XdN

I decided to give that Hackintosh thing a shot (OSx86).

• Gigabyte GA-G31M-ES2L
• Intel E5200 @ 3.75 GHz
• GeForce 8600 GT
• 4 Gigs DDR2 @ 800 MHz
• 160 Gig HDD, IDE
• Lite-On 24X DVD Burner, SATA
• Broadcom 802.11g WiFi Card

Original hardware setup I tried:

• ASRock 4CoreDual-SATA2 (modified 2.10 BIOS)
• Intel Pentium Dual-Core E2180 @ 2.66GHz (1066MHz BSEL mod)
• GeForce 8600GT, 256 Megs RAM
• 2 Gigs DDR2 @ 667 MHz
• 160 Gig HDD, IDE
• Lite-On 24X DVD Burner, SATA
• Broadcom 802.11g WiFi Card

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July 16th, 2009:

I gave up on the 4CoreDual-SATA2 board. Too many patches required, too many issues with compatibility.

Based on what I’ve read from other people, I decided to give this board a try:
$52.99, Gigabyte GA-G31M-ES2L,
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128357

The Gigabyte GA-G31M-ES2L is supposed to work great with a Vanilla OS X install. No special hacks, modifications, or kexts required to get it working. Supposedly you can even use Apple’s own Software Updates to keep Mac OS X updated on it. The one issue that I’ve read about is the ALC883 sound not working until you install a patch. Don’t want to patch anything? There is a cheap sound card you can add to it as well as some other cheap hardware updates.

All of these devices should be natively supported by OS X:

Sound card:
$7.99 for USB CMedia,
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812186035

Firewire 400 card:
$7.99 for 4 ports, power connector, and Firewire cable,
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815283029

Another Firewire 400 card:
$7.99 for a smaller card, single external port and one internal hookup (if your case has a front panel Firewire port),
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815124034

802.11b/g WiFi card:
$16.99, PCI,
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833320022

Bluetooth adapter:
$14.99, super-tiny USB,
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833242001

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Installation:

iPC 10.5.6 w/ PPF5

Options I’m trying:

Video Drivers -> NVIDIA -> “NVdarwin 256MB” (nothing else worked with my 8600 GT)

Fixes and Patches -> “Shutdown/Restart Fix” (also known as OHR or “OpenHaltRestart” fix)

Fixes and Patches -> DSDT Patches -> “Patch DSDT”

Fixes and Patches -> AppleSMBIOS Patch -> “SMBIOSResolver”

Full Quartz Extreme and Core Image support as well.

I ran Apple Update, patched to 10.5.8 and updated all other software listed.

If you want to go with the onboard ALC883 audio, you can grab Realtek_ALC883_Audio.dmg from here: http://an43.com/osx/

I keep forgetting to do it, but I have some ALC883 kexts I will upload. They are patched AppleHDA.kext files that *will* be overwritten if you upgrade your OS.

One supports this:
Rear Line-In
Rear Line-Out
Rear Mic-In

One supports this:
Rear Line-In
Rear Line-Out
Rear Mic-In
Front Line-Out (Headphones)
SPDIF Line-Out

There is a Sleep fix required for 10.5.8 and 10.6. I will try to post more info later (or just Google it).