hackintosh

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Sardine

Sardine

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As I dont have the funds for a real mac im trying to see if I can install osx on my lads laptop. The work hes doing at school is on a mac.

Laptop spec.

Dell inspiron 1520
Core2duo 2ghz
4gb ram
160gb sata
Nvidia 8600gt

What is the osx I should get,

Im trying snow leopard but all the discs I have tried say cannot install I think due to not being a retail version.

I see the retail boxed Snow Leopard is only £14 fom apple.

Does anyone here have a spare retail version to sell that would work with above config.

I dont have an apple shop near me and £14 is cheap ?
 
Snow Leopard's a good choice for that spec of machine, plus I understand it's fairly well-documented as to how you can Hackintosh it.

Retail copies of SL retailed at about £29 last I looked, so £14 seems fair by comparison.
 
I'll buy SL as £14 is not a lot too loose if it won't work

Thanks.
 
I used iboot cd and got as far as setting up HDD partitioning and format. Then "you cannot install OSX at this time. Restart or restore from time capsule backup" which I find out is because the disk I have is grey and not white and from a Mac not a retail version.

Good news is it detects the mousepad and the 8600gt as in the logs it says opengl acceleration enabled and all the windows are snappy and fast.
Logs also say model identification failed or something similar as its expecting a certain model Mac as the disk is grey.
 
Its nothing to do with model identification I think. I run a hackintosh here. You *MUST* use a retail disk, not the grey ones. They are tied to specific hardware which they look for at installation time and will fail if it is not found.

:)
 
Just to warn you, it is a hell of a lot of work. I set up Hackintosh (Snow Leopard I think) on an old Dell laptop I had a few years ago. Getting it to install wasn't so bad, but sorting out all the drivers was an absolute nightmare. I never managed to get the sound or trackpad to work, so eventually I gave up.

Also, bear in mind that you will never be able to do any software updates (SL is already 2 generations out of date, 3 when Mavericks comes out later this year) and IMO handing over a Hackintosh system to somebody non-technical, which is pretty unstable and could be lost at any moment, is not ideal for a child to do their homework on.
 
edd_jedi said:
Just to warn you, it is a hell of a lot of work. I set up Hackintosh (Snow Leopard I think) on an old Dell laptop I had a few years ago. Getting it to install wasn't so bad, but sorting out all the drivers was an absolute nightmare. I never managed to get the sound or trackpad to work, so eventually I gave up.

Also, bear in mind that you will never be able to do any software updates (SL is already 2 generations out of date, 3 when Mavericks comes out later this year) and IMO handing over a Hackintosh system to somebody non-technical, which is pretty unstable and could be lost at any moment, is not ideal for a child to do their homework on.
Click to expand...

Good advice indeed regrading laptops. Setting this up on a desktop system is *much* easier, after a little reading on the tonymac forums, i had mine fully setup and configured in around an hour.

The software updates information is not strictly true. You can do both 'Software Update' or manually download the patches and apply them that way. I still use Snow Leopard here and its always worked just fine. It has matured into a damn fine operating system! Snow Leopard is still supported and still gets regular updates too, the last one being a short time ago when Mountain Lion 10.8.4 was released.

Handing a hackintosh over to a newbie is indeed not the best idea, but anyone wanting to have a go themselves should not be afraid of giving it a try. It can be a very rewarding experience :)
 
WonkeyDonkey said:
Good advice indeed regrading laptops. Setting this up on a desktop system is *much* easier, after a little reading on the tonymac forums, i had mine fully setup and configured in around an hour.
Click to expand...

The same rules we applied for Linux PCs about ten years ago apply to Hackintosh systems nowadays.

In essence, if you want to do it, buy the right hardware for the job. Back in the day, Linux was only compatible with a small number of devices, and if you wanted a working system, the start point was the OS, and you bought hardware that you knew would work. The same is true of this. Don't expect to be able to Hackintosh any old PC you have lying around, you'll have to fiddle to get it all working.
 
Yep. I was quite lucky that way really, the bits I already owned were mostly compatible and the bits I subsequently bought I made sure were compatible too.

Had it not been for the mistake I made in buying the apple thunderbolt monitor instead of the displayport version, I would be using my hackintosh now as my main production system.

:)
 
Good point, I imagine laptops are much harder to source the correct drivers for as most proper desktop video/sound cards etc tend to have much better support for such things.

Interesting about the updates - surely you have to be pretty careful, what if the update replaces some or all of the drivers you've replaced?

Also, although SL is fine now, OS's do tend to start having app support dropped once they get 2 or 3 generations old.
 
not bothered about future support, this is a short term fix for 1-2 yrs for an app they use at school and if I can get the sound working garage band also.

If its doesn't work (but it looks like it will as the mouse pad is fully working as is the 8600gt even before the install starts :D )

I have 10.8 setup in VMware but the lack of hardware VGA is the only reason its not used instead.

due to licence VMware is not allowed to use hardware drivers for VGA in OSX. Bah Humbug!!
 
edd_jedi said:
Good point, I imagine laptops are much harder to source the correct drivers for as most proper desktop video/sound cards etc tend to have much better support for such things.

Interesting about the updates - surely you have to be pretty careful, what if the update replaces some or all of the drivers you've replaced?

Also, although SL is fine now, OS's do tend to start having app support dropped once they get 2 or 3 generations old.
Click to expand...

Well I have never had issues at all with updates. The safest way to apply them is to download the individual installers and apply them after backing up your system, the same as with most OS updates these days. The most Ive ever had was an audio driver that was once overwritten by an update, I simply reapplied the original driver and it all worked again.

The thing with hackintosh machines is that if you get hardware that is known to be compatible with OSX to begin with, then the updates dont affect them that much. If you have drivers that you have had to hack to make them function, then you have to do a little more work.

Snow Leopard is a little odd in the Apple scheme of things I admit. It has been well maintained by Apple for much longer than previous ones. This could be down to the fact they are now releasing new versions of OSX much more quickly (once every year) or because Snow Leopard was the last OS they produced that could be bought and installed through optical media. They took it off retail sale at one point but then started selling it again.

Snow Leopard is also the minimum system you require to be able to login to the App Store and download one of the digital-only newer systems.

Newer Apple hardware has a built-in rom that enables you to login to the Apple servers and download the latest OS without needing an existing installed system, but the older hardware doesnt have this option.

As ever though, the way Apple works is not always as transparent as it could be and their ways of thinking may not always be the most obvious.

Edit : As you can probably tell Ive setup several hackintosh systems here so if anyone needs a hand, just drop me a PM :)
 
Originally Posted by WonkeyDonkey
Edit : As you can probably tell Ive setup several hackintosh systems here so if anyone needs a hand, just drop me a PM :)
Click to expand...


:D I've ordered SL £18 with Delivery. Expect a PM if I cant do it myself...
 
I did this on my Dell inspiron 1525 and it runs beautifully...unfortunately, drivers are very difficult to "patch" since I do not know Apple DOS commands or whatever the silly thing required to patch the drivers. Because I never got the "airport" to properly work, I gave up and installed Windows 8. :p
 
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