Buying MacOS X, hackintosh installs & vmware

[E. K. Hornbeck2]

I have two questions for the OSX86 community.

 

1. I'm interested in playing around with a MacOS X install on an X86 system.

From browsing around the web sites, wikis & forums, I gather that step one

is obtaining some hacked kernels or install .iso images, and that these

items are pretty clearly of dubious legality.

 

I am willing to pay Apple for my own copy of their OS. So, what I'm wondering

is this. Suppose I walked into a software store, paid $130 and bought my own

copy of MacOS X. Would this be sufficient, if I wanted to do a hackintosh

install? I have a feeling that it would *not* be sufficient, that I'd either

have to edit/patch/crack the install image I had purchased in some fairly

wizardly way, or I'd have to go out on the net and find one of these illegal

images to get myself bootstrapped.

 

Supposing I bought a copy of MacOS X. How would that affect the task of

installing MacOS X on a generic x86 box?

 

(By generic, I mean fairly clean & modern -- SATA drives, Conroe cpu, Intel

975 chipset, NVidia 9600 graphics card.)

 

2. Suppose I wanted to install my own personal, paid-for copy of MacOS X

on top of vmware, giving the following stack:

 

MacOSX

vmware

linux

Conroe/Intel 975/NVidia 9600/SATA drives system

 

I can't find any HOWTO's that are specific to doing the

highest-functionality, highest-performance vmware MacOS X system.

I have seen lots of native-hardware install howtos that begin with

a VMWare install, but not much discussion of staying on vmware and

the virtual devices involved.

 

For example, the hardware compatibility list on the OSX86 wiki doesn't

list the vmware devices. It seems to me that it should.

 

The nice thing about staying on top of vmware is that I can have linux

running on one virtual console, and flip over to MacOS X running on a

distinct virtual console. In fact, this is my primary interest -- I'm

not currently all that interested in running a real-hardware copy of

MacOS X.

 

If anyone has any advice on these issues, I'd sure appreciate it. Thanks!

 

-EKH

[iDerf2006]

You sure won't be able to patch/crack it, because the versions you buy in stores are for the PowerPC platform only, and not the Intel ones. It's 100% just impossible to patch it, and the only route you CAN do is buy a real mac, or download the ISO.

[munky]

You could always buy the retail (PowerPC) version and then download the ISO and use it. At least you'd have paid for a copy of the OS. It wouldn't stand up in court, but it might make you feel better.