Introduction

As promised to my ever-shrinking blog readership, here is my small contribution to the Hackint0sh community: building your own Hackint0sh HOWTO.

Please note that–barring a few exceptions–the steps outlined here are guaranteed only work with the hardware listed here (provided the they are followed correctly).

What You Will Need

Here is the list of parts to create this Hackint0sh:

• Gigabyte GA-31M-ES2L LGA 775 Intel G32 Micro ATX Motherboard
• ASUS EN9400GT/DI/512M(LP) GeForce 9400 GT 512MB 64-bit GDDR2 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready Low Profile Ready Video Card
• Intel Pentium E5300 2.6GHz LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Processor Model BX80571E5300
• Crucial Ballistix 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400)
• Western Digital Caviar Blue WD6400AAKS 640GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5″ Internal Hard Drive
• Pioneer CD/DVD Burner Black SATA Model DVR-218LBK
• NETGEAR FA311 10/ 100Mbps PCI Network Interface Card
• SYBA Firewire PCI Card Model Model SD-VIA-FW1E1H (Optional). I chose this one because it’s cheap (~$8), has an internal header, and I don’t really need FW800.
• Any USB flash drive that is at least 8GB in size (don’t buy this like I did, though, because it’s a piece of crap). Technically, any USB HDD will do; the reason I advise to go with a flash drive is because we are going to restore the OS X installer on the drive and if you don’t want to wait forever, you need a drive that is capable of fast I/O.
• Use any PC case and/or Power Supply that is compatible.

The links send you directly to NewEgg.  I don’t get anything from them through this link; I just think they’re awesome and deserve your business.

A few notes on the hardware:

• The most critical components here are the motherboard, the Graphics card, and the Network Interface Card.
• The motherboard is version 2.x rather than the more-”Hackint0sh-friendly” version 1.x. AFAIK, the only difference between the 1.x and 2.x is the on board LAN card; the 1.x sports the more popular Realtek chipset. you can still use this HOWTO to build your Hackintosh if you have a 1.x board and i would recommend that you get a separate NIC for that matter because the on-board LAN for 1.x does not work with Bonjour out of the box, anyway.
• The Graphics and NIC are considered “critical” in the sense that you need hardware that is natively suppored by OSX–i.e., you’ll be able to use the hardware without having to mess with additional drivers (kext) files.
• The processor and memory can be anything as long as they are compatible with the motherboard.
• The HDD and DVD/RW drives can be replaced with another brand/size as long as they are SATA drives. No IDE drives, please.

And here is the list of software:

• Chameleon v 2.0 RC 3 (version is important; make sure you use RC 3 and not the older RC 2)
• Netkas PC-EFI v10.3. This, in conjunction with Chameleon, “fools” OS X into thinking that you have an EFI-based hardware and be able to load OS X without having to modify the OS X binaries. There are a couple of bootloaders out there but IMO Chameleon/Netkas is the best because of this fact.
• OS X Snow Leopard Upgrade. $29 is a steal. Buy it. It has a nice picture of a white kitty on the box.
• Snow Leopard hax0r drivers from InfiniteMac.com. You will need to register to get the files, but it’s free…and so fare I have not received any Viagra offers from them in my email…which is a shame.

Preparation

Build the computer. Building a custom computer from parts is beyond the scope of this Howto. if this is your first time, i know it can be daunting…but it’s easier than you think. there are a lot of websites that tackle this topic…google is your friend.

Create your USB installer by following the guide from Lifehacker except you use Chameleon v2 RC3 and Netkas PC-EFI 1.3 (this is important or your audio will not work).  In addition, copy the Chameleon folder and the snow folder from here to your USB drive root.

First Boot and OS X Installation

Plug in your USB flash drive to an available USB slot and power on your machine. Adjust your BIOS settings to boot on USB-HDD (or just hit F12 on startup). also disable the on-board LAN. If everything goes well, you should be on your way to installing Snow Leopard on your Hackint0sh.

Before you start the installation, you will need to partition the HDD; be sure to select Journaled (NOT case-sensitive) and GUID partition table.

Since you’re installing from a USB, you will notice that the install is very fast. it takes about 20 minutes with this setup with a relatively-fast USB flash drive.

Second Boot

Without removing the USB flash drive, once you reboot and presented with screen to press any key for startup options, press a key and you will see that you can now boot on your HDD. select the HDD and you will be greeted with the Welcome to OSX movie: Congratulations! You now have a partially working Macintosh with Network but no audio. also, note that the HDD is still ubable to boot by itself; you still need the USB flash drive to boot but we’ll correct that shortly.

Now, copy the Chameleon folder to your desktop and use the same procedure for making the USB drive…but this time you apply it to your HDD

copy the Extras folder from snow folder to your local drive and rename Extensions[OS] folder to just plain Extensions (delete the Extensions[USB] while you’re at it). this folder contains the hax0r drivers that would make audio and wake-from-sleep work properly.

Update the UUID on the PlatformUUID.kext. Right-click and select “Show Package Contents” and edit the info.plist file. To get your HDD UUID, open Disk Utility and then select the HDD then click the blue cirle button with ‘i’ (info) on the tool bar. the one that says “Universal Unique Identifier” is your UUID. To be honest, I’m not really sure if this step is necessary; according to some forums I’ve read, it reduces Kernel Panic if the OS can identify the SL drive correctly using its UUID.

Double-click on the Kext Utility to generat your new extensions.mkext this is now your Extensions hax0r kexts tailored specifically for your new Hackint0sh.

Lastly, grab this com.apple.Boot.plist and replace the one on the Extras folder. Open that file for a moment (using any text editor as it’s just a fancy XML file). Note that under device-properties is a value consisting of a long hexadecimal value; this the “EFI string” that lets OSX identify the graphics card you are using. Each graphics card has its own EFI string; if you are stubborn and insisted on using another card other than the one specified in the hardware list, you will need to specify a different EFI string. There is a separate tool that you can use to do so but, again, that is beyond the scope of this HOWTO.

There are a couple more steps here but IMO they are not importat unless you want the “correct information” displayed when selecting “about this mac.”

Final Boot

You can now remove the USB drive and should be able to boot straight into your HDD. If all goes well, you have a fully-working Hackint0sh with network and audio…including Bonjour and the ability to wake from sleep without losing your USB devices!

Feel free to update to 10.6.1 without hassles. Again, since this is not an official hardware; Apple can decide to make changes to the OS kernel…so you can’t just hop on the next available update as soon as they’re available. Check the Hackint0sh community websites and they will tell you if it’s “safe” to apply the OS X updates.

If you installed the FW PCI card and Firewire is not detected, just delete AppleHPET.kext from /System/Library/Extensions (then reboot).

Enjoy your new “Mac.”

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This entry was posted on Monday, October 5th, 2009 at 4:04 am and is filed under hackint0sh, hax0r. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.