same com.apple.Boot.plis.

 

Search the forum for more info.

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Nvidia.com does not have a drivers for my card. They have Mac drivers for 285GTX not the 275.

 

It doesn't matter, the drivers are universal. They even support cards that were never sold for Macs, like my 9800GTX+, which works with unmodified drivers (dev ID 0x0612).

 

For some cards you have to add the device ID to the proper kernel extension, according to chip family (NV40, NV50 etc).

 

Google 'guide for all nvidia boards' for more information.

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Nice. I think I am ready to do this. A final question about the list of extras I posted before. I will be using the same exact version of the OS and the same exact version of the Combo update that LifeHacker used. Only my hardware is varied. It seems like the extra extension is universal as far as hardware goes. Am I correct in thinking this?

 

If I am correct then I will follow step by step what the Lifehacker video guide does except for the specific mobo driver kexts that he puts in after the extensions.

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Yes, something like that, I'm not familiar with Lifehacker but the same general steps should work. Only some kernel extensions will differ - maybe.

 

Motherboard brand is not important, instead you'll want to break it down into components like LAN, sound, Southbridge, Northbridge etc. and then search for fixes (if needed) for, or discover if there are issues with, each component separately.

 

X58 boards usually have the ICH10 or ICH10R Southbridge. ICH10 in AHCI mode is natively supported in Snow Leopard. ICH10R works as well but shows 'generic SATA controller' or words to that effect in System Profiler. There are cosmetic fixes available.

 

Google TonyMacx86 for some good X58/CoreIx installation guides. Don't worry if your specs doesn't match exactly with what's in the guide you follow - as long as the motherboard chipset is the same or similar you should be able to at least boot and then you can fix the missing stuff once OS X is running.

 

Like 3.14r2 said, fakesmc.kext is mandatory, the rest will be hardware specific.

 

The UpstreamDisabler is a community provided extension that disables some Apple kernel extensions that causes mouse stuttering/skipping when running iTunes or anything that uses Quicktime components. It probably has something to do with DRM!

It's not needed on all configurations. I don't need it for example.

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Thank you Gringo you have been most helpful. Lifehacker is just a site that blogs techie info for windows, linux, and mac. They do guides also. They actually use all TonyMacx86 stuff in the video. [url="http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/279450-why-insanelymac-does-not-support-tonymacx86/"]#####[/url], [url="http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/279450-why-insanelymac-does-not-support-tonymacx86/"]#####[/url], etc. I just wanted to double check on the files I would need.

 

Also above posters gave me this link http://wiki.osx86project.org/wiki/index.php/HCL_10.6.0#eVGA which has what I need after the install as far as kexts listed so I just have to find them. Also, there is http://osx86.co/f57/evga-x58-snow-leo-audio-problems-t3813/ that was linked above as well for my mother board.

 

Now I just need to find those files and use the above life hacker video with TonyMacx86 software and give it a whirl.

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The UpstreamDisabler: Yes, Gingo Vernelho, is correct and its used in this case to allow itunes library and iTV to be shared on a network without issue associated to DRM. if you don't do this it doesn't matter to include in your E/E folder.

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Ok I lied. Last question before I try this. I googled TonyMacx86 and EVGA x58 and found this list http://www.tonymacx86.com/wiki/index.php?t...amp;redirect=no . The list has my motherboard and what they did but under the category of [url="http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/279450-why-insanelymac-does-not-support-tonymacx86/"]#####[/url] choice it says

 

"UserDSDT (Fresh extract from May 2010 bios + DTGP,HPET,WAK fixes), LegacyHDA\ALC889, AppleHDA Rollback, RealtekR1000SL, fakesmc, 10.3.1 Supported kernel, 64-bit Apple boot screen boot.plist"

 

I have not cluse what that means and what to do for it lol.

 

Can anyone please clarify this. The next box in the list is I had no issues what so ever in 10.6.4 after this. So in theory if I can understand what the above quote means. I should be in good shape.

 

Thank you all for your help. This forum is just as helpful as the Ubuntu forums where when I was learning it. Now I am a regular poster there to aid others.

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"UserDSDT (Fresh extract from May 2010 bios + DTGP,HPET,WAK fixes), LegacyHDA\ALC889, AppleHDA Rollback, RealtekR1000SL, fakesmc, 10.3.1 Supported kernel, 64-bit Apple boot screen boot.plist"

  • UserDSDT (Fresh extract from May 2010 bios + DTGP,HPET,WAK fixes) - DSDT.aml extracted by a user (the way I read it) from the BIOS file dated May 2010. This DSDT was modified using the listed fixes. Patched DSDT can be loaded using Chameleon boot loader. A fixed DSDT may reduce the amount of additional drivers needed and/or fix some issues like sleep.
  • LegacyHDA\ALC889 - Audio driver.
  • AppleHDA Rollback - Restored the previous version of the kext which was updated via Apple software update. The older version read works better.
  • RealtekR1000SL - LAN driver
  • fakesmc - already told
  • 10.3.1 Supported kernel - Don't know...
  • 64-bit Apple boot screen boot.plist - probably added force load the 64-bit kernel flag in com.apple.Boot.plist. Not quite sure about this one.

It is time to edit the topic title LOL ;)

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The 'Apple boot screen' probably means he's loading a Chameleon theme that looks like Apple's Bootcamp, and the "legacy" Apple Logo.

Some people go as far as modifying their BIOS and inserting the Apple boot screen instead of the motherboard manufacturer splash screen. I know ASUS and Gigabyte both provide Windows apps designed to do that, MyLogo and "FaceWizard" lol.

 

The UpstreamDisabler: Yes, Gingo Vernelho, is correct and its used in this case to allow itunes library and iTV to be shared on a network without issue associated to DRM. if you don't do this it doesn't matter to include in your E/E folder.

 

Hey, thanks for the heads up Hangten. So disabling that is actually good for something even if you don't have the mouse skipping issue.

 

I haven't tried sharing an itunes library between two Hackintoshes yet. I would think that would just work, no? Filesharing and stuff works fine here most of the time, at least between various Windows, an old PowerBook G4, and my 10.6.4 Hack. Even from inside virtual machines.

 

I have an older P4 hack running 10.5.8 on the local network here but it's pretty much stuck running Windows 7 all the time because of work.

I'll try sharing my iTunes library with it if I get the time. If I can still get it to boot OS X at all.

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  • 1 month later...

@Aydos,

 

Did you ever get OS X running?

 

@Gringo Vermelho,

 

Yeah not sure exactly what material containing DRM acts like on a network.

I can't directly say, but the last time I purchased a movie or even a cd? I can't remember!

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