Recommended Hardware

[gulik]

The Hackintosh

 

A lot of people are complaining that it's hard to get OSX running on a PC, and it is if you don't have the right hardware. As far as I'm concerned this is a good thing: one of the reasons Macs are so problem-free is the consistency of their hardware platform. The operating system knows what it has to deal with and is designed to talk to certain components. If you want to try out this OS, as you are fed up with Windows being glitchy and decked out in plastic-toy-talking-dogs kitsch (or just like UNIX-ish environments where you can still use your music software), but don't have a spare 1000 euros laying around to buy a low-end iMac sporting doubtful design decisions (I am referring to the glossy integrated LCD panel), it's completely possible.

 

The trick is just finding the hardware that the software was made for: Intel processors and chipsets that have been used in real Macs. After a failed attempt, thanks to this forum I was able to choose well. It takes patience and research to choose your components, but it makes the difference between a crashing unstable mess and a perfectly effortless and stable system. With well-chosen hardware, the install is painless - I used Kalyway 10.5.2. Once the beast was assembled and running, I used a benchmarking package to see how this machine compared with a real Mac.

 

Geekbench results

 

Hackintosh

Geekbench 2.1.0 for Mac OS X x86 (32-bit)

Processor integer performance : 2813

Processor floating point performance : 4958

Memory performance : 2236

Memory bandwidth performance : 1623

 

Operating System : Mac OS X 10.5.2 (Build 9C7010)

Motherboard : Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd. 945GCM-S2L

Processor : Pentium Dual-Core E5200

Processor ID : GenuineIntel Family 6 Model 23 Stepping 6

Processors : 1 / Cores : 2

Processor Frequency : 2.50 GHz

Bus Frequency : 800 MHz

L1 Instruction Cache : 32.0 KB

L1 Data Cache : 32.0 KB

L2 Cache : 2.00 MB

L3 Cache : 0.00 B

Memory : 2.00 GB

Memory Type : 667 MHz RAM

BIOS : Award Software International, Inc. F7

 

iMac (Early 2008)

Geekbench 2.1.0 for Mac OS X x86 (32-bit)

Processor integer performance : 2658

Processor floating point performance : 4668

Memory performance : 2615

Memory bandwidth performance : 1842

 

Operating System : Mac OS X 10.5.6 (Build 9G55)

Model : iMac (Early 2008)

Motherboard : Apple Inc. Mac-F226BEC8 PVT

Processor : Intel Core2 Duo E8135

Processor ID : GenuineIntel Family 6 Model 23 Stepping 6

Processors : 1 / Cores : 2

Processor Frequency : 2.40 GHz

Bus Frequency : 1.06 GHz

L1 Instruction Cache : 32.0 KB

L1 Data Cache : 32.0 KB

L2 Cache : 6.00 MB

L3 Cache : 0.00 B

Memory : 4.00 GB

Memory Type : 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM

BIOS : Apple Inc. IM81.88Z.00C1.B00.0802091538

 

So there you have it. An old machine thrown away by a friend, gutted and reworked with around 120 euros worth of parts, is just about the same thing as a recent iMac. The main (negligible) difference in performance is memory bandwidth, and this is just because I skimped on the processor and the memory. I only have an analog VGA output on this motherboard, but it's connected to a thrown-away CRT so it's fine for the moment. If I want digital out, I can just add a 50 euro video card in the future that will have better graphics acceleration and drivers than the onboard one anyway. Only noticeable OS glitch: hot-plugging USB storage doesn't work unless at least one device was already present at boot-up. I assume that the OS is simply not loading the mass storage kernel extensions unless it thinks it has a good reason, and I'm sure there is a workaround. Leaving an old 500MB usb drive permanently plugged in works for the moment. I don't know if the onboard sound works because I disabled it and use an external Line 6 USB recording interface, which works perfectly with the drivers on their website.

 

I/O Stress Test

 

I was wary of being falsely confident - as they say, "If it seems too good to be true..." But I am now quite sure that this system is working well, as I just inadvertently did an excellent stress-test of the filesystem management and disk I/O. First I copied my entire 130GB NTFS volume, from a parallel IDE drive mounted from an external USB2 case, into my home folder, on an internal SATA disk formatted with HFS. I had to use "sudo cp -r" because there were some cryptic permissions errors under the GUI, which is not surprising since the files were coming from an 'alien' filesystem. After chowning and chmoding the resulting directory to be read/write accessible from my user account, I ran a "diff -r" on the whole mess, which exited showing no differences. Summary: during several hours of continuously reading and writing billions of bytes through several different interfaces (while I was watching a film with VLC, stored on the same external disk no less), every single operation did what it was supposed to. I am now confident enough of this OS running on my hardware to erase my original NTFS volume and start using Time Machine to keep a backup on the old external disk.

 

For me all this suggests that Apple could make a relatively good 400 euro machine out of stock parts and sell it as the Mac Basic or some such thing, which would really solidify their position as a manufacturer of electronics for everyman. I'm sure it wouldn't cost a fortune to house it in an aluminum or white plastic case or some such thing to keep their high design image. Or they could simply certify certain motherboards as being Mac-Approved and charge a licensing fee. It would be a better solution for both them and us than opening the OS to install on any platform, because it would keep the hardware fixed and the machines solid.

 

Then again, it's not about prices. The other reason that we do this is for the fun of experimenting with systems. I almost laughed out loud when the install finished and I finally saw MacOS boot up without a hitch in 20 seconds on my cobbled-together machine with cables hanging out of it - it looked so unlike the glass and aluminum sculptures on sale in the Apple stores. I see it as my generation's version of my dad rebuilding entire cars from 40 year old wrecks.

[porjo01]

10.5.3 or 10.5.4 will fix the hot swapping USB problem. Joe

[gulik]

10.5.3 or 10.5.4 will fix the hot swapping USB problem. Joe

 

Finally did an update (was a bit hesitant after all I read) from Kalyway 10.5.2 to 10.5.6 with the combo update, using Netkas method described here:

 

http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php...t=#entry1018748

 

Worked like a charm. USB hotplug works, and the GeForce 9800 GT that I just installed is fully functioning - openGL, quartz extreme, all resolutions. The graphics accelerator is detected and usable by CUDA (for general purpose GPU development), which was not the case in 10.5.2.