Snow Leopard on a PC

Chuckles · 28-11-2009, 03:03

Posted this in a couple of other places, but some people might find it interesting.

To give you a rough idea, in geekbench marks, this will beat any Mac Pro under about £3k.

OK, here is a guide on how I made my hackintosh. It dual boots to windows 7 which is on another hard drive and you can also spin up the W7 partition from VMWare fusion.

This works for me with the hardware list I'll attach, but it should work for other i7 boards. The only thing you might struggle with is network and sound. It's up to you, but it's probably easier buying a £10 network card rather than ****ing round with kexts.

Hardware list

GIGABYTE EX58-UD3R INTEL X58 (SO 1 £121.99
INTEL CORE I7 920 "D0 STEPPING" 1 £184.00
PATRIOT VIPER 6GB (3X2GB) DDR3 P 1 £83.99
ANTEC 300 THREE HUNDRED CASE 1 £41.06
CORSAIR MEMORY 650W TX SERIES AT 1 £64.99
NOVATECH GEFORCE GTX 275 896MB 1 £137.28
SAMSUNG S223B - 22X DVD+/-/RW 1 £14.49
NOCTUA SE1366 NH-U12P 1 £51.69

I'm running my cpu at 4ghz but if you don't want to bother, you don't need to last item on that list as you'll be ok with the retail fan.

In addition, you are going to need 3 hard drives. 1 for the OSX install, 1 for the Windows install and 1 as a temporary drive for getting a copy of 10.5.7 to work with (assuming you don't have an existing mac.) This can just be an old 40GB drive as you'll rip it out after.

Install

1) Firstly unplug all your drives (not just disable in BIOS) other than the one you want to install Windows on. This is important because if not in port 0, windows will try and write a boot partition to another drive. In the BIOS, set the properties of the Sata drives to AHCI from IDE if they are not already. Should look like this

2) Install Windows 7

3) Download iAtkos from here www.wudzi.co.uk/temp/iATKOS v7.nzb and burn to a DVD

4) Plug in your temporary hard drive

5) Boot from the iAtkos DVD and install to the temp hard drive. This is a piece of piss, just click next next next.

6) Plug in the hard drive you want to install Snow Leopard to and boot to iAtkos

7) Insert your retail Snow Leopard DVD (or mount an image to the desktop - This will run much quicker).

8) Download this file http://redirectingat.com/?id=292X457..._Installer.zip and extract/run. It will ask you which hard drive you want to work with. Make sure this is the one you are going to be installing Snow Leopard to.

9) Select type of install /Extra

10) Select bootloader PC-EFI

11) Select Mark partition as active

12) Select Run Retail DVD installer. Make sure you select customise during the install process and switch off all the optional installs. This is important.

13) After that's complete, select Run Kext installer. Do a "N" for normal build

14) Run DSDT patcher.

15) Power down PC, remove the temporary drive iAtkos was installed to.

16) Power on, in the BIOS, make sure your new hard drive (Snow Leopard) is first in the boot order. If that has worked, you should get a new boot loader that lets you select either Snow Leopard or your Windows drive. If you don't select, it will go into Snow Leopard after a few seconds.

That's the basics. You will want to check whether your sound and network are OK. I've done a load of pissing round with this, so if not, post here and I'll try and help. There are a few extra things you can do.

Firstly, I'd recommend disabling spotlight on your windows drive as you really don't want it indexing every on that. Just switch it off in the system preferences.

Also, but default, OSX86 will boot in verbose mode, meaning you see all the debug text. If you want just the nice Apple logo, do the following

Open terminal and type
open /Extra
sudo vi com.apple.boot.plist

In the kernel flags, remove the -v. In that file, you can also force the kernel to boot into 64 bit by changing arch=i386 to arch=x86_64 but I wouldn't recommend as a beginner or you'll be ****ing round with kexts again. Bear in mind all Macs other than Xserve default to a 32bit kernel anyway. Due to the way OSX works, all 64 bit apps run correctly and can address over 4GB of RAM even with a 32bit kernel so there is really no advantage.

If you rerun that script, you can pick a few different themes for the bootloader and do things like modify the processor so it is correctly identified in about this mac if not already.

You should also be safe to update to 10.6.2 at this point.

Finally, of you install VMWare fusion 3, you should be able to tell it to create a machine from a boot camp drive. If you do that, you'll be able to boot directly from your Windows 7 drive. Use something like Spaces and you can press Command+2 to toggle between OSX and Windows 7 instantly. If you need the graphics accelloration (to play games or whatever), just reboot and select the windows drive.

That guide has a lot of steps and makes it sound complicated, but when you get your head round, it really is a piece of piss. Feel free to ask questions anyway :visage:

Chuckles · 28-11-2009, 03:06

Here's a quick screencapture of 3 OS's being switched to. The Windows 7 is a native install on a seperate hard drive, the Ubuntu one is a pure VM

http://www.wudzi.co.uk/temp/triple.mov

Pls ignore the SPS advertising. Posted it to there to show iCraig first!

It makes it look a bit complicated having all those steps, but once you've got the hang of it, I could get that setup going within an hour, so feel free to ask me any questions.

The trick is, to try and keep everything on the /Extra partition. That way, you'll have a vanilla OSX install and any updates etc should be fine.

That is Ubuntu booting to usuable desktop in 12 seconds by the way. It seriously flies

Feek · 28-11-2009, 16:51

Looks good, it was making a hackintosh that got me into Macs.

Desmo · 29-11-2009, 16:46

Must admit that when we're looking at getting a new Mac at work, I was trying to stay away from a Hackintosh just for reliabiltiy sake on the software side of things. But I'm getting more and more tempted.

Feek · 29-11-2009, 16:51

Much as I happily say how good my hackintosh was, I don't think I could recommend using one for a business. If you get problems then the chances are that it's not going to be a simple fix and it could leave you unable to work. I don't think that's worth the risk.

Mark · 29-11-2009, 19:14

What I'm about to say is an incredibly over-simplistic statement, and 'do as I say, not as I do' applies: I simply wouldn't recommend using illegal software at work.

Chuckles · 29-11-2009, 22:50

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mark

What I'm about to say is an incredibly over-simplistic statement, and 'do as I say, not as I do' applies: I simply wouldn't recommend using illegal software at work.

There's still a very big cloud as to whether it's legal or not. I've bought the actual Snow Leopard DVD so have a license for it.

Chuckles · 29-11-2009, 22:54

Quote:

Originally Posted by Desmo

Must admit that when we're looking at getting a new Mac at work, I was trying to stay away from a Hackintosh just for reliabiltiy sake on the software side of things. But I'm getting more and more tempted.

As I say, with the way SL works and using the install method I said rather than those hacked DVD's, it's possible to get a totally vanilla install which should as close to reliability of an actual Mac.

I run music software which is reliant on the hardware you attach and it's rock solid. I've also got the Adobe creative studio (is that what you use?) and have never had a crash.

End of the day, you're saving £2k on what Apple would charge you for similar hardware.

Feek · 30-11-2009, 14:27

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chuckles

There's still a very big cloud as to whether it's legal or not. I've bought the actual Snow Leopard DVD so have a license for it.

It's a moot point really. If you have the £25 'upgrade' then you have a license thus: "If you have purchased an Upgrade for Mac OS X Leopard license, then subject to the terms and conditions of this License, you are
granted a limited non-exclusive license to install, use and run one (1) copy of the Apple Software on a single Apple-branded computer as long as that computer has a properly licensed copy of Mac OS X Leopard already installed on it."

Seeing as you can''t have a licensed copy of Leopard already installed, you're technically breaking it on two counts, the upgrade bit and the Apple-branded computer part. Whether that makes it actually illegal is the questionable bit.

Even though I bought my original Leopard DVD, I was under no doubt that I was using it unlicensed. Just buying it doesn't make it official.

I stand by what I said though, it's a great idea but I wouldn't want to run a business on a hackintosh. Not even on my old one which was perfectly stable and I'd have challanged anyone to use it and not know it was a real Mac apart from the box under the desk.

Chuckles · 30-11-2009, 16:30

Quote:

Originally Posted by Feek

It's a moot point really. If you have the £25 'upgrade' then you have a license thus: "If you have purchased an Upgrade for Mac OS X Leopard license, then subject to the terms and conditions of this License, you are
granted a limited non-exclusive license to install, use and run one (1) copy of the Apple Software on a single Apple-branded computer as long as that computer has a properly licensed copy of Mac OS X Leopard already installed on it."

Seeing as you can''t have a licensed copy of Leopard already installed, you're technically breaking it on two counts, the upgrade bit and the Apple-branded computer part. Whether that makes it actually illegal is the questionable bit.

Even though I bought my original Leopard DVD, I was under no doubt that I was using it unlicensed. Just buying it doesn't make it official.

I stand by what I said though, it's a great idea but I wouldn't want to run a business on a hackintosh. Not even on my old one which was perfectly stable and I'd have challanged anyone to use it and not know it was a real Mac apart from the box under the desk.

I've got both a full Leopard DVD and the SL upgrade so am not just using the SL DVD for a straight install..

Which method did you use when you made yours?

28-11-2009, 03:03	#1
Chuckles '09 sexual conquests: 4.5 Join Date: Sep 2007 Posts: 1,075	Snow Leopard on a PC Posted this in a couple of other places, but some people might find it interesting. To give you a rough idea, in geekbench marks, this will beat any Mac Pro under about £3k. OK, here is a guide on how I made my hackintosh. It dual boots to windows 7 which is on another hard drive and you can also spin up the W7 partition from VMWare fusion. This works for me with the hardware list I'll attach, but it should work for other i7 boards. The only thing you might struggle with is network and sound. It's up to you, but it's probably easier buying a £10 network card rather than **ing round with kexts. Hardware list GIGABYTE EX58-UD3R INTEL X58 (SO 1 £121.99 INTEL CORE I7 920 "D0 STEPPING" 1 £184.00 PATRIOT VIPER 6GB (3X2GB) DDR3 P 1 £83.99 ANTEC 300 THREE HUNDRED CASE 1 £41.06 CORSAIR MEMORY 650W TX SERIES AT 1 £64.99 NOVATECH GEFORCE GTX 275 896MB 1 £137.28 SAMSUNG S223B - 22X DVD+/-/RW 1 £14.49 NOCTUA SE1366 NH-U12P 1 £51.69 I'm running my cpu at 4ghz but if you don't want to bother, you don't need to last item on that list as you'll be ok with the retail fan. In addition, you are going to need 3 hard drives. 1 for the OSX install, 1 for the Windows install and 1 as a temporary drive for getting a copy of 10.5.7 to work with (assuming you don't have an existing mac.) This can just be an old 40GB drive as you'll rip it out after. Install 1) Firstly unplug all your drives (not just disable in BIOS) other than the one you want to install Windows on. This is important because if not in port 0, windows will try and write a boot partition to another drive. In the BIOS, set the properties of the Sata drives to AHCI from IDE if they are not already. Should look like this 2) Install Windows 7 3) Download iAtkos from here www.wudzi.co.uk/temp/iATKOS v7.nzb and burn to a DVD 4) Plug in your temporary hard drive 5) Boot from the iAtkos DVD and install to the temp hard drive. This is a piece of piss, just click next next next. 6) Plug in the hard drive you want to install Snow Leopard to and boot to iAtkos 7) Insert your retail Snow Leopard DVD (or mount an image to the desktop - This will run much quicker). 8) Download this file http://redirectingat.com/?id=292X457..._Installer.zip and extract/run. It will ask you which hard drive you want to work with. Make sure this is the one you are going to be installing Snow Leopard to. 9) Select type of install /Extra 10) Select bootloader PC-EFI 11) Select Mark partition as active 12) Select Run Retail DVD installer. Make sure you select customise during the install process and switch off all the optional installs. This is important. 13) After that's complete, select Run Kext installer. Do a "N" for normal build 14) Run DSDT patcher. 15) Power down PC, remove the temporary drive iAtkos was installed to. 16) Power on, in the BIOS, make sure your new hard drive (Snow Leopard) is first in the boot order. If that has worked, you should get a new boot loader that lets you select either Snow Leopard or your Windows drive. If you don't select, it will go into Snow Leopard after a few seconds. That's the basics. You will want to check whether your sound and network are OK. I've done a load of pissing round with this, so if not, post here and I'll try and help. There are a few extra things you can do. Firstly, I'd recommend disabling spotlight on your windows drive as you really don't want it indexing every on that. Just switch it off in the system preferences. Also, but default, OSX86 will boot in verbose mode, meaning you see all the debug text. If you want just the nice Apple logo, do the following Open terminal and type open /Extra sudo vi com.apple.boot.plist In the kernel flags, remove the -v. In that file, you can also force the kernel to boot into 64 bit by changing arch=i386 to arch=x86_64 but I wouldn't recommend as a beginner or you'll be **ing round with kexts again. Bear in mind all Macs other than Xserve default to a 32bit kernel anyway. Due to the way OSX works, all 64 bit apps run correctly and can address over 4GB of RAM even with a 32bit kernel so there is really no advantage. If you rerun that script, you can pick a few different themes for the bootloader and do things like modify the processor so it is correctly identified in about this mac if not already. You should also be safe to update to 10.6.2 at this point. Finally, of you install VMWare fusion 3, you should be able to tell it to create a machine from a boot camp drive. If you do that, you'll be able to boot directly from your Windows 7 drive. Use something like Spaces and you can press Command+2 to toggle between OSX and Windows 7 instantly. If you need the graphics accelloration (to play games or whatever), just reboot and select the windows drive. That guide has a lot of steps and makes it sound complicated, but when you get your head round, it really is a piece of piss. Feel free to ask questions anyway :visage: __________________

28-11-2009, 03:06	#2
Chuckles '09 sexual conquests: 4.5 Join Date: Sep 2007 Posts: 1,075	Here's a quick screencapture of 3 OS's being switched to. The Windows 7 is a native install on a seperate hard drive, the Ubuntu one is a pure VM http://www.wudzi.co.uk/temp/triple.mov Pls ignore the SPS advertising. Posted it to there to show iCraig first! It makes it look a bit complicated having all those steps, but once you've got the hang of it, I could get that setup going within an hour, so feel free to ask me any questions. The trick is, to try and keep everything on the /Extra partition. That way, you'll have a vanilla OSX install and any updates etc should be fine. That is Ubuntu booting to usuable desktop in 12 seconds by the way. It seriously flies __________________ Last edited by Chuckles; 28-11-2009 at 03:13.

28-11-2009, 16:51	#3
Feek ex SAS Join Date: Jun 2006 Location: JO01ou Posts: 10,062	Looks good, it was making a hackintosh that got me into Macs. __________________

29-11-2009, 16:46	#4
Desmo The Last Airbender Join Date: Jun 2006 Location: Pigmopad Posts: 11,915	Must admit that when we're looking at getting a new Mac at work, I was trying to stay away from a Hackintosh just for reliabiltiy sake on the software side of things. But I'm getting more and more tempted. __________________

29-11-2009, 16:51	#5
Feek ex SAS Join Date: Jun 2006 Location: JO01ou Posts: 10,062	Much as I happily say how good my hackintosh was, I don't think I could recommend using one for a business. If you get problems then the chances are that it's not going to be a simple fix and it could leave you unable to work. I don't think that's worth the risk. __________________

29-11-2009, 19:14	#6
Mark Screaming Orgasm Join Date: Jul 2006 Location: Newbury Posts: 15,194	What I'm about to say is an incredibly over-simplistic statement, and 'do as I say, not as I do' applies: I simply wouldn't recommend using illegal software at work.

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