Thomas Laskowski's Blog » Hackintosh – running OS X on an ordinary PC

Hackintosh – running OS X on an ordinary PC

June 1st, 2009 Leave a comment Go to comments

iHackintosh

Watch the Great Success here:

Disclaimer:

Doing this is absolutely illegal even if you do own a copy of OS X since Apple prohibits running OS X on non Apple hardware. It is only meant to be a “try before you buy”. Do not even attempt this if you are a total noob. You’ll break your computer and will have to call Geek Squad over to fix it back up. Before trying this you will need a copy of a modified version of OS X. I cannot provide the information where to find such a thing even if you ask very politely.

So the big question – why?

* You want to see what all the fuss is about
* You’re sick of all the other operating systems (Windows, hundreds of Linux distros, and Opensolaris)
* You’re broke as hell and can’t afford the big bucks for a real Mac ($700 for a Mac Mini? Come on. I built a system few times as powerful for under a grand)
* You would like to try the development tools for the Mac/iPhone
* You like breaking your computer
* You wanna make Steve cry because he won’t sell you an iPhone without a $2000 contract (for development purposes)

What to expect:

* You WILL have issues
* You may like it or you may hate it
* Many trials and errors before it runs stable
* Very limited support

What to avoid:

* Nforce based boards. In my opinion they suck. Nvidia should stick to what they do best – making good video cards
* IDE drives. Use only SATA drives. IDE drives will cause random kernel panics. Disable IDE alltogether in BIOS
* AMD based systems. Don’t get me wrong, I used to be an AMD guy until they slipped and fell behind Intel
* ATI based video cards. Nvidia is better supported at this time from my experience
* Ralink (RTUSB2500) USB wifi dongles. Will cause random kernel panics

What you will need:

* Intel Core or Core 2 CPU
* Intel chipset based motherboard. Something based on P35 would be a good start
* DISABLE MEMORY REMAPPING IN THE BIOS! If you don’t you will have kernel panics
* Nvidia 6/7/8/9 series video card. I use 9800GT and it works just fine
* Supported onboard sound. Something among the lines of Realtek ALCXXX series codecs.
* At least 1 GB of memory
* At least 10 GB of free hard drive space
* Supported network card. I use D-Link DWL-G520 PCI wifi card
* DVD burner to burn the ISO file
* Ubuntu live CD to repartition your hard drive
* Probably more. I can’t remember right now

Quick how-to guide:

* Boot up the Ubuntu CD and run gparted
* Shrink your existing Windows partition to make room for HFS+ filesystem (this is assuming you already have Windows or other OS installed)
* Create an NTFS partition where your OS X will be installed (don’t worry you can erase it later using Disk Utility to make it into HFS+)
* Put in the OS X DVD in and boot it up. Wait a while it takes some time to load
* Turn on verbose mode to see what’s going on. Type “-v” at the Darwin boot prompt.
* If it doesn’t get to the installation screen turn on debugging. Press F8 at the Darwin boot prompt and type “boot=0×100″. This will show you any errors
* If it gets to the “Choose your language” screen then good, you’re 0.25 of the way there
* Pick your language then select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu (up top)
* Choose the NTFS partition you previously created using gparted and erase it to HFS+ Journaled. It will mount automatically
* Exit the Disk Utility
* Click continute and click “Agree” to the terms and conditions
* Select the destination volume
* Pick customize and select the options that apply to your hardware configuration. Vanilla kernel seems to work fine on Intel boards
* Skip the DVD check. It takes forever.
* Go grab a soda and chill for around 20 minutes. If everything went fine you will get a green icon and a prompt asking you to reboot
* If you’re using iDeneb 10.5.5 it will install a bootloader for you. Press any key at the prompt to pick between Windows and OS X
* If you’re using another version, you can install Ubuntu and configure grub to boot OS X. You will need to mess around with /boot/grub/menu.lst. Just copy the Windows entry grub automatically made and change the disk (if applicable) and partition number
* Some of your hardware will most likely not work. This is pretty normal. Get supported hardware