Does anyone have a Hackintosh?

[toptenmaterial]

There is something about this that I just find so interesting. Does anyone here run a Mac rig on PC hardware? Comment and discuss!

[Osgeld]

I tried it once, it was on a 1.6ghz atom machine with an intel board/chipset that matched perfectly with one of the low end mac's at the time... it was amusing

[Dripfree]

I was trying to make my dell a triple boot hackintosh (linux, windows, snow leopard) about a year ago. Never happened. I wanted to make a pc where I could handle software for the 3 major os's. It is possible but getting the mac os up and running was too complicated for me at the time. It was also complicated by the fact that I don't have a real Mac to make the disk image to install the os. I'm may give this another try now that you got me thinking of it again. My skills are better now and I think now I may pull it off.

[iesposta]

I had one for a few years until I got an iMac. It is pretty complicated getting everything set up and the first time installing an operating system from an 8 GB thumb drive.

It was also nice having a quad core machine for a lot less than what Apple was selling.

However in the end it became a bit of a pain maintaining it just the same way as you maintain a PC. Too much babysitting.

Simple upgrades were dangerous. If something broke and it wouldn't boot you have to start over at square one and reinstall everything.

It made me realize why I like the Apple system. They make the hardware and they make the software and everything just works extremely well together and it's seamless.

My system was an Nvidia motherboard with Nvidia graphics card.

I really can't remember the rest like the ram and which quad core chip it was.

I booted it a few weeks ago to find some ring tones I had made for friend. It's really cool to see the bios screen turn into the UNIX command line and then the gray screen with the dark apple apple and then the desktop.

[oracle_jedi]

I run Snow Leopard on a Windows 7 PC under VMware Workstation 9.

 

There is a download available called the darwin.iso file and a special formatted VMX file, that allows you to install MacOS from the install DVD. Apple will sell you the install disc for about $20.

 

It's quite useful. My Dell E6520 has 16GB of RAM and an SSD boot drive, plus an i7 processor with 4 cores and 8 threads. I don't know if Apple sells an equivalent spec laptop as I think the MacBook Pro tops out at 8GB RAM.

 

Plus running MacOS on a PC means I have a real VGA port to use for connection to an overhead projector for a presentation. Whereas all the Apple users have to dig around for another dongle, my Dell Hacintosh connects to everything.

 

And if I want to return to a PC, I can just minimize the VMware window and I'm right back to a Windows desktop.

 

I have run Microsoft Office on this virtual Mac and it has been just fine. I have not found any apps that won't run this way, although I have not tested heavy duty games or video editing. I did this for the challenge and entertainment value but its really quite a useful toy.

[+SpiceWare]

I tried a few years back. I wasn't able to get it to be stable, so the netbook only has Linux on it now.

 

 

I don't know if Apple sells an equivalent spec laptop as I think the MacBook Pro tops out at 8GB RAM.

 

Older MacBool Pros topped out at 8GB. Models since 2011 can handle 16GB, though you need to go 3rd party to get the memory as Apple doesn't offer that as an option on their site (possibly to nudge people towards the Retina models).

 

It's entirely possibly they'll support 32GB at some point - my 2008 MacBook Pro originally maxed out at 4GB until Apple released a firmware update that bumped it to 8GB.

Edited May 29, 2013 by SpiceWare

[SSG]

I had one but my buddy decided it would be fun to disconect the battery to my computer when It was an important update and it screwed up.

[RodLightning]

I actually got mine running this weekend. It's a project I have wanted to do for a long time since buying a eee pc netbook. After trying iDeneb 1.3 and 1.4 a few years ago with limited results, I noticed some progress has been made since 2009. This go-round, I used "iATKOS_S3_v2" burned to dvd from iso and a couple of different guides for eee pc hardware. These are all independent projects available from the usual undernet sources and can be obtained with modified versions of Apple's OSX installation also on the disc.

 

My current setup is Mac OSX Snow Leopard 10.6.3 running on an Intel Atom 1.6ghz eee PC 904ha with 2gb RAM. Most everything is working except wifi. The atheros 5007g wireless has terrible OSX support. I'm waiting on a Dell DW1390 mini pci-e card, found cheap on ebay to be delivered. It supposedly has full Apple driver support. As mentioned in the thread, I am very reluctant to do any major updates that will crash the hardware and require more tweaking.

 

I have never owned or used a OSX machine before so it's been a trip. Since I'm late to the game with this hardware, I'm not sure how many useful years it has left, but it will be fun while it lasts!

Edited June 30, 2013 by RodLightning

[RodLightning]

I run Snow Leopard on a Windows 7 PC under VMware Workstation 9.

 

There is a download available called the darwin.iso file and a special formatted VMX file, that allows you to install MacOS from the install DVD. Apple will sell you the install disc for about $20.

 

It's quite useful. My Dell E6520 has 16GB of RAM and an SSD boot drive, plus an i7 processor with 4 cores and 8 threads. I don't know if Apple sells an equivalent spec laptop as I think the MacBook Pro tops out at 8GB RAM...

 

 

This sounds like something I would like to try. Is the virtual system using darwin.iso difficult to configure? I have very little experience using VMware.

[MagitekAngel]

I have entertained the idea of building one, but ultimately realized that I don't want to have to hold my breath for every software update.

[potatohead]

I did this on a Thinkpad T60p and it worked fantastically well! The basic process was to create a boot CD to shim the proper boot environment into place using the OSS Darwin core. Once that was created and working, I could use a CD or USB key to boot Mac OS.

 

A blank hard disk accepted the OS, and support for various things required some creative editing of .kext files. Once that was done, I honestly had no trouble with it and ran it a lot. Now I have a MacBook Pro, so I've no need for the Think'ntosh, but it was great while I used it.

 

Mac OS performed better than XP or Windows 7 did on that machine BTW.

 

My reason was to actually support a Mac CAD application when I didn't have a Mac! Took 'em a while to get that all done, and so the T60p was the ticket. I ended up really enjoying the experience overall.

 

I think what really made the difference on that model was the ability to basically shut down, pull a hard disk, slap another one in and boot right back up. The T60 has a stupid easy drive port that can hold a disk in by friction well enough to use.

[DNA64]

I've built quite a few myself.

4 Desktops and 2 netbooks. (Dell Mini 10v and Dell Mini 9)

 

All were flawless! No issues.

 

Definately do your reasearch. And pay attention to chipsets, not model numbers

[Hatta]

Hm, I should try that with my T60P. What an awesome little laptop it is. It's also one of the few officially supported targets for coreboot. I wonder if OS X can be launched from coreboot with appropriate shims? Not that I have any reason to run OS X, there are no games to speak of, and I can do everything else I want on Linux.

[oracle_jedi]

This sounds like something I would like to try. Is the virtual system using darwin.iso difficult to configure? I have very little experience using VMware.

 

It was very straight forward as I recall.

 

The Snowy_VM download package includes a bare VM with the VMX file already configured, the darwin boot ISO disc and some drivers. I bought Snow Leopard from Apple for less than $20 online.

 

Some other examples have you hacking the VMware code to add an "Apple Mac" option, but the snowy_vm just lists it as "Free BSD".

 

From memory, once powered up for the first time, you stick the Snow Leopard disc in the drive and the OS install starts.

 

For me it installed first time without any issue. The only thing I had to do was disable the inactive sleep mode as that would crash the VM.

[dudeslife]

I still have my Dell Mini 9 that I hackintoshed back in 2010. Snow Leopard. It was the first Mac I ever used. Liked OS X so much that dumped the pc. been OS X and Linux ever since.