All is well in hackintosh land. Back to work for me.

A7

After the graphics card update, my Mac would no longer boot. It would load part way, then just hang on a light blue screen and go nowhere. I wasn’t overly worried, because I had a full Time Machine backup (Apple’s automated recovery software) of my system from just hours before it died. Plus, I was able to boot into safe mode (-x on startup) and load up my full system to make another full backup of the drive, just in case.

Meanwhile, since I was able to boot into safe mode, I was Googling for ways to get my video drivers working again. I did end up finding the right drivers: Here (and if that link doesn’t work, just Google “X1900 XT EFI VGA Installer 0.1″). The installer ran fine, and after a reboot, my system loaded normally, though I’m still experiencing the graphical glitch. It seems I can’t play any videos on full screen, or they get all choppy and distorted.

So how will I fix it? Unfortunately, the only way I know to fix it is to reinstall the OS. There is a new hacked OSX version floating around called iATKOS. Version 4 installs 10.5.4 directly, so I’m hoping it will correct the problem. However, this is not an easy process. My Hackintosh is my main work machine, and I can’t afford to just reformat and take a chance with all my work data and software. I need to work on Monday morning, and if the install doesn’t go well I’d be screwed. So what’s my plan?

First thing tomorrow, I’m off to buy a new hard drive. That way all I have to do is pull out my existing drive, pop in the new one, and start the install. If it all goes to hell and I can’t get it to work, then come Monday morning, all I have to do is pop in my old drive and it will boot up just like it did today. No risk, no potential downtime; And if all goes well, hopefully a fully working and upgraded system in the process.

Wish me luck. I’ll post back in here when I’m done to let you all know if it worked.

EDIT: I got the hard drive installed today. I started by installing the iATKOS version of OSX, but it didn’t work with my video card. All pop-up menus were blacked out, so I couldn’t use the system at all. I reinstalled the latest version of Kalyway instead (with version 10.5.2 of OSX) and it went really smoothly. In fact, the install went even better than the previous version I installed. The video card drivers worked well, and it included drivers for my network card, and other devices. Once I was up and running I tested some video, and it worked fine. My issue was fixed. I then proceeded to install the updates one by one to see which one caused the issue. Turns out the latest version of Quicktime (version 7.5, which was released in conjunction with the new iTunes 7.7 for iPhone 3G) was the culprit. As soon as Quicktime was updated, I couldn’t play video anymore (it became slow and choppy). I then restored my entire system from my Time Machine backup (it restored everything… from my documents, to my music, to my applications and even my settings). It took about 2 hours to restore, and it went really well. The only issue is that my software licenses are now all gone and I need to re-enter my product activation codes (which makes sense, otherwise people could copy software to other machines that way). Then I used a software called Pacifist to override the new version of Quicktime with the older version (7.4.5) and voila! Video is working perfectly again! My system is running in tip top shape, fully restored, and even faster than before thanks to my new 1 terabyte hard drive. All is well in A7 land, and just in time for work.

A7

This week, I’m writing two smaller articles. Don’t forget to read my article on Microsoft’s Office 2008 for Mac. Now onto the article.

A couple of months ago, I decided to build my own Mac as a side-project because I was a little underwhelmed with the performance of the new iMac I had bought. The iMac design was fantastic, and the price was decent considering the 24″ monitor that comes with it, but I needed something that allowed for more flexibility with the hard drives. HighDef video editing eats up a lot of space, and it’s not always practical or efficient to have a bunch of external drives. The Mac Pro was WAY out of my price range, so I built my own “almost Mac Pro”. I was so pleased with the results, I am using the Hackintosh full time now. It has been running almost flawlessly since I built it. I thought this would be a good time to follow up and let everyone know what issues I ran into so far, and give a few more instructions on getting the most out of your Frankenstein Mac.

First, let’s start with the little issues I’ve come across so far.

Multi-user:
I’m not entirely sure if this issue is related to the Hackintosh I built, or if there’s something else (drivers?) at play, but switching users often caused the current user to quit. The Mac OS comes with a great “fast user switching” feature that allows several accounts to run on the system at the same time, and switch seamlessly between them. I had an account, and so did my wife; The problem was when my wife would log into her account, sometimes my account would just quit entirely (instead of continuing to run in the background) and vice versa. This isn’t really an issue because I prefer having only one account anyway. Having multiple accounts running simultaneously eats up system resources and slows down the computer. Instead, I’ve set my wife up under my account with her own email program and browser. Problem solved.

No Bluetooth or “real” wireless:
This is not an issue for me because I have no use for Bluetooth, but it may be a concern to some. Since I have no use for it, I will not be looking for ways to make Bluetooth work, but I’m sure there are ways around this if you’re desperate enough. As for the wireless, see below for my workaround.

Updates:
Updating on the Mac is normally easy as pie… unless you have a Hackintosh. There have been two updates so far that could break your Hackintosh. You have to be VERY diligent about not accepting automatic updates unless you are sure they are safe. You have to know what you’re doing to make sure you don’t break anything.

Reboots and startup:
Whenever I have to shut down or reboot, there are precautions I have to take. Performing a shutdown doesn’t entirely shut down the system. The power supply fas stays on, so I must shut down the system from the power supply to cut all power. When restarting (fresh or after a reboot) the system sometimes will not start up. I’m 99% sure this is due to the overclocking (see below for details). I could just bring my system back down to the default settings to avoid the problem, but hey, I like the speed! I can deal with a couple of button presses. If the system doesn’t start on first boot, all I have to do is turn off the power supply and try again. Once it starts loading, it’s perfectly fine again.

That’s it! Everything else has been ROCK SOLID. The system only went down once in 2 months (and I suspect it had a lot to do with me running Windows under Parallels).

As promised in the original article, I mentioned a few extra things that can be done to make your system a little better.

Overclocking:
Even though you only bought a Quad 2.4Ghz CPU, you can make it run at 3.0Ghz with only minor inconsistencies (see “reboots and startup” above). Thanks to the huge CPU heatsink and fan I recommend in my original article, overclocking to 3.0Ghz barely increases heat in the system, and gives a nice speed boost. How you perform your overclocking depends on your motherboard, but the basic idea is you need to boot into your bios setup screen and set the CPU clocking to manual. Then you increase the bus speed of your motherboard, the voltage to the CPU and maybe the ram, and perform a few other tweaks. For a more detailed guide, see here.

Wireless:
With the recent purchase of our new home, I needed to make some preparations for the wireless computing and audio setup I will be building. I upgraded my wireless network to an Airport Extreme (wireless N) with a wireless G bridge network. Since I will not have network cable access in the computer room upstairs in the new house, I needed to go wireless, and wanted to go Wireless N. I bought a NewerTech PCI Wireless N card from OWC. I popped it in, installed the drivers, and it works like a charm. Unfortunately, it does not get detected as an official Apple Airport card, so I don’t have the cool wireless GUI that normal Macs have. I have to setup and connect to my wireless network through the software that came with the card (and it is REALLY ugly and clunky, but it works). The updated drivers were hard to find, but can be found via Google. I now have Wireless N working perfectly.

Essential software:
If you need to download torrents (for TV shows or other) I recommend Azureus. It’s a great package that works well. For MSN chatting, I recommend Adium or aMSN instead of the Microsoft version* (unless you are also using Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac and your chat sessions are for work). Your Hackintosh will not include the iLife suite by default like a real Mac would have. iLife is a great software suite. You can buy it from any Mac retailer for cheap, and it is highly recommended for the full Mac experience. Skype should be the next download. It is free, and allows you to do full audio and video chat with anyone on Mac, Linux or PC. If you need to do any file transfers for web development, Transmit is the best FTP client available. Finally, Toast is an indispensable CD/DVD burning application. It does everything from audio CDs, to data DVDs, to disc images, to video DVDs.

That’s all for this week. Don’t forget to read my other article this week, and stay tuned for next week’s article on building the perfect iHome.

A7

When I finally made the switch to Mac a good 6 years ago, the first thing that struck me was how quiet the computer was… or more accurately, how loud standard PCs were. To this day, 95% of the PCs being built are still insanely loud (and in many cases, even louder than before thanks to the rising dependence on advanced cooling). So when I set out to build my Hackintosh, eliminating noise pollution was a the top of my list. As I would find out, quiet comes at a price.

Before we get started, you should know the limitations of running your own Frankenstein Mac. There are things that work and things that don’t. If you follow this guide, there is very little that won’t work, and a whole lot that will. In my current setup, all my software runs perfectly… that includes Final Cut Studio, all the iLife apps, my Adobe CS2 suite, Time Machine backups… literally every software I have works. All my ports work (Firewire, USB, etc), video is fully working and fully 3D accelerated with dual-monitor support for up to two 30″ monitors. I have sound, I can burn DVDs normally, I can use all my external devices (like my tablet, Shuttle Express, external drives, USB memory sticks, etc). Not only that, but I have an e-Sata port (which the Macs don’t have) and way more USB ports than a Mac Pro has.

But what you really want to know is what doesn’t work. The list is short, but pretty important.
1- RAID does not work for a bootable drive. You can setup RAID as an additional media drive, but not as your boot drive.
2- Audio is only partially working (for now… someone may release drivers at some point to correct the issue). You get normal stereo sound, but no optical digital audio or microphone in. This is not much of an issue since external USB mics and other external devices will work fine if you need more than just stereo sound.
3- DVD drives “may” be a little picky about stuff. *I’m not sure if this is an issue with my DVD drive, or with my software.* When installing Final Cut Studio, I kept getting errors on install. This did not happen on my previous iMac, which leads me to believe that it may be an issue with the DVD drive. Note however, that everything else with the DVD drive works… I am able to burn DVDs fine, copy DVDs, make images, install smaller software, copy files… only installing my Apple software has been a problem.
4- Finally, and most importantly, software updates need to be moderated! Most software updates using the automatic Apple Software Updater will work just fine, BUT it could potentially update something it shouldn’t and break your setup. Most major software updates should be avoided until you can confirm that it does in fact work properly.

So now that you know what you’re getting yourself into, (if you haven’t run off screaming already) let’s take a look at the bare minimum you need to properly build your own Mac. There are a number of parts that are interchangeable, but those I list specifically by name are must-haves if you want this to be easy (i.e. you don’t want to search for drivers, have to use external DVD drives for setup, etc…).

Minimum parts list:

• Any mid tower ATX case
• Any ATX power supply with a minimum of 400W
• Any Intel Core2Duo or Core2Quad CPU
• Either a Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L* (cheap) or an Asus P5E (high-end)
• Any SATA DVD drive (reader or burner)
• Any SATA hard drive
• Any USB keyboard and mouse
• Any 2GB dual-channel kit of DDR2 800 ram (2 1GB sticks)
• Either a GeForce 7600GT (cheap) or ATI X1900XT (better but hard to find)

Any combination of the parts above will get you a decent running Mac. After a quick calculation of cheap parts from Canada Computers, you can have a Mac for as little as $570+tax. No, that’s not a typo… I really did mean to write five hundred and seventy. Pretty insane huh?

* note: if you get the Gigabyte DS3L motherboard, you are limited to only one hard drive and 2GB of ram. Due to a conflict with the hard drive controller, you cannot add more ram or more hard drives in the future. If you want something a little better, see my suggested parts list on the next page.

So, now that we have gone through what you can get away with if you’re on a budget (or if you’re just plain cheap) click the next page to see my recommended parts list.