SSD Upgrade

Image from OCZ

With Lion just around the corner, I went hunting for a new SSD for my desktop computer. Thanks to Gizmodo's "Daily Deals" I found one. An Agility 3 60 GB for $100 after mail in rebate. There was a small catch to this, my motherboard, a Gigabyte EP43-UD3L, does not support SATA III connections. My board only supports SATA II connections. So there was one more thing I had to pick up, and that was a 6 Gb/s adapter for my computer. I went and bought the Highpoint Rocket 620 adapter, which was $25 and came with two SATA III connection ports, as well as two SATA III recommended cables. Something to note, there is no difference between SATA III and SATA II cables, they do the same thing. This new drive will be for my hackintosh installation. My next drive, which I plan on having between 90 and 120 GB, will be for my Windows installation. I was very pleased that after all the toil I went through to get the drive installed I was able to boot up with out any issues, and have it recognized by OS X off the bat. In addition, I formatted the drive to make it ready for OS X. I will, however, not be installing OS X on the drive until Lion comes out. Currently, Snow Leopard is not perfect in the Hackintosh community, but Lion will be much much better. Instead of writing to the SSD now, I will save a few weeks of writing to install. I want to be able to get the most out of my SSD, and installing an OS can take quite a bit of reading and writing on the SSD's part. So to not wear it out, I am just going to wait.

~Dave

Still Working on The Hackintosh

When I can find the time, I try and fix the hackintosh as best I can. Right now I am posting on Insanelymac and TonyMacx86 to try and help fix the freezes occurring with the GTX 460. I don't make any kexts, but I do attempt to try them out for people. Although I have full resolution, I don't have full graphics acceleration. I know this because when I attempted to play Half Life 2, but game crashed and an error popped up regarding the physics engine. Now, I could be lazy and just switch out my 460 for my 9800 GT when ever I boot into Mac, but that is just a pain. I would like to be able to consistently use the better of the two cards. With no fix in site, it can only be hoped that Apple will add fermi support. Unfortunately, at this time, it doesn't seem like Apple will be doing that. With each refresh in the past couple of months Apple has chosen AMD, formerly ATI, over Nvidia. One can only hope the switch back.

~Dave 

Starting Fresh

After almost a year I had to start fresh with my Hackintosh. Things were starting to get a little wacky, and I thought the best way to fix it would be to start fresh. However, this time I decided to do a different installation method. When I went about installing this time, I followed this guide. At the moment I have a somewhat functioning 10.6.7 Snow Leopard installation. My current hurdles are sound, PS2 keyboard support, and graphics acceleration. Due to the fact that I am using my MSI Hawk GTX 460 I will not have a perfect setup. The 460 is the one card that has random kernel panics, and the only way around that is to loop a video in the background. I have no problem with this, just slightly annoying.

After finally getting the system up and running, the first thing I did was download Carbon Copy Cloner and clone my fresh installation to a backup drive. I recommend that before you ever make changes to a mackintosh installation, that you always backup/clone your drive first. This will save you much frustration down the road. Another thing to note is always to keep a list of what you did during your installation to get certain things working, this will help you in the long run incase you have to do a fresh installation. As I have found out, a lot can change in almost a year.

~Dave

Lion has no Fermi Support

Well this weekend I attempted to try and install the developer preview of Lion on my Hackintosh. I had a spare drive laying around so I didn't see why not. Turns out I can't even get past the post screen as long as my MSI Hawk 460 is still inside the computer. I would have to switch it out for my 9800 GT. Seems like Apple is leaning towards Raedon more and more, which is disappointing because Nvidia is a very good company. I am still reading around to see if there is a way to install Lion and switch out my card. Who knows, maybe things will change between now and this summer when Lion is released. I really hope they do, it would be a good move on the part of Apple to support Fermi cards. I am going to attempt to install with the 9800 GT in place, and then switch it out to the Fermi card, hopefully it will work. I may not get full acceleration at first, but it is better then nothing.

~Dave

MSI Hawk GTX 460 1GB GDDR5

My brand new graphics card!

After three days of waiting, a weeks of researching, my new graphics card has finally arrived. Installing it was a pain in my thumb because I shredded some skin while getting the PCI-E wires in and out. However, once it was in there was very little issues afterward. I booted into Windows without a hitch. After Windows installed the drivers, and I made sure I had the latest ones, I restarted the computer so Windows could apply the changes. Finally I got into Steam and ran Just Cause 2, a game which has its own benchmarking program in it. First, since I didn't have a lot of time, I set the display setting to "optimal" which is suppose to choose the best for my rig. I thought it was wrong at first because it set everything to "very high" and some optional items to "On". Here are my results:

AMAZING!

This was by far an amazing investment, and will most likely last me the next two years or so. This, of course, is only one benchmark, if I had done others I would probably see slight differences. As for my old 9800 GT, I am putting it away in storage. I have some future plans for it that where I might put it to use. If my current motherboard support the PhysX feature though, I would have put my 9800 GT in PhysX with my MSI Hawk.

~Dave

Purchasing a New Graphics Card

The process to pick out a new graphics card is not always an easy one, especially when you are working with a hackintosh. The trick is, I have to get one that is compatible with the hackintosh, as well as one that will provide the best gaming experience when running windows. In addition, I must have the money for one. My options were either the Nvidia 4XX series, or the Nvidia 5XX series. My price range was no more then $200. I had to read up on the new fermi cards so I could get a sense of what the performance differences were between the 4XX and the 5XX sereis. When it came down to it, the difference in performance was maybe 10-15 FPS (frames per second). However, the 5XX series is a bit pricier because it just came out two months ago. After looking at the differences, it would seem I was confined to buying a 4XX series card. Next things to do? Well I had to choose between the 460, 470, or the 480. From what I already knew, the 480 ran way too hot, and the 470 was very noisy. Bassed on this, I decided to look into buying a 460. Many different companies make variations of the 460, so I had to decide on a company. This is where I had no idea what I was looking for, they all seemed the same. It was at this point that I went to reddit for help. I posted a thread asking what card would be good for me in the 460 series. Within a couple responses it was narrowed down to either an EVGA 460, AR Version, with 1 GB of GDDR5 RAM, or the MSI Hawk 460 with 1 GB GDDR5. The difference between the two cards was the EVGA model came with a lifetime warranty, were as the MSI model was very good for overclocking. That means the MSI card can be set to run at levels higher then it is manufactured to.

There is a price difference between the two cards of about $10. Originally I thought I might need the lifetime warranty, however the more I thought about it, the more it seemed a card with more performance capability would be better. After searching, price matching, and more thinking, I decided on the MSI Hawk. The current price of the card is $199.00 with a $20 mail in rebate. I have decided I will be buying from Newegg because they have the lowest price overall. I was debating whether to go to Amazon or not, but I believe Amazon would be hard to deal with if there were any issue with the card. Thanks to reddit, and a lot of searching, I am getting a new MSI Hawk. My next challenge: Getting it to work with my hackintosh.

~Dave

Installing iPortable Snow

As I mentioned a while back, I decided to put some time into creating an iPortable Snow USB drive. I started off by searching around online and obtaining a copy of iPortable Snow. Then I attempted to create the USB drive by following all the directions provided with the .dmg when mounted. At first I thought I had done everything correctly, but I must have made a mistake along the way because when I booted into the USB drive, it kept shutting down. I asked around on a few forums, and we tried a couple of things, but none of which seemed to work. So I googled "iPortable Snow". I found my way to this youtube video. As I watched it I noticed that I had made a mistake while I was creating the USB drive. With that, I wiped the drive and started new, following everything done in the video. I booted up my hackintosh with the USB drive now ready, and proceeded to try and boot. I got to a blue screen after the introduction screen, but could not get any further. So I went back to the instructions to read what to do. To my luck, there was a fix there. I read it, tried the fix (which was booting verbose and in single user mode), and then let the system boot. Boy was I surprised when it booted. I am still tinkering around with it, trying to get the video drivers to work and what not. For the most part it has worked, but I am trying to get it so I don't have to boot in verbose single user mode each time. I am not quite sure what is wrong, but with each failure comes a learning experience.

~Dave

Running Chrome OS

As stated yesterday, my weekend mission was to try Chrome OS. After picking up a USB drive, 4 GB, I went and downloaded the Flow Build from Hexxeh.net. I then followed the instructions there on how to put it on a USB drive. When I was done, I popped it out and put it on my desktop hackintosh to see how it ran. At first it didn't work, then I set my desktop to boot from USB HDD and it worked! After playing around with it a little, I found Flow to be lacking since it is a little outdated. I went back to Hexxeh's website and downloaded the Vanilla build. Although it was newer, I currently can't test this build on my desktop because it won't boot. At this moment I am running the Vanilla build on my Macbook with no issues other then no wifi. If you have been following my twitter feed, you may have noticed I did contact Hexxeh about the problem. I am currently waiting for a response. As a side note, I wrote this update while running in Chrome OS.

~Dave

Updated, Not Panics

   Yesterday, Apple rolled out their OS update for 10.6.5 fixing bugs and increasing performance as usual. If you own a Hackintosh, then you know that any time something new comes out you must be careful. As always, I took the necessary precautions before installation. The biggest one was cloning my drive to a back up drive using Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC). The great thing about CCC is that it can create a bootable back up drive; thus, if anything goes wrong I can boot into that drive and restore all the information to my original drive. I backed everything up and proceeded to upgrade. Luckily, I hit no kernel panics and everything seems to be working fine as of now. Another great thing about updating to 10.6.5 is Valve stated the following for NVIDIA card owners:

If

- you have the 10.6.5 update installed
- you are running on NVIDIA graphic hardware
- you play with multisampling enabled

you can take advantage of a new option to improve performance. The option will provide a varying amount of benefit depending on which title you are playing, and how often that title uses certain rendering techniques for which this option can potentially provide a speed boost.

In the launch options panel for your game, add this text:

-gl_enable_scaled_resolve

Essentially, the improvements in 10.6.5 allow the game engine (in some cases) to combine what would have taken two separate image operations into a single step in the hardware. This turned up a lot in Portal for example, especially in scenes with reflective or glass surfaces in view.

Again, this only applies if you have 10.6.5, have NVIDIA graphics, and are playing with MSAA enabled. If at some point we see the ATI drivers follow suit, there won't be any problem to enable it there too.

Keep in mind that this won't double your frame rate, on tested scenes it looked to vary between about 5 and 15% overall improvement.

We'd be happy to get your feedback on it once you have tried it out, and if there are no problems we're likely to just enable it by default in future releases.

Now you are probably thinking "Ok.... so that means what exactly?". Well I will tell you! Multisampling is essential making the game look better. Usually when this is done, it slows the game down because you are processing more graphics. Valve is claiming that by adding that code to the launch options panel, your game will run better. By the way, the launch options panel can be found by right clicking on your game, click "Properties", then clicking "Set Launch Options". So that is the it, the new software is out, be careful when upgrading, and try the new code Valve has given gamers.

~Dave

A boy is reunited with his game

A couple weeks back I moved some things around and misplaced my Halo CE edition for Mac. I was furious because that is one of my favorite games. In addition, buying a new one was out of the option because the price has recently risen due to the fact that they no longer sell the game. I turned my room inside out looking for this game. I kept hearing the question "where was the last place you had it", and I kept answering "In my room". Just yesterday it dawned on me that there was one place I had not checked, and that was inside my night stand. Frantically, I opened it up, it being a small white box, and rummaged through everything. Low and behold my CD was there. I was so excited that I proceeded to install it on my Hackintosh and play online for an hour. It just goes to show that nothing is really lost, online misplaced. Just like Spartans, they are never dead, just missing in battle. Have you ever lost something you really liked and then found it? Leave a comment below telling your story!

~Dave

Build it, don't pre build it

Everyone uses computers now a days, but a lot of people buy pre built PCs. However, you shouldn't buy a pre built PC, you should always build your own. When you build a PC, you know what is going into your computer and you spend the time putting it together. You make sure to get quality parts, unlike computer retailers who don't always use quality parts in their products. In addition, you feel the success of building the computer, the fact that you put it together with your own hands. Plus, you can build a PC with the same budget as buying a pre built one, and get much better parts. Not to mention if anything goes wrong, each part is covered under warranty, unlike a pre built computer were the whole thing has one warranty. Also that you don't have to worry too much about compatibility issues when it comes to building your own computer. If you buy a computer from a retailer they may have software and other things that prohibited your from adding certain hardware or software. Sometimes they even ask that you send it in so they can do the upgrade, and that can cost money you don't want to spend. It is always best to build your own, no matter how long it takes. This doesn't really pertain to Macs, unless of course you are building a Hackintosh. If it is time for you to upgrade to a new computer, I highly recommend you build it yourself. It is a good experience and you get much better parts for money. And if you don't know where to buy parts, you can always check out my post,
where you should be buying parts. Make sure to use sales to lower your cost if possible. And remember, it is always good to buy all the parts at once so when you build it and test it, you can see if you have any problems. Good luck and remember, it is best if it is built by you!

Leave a comment below showing off your computer!

~Dave

Triple Booting the Hackintosh

Alright, after much messing around I FINALLY figured out how to dual/tri boot operating systems. Current setup:
HDD 640GB: Snow Leo
HDD 160GB: Win7 (64bit)
HDD 30 GB: Ubuntu

Here is how it is done.

First: Install snow leopard any way you would like. Make sure that when you install this operating system that ALL OTHER HDDs ARE DISCONNECTED. If they are not you may mess up the installation. Once you install apply all the kexts you need and when you are done install chameleon RC4 bootloader. I did this via terminal with the following commands:




Assuming your Root disk is /dev/disk0s1

Step 1. Gain Root privileges and navigate to Chameleon Directory

sudo -s

cd Desktop/Chameleon-2.0-RC4-r684-bin/i386

Step 2. Install boot0 to the MBR, Check your rdisk number!! This can be found by opening up disk utility and clicking on your SL drive. Then click "Info". It will be listed there:

sudo fdisk -f boot0 -u -y /dev/rdisk0

Step 3. Install boot1h to the partition’s boot sector. Again, check your partition number. Same method as before, but instead you click on the SL partition and click info to find the number.:

sudo dd if=boot1h of=/dev/rdisk0s1

Step 4. Install boot to the partition’s root directory:

sudo cp boot /

Once you have completed that reboot and make sure all is working before you move on.

Step 2: Now that you have SL working, turnoff your computer and unplug it. The disconnect the SL HDD and connect the next one that you will be using. This happened to be my ubuntu drive. Turn on your computer and install ubuntu however you wish on that drive. Once done, reboot and make sure everything on the ubuntu drive works.

Step 3: Now as before turn off everything and disconnect the power. Then go and disconnect the ubuntu drive, leave the SL drive disconnected, and then plug in the windows 7 drive. Boot up and install Win7. Install all updates and make sure everything is working.

Step 4: When you are sure everything on windows is working shut down your computer and unplug it from the power source. Now plug in the SL HDD. Make sure that when you boot up, you go to the BIOS and check that the SL HDD is the FIRST drive to boot out of all the HDDs connected. Once you have done that you can boot up and chameleon should load showing Windows NTFS and Snow Leopard HDD. You can now boot into either of them! If you are dual booting, you are finished! If not, follow the next step.

Step 5: Connect the Ubuntu drive and Connect the Mac drive but NOT the windows drive! Now boot into ubuntu. You won't be able to do this through Chameleon, it won't recognize the drive. Hold F12 on boot up to select the Ubuntu HDD. Now, once in, follow these instructions to install Grub. This will allow Chameleon to recognize ubuntu.

1. Boot into Ubuntu like you normally would.

2. Launch Terminal.

3. Type df and press RETURN or ENTER.

4. Note the first entry on the list – the one mounted as /. This is the one we want. In my case it was /dev/sda3.

5. Type sudo grub-install /dev/sda3 – replace /dev/sda3 with the correct entry for your system.

6. Enter your Password and press RETURN or ENTER.

7. Close the terminal window and restart your system.

8. Boot into OS X and reinstall Chameleon.

9. Leave a comment below about how everything went for you.

Due note you may not have to install chameleon again when you are finished.

Step 7: Once you can boot into mac and chameleon, reconnect the windows drive. Now boot up and you have a successful triple boot on three separate HDDs!

Thanks to Daily Blogged for the steps on how to dual boot ubuntu.

~Dave

Installation

It is best to have another Mac if possible when doing this. Before starting, open a text document and title it "Installation Attempts". In this document you will want to keep notes of everything you did. This way, if you mess up you can see why you messed up. You must understand that this process can take a lot of time and that it won't always work on the first shot. I had many kernel panics and had to start over many times because I had no backup drive. A kernel panic, for those of you who don't know, is when the OS detects an error internally that is unfixable. Sounds bad right? Well it is and you really want to try your best to avoid those. This installation info is for the motherboard I am use, EP43-UD3L, if you have a different motherboard I would suggest you try InsanelyMac or Hackint0sh.org, both of which have very helpful forums. Google is also a great source, but the links can lead to headaches.

First things first is to prepare the USB thumb drive. You will need minimum an 8GB USB drive. You will also need a copy of the Snow Leopard installation CD. Retail!

Steps

1. Follow the Lifehacker Guide to Building a Hackintosh, BUT ONLY PROCEED UP UNTIL THE PART WITH THE TERMINAL COMMANDS. Once you are at the part with the terminal commands STOP!

2. Use the same guide (above) and scroll down to where it says "Setting Your Bios". Use the pictures there to assist you in settings your bios. Your bios won't look like theirs, but most of the things will be the same so you can match them up.

3. Now that you have set your bios, you are almost ready to install. One last thing must be done to the USB drive before we install. Download the SnowBootLoader from InsanelyMac EP43-UD3L Installation. Proceed by running that on your USB drive. DO NOT RUN THIS ON YOUR ACTUAL COMPTUER! It will ruin your Mac if you do!

4. In the link above, also download the /Extra folder along with the other attached files. Next, place them all on your USB drive along with the SnowBootLoader.

5. Now boot off your USB drive. This can be done by holding F12 and selecting "USB HDD".

6. You will now boot into the Snow Leopard Installation disc. Click continue at the first screen after selecting your language.

7. Go up to the top bar and click "Utilities" and then choose "Disk Utility".

8. Select your hard drive and format it. Make sure that you format it as a GUID partition scheme, also make sure that it is Mac OS Extended (Journaled).

9. Proceed by finishing the installation, it will ask you to restart the computer when you are done.

10. When you reboot make sure to boot from the USB drive again! Now when it shows the "Snow leopard installation disc" hit any of the arrow keys on the keyboard. You will then be able to choose your hard drive. Highlight it and hit "enter" on your keyboard.

11. Snow Leopard should boot normally. If you made it this far, the hard part is over! If you don't have sound, not to worry we are going to fix that.

12. Once at the desktop you will see the USB drive, open it up and locate those files we placed on it earlier.

13. Drag the "VoodooHDA.kext" onto Kext Utility. It will ask you for you password, type it in and let it proceed with installing it. When complete click "Quit"

14.Drag alc888.txt onto AppleHDAPatcher. Again put your password in and let it install.

15. Next, run the "About this mac" package. This will identify your CPU/Processor. This is aesthetic, but should be done any way ;).

16. Run the SnowBootLoader on the Snow Leopard Hard Drive.

17. Open up your Macintosh HD (or what ever you named your hard drive). There should be a folder there named Extra. Go to your USB drive and copy all the contents in the Extra folder to the Extra folder in your Macintosh HD.

18. Now open up the application Terminal. Paste the following code and hit enter:

sudo defaults write com.apple.loginwindow LoginHook /Extra/bonjour/ifconfig.command

19. Go to energy save and turn off sleep, it won't work.

20. Eject your USB stick and reboot your computer. It should reboot and boot right into the Snow Leopard hard drive. Update to 10.6.4 and you are ready to go! Congrats!

I hope this guide helps some of you out there. I know it can be hard to do this, but it is totally worth it in the end. Also, if the "About Mac" part of your computer doesn't show the proper information, that is because of your DSDT.aml file. I won't get into this now, but you can patch that to make the computer read the information correctly. Thanks to InsanelyMac and Hackint0sh.org for all their help!

~Dave

The Parts List

You can't create a computer that works without the proper parts. It takes many hours of research to get it right when it comes to a Hackintosh. All your parts that you buy must be "compatible" with the OS (operating system). Now, keep in mind my parts are not the most up to date parts. Something you must always remember when building/buying a computer. The second you receive the parts they are obsolete. As for the parts list, here it is:

Case:	Antec Twelve Hundred ATX Full Tower
Motherboard:	Gygabite EP43-UD3l LGA 775 Socket
Processor/CPU:	Intel Core 2 Quad Q9650
RAM/Memory:	2x Patriot Extreme Performance 4GB (2x2GB)
GPU/Graphics Card:	EVGA GeForce 9800 GT 1GB DDR3
PSU/Power Supply:	Corsair 750W ATX PSU
Hard Drive:	WD 640GB Caviar Black 3.5" drive. 3 GB/s
Monitor:	Samsung 21.5" Rose
Speakers	Logitech LS21 2:! Stereo

As I stated before, this was not all top quality stuff. I got what worked and what I needed. Also, price may vary depending on your parts. In the next post I will talk about how I installed the operating system. I won't go into detail here on how to put together the actual computer, but I can link you to some sites. I found Kitchen Table Computers a good site for illustrated instructions. Next post: Installation!

~Dave

Story of My Hackintosh

Something that has recently become my big summer project was building a Hackintosh. For those of you who don't know, a Hackintosh is essentially the Mac operating system running on PC parts. I have spent most of my summer working on mine and thought it would be a good idea to share the experience here. I hope these next couple of posts help some of you who may be thinking about making one. And even if your not making one, you can always see the possibilities. Posts to follow.

~Dave