The Hackintosh Thread

[Zaap]

Updated to 10.8.3 on a backup partition of my sig machine without issue. Just had to reapply an audio kext, no biggie. Tonight I'll upgrade my main install and my HackBook.

drozay: that build will run Mountain Lion just fine. I'd still recommend a dedicated graphic card. I'm really not impressed with Intel HD 4000- it works, but when you start to actually do much of anything with it (Photoshop, video editing, etc.) it starts to show its limitations.

Interesting that 10.8.3 now adds support for ATI 7xxx cards, though TonyMac doesn't recommend them yet. I guess it's still too early to avoid problems with them.

Support is also added for nVidia kelper cards- GTX 650 Ti, GTX 660).

 

[TheStu]

Updated to 10.8.3 on a backup partition of my sig machine without issue. Just had to reapply an audio kext, no biggie. Tonight I'll upgrade my main install and my HackBook.

drozay: that build will run Mountain Lion just fine. I'd still recommend a dedicated graphic card. I'm really not impressed with Intel HD 4000- it works, but when you start to actually do much of anything with it (Photoshop, video editing, etc.) it starts to show its limitations.

Interesting that 10.8.3 now adds support for ATI 7xxx cards, though TonyMac doesn't recommend them yet. I guess it's still too early to avoid problems with them.

Support is also added for nVidia kelper cards- GTX 650 Ti, GTX 660).

Please say 6970, please say 6970, please say 6970. I just bought this thing about a year or so ago, I don't want to have to buy a new GPU just to hack.

 

[Zaap]

I thought the 6970 worked already? No idea if 10.8.3 makes any difference.
ATI cards are just too much a PITA. My 6870 works, but it's a pain to set up for dual monitors. My next investment in my main hack is a 2GB GTX 650.

 

[TheStu]

I thought the 6970 worked already? No idea if 10.8.3 makes any difference.
ATI cards are just too much a PITA. My 6870 works, but it's a pain to set up for dual monitors. My next investment in my main hack is a 2GB GTX 650.

I think the 6950 works, but the 6970 is hit or miss, maybe I need to look into it again.

 

[Kaido]

Tonymac posted the March 2013 buying guide:

http://www.tonymacx86.com/339-building-customac-buyer-s-guide-march-2013.html

 

[PointAndClick]

Been playing with Hackintosh's for a while so I thought I'd throw in some of my experiences.

Built my first rig just to play around with when the Hackintosh scene was first starting.
AsRock P4 dual, basically THE board at the time. Celeron D 2.93. I can't even count how many times I installed and reinstalled various distros... kalyway, iAtkos, etc.

In 2009 I built my first "new" desktop. i7 920, MSI X58m, 6gb, 9600gso. I didn't build it with the intent of running OS X, but my MBP made me realize how annoying Windows really is. I could never get Leopard running, but Snow Leopard worked with basically the same settings/kexts. I used digital_dreamer's hackinstaller script.
I never got shutdown working reliably or sleep at all.

About 6 months ago I decided I wanted to upgrade while I could still get some money out of my i7. I didn't really need more performance, just wanted something a little lighter on the power/heat and more fully working (sleep/shutdown). I went with:
GA-B75M-D3P
Xeon e3 1230v2
8gb
Geforce 210 (my 9600 died last year and I needed a cheap, quick replacement)
Samsung 830 128gb

I used Moarfish's guide, but switched to Lnx2Mac nic kext since VirtualBox would cause the official Realtek kext to crap out. Only problem came from trying to use newer Multibeast. The new Audio kext would cause insanely long boot times and I would loose kb/mouse occasionally. Went back to Multibeast 5.0.2 and all was good.

 

[Kaido]

I used Moarfish's guide, but switched to Lnx2Mac nic kext since VirtualBox would cause the official Realtek kext to crap out. Only problem came from trying to use newer Multibeast. The new Audio kext would cause insanely long boot times and I would loose kb/mouse occasionally. Went back to Multibeast 5.0.2 and all was good.

That's good to know, my D3P is still waiting to be fired up (work schedule & all, boo, hiss). I'll have to check out the audio trick there, thanks for sharing!

 

[PointAndClick]

I have some posts in the thread. One other person was experiencing the same issue and we eventually narrowed it down to the new Audio kext. I don't know if the new(er) versions have fixed the issue, but the one from MB 5.0.2 is safe for sure.

Like I said, the only other issue was Realtek driver. With the official kext firing up a virtual machine would cause me to loose networking. I've never had a problem with Lnx2Mac in the past, so I went back to it.
Oh and the mute button doesn't work. Odd issue, but hardly pressing.

I should make a clone of my system and try the 10.8.3 update one of these days.

 

[mosslack]

My HP DC7800 is up on 10.8.3. I got an unexpected error while the update was being installed and it said the update could not be installed, but on the reboot all appears normal with About This Mac reporting 10.8.3. Preliminary check seems to indicate the system is functioning normally. More later if problems crop up.

It seems after further testing of this system, all was not well. I repaired permissions and rebuilt the kext cache and the system would no longer boot.

Next I did a fresh MyHack install of ML where I did not choose to omit any kext which was suggested to be omitted by MyHack, in hopes this was a more vanilla install. Results from that were the same, the 10.8.3 combo update failed.

At this point I believed the problem was with MyHack and used UniBeast to do yet another fresh install of ML. This time I ran the 10.8.3 combo update and it worked just fine, so obviously the problem lies somewhere with MyHack.

There are still problems with the DC 7800 running 10.8.3, but I believe these problems to be related to the update replacing the hacked IOATAFamily.kext. A separate solution will be required for that.

In the meantime, I will be adding a caveat to my guide which uses MyHack as the installer about not being able to update past 10.8.2.

EDIT: Problem found with the UniBeast install. Missed a step in my own guide. As long as the guide was followed during the initial install, it is perfectly safe to update to 10.8.3 using either the App store or combo update.

 

[BD2003]

Got tired of the limitations of my mac mini, so I'm back to building a hackintosh again:

Core i5-3450
GA-Z77N-WIFI
Zotac 650 Ti
8GB DDR3
Bitfenix Prodigy
Corsair 430W
LG Bluray

The final decision comes down to storage. I plan on dual booting OSX and Win 7 (for gaming).

Options:
1) A single 1TB Seagate SSHD (Hybrid) - Split 500/500 ~ $99

2) 500GB SSHD for OSX, 120GB SSD for Win 7 ~$200

I'd probably prefer to just get it all done with the one SSHD, its the cheapest and its fast enough....are there any long term issues with dual booting off a single drive? I've read somewhere that two drives are better and simpler, but I've found guides that make dual booting off a single drive sound easy enough.

 

[Kaido]

Got tired of the limitations of my mac mini, so I'm back to building a hackintosh again:

Core i5-3450
GA-Z77N-WIFI
Zotac 650 Ti
8GB DDR3
Bitfenix Prodigy
Corsair 430W
LG Bluray

The final decision comes down to storage. I plan on dual booting OSX and Win 7 (for gaming).

Options:
1) A single 1TB Seagate SSHD (Hybrid) - Split 500/500 ~ $99

2) 500GB SSHD for OSX, 120GB SSD for Win 7 ~$200

I'd probably prefer to just get it all done with the one SSHD, its the cheapest and its fast enough....are there any long term issues with dual booting off a single drive? I've read somewhere that two drives are better and simpler, but I've found guides that make dual booting off a single drive sound easy enough.

Congrats & welcome back!

I dual-boot on separate drives for convenience - I run a bone-stock OSX install on my SSD (all Hackintosh stuff on a USB stick) and it makes it easier to backup (regular SuperDuper image clones). Dual-booting off the same drive is definitely doable if you don't mind a little added complexity, but things have come a long way to making it easier. mosslack can chime in on this one!

 

[BD2003]

So you've got the boot loader on the USB stick, and that's what you point the bios to? What's the advantage to that....couldn't you clone a hacked drive just the same? What else is on the stick that would otherwise be on the drive?

Also, I've never moved Mac to Mac before. In my mind this is going to be as easy as using the migration tool and pointing it to the time machine volume on my NAS, and its going to pull everything off that. Probably take a little longer, but that should work, right?

 

[BD2003]

Hmm, keeping the boot loader on the USB stick have me an interesting idea. In my office, I plan on using it primarily for OS X, the windows install is for when I drag it over to my living room for gaming, but there are some desk based windows only games I still want to play (like total war).

So...say I keep chameleon (or chimera?) on the USB stick. When plugged in, I'd have the choice of booting into OS X or windows at my desk. When I move over to the living room, the absence of the USB stick would skip chameleon, and it would boot straight into windows by default.

I suppose this might be easier if Windows was on the SSD, the the BIOS boot priority would then be 1- USB, 2- SSD? Would this work?

 

[xj0hnx]

Really? They seem pretty community-oriented to me. I think part of the attitude comes from being very careful around the legal lines of Hackintosh. As the TKWare blog link points out, the Tonymac installer apparently patches DSMOS to do the install and thus breaks DRMs anyway, but I think the dividing line for Tonymac is the straight-up pirating stuff outright, like offering direct links to pre-patched OSX installs like Kalyway and such. It keeps them out of most of the hot water.

Tonymac's site is a joke. I tried for days to get a simple question answered, and couldn't even get a "you dumb noob, it's right here, read this!", so when I turned to another site and a non-tonymac utility, and come back to my unanswered post to see if I could get confirmation, I get banned instantly. Oh but in another thread just before that I was pretty much told that because my hardware isn't what tonymac recommended I wouldn't get any help. They aren't as worried about helping people get their hackintosh going as they are about generating ad revenue. There are some really nice people on there though.

 

[Zaap]

They aren't as worried about helping people get their hackintosh going as they are about generating ad revenue. There are some really nice people on there though.

Sorry, but have to disagree with you. Based on the whole goal of the site, they actually do want people to get their Hackintoshes going, so the focus is on using only recommended parts that the site owners recommend, or that regular users can vouch for. I personally think that's a good thing, as it helps everyone focus more on the actual goal- running a system with OSX that can be relied on, not just doing lots of random hardware experiments.

Even still, you'll get people on there going "Hey, I want to buy a Biostar 12 core AMD system with a Radeon 7990 and run my pirated distro of Snow Leopard on it! Everyone help me!" And then of course pissed off when that doesn't happen, and banned if they persist. But I submit, the site would be total shit if everyone rushed off to waste their time on tangents like that, rather than helping people serious about hacking hardware that's already proven to achieve great results.

Not saying you were doing any of that, but you have to understand that the more narrow focus is their niche, and it works for them.

I've got nothing against anyone wanting to hackintosh other hardware than what they recommend (just the opposite, that can be incredibly fun) just that TM isn't really the site to get help with it and there are other sites that are better for that anyway.

 

[xj0hnx]

Sorry, but have to disagree with you. Based on the whole goal of the site, they actually do want people to get their Hackintoshes going, so the focus is on using only recommended parts that the site owners recommend, or that regular users can vouch for. I personally think that's a good thing, as it helps everyone focus more on the actual goal- running a system with OSX that can be relied on, not just doing lots of random hardware experiments.

Even still, you'll get people on there going "Hey, I want to buy a Biostar 12 core AMD system with a Radeon 7990 and run my pirated distro of Snow Leopard on it! Everyone help me!" And then of course pissed off when that doesn't happen, and banned if they persist. But I submit, the site would be total shit if everyone rushed off to waste their time on tangents like that, rather than helping people serious about hacking hardware that's already proven to achieve great results.

Not saying you were doing any of that, but you have to understand that the more narrow focus is their niche, and it works for them.

I've got nothing against anyone wanting to hackintosh other hardware than what they recommend (just the opposite, that can be incredibly fun) just that TM isn't really the site to get help with it and there are other sites that are better for that anyway.

Yea, but the entire point of the x86 movement was to break the ridiculous proprietary hardware limitations Apple imposes, and bring OS X to people that wanted to run it on PC. Kind of defeats the point if you are only going to support helping people run it on a certain model, of certain brand motherboard

 

[Zaap]

Yea, but the entire point of the x86 movement was to break the ridiculous proprietary hardware limitations Apple imposes, and bring OS X to people that wanted to run it on PC. Kind of defeats the point if you are only going to support helping people run it on a certain model, of certain brand motherboard

There's actually quite a large variety of supported motherboards (Gigabyte, Asus, MSI, a few ASRock) and tons of video cards. Plenty of choice for most people's needs. It's just not EVERY possible PC motherboard. The site is more for people that are looking for what hardware to buy, not that already have some random PC they bought with no thought of Hackintoshing, and now want a lot of help trying to hack.

 

[Kaido]

So you've got the boot loader on the USB stick, and that's what you point the bios to? What's the advantage to that....couldn't you clone a hacked drive just the same? What else is on the stick that would otherwise be on the drive?

Also, I've never moved Mac to Mac before. In my mind this is going to be as easy as using the migration tool and pointing it to the time machine volume on my NAS, and its going to pull everything off that. Probably take a little longer, but that should work, right?

Hmm, keeping the boot loader on the USB stick have me an interesting idea. In my office, I plan on using it primarily for OS X, the windows install is for when I drag it over to my living room for gaming, but there are some desk based windows only games I still want to play (like total war).

So...say I keep chameleon (or chimera?) on the USB stick. When plugged in, I'd have the choice of booting into OS X or windows at my desk. When I move over to the living room, the absence of the USB stick would skip chameleon, and it would boot straight into windows by default.

I suppose this might be easier if Windows was on the SSD, the the BIOS boot priority would then be 1- USB, 2- SSD? Would this work?

Basically it goes like this:

1. Format the USB stick with Chameleon/Chimera
2. Drop your Extra folder on it
3. Set the BIOS to boot to USB first

Some BIOS versions also allow you to select specific USB sticks, so put that in the boot priority list if you have that option available. When it boots to the USB stick, you will be presented with a GUI of all attached drives. You can use this to select either Mac or Windows. You can also set the Boot.plist file to have a countdown timer to boot a default drive (mine boots to OSX, unless I hit a key and select Windows). I use a USB stick for 3 reasons:

1. To keep a clean Mac drive: My boot drive is 100% OSX and can be swapped into a real Mac if needed. No funny business on the drive, just a nice, clean Mac install.

2. For backup purposes: Chameleon/Chimera puts a small, hidden partition on the drive, which isn't copied over when you clone the drive with SuperDuper. It's not hard to re-install, but if you want a bootable backup, it's handy having all the bootloader stuff on a USB stick.

3. For convenience: I keep a spare USB stick with the original, working config on it - that way I can tinker with different settings on another USB stick, and if it breaks, boot right back up on the other one...instead of having to figure out a way to get the drive booting otherwise. So that's pretty convenient.

It's not for everyone, and it's not any harder to install it to the hard drive or anything, I just find it a bit easier, plus I like having a bone-stock Mac drive with no Hackintosh stuff on it. Makes me feel happy

 

[Kaido]

Yea, but the entire point of the x86 movement was to break the ridiculous proprietary hardware limitations Apple imposes, and bring OS X to people that wanted to run it on PC. Kind of defeats the point if you are only going to support helping people run it on a certain model, of certain brand motherboard

There's actually quite a large variety of supported motherboards (Gigabyte, Asus, MSI, a few ASRock) and tons of video cards. Plenty of choice for most people's needs. It's just not EVERY possible PC motherboard. The site is more for people that are looking for what hardware to buy, not that already have some random PC they bought with no thought of Hackintoshing, and now want a lot of help trying to hack.

That and there's also the question of pioneering a new system vs. using an existing, proven system. Tonymac & MacMan are only 2 people, and most of their time is devoted to working on the installers & creating patches for them - Chimera, Multibeast, Unibeast, etc. So there's only so much of them to go around...I had the same problem a few years back, I ended up helping out people with all kinds of systems that were totally different from mine...trying to do that remotely when you don't have the same hardware can get really difficult & time-consuming, and people tend to expect the world for free. So the fact that they post proven, working systems that you can basically do turn-key is pretty awesome.

But I do understand your experience, some people on Tonymac can love the rules & culture a little too much, and they do seem quick to drop the ban hammer, so you kind of have to take it as it is. A lot of people have told me they've been banned pretty quickly over there...your experience is not unheard of. But also remember, no one owes anybody anything, so if you don't get an answer...well, unless you're paying someone to help you, you can't really expect much. It is what it is. And sometimes people just don't know. A lot of Hackintosh is trial & error combined with online research...I've been surprised at how often I've struggled with problems for days, only to come across some random post that solves it immediately

 

[BD2003]

Basically it goes like this:

1. Format the USB stick with Chameleon/Chimera
2. Drop your Extra folder on it
3. Set the BIOS to boot to USB first

Some BIOS versions also allow you to select specific USB sticks, so put that in the boot priority list if you have that option available. When it boots to the USB stick, you will be presented with a GUI of all attached drives. You can use this to select either Mac or Windows. You can also set the Boot.plist file to have a countdown timer to boot a default drive (mine boots to OSX, unless I hit a key and select Windows). I use a USB stick for 3 reasons:

1. To keep a clean Mac drive: My boot drive is 100% OSX and can be swapped into a real Mac if needed. No funny business on the drive, just a nice, clean Mac install.

2. For backup purposes: Chameleon/Chimera puts a small, hidden partition on the drive, which isn't copied over when you clone the drive with SuperDuper. It's not hard to re-install, but if you want a bootable backup, it's handy having all the bootloader stuff on a USB stick.

3. For convenience: I keep a spare USB stick with the original, working config on it - that way I can tinker with different settings on another USB stick, and if it breaks, boot right back up on the other one...instead of having to figure out a way to get the drive booting otherwise. So that's pretty convenient.

It's not for everyone, and it's not any harder to install it to the hard drive or anything, I just find it a bit easier, plus I like having a bone-stock Mac drive with no Hackintosh stuff on it. Makes me feel happy

Hmm....well in my current config, I ended up installing the boot loader to the HDD. I need to switch HDDs anyway, so I might consider doing it that way eventually.

Unfortunately the audio on my motherboard is basically dead (doesnt work in windows either), so I've gotta RMA it, but with a little tinkering, I got the system up and running pretty well in a few hours. I actually had an easier time getting it to install with the 650 ti already in, than the integrated Ivy Bridge graphics. Copying over the time machine partition now, hopefully everything continues to just work.

As of right now, the only unresolvable glitch that I cant figure out, is that chimera wont boot windows properly. If I select the windows drive directly from the bios boot menu, it boots right up. If I choose the windows drive in chimera, says boot loader not present. Hmph.

 

[Kaido]

Hmm....well in my current config, I ended up installing the boot loader to the HDD. I need to switch HDDs anyway, so I might consider doing it that way eventually.

Unfortunately the audio on my motherboard is basically dead (doesnt work in windows either), so I've gotta RMA it, but with a little tinkering, I got the system up and running pretty well in a few hours. I actually had an easier time getting it to install with the 650 ti already in, than the integrated Ivy Bridge graphics. Copying over the time machine partition now, hopefully everything continues to just work.

As of right now, the only unresolvable glitch that I cant figure out, is that chimera wont boot windows properly. If I select the windows drive directly from the bios boot menu, it boots right up. If I choose the windows drive in chimera, says boot loader not present. Hmph.

That is odd. Does the Windows drive have the 100mb "system reserved" partition on it?

 

[BD2003]

That is odd. Does the Windows drive have the 100mb "system reserved" partition on it?

Yeah. Is that what I should point chimera to then?

 

[Tyranicus]

Yeah. Is that what I should point chimera to then?

Yes.

 

[Kaido]

Yeah. Is that what I should point chimera to then?

Yup, that's the Windows bootloader partition.

 

[destrekor]

I am completely new to this, and am trying to 1) make sure my hardware is compatible; 2) make sure I am not tackling this entirely wrong.

I have a system already dual-booting (triple, actually). I had Ubuntu booting up to play around with it (I've got Win Server 2012 also installed), but now I think I really really want to have OS X installed in it's spot.
I'll have to play around/be cautious with boot loaders already present, and after reading Kaido's posts, I think I'd stick to a USB bootloader for when I plan to boot up OS X, otherwise I'd have the option of my two Windows installs.
I want to definitely see if, perhaps, it truly is the better OS for "creative minds" (photography, in this case), and it will help to truly know my way around the OS if I need to support it in my new job (there are a few Mac's on site, iirc).


This is my desktop. I imagine some "features" may not work so well, or may require a lot of extra work in the hackintosh environment.

ASUS P8Z68 Deluxe
Intel i7 2600K (@ 4.5)
2x4GB DDR3-1600 Corsair Vengeance CL9 1.5v
install would be on SSD (secondary SSD, sharing with Win Server)
also HDDs in system (do make/models matter here?)
2x EVGA GTX 560 Ti 2GB, in SLI, with 3x DVI displays
Creative X-Fi Fatal1ty (old-school PCI) connected to 5.1 system using 3 analog connections - I have a feeling this is a no-go?
Logitech G700 mouse
Razer Blackwidow Ultimate Stealth kb
using on-board (Intel) Gigabit ethernet