Hackintosh

[AntonThaGreat]

Anyone here actually running Mac OS on a PC?

What is your experience with it? Problems? Praises?

[akula169]

praises: cheap hardware compared to Apple official

problems:

-hardware incompatibility
mainly graphics and audio issues
sleep/hibernate can be dodgy, again, hardware dependent - a big issue for laptops

-system updates
you have to avoid them unless you know it isn't going to squash the custom kernel you are running (rendering your box unbootable unless you are very careful)


my experience:
I messed with a Hackintosh setup during the Tiger and Leopard days - it was a fun (and sometimes frustrating exercise) and allowed me to explore what OS X had to offer before making the leap. I got tired of playing the cat-mouse game with system updates and ended up fully switching back in 2007 (with official hardware) and haven't looked back (I can probably also blame the iPhone halo-effect). Wouldn't have been such an easy decision if I couldn't run Bootcamp on my MacPro. But, note that most of my graphics intensive gaming since then has been console-only.

pm me for a site that has an excellent forum for seeking out the possible issues on your particular hardware configuration.

[J Arcane]

I had a fair amount of issues getting it running in the first place. It's almost completely random, at times, as to whether the damn thing will actually install properly. It took me almost a day of trial-and-error reinstallations before I finally got my original Hackenmac working.

Once it finally did, I was fine . . . for a while.

Then an update came out. Basically, updates on HackOS are like playing Russian roulette with your OS install. There's a chance it might work, but there's also a chance it'll completely break your system and you'll have to reinstall, bringing you right back to the aforementioned laborious reinstall process.

My first update went well, though I had to do some monkeying about with the .kexts for my video to get it working right again IIRC. My second one broke shit, and my attempts to reinstall the original version were met with complete and utter failure.

Basically, it's very chancy, very finicky, and probably won't work. Once it does, it runs pretty great, until there's an update, and it comes down to a decision where keeping up to date may entail a risk of totally breaking everything.

[Banacek]

I've been using my Hackintosh since i built it in November with zero crashes. Installed 10.6.4 and 10.6.5 with no issues. If you check my blog on here I wrote an entire write up about it. With the tools they have nowadays it trivial to get OSX running on PC hardware if you buy the right hardware.

Go to http://www.tonymacx86.com/ and read up.

[J Arcane]

Is it still pretty much a no go getting Hackintosh going on an Athlon?

[Banacek]

Is it still pretty much a no go getting Hackintosh going on an Athlon?

Yeah, anything not Intel is more trouble then it's worth. That is the downside; if you don't buy parts exactly for a Hackintosh then I wouldn't try building one.

[J Arcane]

Yeah, anything not Intel is more trouble then it's worth. That is the downside; if you don't buy parts exactly for a Hackintosh then I wouldn't try building one.
Yeah, I bought my parts for economy and peformance, which meant AMD. I can't see buying a rig just for Hackintoshing it. Sadly, it seems like custom building your hardware is the best way to guarantee it'll actually work.

[Dukefrukem]

I've been using my Hackintosh since i built it in November with zero crashes. Installed 10.6.4 and 10.6.5 with no issues. If you check my blog on here I wrote an entire write up about it. With the tools they have nowadays it trivial to get OSX running on PC hardware if you buy the right hardware.

Go to http://www.tonymacx86.com/ and read up.

Great write up!

[Serapth]

I'm running 10.6 in vmware without issues.

[Banacek]

Great write up!

Thanks, I hope it helps someone trying to build one themselves.

[J Arcane]

I'm running 10.6 in vmware without issues.
What guide did you use for that, and how is the performance? I've considered doing that a few times, just so I could potter around with Rapidweaver and this newfangled "Mac App Store" thing.

[Serapth]

What guide did you use for that, and how is the performance? I've considered doing that a few times, just so I could potter around with Rapidweaver and this newfangled "Mac App Store" thing.

Not really sure what guide I used. Frankly it was easier than ever in the past, no wierd .kext editing or selective choosing of driver support etc... then again, I actually have a Mac and a copy of 10.6 to work with. Anyways, it was Snowy_VM I used as the pre-configured VMWare image, the rest was childsplay, although you obviously will need a Snow Leopard dvd or iso.

Performance is fine, I use it only to run XCode, and its faster on my VM than it is on my actual iMac. Im not trying to do anything graphical though.

The only issue I ran into is my laptop natively is a 1.7:1 resolution ( 1600x900 ), which simply isn't support. I am running 1400x900 I believe as a result. Even then, I had to do something, I forget what, to enable that resolution under VMWare, it wasn't difficult and I figured it out within seconds of googling, so whatever it was, its nothing to sweat.