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)
July 16th, 2009:
I gave up on the 4CoreDual-SATA2 board. Too many patches required, too many issues with compatibility (due to its VIA chipset).
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
While I got OS X 10.5 to work amazingly well, ever point update would break something, and I'd have to re-install some patch or another.
I eventually gave up on the Hackintosh by the time Snow Leopard started getting popular.