Got my EFi-X Chip....

[millerj123]

OK then...I'll call it "my box of PC components thats happens to run Mac OS X"



B

See, that doesn't make a good acronym at all. MBOPCCTHTRMOX? No way.
I'd get through MBOP and say to hell with it.

They call Linux Unix-like. Maybe you could say it's your Mac-like box?

I've still got no good suggestions for a name, but I'm at 85% ready to do the same.

 

[walkum13]

it's called a Hackintosh

 

[vendettabass]

who cares what it's called, I'm definitely looking into this!

 

[rockstarjoe]

Boot-132

If you are interested in an EFI-x but don't want to spend the money, I highly recommend getting your hands a little dirty and learning about Boot-132. A little googling will show you a very handy guide to install your bootloader to a secret partition on your hard drive (EFI Partition). This is pretty much the same thing as what the EFIX is doing, but it's free! Plus you have more control over future updates and compatibility.

 

[MacUser2525]

If you are interested in an EFI-x but don't want to spend the money, I highly recommend getting your hands a little dirty and learning about Boot-132. A little googling will show you a very handy guide to install your bootloader to a secret partition on your hard drive (EFI Partition). This is pretty much the same thing as what the EFIX is doing, but it's free! Plus you have more control over future updates and compatibility.

Probably not even a need for that get a supported motherboard like the Gigabyte EP45-DS3R they list on their site then you can take the Leopard retail disk open it from your Mac install onto an external USB drive put a couple of files on it boot it on the PC then use diskutil to clone the install to the internal drive and your good to go.

 

[peejer]

macuser2525: This intrigued me! Thanks for the head's up. One question though, if I use the method you describe will future OS updates be as seamless as they are with the EFix or will I have to constantly fiddle around?

 

[MacUser2525]

macuser2525: This intrigued me! Thanks for the head's up. One question though, if I use the method you describe will future OS updates be as seamless as they are with the EFix or will I have to constantly fiddle around?

Well with that board which I own I have it down to two Info.plist's that are modified to show the internal drives as internal not have them show up as orange external drives this a purely cosmetic issue as the drives still function fine without it. If you had it and wanted to use the Jmicron IDE controller then you need a patch for it and the sound as well needs patching I just use an Audigy sound card which now has a rather nice working driver someone made. Every thing else is taken care of by the files needed to boot OS X on a PC, a DSDT.aml file which fixes Time Machine, allows you to run the IntelCPUManagement & RTC without kernel panics and a few settings in the com.apple.Boot.plist which are never changed by an Apple upgrade so for the last update from 10.5.5 to .6 it was a matter of running software update and replacing the Info.plist's that was all. I also have used the Realtek1000 and OpenHaltRestart .kext from Psystar's site which the former allows Bonjour to work the later gives you fully working halt/restart these are also never touched by OS X so no fiddling there.

 

[Lava Lamp Freak]

Well with that board which I own I have it down to two Info.plist's that are modified to show the internal drives as internal not have them show up as orange external drives this a purely cosmetic issue as the drives still function fine without it. If you had it and wanted to use the Jmicron IDE controller then you need a patch for it and the sound as well needs patching I just use an Audigy sound card which now has a rather nice working driver someone made. Every thing else is taken care of by the files needed to boot OS X on a PC, a DSDT.aml file which fixes Time Machine, allows you to run the IntelCPUManagement & RTC without kernel panics and a few settings in the com.apple.Boot.plist which are never changed by an Apple upgrade so for the last update from 10.5.5 to .6 it was a matter of running software update and replacing the Info.plist's that was all. I also have used the Realtek1000 and OpenHaltRestart .kext from Psystar's site which the former allows Bonjour to work the later gives you fully working halt/restart these are also never touched by OS X so no fiddling there.

I'm thinking about trying this. I specced a build with a Q6600 and 9800GT for $1,000. I have a new MacBook plus I would keep a bootable SuperDuper drive as a backup, so if anything goes wrong with the Hackintosh I can have a bootable drive to hook to my MacBook to keep working.

My main concern is how stable this will be. Does everything function as good as a real Mac? Does sleep and power management work? I guess its cheap enough that I could build it and give it a try, and if it doesn't work good enough sell it.

 

[MacUser2525]

I'm thinking about trying this. I specced a build with a Q6600 and 9800GT for $1,000. I have a new MacBook plus I would keep a bootable SuperDuper drive as a backup, so if anything goes wrong with the Hackintosh I can have a bootable drive to hook to my MacBook to keep working.

Sensible even though it appears the upgrades works perfectly now I always test my changes on a USB drive that I clone it too for just this idea. I have the same processors works well just remember all SATA devices set to AHCI mode in the BIOS is best so keep that in mind if/when you buy the parts.

My main concern is how stable this will be. Does everything function as good as a real Mac? Does sleep and power management work? I guess its cheap enough that I could build it and give it a try, and if it doesn't work good enough sell it.

Rock solid my record for uptime would be the time between 10.5.4 to 10.5.5 other than me going out of my way confirming the Jmicron with 4gb of ram bug I have never had a kernel panic, iTunes will crash every few days playing my .flac files due to something in the xiph_qt component but other than that everything works fine and if playing .ogg files iTunes has never had a crash. Sleep can be hit and miss although I have read it works when not overclocking so that leaves me out power management not sure what you mean here. If talking Speedstep then I have never used it as it screws with the overclocking but I do use the C1E which lowers the speed/voltage to the chip this works as it does in Linux as far as I can tell as the Temperatures on the cores are identical to it in OS X.

 

[peejer]

Thanks Macuser! Great tips. Clearly you are way over my head with the specifics but it just gives me more stuff to use "the google" on.

 

[dukebound85]

I'm thinking about trying this. I specced a build with a Q6600 and 9800GT for $1,000. I have a new MacBook plus I would keep a bootable SuperDuper drive as a backup, so if anything goes wrong with the Hackintosh I can have a bootable drive to hook to my MacBook to keep working.

My main concern is how stable this will be. Does everything function as good as a real Mac? Does sleep and power management work? I guess its cheap enough that I could build it and give it a try, and if it doesn't work good enough sell it.

afaik you cant use a 9800 card with a hackintosh

 

[Lava Lamp Freak]

afaik you cant use a 9800 card with a hackintosh

You can.

 

[MacUser2525]

Thanks Macuser! Great tips. Clearly you are way over my head with the specifics but it just gives me more stuff to use "the google" on.

Your welcome if you do it it is dead simple to get OS X on a machine with this board and the video card you want, by simple I mean if you don't mind issuing a few commands on the command line that is.

afaik you cant use a 9800 card with a hackintosh

You can now buddy I just helped install with this board put a system together with a 9800GTX, the DSDT.aml generating program I used there had the option for it and the 9800GT.

 

[Bennyboy]

I put it all together. ;D

Its Alive....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_CwF1ipMNo

I am calling it my iHack Pro

Super happy with it. Had no problems booting up at all.

Been having fun overclocking the Q9300 quad core. At present im up at 3.5GHz and it seems pretty stable so far.

Havn't really pushed it too much other than making the above youtube video.

Once I get Photoshop on there and start using it for retouching Ill see how the overclock handles.

Would def recommend this for anyone who needs another OSX computer.

So far my only issues are as follows:

1. After waking up from sleep my bluetooth mouse loses connection and I have to unplug and reinsert the USB bluetooth dongle....this may be rectified by buying another make of dongle...

2. Having trouble connecting to other macs over Ethernet. I read on the EFI-X forum that it may be a problem with the Ethernet chip on the motherboard and I should be able to rectify this by installing a PCI ethernet card.... (I can network over firewire tho)

Will keep you posted on any issues/updates etc.

Cheers

 

[macagain]

Howbout "MacInDrag"

 

[Cave Man]

Once I get Photoshop on there and start using it for retouching Ill see how the overclock handles.

If you want to push it, run Handbrake 0.9.3 while doing those other things. The two times my 3.2 gHz Q6600 hackintosh froze was when I hit about 72 degrees (forgot to turn the fans up for cooling).

Would def recommend this for anyone who needs another OSX computer.

Can you remind me where you bought this?

 

[MacUser2525]

Its Alive....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_CwF1ipMNo

I am calling it my iHack Pro

Super happy with it. Had no problems booting up at all.

Been having fun overclocking the Q9300 quad core. At present im up at 3.5GHz and it seems pretty stable so far.

Havn't really pushed it too much other than making the above youtube video.

Once I get Photoshop on there and start using it for retouching Ill see how the overclock handles.

Try running the Mac version of Prime95 that will tell you quick enough if the overclock is work fine or not.

http://www.mersenne.org/freesoft/#newusers

1. After waking up from sleep my bluetooth mouse loses connection and I have to unplug and reinsert the USB bluetooth dongle....this may be rectified by buying another make of dongle...

No clue sleeps has never worked properly for me.

2. Having trouble connecting to other macs over Ethernet. I read on the EFI-X forum that it may be a problem with the Ethernet chip on the motherboard and I should be able to rectify this by installing a PCI ethernet card.... (I can network over firewire tho)

Will keep you posted on any issues/updates etc.

Cheers

Seen from the video you have Gigabyte board so most likely Realtek nic go to Psystars site and get the Realtek1000.kext unlike the Apple built-in driver it supports Bonjour, it is under the Corporate --> Open Source link if I remember correctly.

 

[Peace]

Its Alive....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_CwF1ipMNo

I am calling it my iHack Pro

Super happy with it. Had no problems booting up at all.


Would def recommend this for anyone who needs another OSX computer.

So far my only issues are as follows:

1. After waking up from sleep my bluetooth mouse loses connection and I have to unplug and reinsert the USB bluetooth dongle....this may be rectified by buying another make of dongle...

2. Having trouble connecting to other macs over Ethernet. I read on the EFI-X forum that it may be a problem with the Ethernet chip on the motherboard and I should be able to rectify this by installing a PCI ethernet card.... (I can network over firewire tho)

Will keep you posted on any issues/updates etc.

Cheers

So. Are you having any moral issues yet ?

 

[Cave Man]

So. Are you having any moral issues yet ?

Why would he have moral issues?

BTW - Has Quicktime been fixed yet?

 

[Bennyboy]

Try running the Mac version of Prime95 that will tell you quick enough if the overclock is work fine or not.

http://www.mersenne.org/freesoft/#newusers


No clue sleeps has never worked properly for me.



Seen from the video you have Gigabyte board so most likely Realtek nic go to Psystars site and get the Realtek1000.kext unlike the Apple built-in driver it supports Bonjour, it is under the Corporate --> Open Source link if I remember correctly.

THanks for sharing this.....I downloaded the kext file....Now what should I do with it?

What exactly does it do?

Thanks for your help.

B

 

[Bennyboy]

So. Are you having any moral issues yet ?

No.

considering how much money Ive given apple over the years and considering I own a fair amount of stock in Apple I have no problem running a legitimate copy of OSX.

Would you?

 

[bearcatrp]

I would love to do this but waiting on a dual chip mobo before doing this. Anyone know if there's one out yet? Want to do this with the new i7 processors.

 

[MacUser2525]

THanks for sharing this.....I downloaded the kext file....Now what should I do with it?

What exactly does it do?

Thanks for your help.

B

You install it then instead of the 8169 driver in OS X being used it will be for the net card driver, if you don't know how to do this search on kext helper which automates the process with a simple drag and drop if I remember correctly.

 

[Bennyboy]

Still no joy,

You install it then instead of the 8169 driver in OS X being used it will be for the net card driver, if you don't know how to do this search on kext helper which automates the process with a simple drag and drop if I remember correctly.

Thanks for your help...

I used Kexthelper b7 to install the RealtekR1000.kext

Looks like it put it here:

system/Library/Extensions/RealtekR1000.kext

Restarted and Im still having the same problem.

Im connected to the internet thru a switch that goes to my Airport.Everything works great. The problem comes when I try to connect to another mac over the network.

My other Macs show up when I first boot under the Places menu but if I try and connect they will disappear.

On my other Macs I can see my "iHack Pro" under my network but when I try to connect it comes up with the message:

"The server may not exist or it is not operational at this time. Check the name server or IP address and try again".

So I can use ethernet to be online biut not to connect to other computers over the network.

You mentioned I should install RealtekR1000,kext "instead of the 8169"...
I havnt uninstalled 8169 yet...should I do this and how?

My motherboard is a Gigabyte EP45-DSR3 and it has 2 x Realtek 8111C chips.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

B

 

[Schmye Bubbula]

External USB port?

The Efi-X website says that it plugs into the motherboard USB port. Will it work plugged into an external USB port?

Does EFi-X only work with fully-tested motherboards?

I want to try it with a Lenovo ThinkPad W700 laptop. (I would always use it on my desk in lieu of a tower computer, so a card laying on the desk beside it would be no more of a problem than an external hard drive laying next to it.)

Would this be a hopeless undertaking?