New Hackintosher - Basic Questions

[coldsun1187]

Hello,

 

I've been reading quite a bit of information, and specifically on the system I have in order to have a successful install. I have a few questions before I try my first install.

1. Some of the older posts I read about my hardware, a Gateway 6800-01-e, say I should remove excess RAM above 4GB before trying an install. Is that really necessary?
   
2. I have a 128GB Samsung SSD (I love the thing), a 1TB Hard drive, and an older 750GB Hard Drive. Should I remove all drives except the SSD in order to install the first time?
   
3. Should I install with just [url="http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/279450-why-insanelymac-does-not-support-tonymacx86/"]#####[/url] settings before trying to select individual hardware settings , or should I just check what I know is supposed to be compatible?
   
4. Finally, If the first install doesn't work do I have to start the process from scratch by formatting the drive or just reboot and run installer again?
   

I'm an experienced computer user, just new to this particular experience. Thanks for any help you can provide. I've always been a Windows guy, except when I was a teenager using my Apple IIE and IIC. I just purchased an iPad (3rd Gen) and was so impressed I decided to come back to the Apple fold. I'm also building a really nice Hackintosh piece by piece.

 

Also, noted the sticky topics in this forum. When I first started I had no idea the differences in these sites. One of the topics mentioned that building a Hackintosh was designed as an educational project. I love that idea and am excited to learn from it, but I must also ask what is wrong with building your own Hackintosh because it is cheaper than a real Mac? I ask this out of pure innocence. As a long-time PC user, I have always had the choice to build my own boxes or buy a pre-built machine from a number of companies. I like the idea of being able to upgrade my machines at will by just switching parts around. It is cheaper no doubt. Is this a taboo way of thinking as a new Hackintosh user? Personally, I don't see how it hurts Apple. I'm buying new Apple software now, which I've never done. I'm using Apple Store and iTunes like a beast. I'm paying for my versions of MacOS. If anything, it will only make it more likely I buy an actual Mac PC in the near future.

[Gringo Vermelho]

1. No. If you need to disable memory you can boot with the maxmem=2048 (for example) kernel flag.

2. Only if you're clumsy or worried that you might choose the wrong drive as install target by accident.

3. You should experiment with what you have and learn from your mistakes. If you use [url="http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/279450-why-insanelymac-does-not-support-tonymacx86/"]#####[/url] or any other TonyMac product, we cannot help you here.

4. It depends on your install method and of course, on what went wrong.

 

Building a Hackintosh in order to get a cheap Mac should be way, way down on your list of reasons for doing it.

OS X is not meant to run on PCs and lots of things can go wrong that would never go wrong on a real Mac. Your PC is not a Mac, even if you have managed to convince OS X that it is.

[coldsun1187]

Thank you, Gringo. I understand what you mean now. For what its worth, I'm making the current Hackintosh out of a bunch of spare parts. I was planning on making a custom build, but after reading your post, and knowing that I'm an application developer who is learning Apple programming, I will likely be buying a real Mac sooner than later. Still, this is a good way for me to get my feet wet with MacOs and I'll learn quite a bit about it. Besides, I doubt I'll get the wife to spring for a new Mac after just getting an iPad. Maybe I can make some side money.

 

Thanks for the tip on the RAM. As I said before, I didn't know much about TonyMac before I posted this and read the sticky threads. My goal is to do this without the use of [url="http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/279450-why-insanelymac-does-not-support-tonymacx86/"]#####[/url] and totally within the realm of the ethics of this site and community. I've been a programmer for 18 years, so I can figure it out.

 

Really kind of funny that all the guides I've seen (on the other site I guess) suggest unplugging your hard drives and leaving only one. Seriously because they are afraid they might mess up the other ones? I thought it was because of how the MacOS installer worked. LOL.

 

Again, thanks for the help. I'll be following the guides from this community.

[Gringo Vermelho]

You'll be fine as long as your hardware is more or less compatible - Intel chipset and CPU and the right Nvidia or ATI video card.

 

When I started out I had a P4 651 with ICH5/i865 chipset and a Geforce 7600 GT. I learned a lot, 10.5 ran great on it but it was a lot of work and the Chameleon boot loader wasn't as advanced then as it is now, many "crutches" were needed to get everything working.

 

I did my homework before buying new hardware, so now I can boot and install OS X with only fakesmc.kext and even a mostly un-configured Chameleon boot loader. This is just enough to get up and running and there's a lot more to do post install, but it's pretty cool to me that it is possible at all with just a boot loader with near default settings and a single kernel extension.

 

I have a more complete solution of course, my personal Lion (and previously Snow Leopard) USB installer can boot and install OS X on my motherboard with everything except sound working. The only thing I need to do post-install is patch AppleHDA.kext. Okay, I admit I haven't tried figuring out the Lion recovery partition and iCloud but I have read enough to know that it's possible to pull it off.

 

I even managed to install 10.4.11 on an old G4 powerbook connected to my Hackintosh in Firewire target disk mode. I didn't expect that to work but it did.

 

Some great package solutions are available (like Conti's Myhack and Nawcoms ModCD) but if you're in a do-it-yourself mood you might enjoy reading these:

http://forum.voodoop...x.php/topic,649

http://forum.voodoop...31.html#msg2131

http://forum.voodoop...pic,2304.0.html

http://forum.voodoop...pic,2143.0.html

 

These are mandatory tools when shoehorning OS X onto your hardware:

lspci V1.1.zip

DSDTSE 1.4.3.zip

Champlist.zip

 

...and IORegistryExplorer, which shows your whole device tree with memory locations, IRQs, which driver is loaded and everything else you could possibly want to know and more. IOReg is included with Apple Developer Tools.

Learn how to use Terminal to work with files and volumes, and set permissions and ownership on kernel extensions. Try to avoid point-and-click helper tools if you can, even champlist that I attached. If you take the time to search and read, you can find out how to do all the things you need to do by hand, which has more advantages than I care to list here. Take notes, keep a text document with useful terminal commands and perl scripts that you find.

 

Boothelp.txt, in the Chameleon 2.1 trunk source: http://forge.voodoop...oc/BootHelp.txt

This is where to go to pull the latest version of Chameleon SVN and keep up with the latest developments.

 

Kozlek's Fakesmc branch with HWSensors:

http://www.insanelym...howtopic=275429

Fakesmc is required in order to run OS X on a PC.

 

If you don't have access to a Mac or working Hackintosh, one way to get started is to use any old Snow Leopard hackintosh distro like Hazard for example, or a retail Snow Leopard DVD + one of the many boot CDs that are out there. Then get it upgraded to 10.6.8 (don't worry too much about getting everything working at this point) so that you can buy Lion or Mountain Lion from the App Store. Then you can follow the standard recipe for building an USB installer. There are many guides and it may seem confusing at first but once you have seen enough you will come to realize that the basic steps are identical.

 

The maxmem flag is normally only needed if you're using an older, 3rd party SATA/PATA controller driver that doesn't work right in 64-bit kernel and drivers mode. Some of these were fixed later, for example AppleVIAATA.kext (for Marvell controllers, oddly enough) was fixed by someone and became SuperVIAATA.kext. I guess nforce and jmicron drivers may have had the same issue and were fixed too. If you need to use any of these, read up on it and try to find the latest version.

 

I don't know why the guides you found says to disable or unplug other drives, I have never had any trouble installing OS X on PCs with multiple drives. Maybe it's a good idea if you need to troubleshoot something in the boot process or if you're using some hacked up driver on fringe hardware, I don't know.

 

A little history lesson..read everything here, follow the links at the bottom and read that too: http://tgwbd.org/darwin/

The Chameleon boot loader and everything else we do here is based on that.

 

And finally, you're a smart person (which is why I took the time to write this for you lol) so please stick around and help other people when you have the time. Good luck!

[coldsun1187]

Thanks again, Gringo. I've been experimenting with a few things. I'll let you guys know where I end up when I'm done.

[coldsun1187]

As I said, I'm back. I have Lion 10.7.4 installed. I used IATKOS distro and then ran the combo update with no issues whatsoever. I'm falling in love with MACOS. I think I'm going to buy a new Mac with Retina display around Christmas.

 

I did run into one problem today. I ran a software update that popped up for 10.7.4 - supplemental and it also had a Safari update. That update froze mid install and then on reboot the system would freeze on the Apple logo. Ended up going back to 10.7.2 and updating via the Combo 10.7.4. I won't make the mistake of installing either of those patches from auto update utility again. I also didn't like how Time Machine worked for restoring the backup. I actually made a Time Machine before I installed the update in hope that I could go back if something went wrong. I either did it wrong or just couldn't restore to the point I had started from. What is the best method for backup up the whole drive so you can restore with all settings and files intact?

 

One thing is for sure. After testing Windows 8 since the beginning of the year, I'm definitely loving MACOS a lot more. I describe it as ease and power. If it would play Guild Wars 2 without having to boot into Windows for best performance I would likely use it all the time. Being a Windows user for most of my life, I can't understand the people that like Windows 8. It runs faster (booting, file copying, gaming), but the Metro UI is such a piece of junk and an obstruction to usability on my desktop. I keep seeing people say "but the start menu is still there nothing is changed" on Engadget in almost every story about Windows 8. I don't bother responding, as any serious Windows user is likely as frustrated as I am. Enough to spend my programming time, the time I make money on, learning MACOS and Apple programming when a year ago I wouldn't have even considered it. I work for one of the biggest companies in the world and I develop applications that run under Windows for both web and client. The US Government is actually using some of my stuff. Judging from my own experiences, Microsoft is in for a whole lot of trouble this year. I'm no hater, in fact, I love all my MS development applications VERY much. I'm just astounded that they would go this route. I could develop a better desktop UI for Windows in my sleep than Metro UI. A bunch of big poorly colored flat boxes. A glorified Silverlight application running as the new Windows Shell. Apologies in advance to anyone here who is a Windows 8 fan. I'm just airing my frustration.

 

I don't think I'll install Mountain Lion until it has been out for a while. I've got to learn more about using these boot loaders and other tools instead of using a distro like IATKOS. I did try the guide for ML I found on this forum. Excellent guide! Both systems I had laying around for testing would freeze up during boot though (screen goes black and then nothing). I look forward to learning everything I can about MACOS and programming for iOS. Appreciate all the good information you gave me, Gringo.

 

P.S. Add me to the three million+ users that purchased ML in the last few days.

 

Regards,

ColdSun