A Hackintosh for The Faint of Heart

I just finished building my first real “hackintosh” computer. As someone who has used a MacBook Pro for the past four years, I have really taken for granted how many things “just work” in Mac OS X. I was considering making my new computer a Mac Mini, but its underpowered laptop-grade components just can’t compare to a good ol’ tower PC.

Since I last booted Tiger on a 32-bit Pentium M laptop (my aged ThinkPad T41) many things have changed (for the better) in the world of OSX86. New bootloaders and better driver support, as well as easy install wizards, have reshaped the rocky world of running the beautiful Mac OS X on standard PC hardware. Of course, a hefty amount of research is still required before getting started to avoid getting burned along the way.

The tutorial I followed was tonymacx86′s iBoot + MultiBeast tutorial. At time of writing, iBoot + MultiBeast is pretty much the preferred method of installing and configuring the Chameleon bootloader/PC-EFI, your kernel extensions (kexts), and various tweaks.

Here is a summary of the hardware used in my new “dream machine” build (all purchased from NewEgg, total was $931).

• Processor: Intel Core i7 870 Lynnfield (2.93GHz, 8MB cache, quad core, LGA 1156, 95W)
• Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD3 (HW revision 2.0, BIOS revision F9)
• Memory: Corsair XMS3 4GB (2x2GB, 240pin DDR3-1333, PC3-10666, timings 9-9-9-24)
• Hard Drive: Western Digital VelociRaptor (300GB, 10000RPM, 16MB cache, SATA-II)
• Optical Drive: LG Super-Multi 22X DVD Burner (SATA)
• Graphics Card: Gigabyte GV-N98TSL-1GI Silent Cell (nVidia GeForce 9800 GT, 1GB 256bit GDDR3, PCIe 2.0 x16)
• FireWire Card: SYBA IEEE 1394a SD-VIA-FW1E1H (400Mbit, VIA 6307 chipset, PCI)
• Power Supply: Corsair CMPSU-400CX (400W, ATX12V V2.2, 30A on +12V rail, 80 PLUS Certified)
• Case: Antec Three Hundred (Black Steel, Mid-tower, ATX)

Quite a powerful machine, especially given that a Mac for the same price point has only a mere dual core processor and much less capable graphics card. After assembling the computer (minus the FireWire card during install) and updating the BIOS from F8 to F9 through a USB thumb drive, I was ready to install Mac OS X 10.6!

The first thing one will want to do is configure the motherboard’s BIOS according to the tutorial. This involves:

1. Loading Optimized Defaults
2. Putting CDROM as the first boot device (changed back to hard drive after install)
3. Setting both SATA chipsets to AHCI mode
4. Enabling high-precision event timer support and putting HPET in 64-bit mode
5. Hitting F10 to save changes and reboot

I put in the iBoot Supported CD (version 2.6.4) and was greeted by the Chameleon boot loader. I ejected the iBoot CD and inserted my Snow Leopard retail DVD. After waiting ten seconds for the drive to spin up, I pressed F5 to (re)scan the drive and pressed Enter to boot the installer. Once the installer loaded, I formatted the hard drive with a single HFS+ partition and a GPT layout. I proceeded with installation as usual.

After installation completed, I then booted from the iBoot Supported CD again and selected my hard drive. Mac OS X 10.6.0 started. I installed the 10.6.4 combo updater from my USB thumb drive (downloaded off Apple’s website from another computer). One issue here is that Multibeast had problems running on my original 10.6.0 retail install, so I had to reboot off of the iBoot CD again at this point. Once the system has booted, I removed the CD and put it with the motherboard box in case I ever needed it again (i.e. if I trash my kexts or bootloader, or if I need to restore using the install DVD and Time Machine).

Now that my computer was running 10.6.4 it was time to make the install permanent! Copy Multibeast to your internal disk from a USB thumb drive (again, downloaded from another computer) and unzip the file. I was using version 2.1.4. Launch the installer package. While others may opt for an EasyBeast install as I did initially, I prefer to hand select which files were installed to my computer. I used the following settings for Advanced Options:

• Kexts
  • Audio: VoodooHDA 0.2.56 (not 0.2.61 since it has a bug that causes “hissing” sound)
  • Disk: JMicro36x (aka GSATA): JMicron36xATA, JMicronxSATA
  • Graphics: NVEnabler
  • Network: Nothing selected – read below
  • Non-DSDT Systems: fakesmc, LegacyAppleRTC, EvOreboot, NullCPUPowerManagement
• Chameleon 2.0 RC4 by AsereBLN
• No Optional Kernels
• com.apple.boot.plist: 64-bit Apple Boot Screen
• smbios.plist: iMac: Core i7
• Themes: Standard Chameleon (optional)
• System Utilities: Rebuild Caches, Repair Permissions

(Networking note: The Realtek R1000SL driver included didn’t seem to work with the RTL8111 on-board Ethernet chip. I avoided this problem by using an Apple USB Ethernet adapter to get online, however this forum thread appears to have a working 64-bit driver.)

I then opened (as root) /Extras/com.apple.boot.plist in vim (you can use any other good editor) and changed my configuration to enable a longer boot menu timeout as well as verbose mode. Below are the contents of my file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
	<key>Kernel</key>
	<string>mach_kernel</string>
	<key>Kernel Flags</key>
	<string>-v</string>
	<key>Timeout</key>
	<string>3</string>
</dict>
</plist>

After clicking on Continue and waiting, I rebooted. After checking to make sure all devices were working properly, I opened About This Mac to check it had identified my hardware correctly and System Profiler to confirm I was running in 64-bit kernel mode. All went well and I had a functioning “hackintosh” system!