31 Aug 08 Project: Frankintosh

My Dad and I got a wild hair to build a ‘Hackintosh’ this weekend. A Hackintosh is basically a standard PC running a patched up version of Mac OS X. Originally we had tried to accomplish this with my gaming rig, but unfortunately we were shot down due to my board having an incompatible nForce chipset. We went back to the drawing board and searched for a motherboard generally accepted as compatible. Our conclusion was Gigabyte’s GA-EP45-DS3R ATX motherboard.

The parts we selected are as follows:

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS3R
CPU: Intel E8400 3.0Ghz ‘Wolfdale’
Memory: Corsair XMS (2×2) 4GB DDR2 800
Video Card: EVGA e-GeForce 8800GT 512MB
DVD Drive: Sony SATA DVD-R/RW Drive
Hard Drive: 1x Hitachi 250GB SATA HDD
PSU CoolerMaster 550w EPS12V
Case: Thermaltake Armor+MX

We experimented with pretty much every pre-packaged OSx86 install DVD (Kalyway, iATKOS, JaS, Leo4All), and came to the conclusion that Kalyway was the most compatible with our hardware configuration. Using the Kalyway DVD, we chose to install the modified sleep kernel, REALTEKR100 for LAN, and unchecked everything else under LAN, Audio, and Video. Everything else was left pretty much as-is.

Upon setup and installation of Mac OS X, we had working LAN and basic video out of the box. Sound needed to be patched via the following kext files. These were obtained here: http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=76404

Attached File HDAEnabler.kext.zip
Latest_889a_AppleHDA.kext.zip
Latest_11_JUN_AppleACPIPlatform.kext.zip

Lastly, we patched the graphics with NVinject 0.2.1 (NVInstaller v.52), which we found here: http://scottdangel.com/blog/?page_id=20.

Everything appears to be working, including 3D and video at 1920×1200, LAN, Sound, etc. Overall it seems more fluid than the Mac Pro (2.6Ghz Xeon) that it’s replacing.

Tags: hackintosh, mac, pc, project

Filed in Uncategorized

Viewing 4 Comments

antihero 2 months ago 1 point
Please login to rate.

Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.

thanks for the info. did you use any special instructions (grub-dfe, boot123) to get kalyway/iatkos to boot on this motherboard?

I have just purchased the same motherboard so any tips would be appreciated. Nice blog, keep up the good work - will defiinitely add to my rss feeds.

reply edit reblog flag

Frank 2 months ago 1 point
Please login to rate.

Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.

Thanks for the comment!

There was no real trick to getting Kalyway to boot. We just popped the DVD in and let the installer do its thing. Make sure you only install what packages you need on the customization screen though, or else stuff doesn't work. I'm going to be doing this process again on my PC today or tomorrow (I ordered another GA-EP45-DS3R for myself), so I'll make sure to take note of what specific packages I used.

Also, we used a SATA DVD drive and SATA hard drive, but I'd like to hear if an IDE DVD drive works as well.

reply edit reblog flag

Naveen 2 months ago 1 point
Please login to rate.

Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.

Cheers for the info. Used it to install Leopard remotely for a mate of mine. There was less fiddling then I expected, but when my friends tried to get the machine online they ran into problems with the dual onboard NICs. They had to disable one to get everything working. Any comment about this?

reply edit reblog flag

Frank 2 months ago 1 point
Please login to rate.

Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.

I did not have to disable either onboard NIC. Instead I used the secondary NIC (bottom one) for my connection.

reply edit reblog flag

Trackbacks

(Trackback URL)

31 Aug 08 Project: Frankintosh

Add New Comment

Viewing 4 Comments

Add New Comment

Trackbacks

Tags

Latest Flickr Photos

Twitter

Ad

Blogroll

Meta