When I started freelancing I need to make a new beastly computer that could handle tons of storage and be the central base for all of my projects. The two most important things I was concerned with my system were speed and budget. I had been following the osx86 project on and off over the last couple of years and after seeing successfully running production machines running I was to tempting to build one of my own.
As a part time homebrew/mod hacker I felt making a Hackintosh would be a great exercise, very educational, and also enrich my geek cred.
Total Budget of Project: $700
Parts list for machine
- DFI Blood Iron MotherBoard
- XFX9800GT Graphics Card
- Gskull ram 2 dimms 4gigs total
- Coolmaster Power Supply
- Antec 900 Case
- SATA DVD Drive
- RETAIL DVD of OSX10.5
First you will need to create a boot cd that will allow the bios to read the OSX dvd.
Once the system has been booted it will run threw the normal installation.
After the machine tries to restart you will have to boot to the boot312 cd in the dvd drive. Once that is loaded target the the correct drive to boot. Most systems its 80.
After selecting boot drive I recommend loading the os in verbose mode by typing “-v” or “-v -f” before starting the boot. This will allow you to see all the loading process under the hood this will help nail down what hardware device might be causing issues due to kext conflicts.
Once system has successfully booted install the following:
- Chameleon – This will now replace the boot 312
- Drivers… recommend looking at the OSX86 project for these downloads.
- Depending on what version of install disc you have install combo update to take system to the latest version of the os.
Once you have the system up and running its more of less a full Mac, I highly recommend adding a sectioned drive that you can clone and restore with if you plan on messing around with different kext and or osx updates. Personally I use CarbonCopyCloner and it has already saved me a couple times.
I have been running the machine with virtual no issues for almost 5 months now. The 2 main issues that I have and sleeping and restarting the machine.
The system seems great, I just built on very similar to yours. I have built hacks before but this is my first try with the boot123 method. I have everything installed and running great my only problem is with the chameleon boot loader it just hangs on the apple white screen and eventually a circle with a line through it comes up. Booting with the boot123 disc still works fine and I can install all updates with no problem. Any advice?
Comment by zimo — May 22, 2009 @ 8:04 am
Boot in verbose mode so you can see why it’s hanging.
Type: “-v ” before you boot.
I would also recommend the osx86 chat room from insanelymac.com if you continue to have trouble.
Comment by J.P. — May 22, 2009 @ 8:22 am
[...] messing around with my Hackintosh today I needed to remove some of my kext files in /System/Library/Extentions (S/L/E). I [...]
Pingback by Activating Root Access in OSX Terminal — June 18, 2009 @ 10:04 am
Just updated to 10.5.7 yesterday, only issues were sound and mouse related, both easy kext fixes.
Comment by J.P. — June 18, 2009 @ 10:06 am