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My "Hackintosh"


Astronomer

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Hi all,

 

For some background, I've been in IT for a couple of decades now, and I'm also a hobbyist and a "hacker" in the pure sense: I like to take my gear and extend its capabilities beyond what the manufacturer intended. Who the heck are they to tell me what the limitations of my gear are? I've hacked my DVD ROM in my PC (hint: generally, all models in a given family are identical. The firmware has been crippled in the lower end. Buy the low end, and hack the firmware to give you the high-end model); hacked my routers; overclocked all my PC's and video cards; jailbroken my iPad, iPhone, Nexus 7 tablet, and PSP's etc. I also like to "roll my own" with my servers and their operating systems and the services running on them.

 

One day at the office a few months ago, I noticed a Lenovo T-510 laptop with a smashed screen and beat-up body in the electronics recycling bin. I saw that it was of recent vintage, so I fished it out and took it home. I plugged in a monitor and a universal laptop power supply, turned it on....and there was a working laptop, a 2.66Ghz dual-core i5 with 4Gb RAM and a 500Gb hard drive. A Google search found me a replacement 15.4" screen for US$69. It arrived in a couple of days, and for a few months I ran it as a dual-boot Linux-Mint 15 and Windows 8 laptop.

 

I've always wanted to build a "Hackintosh, that is, a standard PC running Mac OS X without the price-gouging for lower-powered equipment specs. I did some research and found that my laptop is well supported, with some caveats, for running OSX. Game on! I found a website that has many tools and great forums for getting you going (link at the end of this article as placing it here fucks up the formatting turning everything after it into a hyperlink).  After buying a legal copy of OSX Mountain Lion from Apple's App Store (in my OSX Mountain Lion virtual machine on my main PC) and building an install USB key with a tool on Tonymacx86x.com, I went for the install. After 7 failures, I read the documentation and then did a perfect install, and now I have working Hackintosh. I've upped the memory to 8Gb and added 2 supported USB adapters: a latest-version Bluetooth and a wireless N networking. In parts, the whole thing cost me about $135, and it's a very capable and fast machine. Operating systems are another sub-hobby of the IT thing, and using this daily as my second PC allows me to better troubleshoot issues, when rarely necessary, with my wife's iMac.
 

Link for instructions, discussion, and tools: http://www.tonymacx86.com/home.php

post-2069-0-47391000-1381548583_thumb.jpg

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I have no idea what I would do with a mac or a mac/pc. Every time I use one i say to myself.. if that is all we had I would stop using computers. 

 

Been in the IT field for a couple decades as well. :)

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I have no idea what I would do with a mac or a mac/pc. Every time I use one i say to myself.. if that is all we had I would stop using computers. 

 

Been in the IT field for a couple decades as well. :)

+1

 

And have worked with the g5 powermac's.

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I've always wanted to build a "Hackintosh, that is, a standard PC running Mac OS X without the price-gouging for lower-powered equipment specs. I did some research and found that my laptop is well supported, with some caveats, for running OSX. Game on! I found a website that has many tools and great forums for getting you going (link at the end of this article as placing it here fucks up the formatting turning everything after it into a hyperlink).  After buying a legal copy of OSX Mountain Lion from Apple's App Store (in my OSX Mountain Lion virtual machine on my main PC) and building an install USB key with a tool on Tonymacx86x.com, I went for the install. After 7 failures, I read the documentation and then did a perfect install, and now I have working Hackintosh. I've upped the memory to 8Gb and added 2 supported USB adapters: a latest-version Bluetooth and a wireless N networking. In parts, the whole thing cost me about $135, and it's a very capable and fast machine. Operating systems are another sub-hobby of the IT thing, and using this daily as my second PC allows me to better troubleshoot issues, when rarely necessary, with my wife's iMac.

 

Link for instructions, discussion, and tools: http://www.tonymacx86.com/home.php

 

 

Very nice Astronomer.  

 

Definitely if you have the desire and the time, it can be a good way to go.  Will be a bunch of fun updating to Mavericks in 10 days though.

 

Oh and Welcome new folks, just over 30 years in the IT field here.  (Started with the TRS/80 Model I, Apple II and then the LISA)

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Well porn on a mac is just too fun because they don't like it :) And I'm waiting for a machine to make a hackintosh outa too. My problem is everytime I get one there's  a charity that needs one. Good and bad too I guess but its still all fun eh. I should just say thats not me being good thats a daughter that works in the field that takes them. 

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Very nice Astronomer.  

 

Definitely if you have the desire and the time, it can be a good way to go.  Will be a bunch of fun updating to Mavericks in 10 days though.

 

Oh and Welcome new folks, just over 30 years in the IT field here.  (Started with the TRS/80 Model I, Apple II and then the LISA)

 TRS/80??? Lol...didn't that have Eliza on it?? I was a kid and my dad had one...I used to tell her to "kiss my ass eliza" and she would say "why do humans have to be so vulgar??"  TRS/80...that was like a flashback...

 

PS. I didn't understand half of what you said Astronomer, but it sounded way cool...

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 TRS/80??? Lol...didn't that have Eliza on it?? I was a kid and my dad had one...I used to tell her to "kiss my ass eliza" and she would say "why do humans have to be so vulgar??"  TRS/80...that was like a flashback...

 

PS. I didn't understand half of what you said Astronomer, but it sounded way cool...

Think that was the CoCo (Color Computer), a much more modern TRS/80. The Model I had a B&W screen and no audio in, and not much out (unless you count the cassette interface to store basic programs)

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Very nice Astronomer.  

 

Definitely if you have the desire and the time, it can be a good way to go.  Will be a bunch of fun updating to Mavericks in 10 days though.

 

Oh and Welcome new folks, just over 30 years in the IT field here.  (Started with the TRS/80 Model I, Apple II and then the LISA)

Well if you are going back that far... i started 29 years ago. But I was just stealing games and playing on BBS's. 

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Very nice Astronomer.  

 

Definitely if you have the desire and the time, it can be a good way to go.  Will be a bunch of fun updating to Mavericks in 10 days though.

 

Oh and Welcome new folks, just over 30 years in the IT field here.  (Started with the TRS/80 Model I, Apple II and then the LISA)

 

Thanks PingLo. I'll wait for the various patches before I do an upgrade. The regular updates are fine, but the full-version upgrades can cause havoc.

 

I got my first PC in '87, if my memory is correct. It was an 8088 with 640k of RAM, and orange-on-black little monitor and a dot-matrix printer. I think it cost me around $2600. Before that we had TRS/80's (I believe) in school. All of our programs were stored on cassette tapes.

 

The other little beast I'm playing with is a BeagleBone Black. I haven't decided what I'll use it for, but I have a couple of ideas that I'm mulling over.

 

http://beagleboard.org/Products/BeagleBone%20Black

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Ther was no pics of BOOBIES must be in wrong post

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Ther was no pics of BOOBIES must be in wrong post

 

LOL!

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