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Mulling over a hackintosh

S

slicedbread

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Nov 5, 2006
252
10
As a UK user and owner of the first gen (late 2006 1,1) Mac Pro, I feel kinda let down by appe's announcement of new hardware yesterday.

1) New 4870 won't work with first gen MP's (at least not officially right now)
2) drop to quad core as the base spec
3) Large price increases for UK consumers (currency fluctuations don't fly with me - I never paid less when the ratio was $2:£1)
4) The new iMacs are poorer value than last week; no Core i7, quad cores or LED displays either

I've always felt Apple products have inherent value to their higher prices. However with the recession and credit crunch biting hard from all angles, it makes it difficult to justify any of these new Mac desktops, especially as Cupertino deems it ok to have its cake and eat it too with regards to foreign exchange.

Now itching to build a Core i7 hackintosh. Any others out there that have done this? What are your experiences with using it?
 
Core i7 with X58 works great as a Hackintosh. The only issue is Graphics support but the 7 8 and 9 series of NVIDIA cards are all supported as are any cards Apple sell (Naturally the kexts from these are shared among the hacker community) and many ATi cards have full support.

What you should do is look around the OSX86 forums for compatible hardware and/or build guides so you can pick the best components for your build (From a compatibility standpoint).

It will be a lot of work, your have to build your own probably compile a DVD yourself (Or wait for others to make them available for you) and you will run in to some small or big issues here and there but once its setup its pretty much fine. Depending on the hack you go with you may even have full use of Software Update including large Point releases.

If you don't feel like going through it yourself may I suggest purchasing an older 3.2GHz Mac Pro off ebay :)
 
My main issues are 100% stability and full compatability.

Do you think that can be achieved with a hackintosh? Would prefer to use full software updates as well so I dont need to wait for the community to hack the patches after they come out to be fully compatible.
 
I can't do it.

I read some online instructions to make a hackintosh. I got all the way to burning the .iso file (iATKOS_v1.0i.iso) on a disk. It's a patched version of OSX. Whenever I burn it, no matter which burning utility, or OS I use, it always gets stuck somewhere.
 
I think it can be achieved. if you purchase components that are the same as what Apple is using or has used in their older machines then yes.

It all really comes down to how much is your time worth. You can buy a Machine and save lots of time or you can do the work yourself and save money.
 
Quu said:
I think it can be achieved. if you purchase components that are the same as what Apple is using or has used in their older machines then yes.

It all really comes down to how much is your time worth. You can buy a Machine and save lots of time or you can do the work yourself and save money.
Click to expand...
It does make it much easier, and they tend to be able to use most, if not all, of their functionality.

For example, prior to the leaked kext files, the HD 4870 would work, but not at it's full potential. Making it a disappointment.

The simplest way, is to find a software or USB solution that acts as an EFI Emulator.
 
slicedbread said:
My main issues are 100% stability and full compatability.

Do you think that can be achieved with a hackintosh? Would prefer to use full software updates as well so I dont need to wait for the community to hack the patches after they come out to be fully compatible.
Click to expand...

I just said the following on a separate thread:

nateDEEZY said:
In regard to my hackintosh, I built it with the intention of using it with my photography and as a main system. Everything I need it for works, with my equipment, printer and router. There is technically no other reason than security reasons for me to update it. If I were to disconnect it from the net, and use it purely for photography reasons, store photos/back up and edit raws. I imagine it to be a solid performer for years.

Hackintosh's are a great alternative to Mac Pro's if you have pure function with a dedicated software in mind. I'm just getting into the same mindset my IT department has, if it works and does it job well there is no reason to update.

The tech geek in me wants to update every chance I can get just to "push" it's stability and upgrade my system :eek: The only benefit I would see out of it though is processing raws marginally faster.
Click to expand...

As you said, your main issue is 100% stability and full compatibility. Building one in that regards requires a bit of discipline, not downloading every update you see pushed through. I was able to update from 10.5.2 to 10.5.4 through software update using the vanilla kernel, with some minor terminal tweaking. Updating to 10.5.5 required much more terminal tweaking, and 10.5.6 required me to update my EFIv9 as well as flashing my 8800GT.

I've had zero kernal panics since June 08'

The most difficult part of my whole process was flashing my 8800GT as I didn't want to use a Mac Pro's Clock settings, my card was OC'd from the factory so I had to pull the original rom, restart a few times, edit the Mac Pro rom, etc etc.

In order to achieve 100% stability, you need to pick specific hardware that is natively supported by apple. Initial set up took me the longest, but after that it's been pretty much smooth sailing since. When I originally built it, my intention was to build a "budget" hackintosh under $800 USD. That is of course minus the cost of the Desktop Case, and hard drive upgrades.

First link in my signature is Geekbench scores and the second link is a thread I started when I began my how-stable-is-my-hackintosh-as-a-main-desktop project.
 
I will be seriously thinking of building one soon as well, in my opinion apple dropped the ball with the quad core MP(if they're gonna cripple it they should at least drop the price below 2008's quad core).
As soon as the 4870 is working on the hackintosh I may be speccing one out to build. Or maybe buy a psystar open-pro when they offer the 4870.
Maybe a psystar would work for you as well, don't have to worry about all the hacking as it comes with OSX out of the box.
 
I'm very happy with my 2008 2.8 8 core mac pro and I have no plans to upgrade for several years.
I do look forward to snow leopard and software upgrades from adobe and apple that will finally make full use of my 8 cores and my 10gb ram.
I will probably upgrade to the 4870 video card if it proves to be better under snow leopard than the 8800 gt that is in the mac pro right now, and maybe go up to 12 gb ram to have all slots equally filled. But nothing else.

But if in about 3 years, when I'm finally itching to upgrade, if apple is still dicking around with overpriced and spotty configurations, I will probably build a hackintosh then and save myself a ton of money while getting better performance.
 
4870 is working except resolution change freezes it seems... I think final 10.5.7 will indeed resolve the problem though... But everything else is completely working, you can use an efi string if you want, injecting what natit injects, it's the same.
 
Oh how we all wish Apple would just release OS X for generic computers. ;)

If they did that I would run it in a heartbeat.
 
Quu said:
Oh how we all wish Apple would just release OS X for generic computers. ;)

If they did that I would run it in a heartbeat.
Click to expand...

Unfortunately, then it would be as problematic as Windows because it would have to support a vast array of hardware and software rather than a select few.
It's an illusion that OSX is any better written than Windows. It's able to appear that way because of its very restricted nature.
I suspect that, given Windows long experience with writing a broad-based operating systems, any attempt by Apple to do the same with OSX would wind up making it look incredibly inferior to Windows.
 
Quu said:
Oh how we all wish Apple would just release OS X for generic computers. ;)

If they did that I would run it in a heartbeat.
Click to expand...

You wouldn't be running it for long, Apple would be out of business by next year.

Hackintrash computers are the embarrassing drunk uncle to REAL Mac users.
 
Luis Ortega said:
Unfortunately, then it would be as problematic as Windows because it would have to support a vast array of hardware and software rather than a select few.
It's an illusion that OSX is any better written than Windows. It's able to appear that way because of its very restricted nature.
I suspect that, given Windows long experience with writing a broad-based operating systems, any attempt by Apple to do the same with OSX would wind up making it look incredibly inferior to Windows.
Click to expand...

I just want to be able to build my own Mac. Half the price of a Mac Pro with higher performance :D

Also I know what you mean about the compatibility but realistically if Apple released via there Windows Software Update a 'Compatibility Program' that scanned all your hardware and sent the hardware ID's to them and over lets say 6 months they harvest this data and then go to all the hardware manufacturers that see 10% or higher roll out on PC's and get them to code OS X drivers for all there currently available hardware it would make it very easy for Apple.

I know that NVIDIA and ATi and Realtek would definitely be willing to write drivers for OS X if it was more widely used.

And hey look at the OSX86 community they have managed to cobble together a pretty large scale driver repository with no industry support. If a community can do it Apple and there hardware partners sure could.
 
Quu said:
I just want to be able to build my own Mac. Half the price of a Mac Pro with higher performance
Click to expand...

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slicedbread said:
As a UK user and owner of the first gen (late 2006 1,1) Mac Pro, I feel kinda let down by appe's announcement of new hardware yesterday.

1) New 4870 won't work with first gen MP's (at least not officially right now)
2) drop to quad core as the base spec
3) Large price increases for UK consumers (currency fluctuations don't fly with me - I never paid less when the ratio was $2:£1)
4) The new iMacs are poorer value than last week; no Core i7, quad cores or LED displays either

I've always felt Apple products have inherent value to their higher prices. However with the recession and credit crunch biting hard from all angles, it makes it difficult to justify any of these new Mac desktops, especially as Cupertino deems it ok to have its cake and eat it too with regards to foreign exchange.

Now itching to build a Core i7 hackintosh. Any others out there that have done this? What are your experiences with using it?
Click to expand...

What is your time worth ? If you want 100% stability and compatibility and you want to save money, just buy a 2008 Mac pro and throw in the 4870 when it comes out.

Unless you are knowledgeable, have plenty of time, enjoy building things, and enjoy some frustration, I would not bother building a hackintosh.
 
You could get an EFIX, that should save a lot of the headache with all the drivers and extensions and kexts.

I'm planning on getting one, the x58 isn't supported yet so neither are the nehalems, but they are supported in the beta firmware.

From what I've seen you just do the build with compatible components, plug in the efix and install OS X from a retail DVD, and it'll work just like an Apple branded machine.

I guess there will be a few niggles here and there, but looking at the forums there appears to be a lot of successes.

From what I've seen the only issue they're having at the moment is with bonjour on most of the motherboards ethernet ports, but some PCIe network cards seem to solve that problem.
 
Luis Ortega said:
Unfortunately, then it would be as problematic as Windows because it would have to support a vast array of hardware and software rather than a select few.
It's an illusion that OSX is any better written than Windows. It's able to appear that way because of its very restricted nature.
I suspect that, given Windows long experience with writing a broad-based operating systems, any attempt by Apple to do the same with OSX would wind up making it look incredibly inferior to Windows.
Click to expand...

I don't know why people say this. Apple would support as much hardware as they wanted. They could have a hardware compatibility list made up of systems, motherboards, graphics cards, audio cards, etc. If you go beyond that list, you are on your own with no support. Of course the hardware would never be supported by Apple, only OS issues on Approved & certified hardware.
 
Luis Ortega said:
Unfortunately, then it would be as problematic as Windows because it would have to support a vast array of hardware and software rather than a select few.
Click to expand...

In what respect Charlie ?

I sell Macs and PCs. Vista SP1 is working great. I've seen up close the launch of Vista and Leopard. They've both had numerous issues.
 
slicedbread said:
As a UK user and owner of the first gen (late 2006 1,1) Mac Pro, I feel kinda let down by appe's announcement of new hardware yesterday.

1) New 4870 won't work with first gen MP's (at least not officially right now)
Click to expand...

Apparently it does, right now, using drivers from 10.5.7 dev seed.
"We've heard from a reliable source that it has successfully run on the first generation Mac Pro. We'll be giving that a test and report next week."
 
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