I can confirm that MAC OS X Snow Leopard works just fine on a PC based on ASUS P5Q-VM motherboard.
Computer:
- ASUS P5Q-VM motherboard
- 7 GB RAM (historically: 3 original plus 4 upgrade)
- ATI Radeon 4730 video card
- dedicated full hard drive for MAC OSX
- temporary USB keyboard (normally use PS2 one which can be enabled after setup)
- USB mouse
- Installed new empty HDD in the system (SATA)
- Switched BIOS to AHCI mode (which requires changes in Windows running from another HDD)
- replaced IDE DVD drive with SATA one (IDE wont work)
- Installed MAC OSX using NAWCOM boot CD and MAC OS Snow Leopard installation DVD
- Installed hack pack from NAWCOM Boot CD (including PS2 keyboard driver)
- Changed video resolution in the system settings (no need to manually install drivers, only adjust /Extra/com.apple.Boot.plist)
- Installed sound driver (ALC1200_1063 worked, but not other ALC1200)
Remark: I select which OS to boot via BIOS by pressing F8 during initial computer startup. No need to bother with various settings in boot loaders.
Many thanks to all the people who made it possiblle and who shared their experience in various forums and blogs.
So if you have similar setup and want to build a Hackintosh yourself, you'll need the following:
- NAWCOM boot CD : http://prasys.info/2010/10/nawcoms-bootcd-the-sucessor-to-empireefi/
- MAC OS X Snow Leopard installation DVD (you are expected to buy it, e.g. at Amazon)
- Sound driver: http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=161430
- Compatible computer
- PC keyboard works with MAC but the keys work differently. Most annoying one is that Alt is used on MAC pretty much as Ctrl is used on PC, i.e. copy/paste is Alt+C/Alt+V on MAC with PC keyboard. You can change that by using DoubleCommand utility
- By default you'll get read-only access to Windows NTFS drives (FAT32 works with read/write). You can use freeware NTFS 3G driver (note there is a commercial version available from the same vendor)
- There are MAC versions of Skype, FireFox, Filezilla available - they work just fine. And OpenOffice too.
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2 comments:
After doing all this, Do you find it worth the Effort? I mean you have technically done so many things. Wouldn't it be just fine with windows or buying a Mac?
It was not much effort.
Yes it was worth it as I tried MAC OS on the same hardware as Windows and got the feeling and can safely say that I don't see particular benefits over Windows for myself. I mean performance of Adobe photoshop is just the same whether it runs under Windows or under Mac OS.
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