As some of you would know I've undertaken an increasingly popular project - the Hackintosh (which I also called an iHac). It originally started when Apple moved over to Intel chips and could possibly be one of their worst decisions in terms of keeping a closed OS that would only work on Apple hardware. Since then people have found that the OS X operating system will work on computers that aren't Apple based because OS X is actually based on a UNIX variant called BSD. The only things stopping you from installing OS X on a PC is the boot process and the drivers available for your hardware.
The first problem has been very successfully overcome. The Chameleon bootloader which I wrote about a few weeks ago allows EFI boot emulation - this tricks OS X into thinking it's installing and running on an Apple PC. The second problem has been partly solved - depending on what type of computer you own and what devices you have. This is what my story is going to be about - the process of installing and configuring Mac OS X on my Dell Inspiron 6400 laptop. There was a lot of hours work, a lot of hours of internet downloading and a lot of highs and lows when things worked and didn't work and where I screwed up and either had to start all over again or try and reverse the damage (which I got much much better at by the end of the process). So this is the story
The Laptop
I used my Dell Inspiron 6400 laptop which has the following components
- an Intel Core Duo processor
- a Sigmatel 9200 Sound Card
- an Intel GMA945 built in graphics chip
- an Intel 3945ABG wireless network card
- a Dell 355 bluetooth module
- a Broadcom 440 ethernet card
- SD Card Reader
- Firewire
Ok - so I got my external USB hard drive and partitioned it into 3 (the first 2 are for Ubuntu - another much easier story there) and the 3rd one for OS X. I only had the iATKOS 1i DVD (because I don't want to go over my internet usage this month) so I had to start at 10.5.1 and work all the way to 10.5.6 - in the Mac installer I formatted the partition with HFS+ Journaled, selected EFI emulation for boot and the Vanilla kernel - because that's all I need - the newer Chameleon bootloader will not require a modded kernel :)
So it installed and I had to use the DVD as my temp bootolader. I had to do a safe boot (-x at the darwin bootloader) with the command rd=disk1s3 which told the DVD to boot from my newly created partition. This loaded successfully and I went through that fancy opening setup screen and then with the basic Mac OS X interface I was able to install the brand new Chameleon 2.0 bootloader (currently at Release Candidate 1 stage - so nearly ready for final release) to the external drive so I could boot without the DVD. This also seemed to fix the graphics too xD
Now using all the different OS X delta updates I updated my machine from 10.5.1 to 10.5.2, 10.5.3, 10.5.4 and then 10.5.5 one at a time so that if something went wrong, I could isolate which update caused it. A few different things had to be done with some updates - backing up the AppleIntelIntegratedFramebuffer kext from 10.5.2 so that my laptop display didn't turn off on every boot. Also removing the AppleIntelCPUPowerManagement kext stopped other further problems.
When it came to 10.5.6 I had to use the DSDT Patcher and install the Disabler kext so that the update would succeed. It did - only problem is the 10.5.6 update seemed to kill Quartz Extreme and Clear Image which enabled the fancy effects like the translucent menu bar. Other than that the 10.5.6 update didn't break anything else and I could use software update to get all the other patches. To get on the internet I use a Wireless USB dongle.
So at the end what works and what doesn't?
- The Quartz Extreme/Core Image of my Graphics card (hoped to be fixed in some type of patch)
- The Intel Wireless Card (3945 ABG) - Not Working (currently working on building drivers are the Project Camphor Team)
- The SD Card reader semi works with some types of cards
- The Battery Meter functions correctly with the help of the ACPIBattery kext
- The Trackpad works fine with the patching of the Trackpad Kext
- Sound works fine with the patched AppleHDA kext - mute and speaker mute on headphones work!
- Mic works when sound is patched.
- All Mac programs can be installed because the latest security updates and patchs are enabled.
- iWork 09 is fully installed and up to date
- I will try iLife 09 later when I got more download limit left to download the 4GB torrent.
- Bluetooth Works perfectly!
