Friend needs help with OSX x86

[Xaixis]

In another one of my topics when I was talking about my Mac, many of you suggested OSX x86 on a regular pc. Well I already have OSX so there is no need for that for me but my friend really wants a mac but doesn't see him self investing in a new computer any time soon.

So I looked around and I am really confused. Is there a way to dual boot it? He doesn't want to get rid of XP but still wants OSX. Also if someone could give me a link for how to dual boot it and the iso file for osx x86 then I could easily burn it to a CD (using disk utility with ease!) and help him with the installation.

Also I was wondering how reliable the OS is. Since it's a hacked version would all the programs work? Such as iLife? (He really likes iChat). Also would leopard be available to this? Or just tiger?

Sorry for asking so many questions, but since some of you suggested this I was wondering if you wanted to help my friend with it? Well really I'll be doing it for him, I guess you will be helping me  :lol:.

 

[Zethus]

dunno but i'm dual-booting Vista 32 bit and Vista 64 bit

 

[___]

@X: yes, everything works fine. All the hack does is add driver support for 3rd-party hardware to the OS iirc - normally Mac OS only supports hardware that Mac officially uses in its systems, but OS is Unix-based and built to run on Intel-compatible hardware so all you have to do is compile drivers for it. It also circumvents copy protection for obvious reasons, which prevents me from linking it for you but I'm sure you can find it with a little Google. It will dual-boot just like any other OS but you may need to use GRUB and chainload Windows, I don't think you can boot a Unix-based OS from Windows' boot manager (just do a search for this stuff, you'll find the info - the Ubuntu forums have some good guides on how to handle this, but I'm guessing the OSx86 official forums will as well).

Good luck

Oh also yes, last I checked, there was a Leopard build available. In fact I think I have it sitting on my hard drive somewhere.

 

[shadow]

OS X on x86 only works on some hardware, and often doesn't support 100% of your hardware. But maybe it's improved.

 

[Tohsaka]

Everything should work, with exception of the Pro Tools. iChat is included, but your friend will need to get a copy of iLife, since the hackintosh builds don't have it (last I checked).

You'll definitely have hardware issues. Your friend may want to look into making sure that he has compatible hardware, such as a graphics card that supports Core Image and Quartz Extreme. There may be difficulty on the end of the network card, but there are some cards that work out of the box.

You'll definitely want to have him use a Intel Processor- That makes everything easier. However, if he can wait, significant progress is being made on the Voodoo Kernel, which is a replacement for XNU.

 

[___]

Ah yeah I was speaking in terms of software - you do need to make sure you have compatible hardware. A reasonably modern Intel processor is the biggest thing - it must support the SSE3 instruction set, which any processor made in the past 4 years or so should. You may get partial or no support for 3d depending on your video card, and wireless cards are always hit-and-miss on unix-based systems. Most modern, brand-name hardware devices should work fine though, and any hardware or peripheral that normally supports Intel-based Macs should support OSx86.

 

[Xaixis]

Hmm... ok so I guess it isn't as easy as I thought, if it requires all this work then I doubt that I will be able to accomplish this successfully with my lack of knowledge about most of this stuff. I'm not very technical and will probably have to let my friend pass on the oppertunity.

So putting that aside unless someone would like to PM me with a little guidance. Does anyone know how to get iChat to work on pcs, because my friends want to be able to video chat, I mean if anything we can get skype... but preferably it would be better.

 

[___]

You can use AIM to talk to iChat users, but there is no iChat for PC.

 

[rey meustrus]

Video chat works in default AIM on PC, although it requires quite a bit of fiddling with the firewall.  As for OSX86, I installed it once on another computer (I'm very sad that my current computer does not seem to support it) a year ago.  The important thing for dual-booting is to deal with partitioning your hard drive first.  I recommend getting an Ubuntu Linux live CD and using gparted (there are gparted live CD's around too, but we need another partitioner as well).  From there, you need to resize your Windows partition to make space for Leopard.  I'd recommend 15-30gb if you can spare it.  Then you create a FAT32 partition in the empty space.  This is where it gets tricky.  You need to get a more basic partitioning tool.  I'm very fuzzy on the details, if you get to this point and need them PM me as I won't be watching this thread.  You need a basic partitioning tool that doesn't look as nice as gparted, and you need to manually change the partition title to HFS.  It's difficult to do this.  There are some abstract numbers, and I think one of them's a 7.  The program I got didn't know which number was HFS.  But once you've done that, gparted should recognize it as an HFS partition (but don't mess with it, because it can't format and it isn't formatted correctly).

When you load the OSX86 installation CD, you need to run Disk Utility from the menu at the top and find your OSX partition.  Reformat it.  Make doubly sure you're on the right partition first; Disk Utility doesn't show the right proportions in the left pane.

That's how I had to partition.  OSX86 comes with Darwin, a bootloader that can chain load Windows.  As long as the drives are correctly partitioned, Darwin should work fine, although personally, I always used GRUB because that's what I need for Ubuntu, and it loads everything.


And as has been said, software compatibility is no issue; the hardware requirements have been beaten like a dead horse at this point, so I'll just stress that it should be easier to make a desktop work than a laptop, because if some of your components don't work (like ethernet, unlikely) you can go buy another cheap card and put it in.  If sound doesn't work, DO NOT FRET, there is an EASY patching utility to make OSX86 recognize your sound card's codec (if you can obtain a file which describes it, which is always possible with your Ubuntu live CD)  With graphics cards, nVidia's going to be better than AVI, but integrated should work fine as well.

 

[Tohsaka]

If sound doesn't work, the best option is to purchase a USB Device to use sound. As an example, the MacBook Pros don't have a Microphone port, but rather a Line-in. Since line-in does not send power to the device, I ended up purchasing a Plantronic Headset which came with a USB Adapter- It works great.

For WiFi, there are a large set of cards that work out-of-box and are detected as Airport Extreme. The ethernet port is a little iffy, since it may be integrated into the logic board. The best option is to purchase a Motherboard with EFI on it: They exist. That'll make things far easier for you.

Look into Boot-132 if you plan on using a Intel Core 2 processor or a Xeon- That way you'll be able to run a Vanilla kernel and use standard Apple updates.

 

[Xaixis]

Damn, this all surpasses my knowledge of these thing, plus I doubt that my friend would want to do something like this to his computer... =/

Stil... Anyone know any detailed guides that I could follow?

 

[Tohsaka]

Check at InsanelyMac- Although, this isn't something that you'd be able to do easily unless you have intricate knowledge of the machine. Most guides are for installing the OS itself- There are fewer guides for computers, usually guided towards certain pieces of hardware (Certain Motherboards...etc)