How easy is installing OS X on a hackintosh these days?

[Spanky Deluxe]

I spent a good deal of time back in 2006 playing around with the Tiger Development Transition build and installing it on an Athlon X2 system but ended up ditching the Hackintosh route for a Mac Pro when they were released. Three years later and I have five Macs in use in the house.

 

Anyway, I'm thinking of replacing my 2.66GHz Quad 2006 Mac Pro with an i7 hackintosh build because since Apple increased their profit margins on their Mac Pro ranges, I can't really justify spending that kind of money again - different rant different time I think.

 

Since I've been out of the loop as far as hackintoshes go, what's the current state of play? I don't mean in detail since I can look into all that later on but as a whole. I'm guessing it's matured somewhat. How much kext editing is still needed these days and are Software Updates still a nightmare, do we still need custom kernels for each build?

 

I'm thinking of an i7-920 with a Gigabyte EX58-UD5 right now and my two XFX 4870 1GB cards that have been had Apple's EFI bit added on (if that matters). I'd be using my existing Snow Leopard retail disks etc.

 

Is it still an uphill battle or is it no harder than say, installing Ubuntu on a PC? Also what's the deal with these boot loaders like Chameleon, do they make installation easier and more seamless?

[landscapeman]

It takes a little more than any Linux distro. But all in all it was pretty straight forward. You just need to load the kernals and kexts to your hardware. iDeneb and iAtkos seemed to quite easy after I finally figured it out. But it will take a few installs and some reading to get it right.

[pdave54]

Different rant different time . well that did not have to be mentioned. same deal as 2006 Read research hard work ...

[Spanky Deluxe]

It takes a little more than any Linux distro. But all in all it was pretty straight forward. You just need to load the kernals and kexts to your hardware. iDeneb and iAtkos seemed to quite easy after I finally figured it out. But it will take a few installs and some reading to get it right.

 

Cool. Should be straight forward enough then. Things definitely look a lot more mature these days what with these bootloaders etc.

 

Different rant different time . well that did not have to be mentioned. same deal as 2006 Read research hard work ...

 

My, you're friendly.

[ilia.uk]

I spent a good deal of time back in 2006 playing around with the Tiger Development Transition build and installing it on an Athlon X2 system but ended up ditching the Hackintosh route for a Mac Pro when they were released. Three years later and I have five Macs in use in the house.

 

Anyway, I'm thinking of replacing my 2.66GHz Quad 2006 Mac Pro with an i7 hackintosh build because since Apple increased their profit margins on their Mac Pro ranges, I can't really justify spending that kind of money again - different rant different time I think.

 

Since I've been out of the loop as far as hackintoshes go, what's the current state of play? I don't mean in detail since I can look into all that later on but as a whole. I'm guessing it's matured somewhat. How much kext editing is still needed these days and are Software Updates still a nightmare, do we still need custom kernels for each build?

 

I'm thinking of an i7-920 with a Gigabyte EX58-UD5 right now and my two XFX 4870 1GB cards that have been had Apple's EFI bit added on (if that matters). I'd be using my existing Snow Leopard retail disks etc.

 

Is it still an uphill battle or is it no harder than say, installing Ubuntu on a PC? Also what's the deal with these boot loaders like Chameleon, do they make installation easier and more seamless?

 

It is much easier than before. The easiest being something like lifehacker's guide for the ep45-ud3p or the guide posted here for the ep45-ud3lr which involved restoring the OSX image onto a usb stick and then dragging-and-dropping a few modified files and then booting from the usb stick.

 

Otherwise, it involves connecting a second harddisk to an osx system; formatting it under guid, installing osx onto it whilst being on your osx system then installing the bootloader onto the drive and finally adding in a modified boot file with the efi string for your graphics card.

[Spanky Deluxe]

It is much easier than before. The easiest being something like lifehacker's guide for the ep45-ud3p or the guide posted here for the ep45-ud3lr which involved restoring the OSX image onto a usb stick and then dragging-and-dropping a few modified files and then booting from the usb stick.

 

Otherwise, it involves connecting a second harddisk to an osx system; formatting it under guid, installing osx onto it whilst being on your osx system then installing the bootloader onto the drive and finally adding in a modified boot file with the efi string for your graphics card.

 

Hmm... interesting. I might be able to just clone my Mac Pro's hard drive or even just use my Mac Pro's hard drive just by adding the bootloader and kexts.

[machomac]

One pretty much straight forward option is using the Rebel EFI boot software, cost a few bucks but seems really nice.

 

If you check out their HCL here http://wiki.psystar.com/index.php/Hardware...patibility_List you can find a suiting motherboard for the i7. In general Gigabyte is the brand everyone talks about when it comes to osx and PCs. There are two ones listed as compatible whit the 1366 socket.

 

You can get the retail SL DVD from apple store for just a few dollars and then you're almost done!

 

I belive the most important thing is to get the correct hardware if you want to be able to use the standard retail installation without to much patching.

 

Good luck!

 

I spent a good deal of time back in 2006 playing around with the Tiger Development Transition build and installing it on an Athlon X2 system but ended up ditching the Hackintosh route for a Mac Pro when they were released. Three years later and I have five Macs in use in the house.

 

Anyway, I'm thinking of replacing my 2.66GHz Quad 2006 Mac Pro with an i7 hackintosh build because since Apple increased their profit margins on their Mac Pro ranges, I can't really justify spending that kind of money again - different rant different time I think.

 

Since I've been out of the loop as far as hackintoshes go, what's the current state of play? I don't mean in detail since I can look into all that later on but as a whole. I'm guessing it's matured somewhat. How much kext editing is still needed these days and are Software Updates still a nightmare, do we still need custom kernels for each build?

 

I'm thinking of an i7-920 with a Gigabyte EX58-UD5 right now and my two XFX 4870 1GB cards that have been had Apple's EFI bit added on (if that matters). I'd be using my existing Snow Leopard retail disks etc.

 

Is it still an uphill battle or is it no harder than say, installing Ubuntu on a PC? Also what's the deal with these boot loaders like Chameleon, do they make installation easier and more seamless?

[pdave54]

One pretty much straight forward option is using the Rebel EFI boot software, cost a few bucks but seems really nice.

 

If you check out their HCL here http://wiki.psystar.com/index.php/Hardware...patibility_List you can find a suiting motherboard for the i7. In general Gigabyte is the brand everyone talks about when it comes to osx and PCs. There are two ones listed as compatible whit the 1366 socket.

 

You can get the retail SL DVD from apple store for just a few dollars and then you're almost done!

 

I belive the most important thing is to get the correct hardware if you want to be able to use the standard retail installation without to much patching.

 

Good luck!

 

The company you mention is a banned subject on this forum. However Empire EFI is not & it's free

[cnunez1987]

I spent a good deal of time back in 2006 playing around with the Tiger Development Transition build and installing it on an Athlon X2 system but ended up ditching the Hackintosh route for a Mac Pro when they were released. Three years later and I have five Macs in use in the house.

 

Anyway, I'm thinking of replacing my 2.66GHz Quad 2006 Mac Pro with an i7 hackintosh build because since Apple increased their profit margins on their Mac Pro ranges, I can't really justify spending that kind of money again - different rant different time I think.

 

Since I've been out of the loop as far as hackintoshes go, what's the current state of play? I don't mean in detail since I can look into all that later on but as a whole. I'm guessing it's matured somewhat. How much kext editing is still needed these days and are Software Updates still a nightmare, do we still need custom kernels for each build?

 

I'm thinking of an i7-920 with a Gigabyte EX58-UD5 right now and my two XFX 4870 1GB cards that have been had Apple's EFI bit added on (if that matters). I'd be using my existing Snow Leopard retail disks etc.

 

Is it still an uphill battle or is it no harder than say, installing Ubuntu on a PC? Also what's the deal with these boot loaders like Chameleon, do they make installation easier and more seamless?

 

Good GOD. So much easier.

 

When I tried getting Tiger to run on my HP nw8240, it was a two-week nightmare. Wireless was completely out of the question, since it was an Intel chip (which still goes unsupported). Worse, I ran into tons of incompatibilities and even installing it was a mess. (Remember, Tiger was largely PPC-based, so we had to worry about Rosetta working and translating SSE/SSE2/SSE3 instructions to PPC-compatible ones. UGHHHHHH! Thanks Jaxx!)

 

This time around, getting Snow Leopard on my Dell Latitude was as simple as buying (BUYING, as in going to the Apple Store and buying a license) a copy and using a special bootloader to get it up and running. I lost the ability to shutdown and restart conventionally, and somehow sacrified my webcam to get sleep to work. However, it runs fantastic and was a seamless change in my workflow.

 

I think the consensus for this is that Leopard/Snow Leopard were designed from the ground up to be run on x86 chips, whereas Tiger was a PPC/x86 hybrid that was more PPC biased.

[Spanky Deluxe]

One pretty much straight forward option is using the Rebel EFI boot software, cost a few bucks but seems really nice.

 

If you check out their HCL here http://wiki.psystar.com/index.php/Hardware...patibility_List you can find a suiting motherboard for the i7. In general Gigabyte is the brand everyone talks about when it comes to osx and PCs. There are two ones listed as compatible whit the 1366 socket.

 

You can get the retail SL DVD from apple store for just a few dollars and then you're almost done!

 

I belive the most important thing is to get the correct hardware if you want to be able to use the standard retail installation without to much patching.

 

Good luck!

 

Cool thanks. I'll steer clear of Psystar since I despise their 'business' practices. Building a hackintosh for yourself is one thing but making a profit on selling them and stealing all the hard work done by the open source community and people on this very forum is another thing entirely. There's bending a EULA and there's plain theft.

 

The company you mention is a banned subject on this forum. However Empire EFI is not & it's free

 

Unfortunately Empire EFI's site's down right now due to exceeded bandwidth so I can't check it out. I saw on the front page that there's one called Chameleon that's meant to be good but I don't really know what to look for. I swear I saw a video of a hackintosh somewhere that looked identical to a Mac booting with drive selection just like you get on a real mac when holding the alt key down.

 

Good GOD. So much easier.

 

When I tried getting Tiger to run on my HP nw8240, it was a two-week nightmare. Wireless was completely out of the question, since it was an Intel chip (which still goes unsupported). Worse, I ran into tons of incompatibilities and even installing it was a mess. (Remember, Tiger was largely PPC-based, so we had to worry about Rosetta working and translating SSE/SSE2/SSE3 instructions to PPC-compatible ones. UGHHHHHH! Thanks Jaxx!)

 

This time around, getting Snow Leopard on my Dell Latitude was as simple as buying (BUYING, as in going to the Apple Store and buying a license) a copy and using a special bootloader to get it up and running. I lost the ability to shutdown and restart conventionally, and somehow sacrified my webcam to get sleep to work. However, it runs fantastic and was a seamless change in my workflow.

 

I think the consensus for this is that Leopard/Snow Leopard were designed from the ground up to be run on x86 chips, whereas Tiger was a PPC/x86 hybrid that was more PPC biased.

 

That's reassuring to know! I already have family packs of Leopard, Snow Leopard, iLife etc so I should be all good to go if I build this new computer.

 

I remember those days of getting rosetta working and the modified kernels with SSE3 taken out! I wasn't helping myself either since I was using my existing system which was an AMD X2 based setup and nVidia support was non existent at first. I got hold of an eMac 1GHz' logic board though for less than the cost of a cheap graphics card and managed to hack it up to work as a headless machine (not even in a case). After a week of having that it had become my primary machine with my far more powerful PC being kept off most of the time due to it being so noisy. Then the Intel Mac Minis were released so I got one of those, then the Mac Pros were released and my transition was complete!

 

I'm thinking of gutting my Mac Pro and selling the internals off since they seem to command a fair bit of cash and then building an i7 hackintosh into it. I love the design of the case, love the drive sleds, love the cooling and my cat loves to sit on top of it. I (and the cat) am also used to having it on top of my desk now. I'm thinking of using the Asus Rampage II GENE mATX board. I've seen some people have used it on here although it isn't as well documented as the Gigabyte boards. It would mean I'd have to do only minimal modifications to my Mac Pro's case though so could keep it looking legit.