The Hackintosh Thread

[mosslack]

Do you have the iAtKos L2 or ML DVD handy. Try one of those and see if it sees the internal hard drive. They have the special kext necessary to see internal SATA hard drives on systems which don't have AHCI or an implementation which is not recognized by OS X.

If those can see your internal drive then you can just add the kext to /E/E on the installer flash drive to get the same results.

If you don't have the iAtKos handy, you can try adding the kext to /E/E on the installer flash drive, here is a link to it:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/47221269/DC7800/IOATAFamily.kext.zip

 

[purbeast0]

Do you have the iAtKos L2 or ML DVD handy. Try one of those and see if it sees the internal hard drive. They have the special kext necessary to see internal SATA hard drives on systems which don't have AHCI or an implementation which is not recognized by OS X.

If those can see your internal drive then you can just add the kext to /E/E on the installer flash drive to get the same results.

If you don't have the iAtKos handy, you can try adding the kext to /E/E on the installer flash drive, here is a link to it:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/47221269/DC7800/IOATAFamily.kext.zip

no i don't have those discs or dvds handy at home, and i don't use torrents or usenet so it probably wouldn't be easy for me to get them.

i will check out that kext when i get home and try that out before i try the external usb idea. i'll let you know if it works. thanks for that.

 

[purbeast0]

no go with that kext.

i'm now installing to a usb drive. first time i tried it hung up on a white screen and freezed. after googling a little bit i got a fix to try for it and it seems to have gotten passed that part. it's currently installing right now but it is going REALLY REALLY slow. like been going for the past 20-30 minutes and its only 25% done. i'm guessing maybe because of usb. but it definitely got past the part it got stuck on at that white screen so that is good.

 

[purbeast0]

sssssooooo some interesting progress...

took about 2-3 hours to install on usb. i tried to boot up in usb and i couldn't. it didn't see the drive as a bootable disc. so i went into 10.6 and installed chimera on it, and then it saw it to boot up.

when booting with chimera, it would not boot up. it would reset the computer after like 15 seconds of loading kexts. no panel and freeze, just a reboot.

so i then loaded up the unibeast boot disc and tried loading it up that way. then it got to the point where it said "still waiting for root device" and kept saying that, so it never found my hard drive. here comes the bs part...

i then went to my bios. turned off the ahci sata settings and put it on ata instead and tried booting up.

AND WHAT DO YOU KNOW? IT WORKED!

lol. i then went back into the mountain lion installer, and what would you know, the freaking hdd is now being recognized in there too. so all along, even though it said to set it to ahci in the sata settings, that is what was causing me to NOT see it.

so i just was in and ML is running just fine, other than graphics, ethernet, and sound drivers. i have wireless working with a 3rd party adapter.

so since it works on here just fine, and i have a SL time machine backup, i'm going to now try it on my main SL install and see what happens.

so i'm HOPING to have ML up and running shortly.

 

[mosslack]

That sounds like my HP DC7800. To activate AHCI on it you are supposed to set it up as RAID, but when you do, the SATA drives are not seen. That special kext is required to see them in IDE mode, but at least it works. My take on that is that Dell, HP and some others don't adhere to the AHCI standards required for OS X.

Good luck on your upgrade attempt.

 

[purbeast0]

heh welp that didn't work too well...

well it did install fine and everything, but when it loaded up my keyboard/trackpad weren't working lol. but it had all my documents from the snow leopard install and stuff because i saw them on the desktop.

so i just formatted the disc and it installed fine. now i'm moving files over from the time machine backup i made right before so we'll see! says its gonna take 21 hours to transfer files lol.

it's odd though because installation takes HOURS for me of the OS. like it says 30 minutes but it took about 2 hours to do the clean install. and this wasn't when it was usb it was when it's internal.

 

[purbeast0]

having 0 luck with video and sound drivers. i may have to abort this laptop for hackintosh'ing google doesn't show much informatoin about 10.8.3 with this laptop either.

if i don't want to spend a grip on actual mac hardware for a macbook pro, what would be the #1 laptop that you all would recommend to use for a hackintosh that 10.8.3 is running very stable on? looking for something that isn't a dinosaur either kinda like my inspiron if possible.

 

[Centauri]

Anybody done an AMD APU Hackintosh?

 

[mosslack]

having 0 luck with video and sound drivers. i may have to abort this laptop for hackintosh'ing google doesn't show much informatoin about 10.8.3 with this laptop either.

if i don't want to spend a grip on actual mac hardware for a macbook pro, what would be the #1 laptop that you all would recommend to use for a hackintosh that 10.8.3 is running very stable on? looking for something that isn't a dinosaur either kinda like my inspiron if possible.

Check this out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDrZTRCguLA

PM Zaap if you have any questions, he made the video.

 

[purbeast0]

cool thanks. i went to the stores today and actually looked at some. saw some asus vivobook that was really nice too. not sure about how the hackintosh is on them though.

also was checking out actual apple laptops and i don't know, i may just splurge and get one of those. they will last forever and then i will never have to deal with this kinda upgrade crap.

been messing around yet again the past few hours and still, no luck at all with either the sound or graphics. i can't even get native resolution working either. and the more and more i search, i'm pretty sure my graphics card simply isn't supported in ML. it's the Intel GMA 4500MHD video card.

 

[purbeast0]

welp just ended up getting an hp 4540s gonna see if i can get 10.8.3 on it tonight.

 

[Zaap]

welp just ended up getting an hp 4540s gonna see if i can get 10.8.3 on it tonight.

Nice.
I recommend read read read this thread and others on Tonymac:

http://www.tonymacx86.com/hp-probook/87816-hp-probook-installer-6-1-beta-ivy-bridge-support.html

It's why I stress in the video I made that it's not a tutorial, there's a bunch of little detail things you may have to do to get things fully working.

I see that the newer 4540s models have some additional patches required over the 4530s which has so much research done for it, it's now pretty much point and click.

If your wireless isn't working, you may have the same issue I (and most people) had with the 4530s- the internal wifi/BT chip isn't always compatible and needs to be replaced with the correct one. (Usually a $15 or so ebay item and about 5 minutes of work to install).

Rehabman is the king of patches and fixes for the ProBooks, so I'd read through any relevant thread of this on various fixes and patches for any problems you run into.

I'm responding on my 4530s running 10.8.3 off an internal SSD in place of my optical drive. (And a 1080p screen upgrade). This laptop is awesome, best I've ever owned, including a few genuine MacBooks) use it every single day and it's rock solid. Hopefully you have the same experience.

 

[purbeast0]

so got the 4540s up and running no problems now. i got win7 and 10.8.3 on another partition. working well. i do want to get an internal wi-fi card that works. i had a usb dongle that i was using with my inspiron after not having support for wifi in 10.6.8, and it works fine on the 4540s, however it has some weird issue when it goes to sleep. unless i take the usb dongle out, it will not wake up properly from sleep. so i'd like to get all that fixed, but other than that it's working like a champ.

 

[mosslack]

If anyone is looking to build a cheap Hackintosh, I just finished one using this motherboard:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/FOXCONN-G33...616491636?pt=Motherboards&hash=item4cfa474e74

I've posted a quick & dirty guide here if anyone is interested:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1XWuqJXLNpcPxCi81us0KkE27PQ_Qf8pmqXPdqQD6eD8/edit

 

[Kaido]

The new Mac Pro is pretty interesting. Would fun to do a casemod with a broken Dyson vacuum or something

So just to discuss hardware -

1. Processors & Memory:

lightninhopkins over on the Tonymac forums has been running a 16-core (32-thread) Hackintosh with 128gb RAM (I believe 96gb usable) for over a year now:

http://legacy.tonymacx86.com/viewtopic.php?f=169&t=55963

It'd be interesting to see how the cost compares to the newly-announced Mac Pro. The top-end 3.1ghz 8-core Xeons are $1935 each on Newegg:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819117272

So you can still build a beefier Hackintosh. However, 1155 is the best for maximum compatibility on a Hackintosh right now, so you're capped at 32 gigs max if you want to go that route, although you can get 64-gigs on a 2011 board if you don't mind a few shortcomings (I think power management still has issues, so the cpu runs at full-tilt 24/7).

As far as memory goes, Apple is saying the Maverick has been tested at up to 128 gigs; the max for Mountain Lion was 96gb usable. The Mac Pro takes 4 sticks according to pictures; 32gb individual modules are currently available (albeit for a hefty $3700 a pop) so you can max out at 256gb RAM in theory. You could probably match that on a very expensive server board if you wanted to Hackintosh it, although there's not too many applications that would use that much RAM right now, so the point is moot for most people.


2. Solid-State Drive:

OWC has a really nice PCIe SSD product called the Mercury Accelsior_E2:

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/SSD/PCIe/OWC/Mercury_Accelsior/RAID

Advertised 820 MB/s speed, available capacities & prices are 120gb ($320), 240gb ($478), 480gb ($735), 960gb ($1300). I buy these at work sometimes and they are pretty nice for an easy solution. I'm sure with PCIe 3.0 we'll see even faster speeds!


3. Ports:

The big card the Mac Pro is playing is Thunderbolt 2. You can build a Hackintosh now with Thunderbolt 1:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813128559

But it has it's quirks (I believe you still have to boot up with the Tbolt device already plugged in for it to be recognized) and you don't get the new 20Gb/sec speed yet. It looks like Apple is pretty much going the solid-state internal/modular external route for the new Mac Pro, which makes sense in a lot of ways, even though initially it seems a little nuts (imagine the mess on your desk!).

However, Intel is really pushing Thunderbolt and is trying to make it more mass-market friendly:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7049/intel-thunderbolt-2-everything-you-need-to-know

However, 2 notes:

Thunderbolt 2 provides that solution. By combining the channels together, Thunderbolt 2 enables two 20Gbps bi-direction channels instead of two sets of 10Gbps channels. There's no overall increase in bandwidth, but the solution is now more capable. Since there's 20Gbps of bandwidth per channel, you can now do 4K video over Thunderbolt. You can also expect to see higher max transfer rates for storage. Whereas most Thunderbolt storage devices top out at 800 - 900MB/s, Thunderbolt 2 should raise that to around 1500MB/s (overhead and PCIe limits will stop you from getting anywhere near the max spec).

Thunderbolt 2/Falcon Ridge still feed off of the same x4 PCIe 2.0 interface as the previous generation designs. Backwards compatibility is also maintained with existing Thunderbolt devices since the underlying architecture doesn't really change.

So basically, it's still on old-tech PCIe 2.0 instead of the newer 3.0, so you get capped at 1500 MB/s theoretical. The Anandtech article above said that peak performance of a tested SSD array was just under 1100MB/s, which "Intel expects will be much higher once final hardware is ready."

I'm very impressed with the new Mac Pro's size...it will be extremely difficult to replicate as a Hackintosh unless the manufacturer's change the form factor. I guess you could do a Mini-ITX, but then you'd be stuck with only one GPU instead of two, if you want to do a 1:1 build. Really though, I don't see much of an issue with building a box. I've been using the Antec VSK-3000 in a lot of projects lately - small, sturdy, inexpensive:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811129186

I build most of my $4,000+ engineering rigs using this - a slim gen2 Quadro 4000, 32 gigs of RAM, SSD & backup drive, i7-3770K. Extremely quiet too!

So Apple has made an interesting design trend here - tiny, solid-state, all expansion is external. Really I think it was just a matter of time before this happened, because the performance of hardware is such that it's going faster & small, so modularization makes a lot of sense, even though it doesn't seem to at first.

 

[mosslack]

Happy to report I have Mavericks DP1 installed on my GA-P35-DS3L. Tried the myHack 3.2 beta 8 installer first, but kept getting loss of video signal and nothing else. Finally went back to the drawing board and used this method:

http://rochetechnology.com/quick-hackintosh-tip-installing-10-9-mavericks-developer-preview/

Presently installing on my Foxconn G33M system. Fun, fun, fun!

Update: Installed fine on the Foxconn system, but video is a bit wonky. May have more to do with the old, old monitor I am using on that system. Probably all I will do with Mavericks for awhile. Just wanted to check it out a bit.

 

[Kaido]

Got Mountain Lion up on my B75 over the weekend. I used this board:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128556

Install was cake, no issues, just make sure you turn AHCI on. Blackmagic Disk Test says 420 MB/s on the SSD, nice! Updating to 10.8.4 right now, I need to update all my master USB's & DMG's haha. Seems pretty awesome so far! I have the i7-3770k in there along with a new ATI 6870. The GPU makes a lot of fan noise; my other 6870 is a lot quieter (same model, XFX I think, but a different version). As this will be my primary FCPX machine, I opted to go with an ATI (AMD?) card as my primary for the first time in a long time. My GTX470 is going into my Windows-based HTPC as a Steambox/Plex rig.

I may dump off all of my old stuff (got some UD3P/DS3L's still kicking around) and just migrate my wife's machine to a B75 as well. Installation is effortless, it's ridiculously fast, it's just so easy these days haha. I've got mine in a tiny, cheap Antec VSK3000 case, which I really really like and only cost about $30:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811129186

So my summer network plan is:

1. PFsense router: Firewall/router on an H77n Mini-ITX (dual Ethernet) with a low-power CPU
2. Rosewill 802.11n Wifi router: Acting as a WAP with DD-WRT
3. B75 + i7: My rig (primarily for video editing)
4. B75 + i7: Wife's rig (primarily for photo editing)
5. H67N + i5: Steambox + Plex HTPC (also acting as the NAS)

I'll post more details later this week once I get my master installers made, but it's nothing really hard - just make a Tonymac Desktop USB stick with Mountain Lion, turn on AHCI in BIOS, install, and go from there. 10.8.4 will be finished downloading tonight & then I'll do the desktop driver installation. Pretty dang cool!

 

[jalaram]

GIGABYTE GA-Z77-DS3H - $75 AR (+ tax)

 

[Kaido]

Unibeast 2.0 has been released (v2.0.1 at the time of writing):

http://www.tonymacx86.com/368-unibeast-2-0-update.html

* You need a free account on Tonymac to download it
* Supports Lion & Mountain Lion (Mavericks support upcoming, upon official release)
* All-in-one installer with options for Desktop, Laptop, and Legacy USB support (for 1156 boards)
* Requires a bootable 8GB (or larger) USB stick
* Must be formatted to an MBR (not GUID) partition with Mac OS Extended (Journaled) formatting
* Can install from Snow Leopard (requires 10.6.8 & Apple Software Installer Update 1.0), Lion (if using 10.7.5, requires OS X Lion 10.7.5 Supplemental Update), or Mountain Lion
* Takes approximately 30 minutes (installer timer incorrect)

Lifehacker has a good guide for building a Hackintosh that they update on a regular basis:

http://lifehacker.com/the-always-up-to-date-guide-to-building-a-hackintosh-o-5841604

 

[Kaido]

Quick Unibeast 2.0 tutorial:

This can be done on a Mac or Hackintosh. I did this on my Mountain Lion Hackintosh.

1. Register at TonymacX86: http://www.tonymacx86.com/register.php

2. Download Unibeast 2.0.1: http://www.tonymacx86.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=175

3. Format an 8GB or larger bootable USB stick in Disk Utility:

a. Set partition layout to 1
b. In Options, select MBR (not GUID)
c. For Format, select Mac OS Extended (Journaled)

4. Download Mountain Lion from the Mac App Store

5. Unzip & run Unibeast. Select your desired options: http://i.imgur.com/6qqlrhp.png

a. 10.7 if you want Lion
b. 10.8 if you want Mountain Lion
c. Laptop Support if you want to Hackintosh a laptop (adds MBP definition & laptop keyboard/trackpad drivers)
d. Legacy USB support if you have an older 1156-based system

6. Allow approximately 30 minutes for formatting. The timer system is completely wrong: http://i.imgur.com/rXAb5Bs.png

This creates a bootable USB stick so that you can install OSX on a PC desktop or laptop.

 

[Kaido]

Personally I keep 3 sticks in my toolkit:

1. 10.8.4 Desktop stick
2. 10.8.4 Laptop stick
3. 10.8.4 Stock stick (by just restoring the OSX DMG to the stick for use on real Macs)

You can use a Tonymac stick in a few ways:

1. To install OSX to your Hackintosh
2. As an emergency boot disk (for example, if your bootloader borks or drivers get overwritten)
3. To restore a system image (DMG) via Disk Utility

For the last one, that's the same method I've explained before - I install OSX to a small 20-gig partition, run updates, configure all the settings I prefer, then clone it to a sparseimage bundle using SuperDuper. I can then restore it via Disk Utility so that I don't have to wait through the OSX installation process each time I want to setup a new hard drive, and because the original partition was small, I can expand it to fit anything from a small, cheap 60gb SSD to a large 1TB drive.

You can also copy that "Master" DMG to a USB stick and use Disk Utility to restore it via the Tonymac USB stick, so you can go from a totally blank system to a pre-installed desktop in 20 minutes or so. Or even faster, just use a USB dock from another Mac/Hack to restore the image to a partition (takes about 5 minutes). If you're a speed freak, you can do a direct SATA to SATA copy (DMG to 2nd drive internally) if you want to pop open your existing machine. Lots of options.

 

[Kaido]

Just some geek notes:

My setup right now is a 240gb SATA-III SSD (400 MB/s+) & a 2TB data drive, with Backblaze for online backup. My wife's rig is similar, except she has an additional 2TB drive in there for local Time Machine backup (my projects are stored on our RAID NAS). We are both running 1GB ATI 6870's with good results. I am mostly using mine for FCP-X and my wife uses hers primarily for Lightroom & Photoshop for her photography. She has a 24" Dell IPS (1920x1200) and I have a 28" Hanns-G 1080p non-LED (I prefer the non-LED over the LED for warmth, the LED model is a bit too harsh for my tastes) and a smaller 23" Asus 1080p IPS for color work (mainly for DaVinci Resolve with some light Photoshop & Illustrator work thrown in there).

For peripherals, I use a Microsoft 4000 ergonomic keyboard with a Wow Pen Joy ergonomic mouse (link). I also have a Wacom Intuos medium tablet, a Logitech Nulooq, and a SpaceNavigator, although I haven't been doing as much 2D/3D stuff lately as much as my video work. I was on FCP7 for a long time, but have not installed it on my new Hack as I'm getting up-to-speed on FCP-X. I have to say, I do like the ease of entry into FCP-X, and I'm not sure if I'll be re-installing FCP7 on the new machine or not. I have a lot of plugins & system tools invested in 7, but I've also been finding a lot of replacements in X, so I'll see how that goes this summer.

I'm using Syba USB stereo adapters on both machines for driver-free sound. I have a pair of M-Audio AV40 monitors on my rig (I'll probably add that $99 12" Monoprice sub to help it out at some point), but usually use my Sennheiser HD280 headphones. My wife has a set of Klipsch ProMedia 2.1's, which sound pretty good. We both have those inexpensive Dynex 1.3mp USB webcams off eBay; I still like their quality over Logitech & Microsoft. My wife's computer is in the kitchen right now, so we have a Logitech K310 washable keyboard on it, which is working great. When the i7 Intel NUC's/Gigabyte Brix come out, I'd like to mod my old G4 Cube with it for kitchen use (probably with Windows 7 & DeepFreeze, along with the waterproof keyboard) plus a 27" HP 27xi Mac-esque monitor to match.

I'm also retiring all of my old machines. Both my rig & my wife's rig will be B75's with 32GB of RAM once I'm done with the upgrade migrations (using an i7-3770K right now, it screams!). I have an i5-based HTPC running Windows 7 for gaming & NAS duties with a GTX470. My old FreeNAS box is being retired - years & years without hiccups, excellent system, just too small at 2TB RAID 5! I'm also in the process of deciding between Raspberry Pi's & Airport Expresses for whole-house audio. The Aiport Express systems also give me multiple WAP's (although I'm a bit concerned about getting brain cancer if I have 10 or so of them running at the same time lol) & OOTB functionality for $99 a pop. So the final setup will be something like:

1. Network: PFsense box (H77n), Gigabit switches, Wireless Network (either multiple Airport Express units or my Rosewill DD-WRT WAP & DIY Raspberry Pi Airplay receivers to double for use as a whole-house audio system)
2. My rig: i7-3770k, 32gb RAM, 240GB SSD, 2TB data, 1GB 6870, 28" Hanns-G, 23" Asus IPS, Backblaze, backup
3. My wife's rig: i7-3770k, 32gb RAM, 240GB SSD, 2TB data, 2TB backup, 1GB 6870, 24" Dell IPS, Backblaze backup
4. HTPC/NAS: i5, 8GB, GTX470, 50gb boot SSD, 4TB data, 4TB backup, Backblaze backup, Viewsonic PLED-W500 LED projector
5. Elliptical: (I require video entertainment for my cardio workout, hahaha) Aaxa P300 LED mini projector, Roku 3 (Netflix + wireless headphones off the remote)
6. Living Room TV: 60" Mitsubishi DLP (RIP DLP business), WDTV Live Streaming, Roku 2

The entertainment setup is pretty fun. I'm up early & do my workout in the morning, so I watch about 45 minutes of TV on the elliptical at 4am. Nothing like starting out the day with Jack Bauer! Haha. The Roku 3 can do Netflix (my preference) as well as Plex (so I can watch movies off the NAS if I want), plus the wireless headphone jack on the remote control so I don't have to wake anyone up with the TV show audio in the morning. There's also Amazon Prime Streaming, which I use from time to time.

We have a regular TV in the living room for daytime viewing. I have my old Roku 2 on it, which we mainly use if we want to watch something off Amazon, but we mostly use the WDTV Live Streaming box because it can handle full 1080p MKV streams over the network from the NAS, as well as Netflix. I do keep a basic Bluray player around for "emergencies" (like if a family member brings over a disc-based movie), but mostly I just rip my movies with MakeMKV on my computer & throw them on the NAS.

The basement theater is my pet project as of late. It's about 200 square feet, just enough to fit a loveseat in. I have my LED projector & 5.1 in there (well, 5.2 - a giant Sonosub & a smaller box sub, hehe). That's all hooked up to my HTPC-NAS running Windows 7. I use it for Plex (movies), Steam (gaming), and some basic MAME/emulator stuff with my X-arcade Tankstick (which is awesome). I have a variety of input devices - Logitech K400 wireless keyboard/trackpad, Logitech M515 sealed "couch mouse", a pair of Xbox 360 controllers (which work great for SNES etc. games), and a couple different remotes (still undecided, haven't found the perfect one yet). So the this PC is the heart of the house's entertainment center - it has all of the movie files & streams to everything via Plex, so I get the covers, info, and can send to my iPhone & also use the iPhone as a remote. Pretty nifty!

We dumped our house phone (just use iPhones now) & cable TV (huge monthly savings, although we do get some sort of basic cable with the Cable Internet service) since we mostly just use Netflix & movies we own (plus some Amazon Prime movies & VUDU rentals thrown in there, with the occasional Redbox rental - we like movies!). My only complaint with the Roku is that they don't officially support Youtube, but I can use the WDTV or HTPC for that, so that's really only a minor complaint on the elliptical machine seutp. So overall it's a pretty basic tech package - a small box or two per TV setup, a workstation for each of us, and an upcoming kitchen PC once the mini i7 stuff is out.

My next planned purchase is the Samsung ARM-based Chromebook - great battery life & bulletproof OS. I hate surfing the net on the iPad, I need a keyboard & mouse (I also hate touchpads with a passion haha). My buddy picked one up, and while it has its shortcomings, it's an awesome couch device that you don't have to worry about maintaining - just plug it in at night & you're good to go! I've been fiddling with whole-house audio for awhile, too - the Airport Express gives me the easiest setup, for a relatively low price (whole-house audio systems can get expensive!), plus adds additional Wi-fi access points, but the Raspberry Pi's let me go down the DIY route a bit more and also let me use a more controlled DD-WRT/Tomato WAP system. Although I setup a cheapo Cisco WAP recently and the built-in guest feature sure is not for a no-hassle way to get friends & family on your wireless network. Reemote is okay for whole-house audio distribution (which pairs with Airfoil), and I like Sonos, but I just wish Sonos has built-in Airplay. I'm actually not a huge music listener, it's more of a "cool to have" feature that is also fun to tinker with, so it's been kind of progressing at a snail's pace.

The other project I've been messing around with is INSTEON home automation. They have new dual-band powerline/RF mesh network technology that's supposed to be more reliable in day-to-day operation. So you can combine stuff like lighting, locks, window sensors, etc. using your Hackintosh & iOS devices as control units. I'm in the process of converting my home to LED lighting as well (about a quarter done so far, as budget allows), so that will be a pretty cool way to save electricity, between efficient devices like LED bulbs & remote control through the smarthouse stuff. Best of all, it's fairly budget-friendly, with smart outlets & switches running in the $49 range per unit, vs. the $20,000+ Creston etc. range for serious custom installs.

Anyway. Just kind of a small tech update post

 

[Subyman]

Thanks for the wrap up. I like the idea of keeping USB sticks with the install loaded on them. I need to pick some USBs up just for that.

 

[Kaido]

Thanks for the wrap up. I like the idea of keeping USB sticks with the install loaded on them. I need to pick some USBs up just for that.

Np. I'm using 8GB ADATA C008 USB 2.0 (not 3.0) sticks right now. $8 on Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/ADATA-Classic-...dp/B0040HMBL0/

They are bootable and they are large enough that I can print out a label sticker off my Brother labelmaker (TONY DESK, TONY LTP, 10.8.4 STOCK), and large enough to pull out easily (unlike my mini-sticks; I use a micro USB flash drive for the permanent one I keep in the back for vanilla bootup). I have another one with a Windows 7 Retail ISO (using Microsoft's ISO to USB tool) and a few others with various tools (Memtest, Kaspersky etc.).

Side note - I'm working on converting all of my disc-based tools to a single ISOstick - it has a hardware CD-ROM emulation chip that passes on to a MicroSD card so you can load ISO images like CD's, which is especially useful for older operating systems that don't support USB boot (like Windows XP), as well as for having all of your "discs" on one handy stick:

http://isostick.com/

$99 for the ISOstick + a memory stick (I got the 64-gig Sandisk one) came up to about $150 total. Extremely useful little device!

 

[Kaido]

Quick tutorial on using SuperDuper to make a Master Image:

This is useful for quickly copying a pre-installed copy of OSX to a new drive. This can save a lot of installation & setup time. You can restore it from a PC (direct via SATA or via a USB dock) or after booting into an OSX USB stick via Disk Utility. SATA is the fastest, USB dock is second fastest, USB stick is third fastest (although still a lot slower - 5 minutes via USB dock vs. 20 minutes via USB stick - but either way still beats having to install a fresh copy from scratch, install updates, and configure your favorite system settings).

1. Install OSX on your Hackintosh (I only use the Tonymac USB stick for this part & don't install Multibeast or any kexts or bootloaders on the boot drive - this way you get a 100% bone-stock OSX install that can be used on a real Mac or any Hackintosh, without any kexts that can get outdated or bootloaders that won't copy)

2. Run all OS updates for OSX (may require multiple reboots)

3. Configure any desired system settings (see below for more info)

4. Download & install SuperDuper:

http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html

5. Setup SuperDuper to copy to a Disk Image. Select your boot drive on the left, then select Disk Image on the right and point it to a secondary drive (you can't save it to the boot drive while it's cloning the boot drive):

http://i.imgur.com/zXkhXI4.png

My final image (Mountain Lion Master.dmg) was 6.13gb for ML 10.8.4 with the latest updates & my settings. If you need to save space, you can set the compression level in the Disk Image options from "None" to "High" - the same 6.13gb uncompressed image went down to 4.72gb (a 1.41gb savings); the on-disk install was 9.51gb for reference, so you could probably get away with a smaller 10 or 15-gig partition if you need to for whatever reason.

I don't know if there's much of a speed difference creating or restoring a compressed image, but it seemed negligible when I did some quick testing. Also, the Tonymac 10.8 desktop install took up 5.12gb of space on my 8gb (7.78gb-usable) USB stick, with 2.66gb free, so you will need at least a 16gb bootable stick if you want to keep a copy of your Master Image on your bootable installer/rescue stick.

As far as system settings go, everyone will have different ones, but here's mine:

a. During install - skip all registration & location features
b. Setup default account (admin as username - you can always create new ones & delete old ones later; this way you have a standard admin account on the system)
c. Set desktop & folder view settings (arrange by name in icon view - I hate the messy default settings that make the icons go all over the place & overlap)
d. Set the Dock to magnify (because it's awesome)
e. Set the wallpaper to the solid dark blue color (easy for me to read desktop icons on)
f. Disable the screensaver (because I use Display Sleep instead)
g. Set the Security to allow applications downloaded from anywhere, not just the Mac App Store
h. Under Energy Saver, disable computer sleep, set the Display Sleep to 5 minutes, and uncheck "put hard disks to sleep when possible", "wake for Ethernet network access", and "allow power button to put the computer to sleep"
i. Disable natural scrolling direction for the mouse (yuck, only works well if you have a trackpad)
j. Change the computer name under sharing to whatever you want, instead of the default name
k. Disable the automatic updates check (so you don't break your Hackintosh down the road)
l. In Safari, show the status & bookmarks bar. Right-click on the toolbar and add the Home button back. Set the default homepage to Google.com and disable the automatic opening of downloaded "safe" files. Disable all autofill settings.
m. Add the boot drive icon to the left nav bar in Finder: In Finder, click on Desktop, then right-click in the top middle and it will let you navigate to the root, then drag the boot drive icon over to the left under Devices.
n. In "General", set "show scroll bars" to "always" and check "ask to keep changes when closing documents"
o. Create a shortcut to the Applications folder next to the Documents folder on the Dock
p. Clean out any unneeded icons on the Dock (Launchpad, Mission Control, etc.)
q. Sound - Show volume control in menubar
r. iTunes - show sidebar & status bar
s. Do a restart AND a shutdown and uncheck the annoying "restore windows" checkbox (this may be accessible in General under "Close windows when quitting an application", but I usually do both a shutdown & a reboot after doing all the updates & settings just to make sure everything is fresh before doing the system clone)

My personal preferences are kind of a "bug-me-not" setup so that things get out of the way & let me use my computer to work & play. I like having this clone because #1, I can restore it with the latest updates quickly, and #2, it already has all of my favorite settings ready-to-go out of the box, so I can setup a new drive quickly and be ready to rock & roll.

I also digitize all of my software - anything on a disc gets copied as an ISO file, anything that gets downloaded (like SuperDuper) also gets put in the archive on my NAS or backup drive for quick re-installation. You can also backup your Mac App Store purchases, which is especially useful if you have purchased large apps & don't want to wait for the entire original install to download again on a fresh OSX install (such as FCP-X, which is nearly 2 gigs). Official procedure is here: (it's just drag & drop to your storage location, then you can sign in to do updates & whatnot)

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4482

One method is to simply get one of those single-USB bus-powered 1TB drives for like $70 and use it as a giant USB stick - install Tonymac to it for a bootable OSX installer/emergency booter, throw your Master Image on it, and copy backups of all your apps to it. Ta-da, very fast recovery system!