# Hackintosh



## Hugis (Apr 25, 2020)

Are we allowed to chat about it on here?


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## dorsetknob (Apr 25, 2020)

Hugis said:


> Are we allowed to chat about it on here?


@Easy Rhino @Mindweaver  opinion/clarification needed


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## Regeneration (Apr 25, 2020)

I'd say as long as you own a legit copy of the macOS software. But hey, it looks like macOS Catalina is being offered for free.

You can run Windows on a Mac officially with Boot Camp. Shouldn't be illegal the other way around.

If free is a no-go, OS X Lion is $20 on the Apple Store, that makes you eligible for the free upgrade.


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## TheLostSwede (Apr 25, 2020)

This is one of the best resources for it on the web for it.








						Home
					






					www.tonymacx86.com
				




They are a bit heavy on the ban hammer though, so be careful what you ask their if you sign up for the forums.


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## Hugis (Apr 25, 2020)

TheLostSwede said:


> This is one of the best resources for it on the web for it.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


yep already frequent there


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## TheLostSwede (Apr 25, 2020)

Hugis said:


> yep already frequent there


Worked there for a few months, many moons ago. Wrote a few reviews, lots of news, made some kexts and what not.
Don't really mess around with that stuff any more though.


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## king of swag187 (Apr 25, 2020)

MacOS is only free if you own a Mac (aside from pirating/downloading it elsewhere, which is *ILLEGAL)*

Tonymac forums are a awful place, r/hackintosh is much better as bad as reddit is, they have much better guides and support.


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## R-T-B (Apr 25, 2020)

king of swag187 said:


> MacOS is only free if you own a Mac (aside from pirating/downloading it elsewhere, which is *ILLEGAL)*



You also buy install media (ie it's not "free" even for mac users to upgrade), but yes, EULA violation and all that.  No one really cares though.  Apple even gave up on that a while ago.


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## Easy Rhino (Apr 25, 2020)

Yea people can talk about it. The hackintosh community isn't exactly underground these days.


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## Mindweaver (Apr 25, 2020)

Easy Rhino said:


> Yea people can talk about it. The hackintosh community isn't exactly underground these days.


Yea, I don't see a problem with it either and it's been a while since I've ran one. Last time I did it was on a C2D.

*EDIT: Snow leopard if I'm not mistaken.. lol*


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## Hugis (Apr 25, 2020)

Cool just putting an old school pc together, seeing how far i can go up the ladder(osx-macos wise)

PC:
Asus G31 mobo
2*2Gb 800Mhz ddr2
Q9550 @ 3.4
Mobile sata HDD Fuji 160Gb
Nvidia9500GT 1gb (ddr2)

Got mavericks working great 10.9.5 (13F1911)
trying for 10.13 tonight/tomorrow


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## freeagent (Apr 26, 2020)

My workmate built one using a 9700K, little gigabyte WiFi board, dark rock pro 4, 5700xt, and a couple nvme drives and a few externals. That thing is a beast.


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## TheLostSwede (Apr 26, 2020)

king of swag187 said:


> Tonymac forums are a awful place, r/hackintosh is much better as bad as reddit is, they have much better guides and support.


Well, the guy who runs the site isn't quite right in the head, we were supposed to sign a contract and it was never finished and then he just told me to get lost one day... 
Their super moderator, Stork is some old dude that's a bit weird, to say the least.
Haven't really been back since then so...


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## king of swag187 (Apr 27, 2020)

I've browsed the forums a couple times back when I was looking for the quick and easy route for Hackintoshing (which doesn't exist without compromises)


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## sam_86314 (Apr 27, 2020)

I hackintoshed my old 2600K system a few years ago and everything but audio worked really well. At the time, it had an i7-2600K (obviously), an ASUS Sabertooth P67, 8GB of DDR3-1600, a GTX 780, and the OS X install ran off a 500GB Seagate HDD.

I ran Yosemite on it, and used my 2011 MacBook Pro (my main laptop at the time) to set everything up.


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## phanbuey (Apr 27, 2020)

Apple is moving away from x86, so the days of hackintoshes might be coming to an end.


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## TheLostSwede (Apr 27, 2020)

sam_86314 said:


> I hackintoshed my old 2600K system a few years ago and everything but audio worked really well. At the time, it had an i7-2600K (obviously), an ASUS Sabertooth P67, 8GB of DDR3-1600, a GTX 780, and the OS X install ran off a 500GB Seagate HDD.
> 
> I ran Yosemite on it, and used my 2011 MacBook Pro (my main laptop at the time) to set everything up.


Audio was tricky on some boards, but doable on most, but not all. I did some surround sound kexts at the time, so even that worked, but again, not perfect with all Realtek audio chips.



phanbuey said:


> Apple is moving away from x86, so the days of hackintoshes might be coming to an end.


Uhm, not any time soon. There's talk about one laptop with an ARM processor, which has somehow been turned into Apple giving up on Intel. That's not the same thing...
Besides, with the new Mac Pro just having launched, I think x86 support for OSX will continue for at least the foreseeable future.


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## Mats (Apr 27, 2020)

Haven't really looked into it since <2008  , but I remember that http://wiki.osx86project.org was really useful, especially their hardware compatibility database, guides, and system build recommendations.
The site is not what it used be, unfortunately, but the forum is pretty good.









						InsanelyMac
					





					www.insanelymac.com
				




Yeah, I was kind of interested, then came Windows 7.


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## Fouquin (Apr 27, 2020)

phanbuey said:


> Apple is moving away from x86, so the days of hackintoshes might be coming to an end.



Don't hold your breath. Quite a few people within Apple have no intention of letting Hackintosh die.


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## bobbybluz (Apr 27, 2020)

I built a dozen or so for co-workers 8-10 years ago. Gigabyte motherboards and Intel CPU's were the trick back then. The last one I built was for myself, a 3770K in an Asus P8Z77-V Deluxe. After a couple of days I was so bored with it I put Windows 7 on it and it's still running today with 7 and 10 in dual-boot as a utility PC.


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## Mats (Apr 27, 2020)

bobbybluz said:


> I built a dozen or so for co-workers 8-10 years ago. Gigabyte motherboards and Intel CPU's were the trick back then.


Yeah, I remember Gigabyte worked best out of the box. I always wondered why, because I can't imagine Gigabyte putting money into making their boards compatible. Then again I don't think they worked well just out of coincidence. Maybe they just picked components that was used in Macs?
Dunno how tiny this market is, but making boards that play nice with OSX should make any brand look a bit better.

GA is still being popular..








						Installation Guides
					

Guides or Tutorials only - Do not ask help here!



					www.insanelymac.com


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## TheLostSwede (Apr 27, 2020)

Mats said:


> Yeah, I remember Gigabyte worked best out of the box. I always wondered why, because I can't imagine Gigabyte putting money into making their boards compatible. Then again I don't think they worked well just out of coincidence. Maybe they just picked components that was used in Macs?
> Dunno how tiny this market is, but making boards that play nice with OSX should make any brand look a bit better.
> 
> GA is still being popular..
> ...


Well, for one, Gigabyte had a few UEFI tricks that made their boards slightly more compatible with OSX. Then there's the fact that they made a custom board for a "commercial" hackintosh maker, so I guess they figured out a few more things then. I think I have the pictures at home somewhere of that board, but I can't even remember the name of the company they made it for and I think they're long gone.

*Edit: *Found a few details. Turns out they even ran a Kickstarter... (seems like they ripped off a lot of people)
Possibly one of the highest-end mATX boards ever made.








						projectQ - Run Any OS: The Unique Motherboard
					

The first motherboard designed to run any Operating System you choose out of the box.




					www.kickstarter.com
				








						Z77MX-QUO-AOS - OSx86
					






					wiki.osx86project.org


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## Mats (Apr 28, 2020)

TheLostSwede said:


> *Edit: *Found a few details. Turns out they even ran a Kickstarter... (seems like they ripped off a lot of people)


How did I miss that one..  That guy and GA were onto something, I bet some people/professionals who wants a board that just works are willing to pay a premium


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## TheLostSwede (Apr 28, 2020)

Mats said:


> How did I miss that one..  That guy and GA were onto something, I bet some people/professionals who wants a board that just works are willing to pay a premium


Let me know if you're interested in making a custom board, I know a few people...
This was Gigabyte's own board, which it was based on.








						GA-Z77MX-D3H TH (rev. 1.0) Overview | Motherboard - GIGABYTE Global
					

Lasting Quality from GIGABYTE.GIGABYTE Ultra Durable™ motherboards bring together a unique blend of features and technologies that offer users the absolute ...




					www.gigabyte.com


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## Mats (Apr 28, 2020)

TheLostSwede said:


> Let me know if you're interested in making a custom board, I know a few people...


Thanks, but I'm not the right person for that.  I value time more than anything, and a project like that would eat a LOT of time.


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## bobbybluz (Apr 28, 2020)

Just looked, there's one of those mobos up on Ebay at the moment.


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## phanbuey (Apr 28, 2020)

TheLostSwede said:


> Uhm, not any time soon. There's talk about one laptop with an ARM processor, which has somehow been turned into Apple giving up on Intel. That's not the same thing...
> Besides, with the new Mac Pro just having launched, I think x86 support for OSX will continue for at least the foreseeable future.



Possibly, but we're also talking about a company that axed the headphone jack, nvidia GPUs and the entire PowerPC architecture in fairly short order.  If their new laptop is even remotely successful (and even if it isn't) I don't think it would surprise anyone if Intel/x86 was well on it's way out in the next 5 years replaced by A14/15/16 and an emulator.


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## TheLostSwede (Apr 28, 2020)

phanbuey said:


> Possibly, but we're also talking about a company that axed the headphone jack, nvidia GPUs and the entire PowerPC architecture in fairly short order.  If their new laptop is even remotely successful (and even if it isn't) I don't think it would surprise anyone if Intel/x86 was well on it's way out in the next 5 years replaced by A14/15/16 and an emulator.


How do you know they've axed Nvidia GPUs? I have a feeling there's a lot more to it than that. There's also a 50/50 chance we'll see Nvidia GPUs in future Apple products, as long as the two haven't fallen out beyond repair. 
The shift from PowerPC to x86 was more due to IBM not being able to crank out competitive enough chips any more, so if anything, Apple might to AMD over Intel, but that rumour has been ongoing for years now.
Running x86 code through an emulator is highly inefficient. We already know how badly Windows on ARM have work to date.
Running ARM code on x86 on the other hand, works good enough, as you're unlikely to notice any slowdowns. 
Then as a third example, I don't know if you remember Transmeta, they had a chip that used a hardware "translator" to run x86 code on their VLIW chip and although it worked and was at the time, very power efficient, it was also very slow. 
It's simply not efficient to run code that's compiled for a certain architecture on a different architecture. x86 CPUs have enough "raw power" to handle "slower" CPUs, like ARM, MIPS, RISCV, etc. at least for now. However, the opposite isn't true.

What I do believe we'll see over time, is more powerful ARM based processor cores, as they're clearly targeting to be competitive in the server space now. This means we'll see a very different architecture branch from ARM, that could very well be competitive with x86. There's no reason why ARM couldn't be competitive with Intel and AMD, it's just that so far, their focus has been on lower power, not raw performance. We're sort of at the very early stages of this right now, but yes, you're most likely correct in that we'll see Apple wanting to move away from using third party processors over time, but it's not going to happen over night.

One major advantage that Apple has, is that they could make iOS code run on OSX for their ARM powered device and this would allow a lot of software to function from day one. This is assuming that their first ARM based laptop will run OSX and not iOS/iPadOS. Their move to making a slightly different OS for the iPad is what makes them moving to ARM based laptops even more likely, but I think it will be a very slow transition and Apple is likely to play the long game on this. Apple has too many professional users to just cut them off over night.


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