[Guide] OSX on HP G50 / Compaq CQ50

[Falenus]

Hi everyone! After struggling endlessly in the valiant battle to get my HP G50-112NR to run Mac OS X, I figured that I would share a guide with anyone else in the community looking for a similar guide to doing the same!

 

Some things to note:

• Be prepared to wipe your hard drive completely. I haven't the patience to try and get multi-booting working after the trials and tribulations of getting this working in the first place.
  
• Be prepared to sacrifice a USB drive or an external drive, at least for the duration of the installation.
  
• Be prepared to not have a working CD/DVD drive, unless someone can enlighten me as to how to get it to work.
  

Table of Contents

1. Hardware Compatibility
   
2. Requirements and Kernel Extensions
   
3. Getting the Installer Running
   
4. Installation
   
5. Configuration
   
6. Additional Comments
   

--- 1. Hardware Compatibility ---

 

Green indicates working flawlessly out of the box

Orange indicates that some tweaking is needed to get it working correctly

Red indicates that it works but not entirely, is a huge hassle, or doesn't work at all

• Card Reader (Realtek)
  
• Sound (Some {censored} I don't remember)
  
• Sleep / Hibernation
  
• USB Ports
  
• Touchpad (Synaptics)
  
• Ethernet (Realtek PCIe)
  
• Accurate Battery Stats
  
• Wireless (Atheros AR5007 802.11b/g)
  
• Graphics (Intel X4500MHD)
  
• DVD+-RW Drive (Optiarc AD-7560S)
  

--- 2. Requirements and Kernel Extensions ---

 

These requirements are going to seem a bit odd, but for some reason these series of laptops don't seem to like having the DVD drive and HD play nice together. This guide is really intended for people without IDE cables.

 

Software:

1. A pre-existing Windows installation, or the ability to use another Mac to recover an ISO to a USB stick / hard drive.
   
2. An external hard drive or USB stick > 10GB as a DVD will not work for this guide
   
3. An ISO of Leopard, 10.5.5 or later recommended (iDeneb 10.5.8 Lite was used here)
   
4. TransMac (the trial will do, we're only using it once)
   
5. KisMAC
   

Kernel Extensions:

1. Touchpad drivers (these worked out of the box for me)
   
2. Ethernet and Wireless (Wireless is unstable, but this fixed Ethernet in the process)
   
3. Battery Support
   
4. Graphics (No QE as of yet, cross your fingers)
   

Now that all of that is out of the way... on to the horrific guide to actually getting this installed!

 

--- 3. Getting the Installer Running ---

 

This is probably going to be the messiest and most confusing part of the entire guide, as it really is a horrible pain in the ass to get this working correctly. Well, actually, it's not that it's a pain in the ass so much as it's weird.

1. Install TransMac
   Above, I noted that TransMac is necessary for this guide coming from Windows. If you're already able to access a Mac, you can skip the next few steps entirely - it's just a simple process of formatting the disk as HFS+ and restoring the image to the disk.
   
2. Plug in USB Stick / Hard Drive, Prepare Installer ISO
   In this step, you're going to want to plug in your hard drive and put the installer ISO somewhere that it's easy to get to. Then, open TransMac and make sure that your hard disk shows up in the panel on the left. If it does, right-click > Format Disk > Format with Disk Image.
   
   
3. Write the ISO to the Disk
   In the resulting window that pops up, just select the disk image and follow the few steps it has you follow - it shouldn't be anything I should have to write a step for.
   
4. Change your BIOS boot order and set your USB stick / hard drive to first
   If I have to explain how to do this, you probably shouldn't be making yourself a Hackintosh in the first place.
   

--- 4. Installation ---

 

*Note: This section assumes that you are using iDeneb 10.5.8 Lite and that you have some sort of concept of what you're doing. If you're not, you're sort of on your own for what to select here.

 

After rebooting from the disk, you should be prompted with the installer. At this point, you're going to want to use Disk Utility to format your computer's hard drive as Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Continue with the installation, adding what you need. Remember the following:

1. Use Chameleon
   
2. Use the Vanilla kernel
   
3. The Chipset is AHCI SATA/IDE
   
4. Get the card reader (SD/SDHCI Drivers)
   
5. Install all the Realtek ethernet drivers
   
6. DO NOT install Atheros drivers or any Graphics drivers
   

Wait for the installation finish and all should go just fine!

 

--- 5. Configuration ---After you've finished installing OS X, the fun part comes along: driver installation! Hooray!

 

OSX86Tools and KextHelper are both included with the graphics card kext package. If you didn't download it in advance, that's your problem.

1. Use KextHelper to install IOPCMCIFamily.kext, IONetworkingFamily.kext, and IO80211Family.kext from the Ethernet and Wireless drivers link above. Do not restart
   
2. Use OSX86Tools to install the kernel that is supplied with the drivers in step 1.
   
3. Click "View PCI Device/Vendor ID" in OSX86Tools and install what it tells you to. Now restart.
   
4. Following the rest of that guide, you should be able to get wireless up and running or, at the very least, ethernet - install all software updates. If anything breaks, just repeat step 1 afterward.
   
5. Install the rest of the kernel extensions that I linked above using KextHelper, following whatever steps their respective guides say.
   

--- 6. Additional Comments ---

 

Well, that's it. Hopefully this guide will help some poor souls out that were just as confused about the dreaded "Still waiting on root device" error as I was. I wasn't able to find any means of installing it using a DVD, sadly... and, as a result, the CD/DVD drive does not work and I do not know how to fix it.

 

Enjoy!

[victory144]

Tested on Compaq CQ50-215NR, with iAtkos v7, but I can not figure it out to boot .. set USB to first boot order, but still nothing.

 

 

 

Any help will be appreciated!

 

Thanks in advance...

[CrisJanz]

victory144, you have to install it either from an external drive or with VMWare.

http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php...t&p=1485707

[purity2010]

thanks

[d.mehinovic92]

so this wouldn't work if burned iDeneb onto a dvd?

[KyLe1294]

so will this work with my system (Compaq CQ60-405SA) basically looks the same spec-wise but my processor is an AMD Sempron SI-42

[KyLe1294]

any help..?

[Joey Orlando]

I'm running Snow Leopard 10.6.3 on my G50-112NR, I believe iAtkos S3 Version 2; I installed directly from a DVD that i burned from an iso that i found online.

 

Everything works, minus WiFi and headphone and microphone jack; built-in speakers work fine though. I went and bought a little usb WiFi reciever that's mac compatible for $8.00 + S&H

 

 

 

...Who would'a known... i paid $16 dollars total for my "mac"