Building a Hackingtosh, good/bad idea?

It USED to work ok, but doesn't now. I don't disconnect monitors often enough to fix it, but it certainly can happen on real hardware

Its only 1 of the ports though. I think the VGA (?) is the one with issues and the (DVI? Display port?) works fine.

 

Well, I tell a lie, sometimes it happens with my horrible cheap chinese USB-to-DVI adaptor.

But that's not the OS, it's the horrible chinese drivers.

 

My Macbook is absolutely fine (has the precursor to mini-display port), my MacMini is fine with HDMI, but it I unplug the thunderbolt adapter, it will often have a fit. If I unplug the *monitor* from the thunderbolt adapter, it works as expected. We have an ancient mechanical monitor switcher, which basically has 4 inputs, 1 output and a big manual rotary switch. If I switch between Dreamcast VGA Box and Mac it works every time. What it doesn't like is using the second monitor if it was turned on with the monitor disconnected (e.g., on DC VGA Box.) That's the only time I would unplug/re-plug the Thunderbolt, and that works "most of the time" without fail. Having said that, your mileage will ultimately/undoubtedly differ ;-)

 

After reading this thread I'm toying with the idea of selling my aging iMac 2008 and building a hackintosh. Currently bidding on a G5 case to put it in, apparently it's tricky to get an ATX board in there but will give me something to do. If I attempt it I'll post pics of the process.

 

I've got a 2006 macbook with intel graphics, it doesn't like flash either. There is a hardware problem with the sound port, it detects an optical cable (I've never had or used an optical cable) and needs fiddled around with a small needle.
Yes the sleep problem is just related to my hardware and not macs, adobe problems on the other hand are apparent on this hackintosh and my macbook (I haven't tried 3D on it but editing large images is just impossible).
Well yes you can use DD and mv from terminal, I'm talking about the GUI. Open finder and select ANY file, click the edit menu and behold a greyed out cut option. I really couldn't care less for having to use a mouse to move a file using finder. I had another problem on the VM when it didn't have a mouse driver installed and could only use a keyboard, the default option for keyboards on macs is to not select most elements when using tab, and you cannot get to that option in settings because of that problem, if you try to tab to the checkbox then it just tabs over it. I asked at another forum and had 3 pages full of zealots saying I was an idiot, when eventually after all that someone gave me the shortcut to enable that option, I can't even remember what it was but it wasn't something you'd just stumble across.
Also, look up mac osx server on the app store, bad review after bad review .
But yes, mac does have it's plus sides, you can read millions of threads about what people like/hate about it but you'll only ever really know what you think about it when you try it.

'Real Macs don't have this problem. That doesn't help with using a Hackintosh, but I'm saying this so y'all know it's not a fault in the OS, but rather in how it's fooled into running on a non-Mac video card.'
Actually it's using the native nvidia drivers. There is an official nvidia 9600 for macs and firmware, I didn't bother flashing it to my card as it works on everything as-is.

'Any recent modern camera will work. Anything that required an exotic driver on Windows, wont.'
Misconception, from what I have seen ONLY official isight cameras work, I found the problem with macam anyway, it doesn't support mountain lion. Of the 2 external webcams I have, one works natively in windows since XP (logitech) and the other (PAC207) driver is found in windows update on 7.

'If you want to run Windows apps, Crossover works just fine on the Mac, and there are countless ways to create a VM on a Mac, not least VirtualBox, but also VMWare and Parallels. And, you know what - there's a native version of MS Office, which in many ways is actually nicer than the version on Windows.'
I do fully agree with that actually, office for windows annoys me quite a bit, however office for mac is (in my mind) very well designed.

 

It works, but it won't work properly (as you've experienced) without spending ages dicking with the senseid bytes in the kext. That's what flashing the firmware will address.

 

Hackintosh is awesome. I've gone through two different builds and they were both great. Picking known hack friendly hardware will make your experience much better so do some homework. Don't buy a EFI-X as the open source solutions or booting are free and better.

 

Isn't it a better idea to run a virtual machine with OSX from within Linux/Windows? Unless I guess you need 100% horsepower... I remember I had a SnowLeopard vm some years ago that I used to help some friends, worked well...

 

Is there any virtual machine that can provide fully working OpenGL and multiple desktop resolutions, sound, etc in OS X? Haven't found any.

 

OSX works quite well on Virtual Box, I've got it loaded on my rig shared across my Linux and Windows installs (available to both), I'm pretty sure it has no Opengl support but multi screens I think works and sound ect work pretty much flawlessly for me.

 

Got quite excited about this Hackintosh idea so decided to order some parts to build one. Managed to get a system together for less than £400. Got most of my parts from eBuyer. If you already have a monitor it's an even cheaper set up.



Not going to be out of this world but way more powerful than what I have an future proof. If anyone is wondering, the motherboard is pretty much OS X native from the get go, could have paid less for a H61 board but can be tricky with audio and LAN if you end up with a certain revision.

Haven't decided on the processor yet, on a low budget so may just opt for a Sandy Bridge i3 for now and upgrade to an i5 later. What I didn't realise in the beginning was that you have to pay mega bucks for an i3 or i5 which supports HD3000 or higher, the lower priced OEM CPUs only offer HD2500 which doesn't work with OS X. So it kinda sucks that I'm having to buy a GPU that I'm not really too fussed about but the GT 640 seems adequately capable for gaming and ML supports native drivers for it.

Quite excited for everything to arrive although there's a few other parts I'll need such as a bluetooth dongle for my Magic Mouse and a compatible wifi card but I'm just going to use a powerline adapter over LAN for now.

Should be fairly straight forward to get going. I've done some pretty intensive Hackintoshes in the past with Kext and DSDT hacks and all sorts so this should hopefully be a breeze.

Either way it's necessary I get it working as I'm an iOS Developer so native OS X is a necessity.

 

Um... what?

If you're an iOS developer, and you pay your bills writing software in OS X, why cheap out? Mac Mini is 500 pounds delivered.

I understand a Hackintosh for a hobbyist, but if you're a professional then you must appreciate having the right tools for the job...

 

Because it'll be fun, the set up is pretty much guaranteed to work in the way I want it to for what I need, upgrades will be easier/cheaper in the not so distant future and I've been itching for a gaming rig for a while so this can be dual booted into something half decent on the MS side in time.

 

Ah, well that makes more sense. You see where I'm coming from though.

 

Absolutely. I wouldn't do it if I though I was going to screw up my working life. I already have a Hackintosh laptop that works good enough to do a few bits and pieces in the meantime. It just so happens I have a week off work and I'm a bit bored lol.

 

2006, so what, GMA500? Not a particularly powerful chipset. Mine has the GMA X3000 which is a heck of a lot more powerful. That might be the difference needed.

So therefore is nothing to do with the OS, as the OS wasn't QA'd/tested against or released with support for your hardware.

Honestly, that sounds more like a lack of RAM. Mac OS X is fairly RAM hungry and a machine with 2GB and identical hardware will run noticeably worse than a machine with 4GB RAM, just as a machine with 8GB runs faster than a 4GB equipped model. It also depends on how well your graphics card is running with the drivers you are using.

You had keyboard working? You just needed to bring up spotlight (command+space? or is it control+space? one or the other) then type "terminal"<return>. You then have full command line access tot he OS, and can set any options you like, FTP new files on to the machine and unpack archives etc. Basically - all the tools a Hackintosh user would need to fix the mouse issue.

What has that got the do with this discussion? Mac OS X Server is a niche product these days.

You honestly get what you pay for.

As stated, if you require a driver, then it depends on the company who produce the hardware to provide a Mac one or a third party to gain enough info to produce one. Most manufacturers do make Mac drivers these days, but there are also plenty of webcams that work out of the box. Apple don't even produce iSight cameras anymore, so all the MacMini owners are certainly getting web cams from somewhere.

 

This machine has 6GB of RAM, it's not related to not enough memory.
I tried terminal for enabling the accessability and mouse-keys, searched the web for what commands enabled them, the commands for 10.3 are different from 10.4 which are different from 10.5 which are different from 10.6 which are different (or missing) from 10.7 and 10.8 removed all commands completely, it isn't possibly to configure the mouse from terminal any more.
There's nothing wrong with my graphics drivers as I've already said.
"Mac OS X Server is a niche product these days." It's made by apple (well, from open source software) and supported by them, being pretty awful quality even if it's not used very much is just a piss poor performance.

 

Why would anyone want to?
Apples OS is completely overrated, and in my experience windows 7 is 10000% better than any Apple OS.

Plus, you can build or buy a modern and fast Windows PC WITH THE SAME SPECS AS A MAC for less than $500. But for mac? $1000+.
Completely baffled at how people dont see through apples scam.

 

lol.

Each to their own as far as which OS you prefer. I'd rather eat my own vomit than use Windows again but that doesn't mean I'd question anyone else's decision to, pleased I got to that point in life where you realise that being a fan boy is just fucking pointless and makes you look and sound like a nob.

Anyway, as for the hardware, yeah I guess you're kinda right. I finished my Hackintosh today and it's a pretty powerful machine for not a lot of money but I do kinda miss the altogetherness of my iMac.

Going to stick with the Hackintosh though, was a very easy install and all the parts I bought work natively so it's definitely reliable enough to do work on.

If anyone wants to know the exact parts I bought and the install steps, let me know.

 

And for 100$ less, you can have linux!