Very happy with my Hackintosh (Dell Optiplex 620)

[Kinshi]

This was damn near a Mac-like..certainly went better than some of my Windows install.

 

Now first, my rig (its not a stock 620). I have swapped the CPU for a P4 3.2 Ghz Dual-core CPU, and I have a Radeon 1900XTX. I also have a aftermarket DVD R/W.

 

I opted to NOT dual-boot in anyway shape or form, so my PC is 100% Mac-ized now.

 

I chose Kalyway 10.5.2 to start with based on reports that it gave the least hassle for install. I did have to use a USB DVD drive to boot the disk (and frankly it seems if you use an IDE DVD, you are simply wasting your time trying to boot the DVD off that thing..far easier and cheaper in the long run to use the external USB DVD. I didnt even use a boot loader..just formatted MBR and made my disks all MACOS Journaled.

 

It was quite nice to have my ATI video supported with ease (including full screen and windowed 3D, and to have the power-saving functions work well too w/o having to resort to some of the wild extremes I have seen reported.

 

Then I was pleased to find Mac equals to other Windows apps I used, like for XFire I found iFire, for TeamSpeak I found TeamSpeex, for Trillium I found Adium.

 

The only time things got tricky was when I felt compelled to make the move forward from 10.5.2 to 10.5.8. (Eve Online requires 10.5.6, and Warhammer Online requires 10.5.7) Now I did the smart thing and made disk images of my boot drive, and good thing I did because I bricked my system trying to follow one upgrade guide, but then I found the iDeneb 10.5.8 upgrade kit along with the applelife.ru ktext utility. Made it very easy to make the upgrade .

 

After the upgrade I started having a somewhat common problem 9would not boot w/o the install DVD in the drive, but found the ktext for that, then I also needed the ktext to fix the seatbelt problem (kernel panic when mounting DMGs) but I was able tofind those with relative ease and get them installed. Problems all fixed.

 

BTW, the audio performance for the AC97 sound seemed to have gotten a lot better between 10.5.2 and 10.5.8

 

So in a nutshell, I 'made the switch' to a hackintosh and am estatic with the results.I have no traces of Windoze/NTFS left on my system (not counting the copy of WinXP I run in VirtualBox). I have decided if an app or game wont run native, or under Cider/Crossover or in a VM..I can live w/o it.

 

Next up, getting my Dell Inspiron laptop to become a "Hackbook Pro"