Hackintosh

To recap – I have One real Mac (an iMac 24″, 2.8Ghz and so forth) and 2 machines which were loaded up as a Hackintosh. I shall go over them both (hackintosh) and see what use they were in real life, updating them and so forth.

The Toshiba Laptop was dual boot if we recall and to be honest never used it at all in any form. As the Mac was the default on boot up, any reboots the OS might make have to be watched if I wanted to go to Windows for example and remember half the stuff never worked on the Apple anyhow. I have chosen to wipe this machine for the last time and start again with something I know is going to work – this been Windows XP. XP Might be a shocking choice to some, what about Linux or stay with OS X – well gang, Windows just works and I can do what I need to do – no worrying about drivers and so forth.

Not sure about the Dell GX620 machine to be honest – this is still OS X 10.5.3, do I keep this Apple or swap this to Linux for example? Both work out of the box on this machine – stay tuned as they say.

To recap: I had managed to Get OS X on here before and there was a lot of stuff that never worked (such as Wireless, PCMCIA, Sound Inputs and so forth) and I reverted it back to Windows as I knew everything worked when in that mode. Recently I had a think about this and went for Plan B. I had already used the Toshiba DVD to restore the machine to XP (I choose this over Vista for now) and updated to death – at this point I have not put anything else on there. I grabbed Partition magic 8.05 and split the drive into 2 Halves – leaving Xp with its 80 GIG to play with and an Unformatted 72 GIG Primary Partition.

I had to disable in the Bios Dual core and this allowed the Kalyway 10.5.2 to Boot otherwise it crashed and burned. Once I had selected everything I needed, it rebooted and I had a Blue Screen but I could hear the Start up music. I had to connect a 2nd Monitor at this stage to continue setting it up. I put on the 10.5.3 Update plus the 9.3 modbin Kernels and rebooted. I already had ready the Intel GMA950 Fix which not only sorts out the resolution (to allow more then 1024×768) but makes the screen on the laptop come on without needing a second screen.

Finally – went through putting on iLife, Office 2008 and various other programs and made it into a workable Mac Laptop. I went into the BIOS and switched back on Dual CPU and the Machine Booted fine. What we ended off with was as follows:

* Windows XP Pro with SP3 with everything on the Laptop Working such as Card Reader, Wireless and Sound.
* Leopard 10.5.3 Fully working at 1280×800 (native res of screen) with all Update son there.
* Wireless Does not work in Leopard but I am not bothered about this.
* Sound works but no Line in (MIC) – Can use a WebCam Mic for this.
* PCMCIA does not work (I think)

This now Allows me to have the best of Both worlds, when I need the entire Hardware such as Wireless etc – then I can crank up XP and use that – I can boot the Apple mode when I need to do anything else.

Toshiba Satellite Pro A120
I was happy with this working but I was also not happy that wireless, no Audio Input, PCMCIA not working or the memory slot failing to pick anything up was a problem to me. I tried with all sorts of driver to get various things working and ended of with a non-working wired port now – so at this point I stopped and put the base XP Image back on. This machine was more of a Challenge them a goal to get it OS X but maybe later when the driver get better – i might revisit this.

Work machine (Lenevo)
I tried it n this machine just to see if the DVD actually worked, I got OS X on there no problems out almost straight away I had no Video Drivers and no Sound – not sure about the network. The Gfx card was an ATI X300 and never found anything to make that work – display just went off after a reboot. The in built worked until I put on the fix for better resolution and I got “Out of Sync” – I re-ghosted it back to Windows at this point as it was just a test anyhow.

Athlon 64 3700
My most recent machine was an Athlon – I had no faith in this running and the first go worked but could not shutdown, reboot or Sleep. I found a guide online and once following this – the machine worked as it should, sleep, reboot and everything else. Busy going through putting on various Apps – its not a bad speed machine and everything so far works.

I had struggled long and hard with the the Toshiba A120 Laptop, the specs read as follows:

Intel Core 2 Duo 1.66GHz
Chipset Intel 945GM Express
15.4″ TFT Screen running @ 1280×800
Graphic Controller Intel 945GM Express
1 GIG DDR-2 Ram
Intel Pro 1000 Wired Network Card
Intel Pro Wireless 3945ABG
Realtek HD Audio
160GIG SATA-2 Drive

Upon initially trying both the Kalyway (Stop error on Screen) and Leo4All V3 (Kernel Panic on APIC) – I set about searching for answers to see if this was even possible to put OS X on there and every single post I found said the same thing – seems it was never to be. I am not one for giving up though and I had a brain wave, what if the BIOS needed updating? My BIOS was at version 1.50 and the latest was 3.40 – quite a bit out then. My next problem is the BIOS Updater was a Windows Program and I had not got windows installed, only Ubuntu. I put in the recovery DVD and left it going overnight. Next morning I Updated the BIOS, stuck in a Leo4All DVD and selected what I needed to Install, I had already wrote down from Windows what Hardware I had in there. I left the machine Installing and I went off to Work – would it work when I got back? Would it be stuck on the Installer or would I be Sitting looking at OS X??

The Laptop was on but nothing on Screen – it had tried to Powersave of course but fails on a Hackintos. I hard Booted the machine and soon it came up to a OS X Desktop – brilliant. Now we go on to check what works and what does not.

Graphics:
The Screen was running at 1280×800 with QE (Quartz Extreme) and CI (Core Image).

Sound:
I had sound working – though plugging in a Headset – the sound still came out of the Speakers.

Networking:
The Wired Connection worked just fine at full 1 Gigabit speed.
The Wireless did not work at all (not even showing up) and it seems the drivers are not ready yet – so no Wireless unless I plug in a USB One I have spare, I am not all that Bothered as of now though.

Sleep does not work as it should so I switched it off on the power saving options, would have been nice for it to work but I can live without this feature for now. All in all I am very happy – I have my very Own Mac Book (of sorts) and can now use OS X anywhere as I choose.

Windows and Linux were built to take into account the various PC Hardware out there, so shove in a CD/DVD and it boots, installs and works – drivers you can add later and so forth. Now on a real Mac – no matter how expensive you all think they are – you stick in the DVD and it just installs – of course it does and anyone can do it.

Now a lot of people I have spoken to and people posting on my Blog comments / Youtube are stuck and they expect some magic way to make any old PC that they own (be it desktop or Laptop) to stick in a Kalyway / Leo4All etc DVD in there and for it to Install and work first time. The shocking truth is that it probably won’t as proven by me on a whole range of machine’s at work.

The Sticking points are as follows (the one’s have come across):

1. Kernel Panic upon loading DVD – you can try -x -v cpus=1 and it MIGHT work but on the whole – if it sticks at this point – go search the web.

2. It Installs and rebooting is met with Errors or Blue Screen or whatever – Once again you have to do you research.

3. Sound / graphics / Network etc does not work – A bit of research might get the driver required (Kext’s).

The Bottom Line.
By all means download a Kalyway / Leo4All DVD and write it at 2x Speed, have a spare HD fitted in case it all goes wrong or at the very least a Ghost Image so you can get you system back to working if it fails. If the Installer does not boot and you get a Kernel Panic – you have lost nothing (as you have no formatted the HD yet). My advice is rather simple”

OSX86 WIKI

This might have your machine listed or the hardware used – do you research before you start and KNOW what hardware you have such as what Motherboard, Graphics Card, Sound and Networking. The other place to check is:

Insanely Mac

Search, Google and ask about – even with a system that worked the first time around, further tries might be met with a failure – try and try again. If you are serious about Using OS X – I suggest you buy a real one and make life easier.

I wish to make a few points clear before I go on:

I own a real iMac 24″ along with many other computers and while this is great for streaming due to CamTwist & Colloquy – the built in iSight is fixed. I did buy a “Mac compatible” Webcam but there is not controls so the image is dark. This is why I looked into making one of my Spare computers (A Dell GX620) into a Mac Clone so it could do what I needed.

So many Version – which is best?
We have iAktos, Leo4All, Kalyway and probably a few more DVD Images you can download and turn a normal desktop PC into a Mac Clone. By luck, the Dell GX620 Machine worked with either Kalyway or Leo4All. There is many things missing but if you own a normal Mac, then they can be copied across, such as the Alex Voice (which is a CD worth of Data in itself). Remember when people are sharing files, they want to make it both fit onto a DVD and be as small as possible – so this is why there is stuff missing, a Proper Leopard DVD is 6.XX Gigs – Dual Layer in fact. If you do get to try this out, it is not for the faint hearted and for most, it will probably fail before or after the install – this is life, get over it and buy a real Mac if you want one that badly.

How compatible is this machine??
I loaded all the software I run on my real iMac onto this Dell machine – and it all worked and quite quickly too I would say. I have connected a Lead which allows dual screen on the Dell GX620 (plugs into the DVI Port) and indeed – I now have a dual screen Mac, Ideal for Broadcasting. I can turn it into a Web Server by means of MAMP Pro and set up a FTP and so forth, as this beats the real iMac due to the ability to turn off the screen. I would say that a Mac Mini Might well be as good but more expensive of course – why would I want to go and spend £399 or £499 when I can reuse this equally small Dell GX620. I would say you could pick one up on e-Bay for half the cost of an iMac. The P4 3.2 Ghz is not slow but of course not as fast as a Dual Core Machine.