Monday, September 28, 2009

snow leopard on a pc

i finally managed to get a working Snow Leopard Mac OSX 10.6 running on my PC after so much reading, researching and working...hackintoshing a PC is so different and now i know why MacBooks and iMacs doesn't come in so many different flavors (compared to a clone PC, COZ IT'S SO DAM HARD TO BUILD 1 WORKING OS!!!)

well, i can't say i hv a fully functional OSX running right now but i am happy to say, based on my current PC specifications, most of the things are working right now except for 1 thing which really bothers me a lot up till now. SOUND! i've got NO SOUND! thanks to intel's HDA which i need to find the suitable kext(driver) for it to run "properly"

my current cpu specs:-
Intel Core2Duo E8600
Gigabyte P35-DS3 (Rev 1.0)
Kingston 1GB 800Mhz DDR2 RAM x 2
ASUS EN8800GT OC 512MB DDR2 Graphics Card
LG 22X Sata DVD-RW
W/D 160GB Sata2 HDD
W/D 500GB Sata2 HDD
W/D 1TB Sata2 HDD

first u need to hv a few things to make ur pc work on a Mac OS, the basic kexts (kernel extensions) to run it which is
AppleIntelCPUPowerManagement.kext = fix for power on
fakesmc.kext = faster bootup time
IOAHCIBlockStorageInjector.kext = ahci storage driver
NullCPUPowerManagement.kext = fix for power off
OpenHaltRestart.kext = fix for restart
PlatformUUID.kext = fix for bootup
SleepEnabler.kext = fix for sleep

after preparing the specific files, u need to have a bootloader to prepare ur pc in order to let it choose which drive to boot from, and for this instance, the Mac drive. i used Chameleon bootloader RC1 which is found to be more compatible with my motherboard.

next is the troubling part, every mac has to have a dsdt.aml file in order to boot into Mac OS properly and each dsdt.aml is very specific so you'll have to build 1 on your own to match your cpu configurations.(there's also a known cmos reset bug which makes the cmos crash everytime you reboot so you'll have to add in a row of command into the dsdt.aml as well to fix it) it took me 2 weeks to do research and finally knew how to build a working dsdt file.

there are also several plist files which has to be edited in order to allow the bootloader know where to boot from and which drive to load the kext from.
- com.apple.bootlist (contains the information of your hardware)
- smbios (contains the information of your cpu which u can personalize)

it may look simple up till know but when u start doing it u will be facing a lot of restarts, or what we call kernel panics (for those familiar with windows, it's the mac version of BSOD) where the screen is white.

i myself had trouble with the dsdt file and i literally removed my cmos battery to stop the cmos reset bug while i was restarting and testing out the dsdt.

most of the devices are working right now :-
- Graphics Card detected and loaded running at 1920x1080 32bit 60hz
- RTL Ethernet detected and loaded with Internet enabled
- USB Keyboard Mouse detected and loaded
- DVD-RW Drive detected and loaded
- ALL USB Ports detected and loaded
- ALL Sata Ports detected and loaded

up till now i still can't figure out how to make my sound device work because the little speaker icon on the upper right is greyed out showing that it can't detect any device.

i hope that someone is able to assist me from where i'm stuck at the moment...

No comments: