Once upon a time, talking about building a Hackintosh was more or less considered an underground activity. Today, even the most popular mainstream websites and blogs have started publishing articles about building a Hackintosh. There are several reasons why Hackintoshes are becoming popular among the geeks - full control of your hardware configuration at the fraction of the cost of a real Mac, advancements like pc_efi which helps you run OS X with very minimal patching and of course, the satisfaction of building everything from scratch- a stepping stone towards geek nirvana.
My original plan was to buy an iMac in mid-2008. But that shouldn’t stop me from running Leopard till that time. Here is a small run down of how I converted my Media Center PC into a near perfect Macintosh running OS X 10.5.1. Note that you can select the same parts that I have mentioned here and end up building a Hackintosh that is as fast as the current line of iMac.
The Media Center PC that I had was an AMD machine built around a cheap ASUS M2N-MX motherboard. This time around, I wanted to build a Intel based machine as the Hackintosh support for AMD processors are a little on the weaker side. I sold the AMD processor and motherboard to a friend who happily upgraded his ailing 4 year old PC with those components.
For the motherboard, I chose an ASUS P5GC-MX
The other parts are standard fare: A Sony DW-G120A DVD RAM drive, a Samsung 940BW widescreen monitor at 1440×900 resolution and a creative 4.1 speaker set.
How I installed the software
This is the tricky part, but it is pretty simple if you know what you are doing. There are patched Leopard DVDs available, which is probably the easiest way to install. But I chose the ‘flat image’ method because the flat image is only about 2.5 GB - which makes it pretty easy to download - considering the kind of broadband access we have in this part of the world. I already had the Tiger 10.4.8 JaS DVD, which made things a little easier. On my 320 GB IDE drive (which is set as the bootable hard drive in the BIOS), I made 3 partitions: A 30 GB partition for Tiger, a 120 GB partition for Leopard and the rest for storing movies, music, photos etc.,
Tiger installed without any problems. Once I booted into Tiger, I extracted the flat image and used the excellent Carbon Copy Cloner tool to expand the Leopard image into the 120GB partition. This is an important step because using the dd method, you will end up with a 16 GB partition. You can probably use the restore image tab from the Disk Utility to do the same, but I didn’t try that. Afterwards, I made the second partition as bootable and rebooted the PC. Leopard booted for the first time without any problems. Next comes the important step: installing pc_efi. I made a backup of the kernel in Leopard in a different name under the root folder and applied the 10.5.1 update. This update overwrites the patched kernel that comes with the flat image - that is why I took the backup earlier.
I rebooted into Tiger and installed pc_efi onto the Leopard partition using the instructions provided with the pc_efi bundle version 8. Once this is done, I rebooted again and had Leopard running - this time with the Vanilla kernel, which makes it possible to pull in all sorts of updates that come from Apple in the future! Voila, I have a perfect custom built Mac Pro running!! I am planning to use this PC till I save enough money to buy the iMac when it is refreshed with the Penryn processors from Intel. Here is a photo of my rig running Leopard. Click to enlarge.
Update- 21 Feb 2008: The 10.5.2 install, even with the Netkas method disabled my PS2 keyboard. The workaround? Make sure that you backup the ACPIPlatform.kext file before you start the update and then restore it. Warning: Do not install the update from the Software Updater, but through the offline updater available from the Apple site.
Update: The 10.5.3 combo update from Apple hosed my install again. But thankfully I have started using Time machine and could do a successful recovery. Needed to use the Netkas method again.
Update- 1 July 2008: 10.5.4 update worked like a charm. Just updated it from Software Updates like a real mac.
I strongly advice you to use time machine as this could be your savior in case any update results in a borked system.
Please feel free to post any questions regarding this configuration and I will be glad to help. But please note: You are doing everything at your own risk and I am in no way responsible for any kind of outcomes, good or bad.
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Hi,
After installing leopard, did u remove the tiger partition?
I am retaining Tiger because if any future Apple update screws up my main installation, I can always boot into tiger to do some repair work or retrieve my data in case of a badly affected Leopard installation
Hi,
Thanks for the great article. I followed these instructions and I was able to get the system up and running on leopard.
My friends were impressed. But there is one pblm. My 2.33 GHz Core 2 Duo processor is shown as 1.86 Ghz on the Apple System Profiler. Any ideas why it is running slow? (I used the same mobo recommended by you.)
–andrew
@reinman, This is due to a bug in one of the bios versions shipped with P5GC-MX motherboard. It runs the processor at a lower clockspeed. You can update the BIOS to the latest version using the sw available from the ASUS website. You may have to use a floppy drive, in case you do not have a windows installation. Jaganath
How did you manage to 1440×900 Resolution. I have the very same monitor and i cant get leopard to use 1440×900
Trush
@Trush,
When leopard first booted, it did not select the correct resolution. I just went to system properties and changed the resolution to 1440×900.
What graphics card are you using? Is it a supported graphics card?
I’ve seen that Nvidia 7300GT is supportet too? It’s cheap…
Great Article. I was looking to built a Hackintosh myself and all the parts other people mentioned were expensive.
One question, did you have to change any BIOS settings to get this working?
@Brian,
No, I am using the default settings.
If you are using this Mobo, check if you need to upgrade the BIOS. Mine was under clocked till I upgraded the BIOS.
Are you running PS2 KB/Mouse or USB? The reason I ask is that some people have had issues with PS2 and OS X.
Thanks
@Isaac,
My KB is PS2. No problems with it.
My mouse is a USB mouse.
Jaganath,
I’m building a Hackintosh with the same board out of a G4 Quicksilver case. I want to use 4GB of ram and there are conflicting specs. Depending on where you look it supports either 2 or 4 gigs. I know you are only running 2 but is there a way you could confirm 4?
Thanks,
Dan
Dan,
According to the mobo manual, it supports upto 4 GB.
How did you get the Dlink cARD WORKING. I have the same card .. but no luck with internet yet.
would appreciate it if you could tell me where u got the drivers from ..
@Abhijit
The D-Link card worked out of the box. I did not include any other drivers. Are you able to see it in System Profiler?
Nope .. i do not see in the system profiler (says no PCI Card found .. does not even recognise my Hauppage TV Tuner card which is fine) .. FYI .. i got a DELL E510 .. Bios recognises it, Vista recognises it. However Leopard no go !!
Abhijit
I just built a system based on this parts list and am quite pleased. You don’t even need the graphics card since the on board Intel GMA 950 chipset is fully supported. I used the Kalyway LEO 10.5.1 distribution and the install went very well. The only issue I have experienced is with power management. When I attempt to shut down the system, it requires that I hold down the power button to fully power down the machine. Sleep seems to work just fine however. It might be a BIOS tweak.
@Isaac,
Glad to hear that. Interestingly, for me sleep does not work, but power down works without any problems. See my updated note for the 10.5.2 upgrade, in case you are planning to do that.
@jaganath
I found that disabling the on board network and audio device resolved the shutdown issue. I didn’t bother with installing audio kext’s for the Realtek device because I’m running a pro audio interface (MOTU 828MkII) and of course the on board LAN device is not supported (yet?). The point is that it may simply be a matter of disabling the devices that are unresolved by the OS. This is purely anecdotal and hasn’t been fully proven, but hey, we’re experimenting here. By the way, I’m running Logic Pro 8 on this machine without any issues. I’m a long time Logic user and this update is very worthwhile.
I forgot to mention that sleep still works after these changes.
jaganath bro i got the ASUS P5GC-MX 800 bus version mobo.. how do i make its lan card work? i got a SMC lan card as well.. can u help me in this please?
Sajid,
Did you check the HCL to see if it is a compatible card? If so, just plug it into the PCI slot and you should be good to go.
could you give me settings for the bios of the mainboard that you have used? I’ve got the same mb but it doesnt’t work.
I’va problems with acpi drivers..I don’t know. I’ve tried to install Leopard 10.5..could you help me?
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