PhantOS Posted June 17, 2008 Share Posted June 17, 2008 My predictive, crystal ball 2c - it's a simple USB thumbdrive that boots their own version of the Tianocore EFI environment, heavily modified to resemble as closely as possible the way Apple's EFI behaves and how it interacts with the install dvd. Probably not-so-clean-room-reverse engineered, since they're avoiding sales in all countries with DMCA-ish IP laws in effect. Some people were talking about a similar solution on this very forum ages ago - booting a EFI implementation from a floppy. It's basically PC_EFI on steroids, with working code (for device probing etc.) instead of the bare minimum skeleton stubs needed to trick the vanilla kernel into booting. So your BIOS boots their hacked EFI, which then boots your OS of choice via that cute Apple-ish selector splash screen seen in the netkas video. So now the devil is in the details: - Does it have a database of hardware strings, or a list of 100% supported configurations? - How did they circumvent dsmos? - Does it contain modded EFI drivers? - Is it possible to update it as new hardware comes out? - What kind of Mac model it tricks the install DVD into believing your PC is? Does it change dynamically according to what your actual hardware is (that'd be pretty awesome)? - What about ACPI, fan control, sleep, shutdown & restart? etc etc. Looks like a cool, clean hack, but I have my doubts the process is as painless as they make it out to be, once it gets out in the real world on a zillion different configurations. And trying to sell it instead of just putting it out is skating on pretty thin ice both ethically and legally, IMHO. All in all, I wish these guys all the best, but I'd say they're in for some reality check. We'll see soon, I guess. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
starobrno1 Posted June 17, 2008 Share Posted June 17, 2008 But man if it worked to install using the retail leo and upgrade to 10.5.3 on my old steam engine Mobo Asus P4P800se P4 3Ghz cpu it just has to be possible for a whole lot others to do the same. Once you figured out how to interpret the sticky (and that one can easily be rewritten so it´s easier to understand even for thouse of us that does´nt have english as first language) it was´nt hard to install. Man I´m typing this from it now, it´s been running perfect for over 10 hours now. So why pay for this and for the OS, better give apple the money maby they let us be then. An Italian guy found out that a lowprized Intel mobo with onboard graphics and cpu works pretty much out of the box. So for round 250 - 300 euros you can get your mac and OSX (no monitor though) that should work as an ordinary home/family computer. So I say if you want a cheap mac this is the way to go and you´d be supporting apple maby feel a bit better bout this thing at the same time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bearcat Posted June 17, 2008 Share Posted June 17, 2008 Disclaimer: I do not know what this device is, so this is speculation only. I suspect that this device on a USB dongle is a BIOS chip, with extended BIOS on it, that gets invoked during POST. From then on it can simulate the EFI from a mac, and continue to boot. This has been done before for PCs. There is a company called ScaleMP, that makes Parallel and USB dongles, that contain BIOS extensions to allow you to connect multiple machines together (through Infinniband), and the OS (Windows or Linux) thinks the machine is a large multi-processor machine, not 4 or 8 processors, but 32 or 64 processors. Just a thought. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mifki Posted June 17, 2008 Share Posted June 17, 2008 {censored}, im buying me one of those things then Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dvil Posted June 17, 2008 Share Posted June 17, 2008 Bearcat, Seems like you are right. They added a little more info to their welcome page and it looks just like that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
curlyboy Posted June 17, 2008 Share Posted June 17, 2008 {censored}, im buying me one of those things then Damn tootin im buying 2 off em 1 spare LMAO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thefinalprophecy Posted June 17, 2008 Share Posted June 17, 2008 hopefully there'll be a way to get them in the US without a big middle-man premium on them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dudi4ek Posted June 17, 2008 Share Posted June 17, 2008 This is a little compensation for European customers,being almost blackmailed by Apple to pay as much as double price for a Mac. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
awesomo Posted June 18, 2008 Share Posted June 18, 2008 hey do you guys think this will work with snow leo? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zeamp Posted June 18, 2008 Share Posted June 18, 2008 Now we just need some shops to open up who'll sell those people in the United States a bag of cat litter in a USB box for our Snow Leopard needs, if you catch my drift. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
drumthrasher109 Posted June 18, 2008 Share Posted June 18, 2008 I don't like this...It's easier to just buy the retail DVD patch it yourself and you're done. Here you have to buy something else. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iPhoneTom Posted June 18, 2008 Share Posted June 18, 2008 I don't like this... Thats your problem. It's easier to just buy the retail DVD patch it yourself and you're done. Here you have to buy something else. Indeed! Its very hard to plug an USB-Device into an socket. Its much easier to rip an DVD, patch it, burn it. Also to buy that device is just very hard and needs years of How-To-Buy-Something knowledge! ROTFLMAO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pitap Posted June 18, 2008 Share Posted June 18, 2008 I am more interested in how they will handle the post installation of retail DVD... whats gonna happen to all those crucial Kexts? It wouldn't make things any easier for those of us who have already gone through all those painful trail and errors... if they are only providing solution for EFI sim on a USB Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kinkster Posted June 18, 2008 Share Posted June 18, 2008 netkas and stella must be having allot of fun reading this thread, heh. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
titooo Posted June 18, 2008 Share Posted June 18, 2008 netkas tell us something!!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stellarola Posted June 18, 2008 Share Posted June 18, 2008 netkas and stella must be having allot of fun reading this thread, heh. You guys crack me up. You all are speculating like crazy, but I guess that's all you can do. I'll give you a hint... ... It lets you run OS X on a PC. -Stell Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
curlyboy Posted June 18, 2008 Share Posted June 18, 2008 Theyre all hush hush big secret for a device most people dont actually need really who cares Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nigelbb Posted June 18, 2008 Share Posted June 18, 2008 What we need to have is governing body to set standards of EFI (like those of USB and IEEE) for everyone to follow. Or pay up the royalties and use Intel's EFI. Board manufacturers have been doing this with the chipsets from Intel.That's exactly what we have with EFI. It's an open standard looked after by the United EFI Forum which is non-profit corporation withresponsibility for the management and promotion of the EFI specification. PC manufacturers are moving over to using EFI instead of PC BIOS although generally it i only 64-bit processors/OSes that can use EFI. Itanium has used EFI to boot 64-bit Windows, HP-UX & OpenVMSsince those OSes were available on that platform. With 64-bit versions of Windows Vista SP1 & Windows Server 2008 Microsoft now supports x64 processors booting with EFI. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JSn1™ Posted June 18, 2008 Share Posted June 18, 2008 I would like to see the "no patches needed" reality. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
titooo Posted June 18, 2008 Share Posted June 18, 2008 Hahaha. We are so busy dreaming about the possible features of efi-x that seems that nobody realised that stellarola, who talked to one of the devs, recommended to get a mobo with ALC889A because it will have the audio working natively. And that means that people with that mobos may have it working without any additional driver or kext! So maybe we should start looking for that motherboards (according to Taruga's site relation between chipset/mobo): GA-X38-DS5 GA-P35-DS3R GA-P35-DS3 (rev 1) GA-G33M-DS2R Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iSkylla Posted June 18, 2008 Share Posted June 18, 2008 ALC888 is pretty close to ALC889A, I wouldn't be surprised if that might work, too. But you know all this is pointless, audio can be EASILY patched with a kext, the things that can't be patched with kexts easily are powermanagement, fan control, sleep, shutdown, and restart. Those are the things I will be looking for in this device. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
titooo Posted June 18, 2008 Share Posted June 18, 2008 True... Anyway look at what they say in their site: EFiX also brings some other advantages for users of standard PCs, such as: - Online updates of EFiX firmware. - EMI & RFI protection. - An Interactive system boot selector. -Working power management Features such as Shutdown, Reset, etc. But I honestly don't think they could do it as if it were an Apple computer... that must be really difficult Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iSkylla Posted June 18, 2008 Share Posted June 18, 2008 I saw it, but "etc" is very vague Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MacThomas Posted June 18, 2008 Share Posted June 18, 2008 It's sad that AMD processors won't be supported Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
macgirl Posted June 18, 2008 Share Posted June 18, 2008 ...It lets you run OS X on a PC. -Stell Really? My dream will come true, wow Mac OS on a PC, yay, wonderful, hurray Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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