The Merged Hackintosh Thread

[NoSmokingBandit]

to begin with i was TOTALLY baffled.. all these terms coming at you.. kexts, drivers, sound card & GPU support and stuff.... its confusing at first because there are no real guides for that sort of stuff, its all assumed.

I started back in the Tiger 10.4.4 days, it was really confusing back then. What i always tell the noobs is to expect everything to go wrong the first time you start out. Its a shame that there is no noobs guide to everything. I would try and write one up, but i dont know what some of the newer stuff does like the dsdt and whatnot.

Stable enough to use as your main computer?

I cant speak for anyone else, but i have 2 hacs that are as stable as a real mac. One i built from the ground up just for a hac, its an E6750, GA-P35-DS3L, 8600gt, and everything works perfectly. Updates like a mac, feels like a mac, and cost me about $600 when i built it over a year ago, which was way ahead of anything apple could have offered then.
My other hac is the one i have listed for sale up there ^^ (any interested??), which is a bit overpowered for my use, but is amazing. The 10.5.7 update was giving me hell until i realzed that it has the ICH9 chipset, not ICH10, and now everything works 100%, its really quite amazing. I run CS4, Garageband, and various other apps with zero problems.

 

[kasakka]

Stable enough to use as your main computer?

None of my computers generally crash unless it's from overheating, too much overclocking or something like that. Regardless of the OS. So if your computer is stable in Windows, it should be stable in OSX, unless there's some driver that throws a kernel panic for some reason.

My Hackintoshes have been stable, but sometimes when starting they have to be booted a few times before they start properly loading the OS. After that they run great. My current build unfortunately doesn't do sleep at all and I can't figure out why.

 

[maccompaq]

I started back in the Tiger 10.4.4 days, it was really confusing back then. What i always tell the noobs is to expect everything to go wrong the first time you start out. Its a shame that there is no noobs guide to everything. I would try and write one up, but i dont know what some of the newer stuff does like the dsdt and whatnot.


I cant speak for anyone else, but i have 2 hacs that are as stable as a real mac. One i built from the ground up just for a hac, its an E6750, GA-P35-DS3L, 8600gt, and everything works perfectly. Updates like a mac, feels like a mac, and cost me about $600 when i built it over a year ago, which was way ahead of anything apple could have offered then.
My other hac is the one i have listed for sale up there ^^ (any interested??), which is a bit overpowered for my use, but is amazing. The 10.5.7 update was giving me hell until i realzed that it has the ICH9 chipset, not ICH10, and now everything works 100%, its really quite amazing. I run CS4, Garageband, and various other apps with zero problems.

Check your Private Messages.

 

[pilotError]

Stable enough to use as your main computer?

My kids have been watching movies and playing games on it for a week now. It hasn't had any real issues. I had handbrake crash on me doing a conversion, but that's not all that unusual.

I'm going to install FCP2 on it, that will be the real test, but so far all the benchmarks (xbench, geekbench) as well as VLC have been rock solid.

 

[NoSmokingBandit]

My kids have been watching movies and playing games on it for a week now. It hasn't had any real issues. I had handbrake crash on me doing a conversion, but that's not all that unusual.

Handbrake always screws up no matter what im doing. I usually rip in windows, though i havent done that recently so idk what apps i even use anymore, lol.

I'm going to install FCP2 on it, that will be the real test, but so far all the benchmarks (xbench, geekbench) as well as VLC have been rock solid.

FCP2 will push your system pretty hard, so thats a decent testing software i suppose. I've done quite a few large photoshop docs and mine has never stuttered. I've done quite a few Garageband project where i've had ~20 instruments with tons of effects (techno ftw) going and my e6750 just kept chugging along. A hac is stable if you do it right, but its not really an easy thing to dive into.

 

[scott2189]

Need some help

I am running about a year old Acer with an amd 64 processor, I was able to get a Kalway 10.5.2 disk to work on my computer but only could do a dvd boot and the hard drive it is installed on also has Xp pro 64 bit on it.. i need to still use xp. Today I have been trying to use IPC 10.5.6 and get a boot error...

Any ideas with what I can do?

I have done over 15 installs today, is there something I am missing....

email:scott2189@msn.com

 

[pilotError]

I am running about a year old Acer with an amd 64 processor, I was able to get a Kalway 10.5.2 disk to work on my computer but only could do a dvd boot and the hard drive it is installed on also has Xp pro 64 bit on it.. i need to still use xp. Today I have been trying to use IPC 10.5.6 and get a boot error...

Any ideas with what I can do?

I have done over 15 installs today, is there something I am missing....

email:scott2189@msn.com

You need to partition the hard drive with a second partition, then when you boot into the iPC Live DVD, use the disk utility to format the parition at GUID (under options). You might want to use the iPartition on the disk to avoid wiping out your XP data. (This is all done with the F8 then you type in boot=???.plist, then finally bootlive ** Forget the actual sequence off the top of my head). Since your using AMD, you need to change one of the commands boot= or bootlive to boot the AMD kernel. It's in the instructions, you need to look it up. It was mentioned a few pages back in the thread.

When you get the partition ready, you reboot and allow the installation to run (just boot from DVD). When the installer comes up, it finds the disk and you choose it, the next screen pops up with a Install button, but you want to do "Custom". Under that "Custom" button is all the options you need. The Kernel (You need to boot a special one for AMD), the motherboard chipset, the audio, video, etc.. When done selecting one from each category, you then do the install.

 

[iSlave]

Hackintosh : My experience

After being thoroughly let down by Apple's hardware release over the last few years, particularly the iMac, I decided to dip my toe into the murky waters of Hackintosh to see if I could get a proper desktop Mac with a matte screen without breaking the bank. I'll admit to being a little intimidated at first, all this talk of kexts and kernels just made my brain ache and I very nearly abandoned the project.

I am so glad I didn't.

I tracked down the following hardware, which I was pretty certain would be compatible :

* Antec Sonata III Piano Black Silent Case
* ASUS P5K AiLifestyle Series iP35 Socket 775 eSATA 8channel Audio ATX Motherboard
* Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 B3 (2.4GHz 1066MHz) Socket 775 L2 8MB Cache (2x4MB (4MB per core pair)) Retail Boxed Processor
*Zalman CNPS7500-ALCU LED Socket 478, 775, AM2, 754, 939 & 940 CPU Cooler
*OCZ 4GB Kit (2xGB) DDR2 800MHz/PC2-6400 Memory
*Inno3D NVidia GeForce 8600GT PCI-E card.
*Western Digital WD5000AAKS 500GB SATA II 7200RPM 16MB Cache
*NEC Optiarc AD-7170S-0B 18x DVD±RW/DL/RAM Serial ATA Black
*Asus WL-138G-V2 Wireless PCI Adaptor

After putting all this together it wasn't long before I was installing iDeneb 10.5.6. I needed to make a small adjustment during the install, deleting the AppleIntelCPUManagement.kext following some instructions I found online, otherwise it was just a matter of selecting the right components from iDeneb's list.

Installation went without a hitch, and the system booted as normal complete with the 'flying welcome' screen. Checking system profiler, the machine shows as Mac Pro 3,1 and is blazingly fast. I mean ridiculous speed.
To test it out, I installed FCP and it was working perfectly. So far, nothing has gone wrong and the project has far exceeded my expectations - i'd even go so far as to say it's made me feel somewhat stupid for spending so much money on a 'real' mac all these years!

In short, if you are thinking of going hackintosh - do it. There's loads of guides online to help you, and it's not nearly has hard as you might think. You want a Mac Pro for £400 like me? You know what to do...

Please dont flame me with talk about EULAs, I really dont care about it. I own a retail copy of Leopard as it is.

 

[NoSmokingBandit]

Glad to hear it, iSlave! If you install the Disabler kext you dont need to delete the intelcpupowermanagement kext. The disabler keeps it from ever being loaded so theres no need to remove anything. It disables a few other problematic kexts too. The biggest benefit is that after an update you dont have to go back and erase the bad kexts any more since they dont do anything anyway.

Where did you find the Q6600? Newegg doesnt keep them in stock any more

 

[localoid]

...
Where did you find the Q6600? Newegg doesnt keep them in stock any more

They're back in stock: NewEgg just had the Q6600s on a "Shell Shocker" sale for $169.99 on Monday of this week, but you can still buy one at the regular price.

 

[iSlave]

Glad to hear it, iSlave! If you install the Disabler kext you dont need to delete the intelcpupowermanagement kext. The disabler keeps it from ever being loaded so theres no need to remove anything. It disables a few other problematic kexts too. The biggest benefit is that after an update you dont have to go back and erase the bad kexts any more since they dont do anything anyway.

Where did you find the Q6600? Newegg doesnt keep them in stock any more

Maybe you can clear something up for me. So, if I were to add a hard drive, change the graphics card etc....I would need to completely reinstall OSX from scratch? Or is there someway I can make changes without doing this?

Is it best to keep to the standard Mac way of doing things i.e. once it's built - leave it alone!!

Not too worried about GPU, but I would like to add more storage at some point.

 

[DoFoT9]

Maybe you can clear something up for me. So, if I were to add a hard drive, change the graphics card etc....I would need to completely reinstall OSX from scratch? Or is there someway I can make changes without doing this?

Is it best to keep to the standard Mac way of doing things i.e. once it's built - leave it alone!!

Not too worried about GPU, but I would like to add more storage at some point.

i dont see why you would need to reinstall when adding hard drives. i never have to.. they "just work", i am always adding and taking away hard drives from my hack.

the GPU is just a simple kext upgrade, simple as.

no reinstall is necessary unless you completely stuff it up.

 

[iSlave]

i dont see why you would need to reinstall when adding hard drives. i never have to.. they "just work", i am always adding and taking away hard drives from my hack.

the GPU is just a simple kext upgrade, simple as.

no reinstall is necessary unless you completely stuff it up.

Another really stupid question...say I was going to upgrade the GPU, where would I get the kext from? I'm still new to all this!

 

[DoFoT9]

Another really stupid question...say I was going to upgrade the GPU, where would I get the kext from? I'm still new to all this!

haha thats fine, everyone has to start somewhere. you can mostly get them from insanelymac.com, its great for all sorts of things. what GPU were you planning on getting?? the install disc might even have support for it out of the box, youd have to check though.

 

[iSlave]

Thanks for humouring me

Okay, just talk me through something - say I want to upgrade the GPU to a Radeon 4850 or GTX260, how would I install the kext from the install disc I already have? If it's not on there, whereabouts on insanelymac are the kexts?? I've just had a look and it's not the easiest site to find stuff on...

 

[DoFoT9]

Thanks for humouring me

Okay, just talk me through something - say I want to upgrade the GPU to a Radeon 4850 or GTX260, how would I install the kext from the install disc I already have? If it's not on there, whereabouts on insanelymac are the kexts?? I've just had a look and it's not the easiest site to find stuff on...

ok to check on the install disc there are two ways, (i would do method 1)

1. boot from the install disc, keep pressing "ok" or "next" etc until you get to the part where you can customise the installation, in the tick menu see if you can find your GPU that you wish to support, if yes then you can install the OS again (using archive and install) - seems pretty easy...

2. go and try to manually find the supported kexts on the install disc, i highly doubt the 260 would have any in there, there are lots of problems being reported.

i found this and this on the GTX260, the support for it seems to be lacking a bit because its a fairly new card. i have heard better reports for the 48**.

either way, the way to get answers is thru a google search such as this, it tends to yield good results for me..

there are normally a whole bunch of different kext "versions" for a particular GPU, thats why its hard to give direct links, it all depends on your system. i would recommend finding as many as you can and downloading them all then trying to install them. some come as programs that automatically install it for you, others require you to "drag and drop" the kext into the correct library file..

any more questions just shoot

 

[iSlave]

That's awesome! Thanks for your help. I dont really need to upgrade the GPU at the moment, it's just something to consider for the future (by which time I'm sure more drivers will be available).

 

[DoFoT9]

That's awesome! Thanks for your help. I dont really need to upgrade the GPU at the moment, it's just something to consider for the future (by which time I'm sure more drivers will be available).

thats cool no worries, goodluck with it all when you do decide to do the upgrade. 10.6 is reportedly going to have much better support for some reason, maybe hold out until then

DoFoT9

 

[NoSmokingBandit]

You could just use osx86tools to find the kexts for you.

 

[pilotError]

For the GTX260 (which works just fine BTW), you can google search for the Netkas injector pkg and the GTX280 drivers work just fine for the GTX260.

 

[maccompaq]

Antec Sonata III 500 computer case

I just received my second Antec computer case of the same model. The first one was built right away, and it worked fine. The one I received today will wait for the components to be built.

Question is: should the power supply fan run when the case is plugged in without a MOBO or HD? This one does not. Since I did not try the first one until it was built, I have nothing to compare it to.

 

[MacUser2525]

I just received my second Antec computer case of the same model. The first one was built right away, and it worked fine. The one I received today will wait for the components to be built.

Question is: should the power supply fan run when the case is plugged in without a MOBO or HD? This one does not. Since I did not try the first one until it was built, I have nothing to compare it to.

It should only run when there is power being drawn from it and even then if it is one of the silent types it may not run until there is enough load/heat being produced on the supply to start the fan.

 

[Cave Man]

Question is: should the power supply fan run when the case is plugged in without a MOBO or HD? This one does not. Since I did not try the first one until it was built, I have nothing to compare it to.

When I shut down all the fans stop.

 

[maccompaq]

When I shut down all the fans stop.

I have not built the computer yet. I just plugged the computer case into the electric wall socket and turned on the power switch at the power supply, but nothing happened. Should the fan to the power supply run or does it require the system to be built before the Power Supply functions?

 

[MacUser2525]

I have not built the computer yet. I just plugged the computer case into the electric wall socket and turned on the power switch at the power supply, but nothing happened. Should the fan to the power supply run or does it require the system to be built before the Power Supply functions?

The power supply will only come on when there is a real load on it via pushing the power switch on the front connected to motherboard/fake load tester connected onto it, they are designed this way on purpose.

Edit: And I should add if you ever have to change ram, hard drive, video card... make sure that you either have turned off the switch on the back or pulled the cable to the supply as most motherboards are still powered when the machine is shut off.