My experience with Hackintosh

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: umrigar
Don't forget to spec out a refurbished MacPro as a comparison, too.

They cost $1900 + tax. $300 less than the same configuration at the regular Apple prices.

Nice writeup, though. Certainly makes one think about a $1000 Hackintosh.

Still, my $1300 Hackintosh beats the pants off the $600-more-expensive-and-used Mac Pro :laugh:

 

[kalster]

Originally posted by: bigrash
I've really been thinking about doing this since I don't have a mac right now. I guess the only thing I might need changing is a new motherboard and more ram. I have to do more reasearch to see if my mobo would work with this.

ga-p35-ds3l works just fine with osx

 

[bigrash]

Originally posted by: Kaido

Originally posted by: bigrash
I've really been thinking about doing this since I don't have a mac right now. I guess the only thing I might need changing is a new motherboard and more ram. I have to do more reasearch to see if my mobo would work with this.

bigrash, your motherboard is 100% supported - everything works in Hackintosh. Also, 4 gigs is plenty! lol. Download this package:

http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=76014

Follow the instructions step-by-step. Even though it is written for the Bad Axe 2, it should work perfectly on your board. Just skip installing the Sound Driver after reboot. It will install the driver the 7000-series video cards, but your video card will only run in VESA mode. Edit: Looks like it only needs AppleSMBIOS & IONetworkingFamily, you might be able to skip dsmos.kext. If you want, remove dsmos.kext and NVinject.kext from the instructions in the Terminal (it simply won't install them if you don't type them in). Otherwise it probably wouldn't hurt to install dsmos.kext...play with it.

The only part of your system that I don't think will work is the 8800 - if it's a G80 it should work, but if it's G90 it won't work. Read up here for more information:

http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=65849

According to this thread, 8800GTs are not working currently:

http://forum.insanelymac.com/i...wtopic=70247&hl=8800gt

I'm running a 320mb XFX 8800 GTS and it is working fabulously. If you really want to get into Hackintosh, sell your GT and upgrade to a known working GTS or other high-power compatible model. They are going for around $200 used and in the $250 range if you can find a good deal on them.

******

For everyone else, here is a list of known working motherboards:

http://wiki.osx86project.org/w...CL_10.5.0#Motherboards

If it's not on the list then it simply hasn't been tested and documented yet.

Thanks Kaido. That's some really good information!

I'm going to check if I have the G80 or G90 card once I get home tonight. I've been browsing through some of the links that you posted, but will go through it more once I'm not at work.

Thanks again man!

 

[kalster]

Originally posted by: Kaido

Originally posted by: kalster
my $250 compaq c500 works well with leopard

Right on! Specs/details??

this is my laptop

Text

its got gma 950, so qe/ci works just fine, the only issue is that the pci express bus isnt supported correctly, so the broadcom wifi card that is supported as airport extreme doesn't work, simple ralink usb wifi dongle takes care of that, other acer series cheapo laptops (the intel ones that go for 399) don't have that issue ether, the celeron m 440 my c500 has is recognized as core solo (since its just a core solo with 1mb cache),

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: bigrash

Originally posted by: Kaido

Originally posted by: bigrash
I've really been thinking about doing this since I don't have a mac right now. I guess the only thing I might need changing is a new motherboard and more ram. I have to do more reasearch to see if my mobo would work with this.

bigrash, your motherboard is 100% supported - everything works in Hackintosh. Also, 4 gigs is plenty! lol. Download this package:

http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=76014

Follow the instructions step-by-step. Even though it is written for the Bad Axe 2, it should work perfectly on your board. Just skip installing the Sound Driver after reboot. It will install the driver the 7000-series video cards, but your video card will only run in VESA mode. Edit: Looks like it only needs AppleSMBIOS & IONetworkingFamily, you might be able to skip dsmos.kext. If you want, remove dsmos.kext and NVinject.kext from the instructions in the Terminal (it simply won't install them if you don't type them in). Otherwise it probably wouldn't hurt to install dsmos.kext...play with it.

The only part of your system that I don't think will work is the 8800 - if it's a G80 it should work, but if it's G90 it won't work. Read up here for more information:

http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=65849

According to this thread, 8800GTs are not working currently:

http://forum.insanelymac.com/i...wtopic=70247&hl=8800gt

I'm running a 320mb XFX 8800 GTS and it is working fabulously. If you really want to get into Hackintosh, sell your GT and upgrade to a known working GTS or other high-power compatible model. They are going for around $200 used and in the $250 range if you can find a good deal on them.

******

For everyone else, here is a list of known working motherboards:

http://wiki.osx86project.org/w...CL_10.5.0#Motherboards

If it's not on the list then it simply hasn't been tested and documented yet.

Thanks Kaido. That's some really good information!

I'm going to check if I have the G80 or G90 card once I get home tonight. I've been browsing through some of the links that you posted, but will go through it more once I'm not at work.

Thanks again man!

Yeah basically you just have to worry about (1) the motherboard and (2) the video card. Once you get those two picked out it's all downhill from there. If your card isn't supported, it may be worthwhile just to upgrade to a fully-compatible GTS like I have so that everything works 100%. Also from what I've read the 8800 series seems to be up there with the Quadro FX 4500, a $1650 option from Apple, and has an edge over it in gaming (although not as good when doing CAD-type rendering stuff). Not bad for $300 new!

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: kalster

Originally posted by: Kaido

Originally posted by: kalster
my $250 compaq c500 works well with leopard

Right on! Specs/details??

this is my laptop

Text

its got gma 950, so qe/ci works just fine, the only issue is that the pci express bus isnt supported correctly, so the broadcom wifi card that is supported as airport extreme doesn't work, simple ralink usb wifi dongle takes care of that, other acer series cheapo laptops (the intel ones that go for 399) don't have that issue ether, the celeron m 440 my c500 has is recognized as core solo (since its just a core solo with 1mb cache),

Does ACPI/Power Management work correctly, i.e. can you see the battery status? Also does sleep/wake work correctly? A cheap Hackintosh laptop, even if it is single-core, would be pretty neat. I've heard that the Acer series works pretty well, aside from power management...you kind of have to guess at the battery life.

 

[Kaido]

Just tested the card with my wife's 24" Dell as the secondary display, works great!

Currently running a 320mb 8800 GTS with two 24" 1920x1200 LCDs on DVI without any issues.

 

[AmigaMan]

Originally posted by: Kaido

Originally posted by: AmigaMan

Originally posted by: Kaido
I am building a second Hackintosh this week using a $50 Gigabyte board. The limitation is that it only supports a maximum of 2 gigs of ram (and I believe only dual-core chips), but it's a great (expandable) alternative to the Mac Mini. Pair up with an inexpensive Core 2 Duo chip, a couple gigs of ram, that $30 Rosewill case/psu, and a 7300GT, you can save quite a bit of money and get a more powerful "low-end" machine than the Mini offers. This is also a great option if you want an HTPC and the Mac Mini won't cut it for you for HD playback. Here's the board:

Gigabyte GA-945GCMX-S2 - $45

Optionally pair that up with a nice mATX HTPC case:

Antecn NSK2480 with quality 380w PSU - $80

You can make a pretty nice "real" HD AppleTV clone using that. Install Perian and voila, Apple multimedia center! You can even use a Wiimote as your Front Row controller!

http://sourceforge.net/projects/darwiin-remote/

are there any mobo's out there that would work that support more than 2GB of RAM?

Yes, read my original post for details - I'm running 8 gigs in my machine ($200 from Newegg!). One guy on the InsanelyMac forums is running 32 gigs on his dual-Xeon Hackintosh

I actually meant a cheaper mobo, like the gigabyte, that also supports more than 2GB. I'd really like to not spend $175 on a mobo, but I also want 4GB of RAM.

The perfect system for me would have 4GB RAM, a 250GB HD, a Core2Duo 2.4Ghz CPU, and the cheapest video card that would be stable and have dual dvi outs. I wonder if my old Shuttle 3Ghz P4 would work? Tiger maybe?

 

[Oil]

I would love to try on this on my T61 but I don't think Intel wireless cards are supported very well

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: OSx86
I would love to try on this on my T61 but I don't think Intel wireless cards are supported very well

Boy are you in luck:

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=52240

Looks like that guy got everything working 100%

 

[SoundTheSurrender]

Are you using the Vanilla Kernel or the hacked Kernel?

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: SoundTheSurrender
Are you using the Vanilla Kernel or the hacked Kernel?

Vanilla kernel! Allows my machine to download updates directly from Apple!

 

[Megatomic]

Awesome. I wish I could install OSX on my HP DV6000T, but from what I've seen I've got too much hardware that isn't compatible that it would be difficult if not impossible.

 

[Oil]

Originally posted by: Kaido

Originally posted by: OSx86
I would love to try on this on my T61 but I don't think Intel wireless cards are supported very well

Boy are you in luck:

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=52240

Looks like that guy got everything working 100%

Actually he had the Intel 4965 AGN but bought and installed the IBM ABG (Atheros) for full compatibility

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: OSx86

Originally posted by: Kaido

Originally posted by: OSx86
I would love to try on this on my T61 but I don't think Intel wireless cards are supported very well

Boy are you in luck:

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=52240

Looks like that guy got everything working 100%

Actually he had the Intel 4965 AGN but bought and installed the IBM ABG (Atheros) for full compatibility

Ahh you must have a different setup. Amazing how much variation there can be between models. A T61 would be my ideal Hackintosh laptop.

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: Megatomic
Awesome. I wish I could install OSX on my HP DV6000T, but from what I've seen I've got too much hardware that isn't compatible that it would be difficult if not impossible.

Thread here:

http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=31474

 

[Kaido]

Geekbench scores:

http://forum.insanelymac.com/i...id=537751&#entry537751

Just for comparison:

http://www.primatelabs.ca/blog/page/2/

3682 - single 2.4ghz @ 2.8ghz Core 2 Duo E6600 (Onetrack)
3910 - dual 2ghz dual-core Xeons (Mac Pro)
4652 - single 2.4ghz quad-core Core 2 Quad (weaksauce12)
5018 - dual 2.66ghz dual-core Xeons (Mac Pro)
5574 - dual 3.0ghz dual-core Xeons (Mac Pro)
6011 - single 2.4ghz @ 3.0ghz quad-core Core 2 Quad (weaksauce12)
8626 - dual 3.0ghz quad-core Xeons (Mac Pro)

So, my 2.4ghz Quad is faster than a dual 2ghz dual-core Xeon by 1000 points and is $3,800 less than the comparable configuration. It is only 400 points under the dual 2.66ghz dual-core Xeon. Overclocked to 3.0ghz, my Hackintosh is faster than both the dual 2.66ghz dual-core Xeons and the dual 3.0ghz dual-core Xeons. The Octo-core is about 2600 points faster than my Hackintosh.

 

[ViRGE]

Keep in mind the Mac Pro uses FB-DIMMs. They take a huge hit in performance in order to allow a motherboard to have more DIMM slots.

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: ViRGE
Keep in mind the Mac Pro uses FB-DIMMs. They take a huge hit in performance in order to allow a motherboard to have more DIMM slots.

Are you saying that theoretically the Mac Pro would be faster if they had fewer FB-DIMM slots?

 

[Carlis]

But running single socket you have 4 cores on a single bus. Does that do much to performance? A good thing is you don't have to coop with slow buffered memory...(by the way, amd does not use that I think? and they have many memory slots as well...)
What about ECC? Is it nonsense or does it make a difference to stability?
Please write more threads about the big hole in apples product line, there is a tiny chance they will listen, at least if we solve the problem our selves...

 

[ViRGE]

Originally posted by: Kaido

Originally posted by: ViRGE
Keep in mind the Mac Pro uses FB-DIMMs. They take a huge hit in performance in order to allow a motherboard to have more DIMM slots.

Are you saying that theoretically the Mac Pro would be faster if they had fewer FB-DIMM slots?

Not fewer FB-DIMM slots, no FB-DIMM slots. If they went with regular DDR2, performance would improve thanks to higher memory bandwidth and much lower latency. However since it's a workstation machine, it's designed around the needs of customers who have very large projects that need more RAM, where the amount of RAM improves performance far more than the speed of said RAM.

 

[fyleow]

..

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: fyleow

Originally posted by: Carlis
But running single socket you have 4 cores on a single bus. Does that do much to performance? A good thing is you don't have to coop with slow buffered memory...(by the way, amd does not use that I think? and they have many memory slots as well...)
What about ECC? Is it nonsense or does it make a difference to stability?
Please write more threads about the big hole in apples product line, there is a tiny chance they will listen, at least if we solve the problem our selves...

Doubtful. There's a 156 page thread on Ars about the non existent xMac but I guess it's just not something Apple wants to offer.

Yeah they only seem to go after the easy things...releasing iPhone DIY software when the hackers did it, releasing Boot Camp after the hackers did it...

If they really wanted to be awesome, they'd release an ultraportable MacBook Pro and a Mac Pro Lite desktop machine, maybe SFF Shuttle-style. That will fill the gaps in their product line imo.

 

[SoundTheSurrender]

A Mac Pro Lite desktop would eat into the sales of iMacs and the SFF Shuttle Style would eat into the Mac Mini.

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: SoundTheSurrender
A Mac Pro Lite desktop would eat into the sales of iMacs and the SFF Shuttle Style would eat into the Mac Mini.

Thus the Hackintosh