Hackintosh Resources I Used

Here was the more information I promised a post or two ago. These are the resources I used for not only building my Hackintosh but also getting some pointers in the right direction for some problems that were driving me crazy on it.

General Resources

  • TonyMacx86 – The defacto resource I used to sourcing out parts for my Hackintosh along with all of the tools needed to get it up and running once you have all the components assembled. The forum is filled with people who have seem to have done this 1000 times over.
  • OSX86.net – I have no idea if these guys are associated with the link I list below but they provide a good number of custom downloads for people with specialized issues, experimental solutions, and general solid drivers, configs and applications to make your transition to Hackintosh go as smooth as possible.
  • OSX86 Project – Another great resource on hardware and components along with a live forum of people that are asking AND answering questions. Very rare these days!

Links to things that helped me out of some problems.

Problem 1: Hackintosh will not authorize to the Mac App Store, iTunes Store or iCloud. It would throw up an error about the “device or computer could not be recognized.”

My Solution: Had to do a couple of things. First and foremost I had to make sure my onboard ethernet was seen as en0 and my WiFi Adapter was seen as en1. This required me to follow all of the steps shown here (thanks to Mak1 for this post). I had to do all three of the suggested fixes before it was working for me. The part involving EFI Studio was the key.

Problem 2: After upgrading to 10.7, unbeknownst to me my ATI card was only being recognized as an “ATI 5000 Series” rather than a full on Radeon 5770. Because of this, the framebuffer specific for my card (Vervet) was not being loaded and instead a generic ATI Framebuffer. The main symptoms of this happening include: Cider-translated based full screen games (Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas in my case), any Source engine based game from Steam, and DVD Player would all crash on launch. Also in the dashboard, adding new widgets wouldn’t have the ripple effect anymore. This is attributed to CoreImage/Quartz Extreme not technically loading to the specific frame buffer.

My Solution: My fix was much more simple than I thought it would be. I ripped out all the extra kernel arguments from my org.Chameleon.boot.plist in the /Extra folder that Chimera generates. Here is my working file.

<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”UTF-8″?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC “-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN” “http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd”>
<plist version=”1.0″>
<dict>
<key>Kernel</key>
<string>mach_kernel</string>
<key>Kernel Flags</key>
<string>darkwake=0</string>
<key>GraphicsEnabler</key>
<string>Yes</string>
<key>AtiConfig</key>
<string>Vervet</string>
<key>AtiPorts</key>
<string>4</string>
<key>Timeout</key>
<string>2</string>
<key>Legacy Logo</key>
<string>Yes</string>
<key>EthernetBuiltIn</key>
<string>Yes</string>
<key>UseKernelCache</key>
<string>Yes</string>
</dict>
</plist>

There are other forum resources I followed that pointed me in the direction of using an ATY_injector, using a different framebuffer (they are all monkey names), and a few others scattered on the sites I mentioned above but none of them did the trick. They are more for cards that don’t have an “official” Apple equivalent. The 5770 is a common card on the Apple platform so the built in support was a no brainer. My problem was the kernel arguments I had in there since 10.6.X when I first built the machine were no longer neccessary and needed to be removed.

Hopefully this will help some people out?

Lion vs. Hackintosh

My Hackintosh is now fully recognized, graphics card and all, in Lion. For the past week my graphics card (Radeon 5770) was giving me major shit as only showing up as a Radeon 5000 so no Steam games or Cider games would work. A week of research and .plist and .kext hacking later and I am back up and running.

More details to follow.

Xcode Updates Without The Bulk

I don’t see this mentioned on any of the sites i normally read so I am going to post it right NOW. So you are running Lion or Snow Leopard and you have Xcode installed through the Mac App Store. The problem is that after it is installed, you have a 2 to 4 GB installer in your /Applications folder. If you delete the installer, you won’t be informed in the Mac App Store when an update to Xcode is released. If you keep it on your computer, you are wasting 2 to 4 GB of unnecessary installer data.

Here are three easy steps that lets you get rid of the bulk of the installer, but still have it show up in the Mac App Store as installed and will let you know when updates are available.

Step 1.

Right click (or control click if you STILL don’t use a two button mouse setup) on the Install Xcode application and select “Show Package Contents”

Step 2.

Navigate inside the package to “Contents/Resources/Packages”

Step 3.

Select all of the .pkg files that are inside the Packages folder and DELETE THAT SHIT. Don’t forget to empty your trash to really feel the effects of those savings.

Congratulations! You have now cleared up enough space on your computer to fit approximately 2 minutes of ProRes 4444 NTSC footage on your computer. Of course if you are using your boot volume to hold video footage, you have a bunch of other problems.

Liveblogging Jersey Shore: Season 4 Episode 12

I was pleasantly surprised to find out that this is the SEASON FINALE of Jersey Shore. I am ecstatic right now. Here I was thinking I would have to suffer through another two or three weeks of this shit. Instead it all ends today. Today we get closure on the sad state of affairs with the Situation. His bad luck continues to follow him as he was recently ejected from an Apple store after trying to cut in line for an iPhone 4S. We get possibly a hint of things to come next January for what the gang was doing in Seaside this summer. Thanks to everyone who tuned in to the live blog these past few months and suffering through this crap together.

And now without further ado, the conclusion to the Jersey Shore Liveblog… Season Four Episode Twelve.

Liveblogging Jersey Shore: Season 4 Episode 11

We are at the home stretch. After this week we have, (clicks on calendar menubar icon…) TWO more episodes left. That means tonight included there are three episodes left. The season is just about over. One more season after this, the show is DONE! DONEZO! I am watching last weeks episode right now. Vinny (fresh off of smooshing Snooki) and the male gang goes to Siciliy to meet his family and and Snooki, Deena, Sammi and J-Woww go wine tasting. Of course the dudes have a normal reflecting time and the girls got bat shit drunk and broke everything they got in contact with. J-woww gets mad credit for calling Snooki out although she proved wrong in the long run as Snooki recently announced on Twitter that herself and Jionni were celebrating their 1 year anniversary.

No idea what’s in store for tonight so tune in to find out! I bet it involves Situation getting into a fight with someone in the house, people getting drunk and a lot of sex!