Kotoseiya Posted March 13, 2006 Share Posted March 13, 2006 Greetings, I never thought such an unthinkable act as installing Apple's finest onto a commodity PC could be so close to reality before I happened to come across this site. I used to bleed six colours in mid-Nineties before becoming disillusioned by Jobs's axing of the clones and deserted to self-assembled PCs much as I found it regrettable (yet very satisfying in some regards as tinkering with hardware was, and is, cool in itself). Long story short. I have some surplus hardware at hand, a disc image torrent is being downloaded (MacOS X X86 10.4.4. with 10.4.5 update Myzar; I assume that's the one I'd prefer, right?) and now I need to figure out what components to order. My CRT is a Samsung SyncMaster 959NF featuring both VGA and BNC connectors. I intend to have it connected simultaneously to both my laptop (Asus W1978NAUP) via a VGA-VGA cable and to my to-be-built desktop PC via VGA-BNC cable. A simple input selection in the OSD screen should do the trick. My laptop is able to drive the monitor all the way up to 2048*1536*32@66 with would be absolutely great on the "Mac" side as well but even 1600*1200*32@85 would be perfectly passable. I have a few PATA drives of which I intend to use a Samsung SP1604N as the new "PC-Mac's" system drive. I initially planned a dual-boot machine but since I have this laptop, I might as well keep the new machine completely to OS X. Optical drive is a Philips DVD8301/44 DVD+R/RW burner from my former workmate's HP desktop. I have no use for DVD-R/RW support but if need be, I'm prepared to change this device to another with known compatibility. I have two Radeon 9800s available; a Club3D 128 MB, 256-bit 9800 SE (the one soft-moddable to 9800 Pro; CGA-S988TVD) and a proper Sapphire 9800 Pro 128 MB (SKU# 21016-00)). Both are AGP 8X cards, naturally. My primary storage disc is an Iomega USB 2.0 external drive with a 300 GB Seagate PATA drive. It is partitioned in two equal NTFS primary partitions, 139.73 GB each. I assume the "Mac" is able to read and write to this disc without disturbing its partition table or something else equally disturbing. Case, power supply, processor cooler, memory... Those should be non-issues in regards of OS X compatibility, right (?). I've been thinking about two 1 GB DIMMs. That should be enough for a while. Keyboard and mouse should be USB models, right? Extra keys (mute, volume etc.) might not work? And now for the tricky part. I have practically no experience at all with OS X or any other Unix derived OS. Therefore I'd love to assemble an OS X compatible PC with as little a need to run patches and minimum fuss as possible. That, I understand, leads me towards motherboards based on Intel 915G and 945G chipsets and Celeron D or Pentium D processors with those all-important NX, PAE, SSE2 and SSE3 extensions. On the other hand many seem to have been successful with AMD based hardware which would appear to be somewhat cheaper at least here in Finland. Moreover, I'm under impression the Intel internal graphics, even the newer GMA950, lack the speed needed to really make OS X fly. --- What would I deem absolutely necessary to achieve to make this project worthwhile? 1. Ability to reach a decent resolution (1600*1200) with full Quartz Extreme and Core Image acceleration. 1024*768 would suck on a 19" monitor, even if a CRT. 2. Ability to connect later two (if not more) additional, internal SATA drives (Western Digital Caviar SE WD3200DJs (320 GB, SATA/150) are available for an excellent price here nowadays) by simply plugging them in. 3. Ability to connect to my ISP via the D-Link DSL-300G+ external Ethernet ADSL modem; can be changed to another model if need be. A separate PCI NIC, if needed, is no problem, of course. 4. Ability to properly handle sound (volume control, stereo sound etc.) and connect via USB 2.0 ports. 5. Ability to run Rosetta properly, I've let myself to understand. 6. Something else I haven't thought of yet but what you'd think most people would consider essential on a PC running OS X? --- What would be nice to have? 1. Ability to later (if not right away) upgrade the video card (to a PCI-E 16X card) if the motherboard's inbuilt graphics or one of the aforementioned Radeon 9800s begin to grow long in the tooth in the face of HD content. 2. Ability to later upgrade the processor; right now I could get along with a Celeron or a Sempron but a little bit of future-proofness wouldn't hurt. 3. Ability to install a DVB-C digital TV tuner, either as a PCI card or as an external USB box; I realize this could prove to be problematic. --- I do understand some of my aspirations are antagonistic at each other. Given my utter lack of experience with OS X, I suppose compatibility and general easiness in assembly should prevail over future expandability. I can always build (partially) new machine whenever new versions of OS X or increased hardware expectations so demand. I would be most interested to listen to your suggestions for the components I need to purchase to realize this dream of the world's greatest OS on commodity hardware. Preferably mention the exact model number of a motherboard, processor, video card etc. you first-handedly know to be compatible with the goals I've mentioned above. I'll attempt to spread the information onwards and help others in turn. I'm sure there are a lot of people in my vicinity who think like me and would love to hand over 129 euros (or whatever is the standalone price of OS X nowadays) to Apple for a fully supported copy of OS X for X86. That day can't come too soon. I'm fed up supporting Windows PCs. My relatives and workmates are undoubtedly fed up asking me to fix their machines. Thank you in advance! Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/11899-requesting-recommendable-components/ Share on other sites More sharing options...
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