Is it possible to boot OSX?

[breathemetal]

Could i install osx on my current rig?

[AthlonXP1800]

Yes you can boot OSX on your rig.

http://willjfergus.wordpress.com/2008/05/04/a-detailed-guide-on-installing-osx-on-my-pc/

[ViN86]

yes, it is possible. but it's also illegal.

buying a copy of OSX doesnt make it legal either, even though it might relieve your conscience :p

i suggest a google search. there are a lot of forums out there relating to this topic, and i assure you it is doable on your current rig. should be quite easy tbh.

[evox]

The real question is....why bother? :D

[brady]

yes, it is possible. but it's also illegal.

I've been doing a little reading and that may or may not be the case and it would be for a court to decide. EULAs have been deemed but enforceable and unenforceable in similar cases in different courts. As a consequence, the matter is hardly settled and unless a court decides the specific case or there's a ruling from a higher court nobody knows whether, for example, Apples EULA with respect to OSX is enforceable.

buying a copy of OSX doesn’t make it legal either

Well, as I said the matter is still open for debate. It may be the case that when an individual owns a legal copy of OSX it is not illegal for them to install it on non-apple bought hardware. Obviously Apple doesn't want you doing that but what Apple wants and what is against the law are not necessarily the same thing. That's the reason some EULAs are deemed not enforceable.

i suggest a Google search. There are a lot of forums out there relating to this topic, and i assure you it is doable on your current rig. Should be quite easy tbh.

insanelymac (www.insanelymac.com) is a great resource. The best, in my opinion. In fact I found guides created by forum members that were specific to the exact hardware I have. I've been running OSX off and on since Tiger. Since the beginning of this year I stopped experimenting and properly configured a Leopard install which has been up and running just fine for several months now.

Everything works great and performance is exceptional. The system in my sig costs 363% less than a similarly configured Quad Core Mac Pro from Apple and it performs about 30% better in both Geekbench and Xbench under OSX. In fact, it performs only 10% worse than Apples 2.8GHz 8 core system with 8GBs of RAM.

I've been looking into building an 8 core system using either Skulltrail or a more traditional Intel 5400 server board which is what's used in authentic Mac Pros. If I go that route I still end up beating Apples price by a considerable margin and with Skulltrail I could do some decent over clocking for even better performance.

There are good reasons to buy a Mac from Apple but none of those reasons have to do with performance. If you don't think you're that technically savvy you just might be better off buying a Mac and use Apples technical support. You also get a nice looking case and a lighter wallet. However, if you can stomach a little tweaking you can build a system with identical hardware to a Mac Pro (4 or 8 core) which will perform exactly the same or better under OSX and you'll pay significantly less.

For the record I did buy a retail copy of Leopard. It wasn't just to quite my conscience. I bought it to support OSX development. I may be violating Apples EULA but I'm not about to blatantly steal their software.

The real question is....why bother?

For one, the challenge. But, on top of that OSX is a very nice OS. It's very stable (even on my "Hack Pro") and there are some fantastic features build into it. Additionally, if you want to do any video editing, Final Cut is about as good as you can get for a consumer level NLE. Finally, it just looks sexy.

[bacon12]

Brady how is the OSX bootloader handled? I am wanting some of the apps that are only available on mac, and feel I could get it installed. Only question is how are you dual booting?

[ViN86]

I've been doing a little reading and that may or may not be the case and it would be for a court to decide. EULAs have been deemed but enforceable and unenforceable in similar cases in different courts. As a consequence, the matter is hardly settled and unless a court decides the specific case or there's a ruling from a higher court nobody knows whether, for example, Apples EULA with respect to OSX is enforceable.



Well, as I said the matter is still open for debate. It may be the case that when an individual owns a legal copy of OSX it is not illegal for them to install it on non-apple bought hardware. Obviously Apple doesn't want you doing that but what Apple wants and what is against the law are not necessarily the same thing. That's the reason some EULAs are deemed not enforceable.



insanelymac (www.insanelymac.com) is a great resource. The best, in my opinion. In fact I found guides created by forum members that were specific to the exact hardware I have. I've been running OSX off and on since Tiger. Since the beginning of this year I stopped experimenting and properly configured a Leopard install which has been up and running just fine for several months now.

Everything works great and performance is exceptional. The system in my sig costs 363% less than a similarly configured Quad Core Mac Pro from Apple and it performs about 30% better in both Geekbench and Xbench under OSX. In fact, it performs only 10% worse than Apples 2.8GHz 8 core system with 8GBs of RAM.

I've been looking into building an 8 core system using either Skulltrail or a more traditional Intel 5400 server board which is what's used in authentic Mac Pros. If I go that route I still end up beating Apples price by a considerable margin and with Skulltrail I could do some decent over clocking for even better performance.

There are good reasons to buy a Mac from Apple but none of those reasons have to do with performance. If you don't think you're that technically savvy you just might be better off buying a Mac and use Apples technical support. You also get a nice looking case and a lighter wallet. However, if you can stomach a little tweaking you can build a system with identical hardware to a Mac Pro (4 or 8 core) which will perform exactly the same or better under OSX and you'll pay significantly less.

For the record I did buy a retail copy of Leopard. It wasn't just to quite my conscience. I bought it to support OSX development. I may be violating Apples EULA but I'm not about to blatantly steal their software.



For one, the challenge. But, on top of that OSX is a very nice OS. It's very stable (even on my "Hack Pro") and there are some fantastic features build into it. Additionally, if you want to do any video editing, Final Cut is about as good as you can get for a consumer level NLE. Finally, it just looks sexy.
well, there is protection involved that is circumvented to allow the software to be installed on an x86 machine. isnt this a violation of the DMCA?

[brady]

well, there is protection involved that is circumvented to allow the software to be installed on an x86 machine. isnt this a violation of the DMCA?

Yeah, now that's a different matter. Back in 2006, Apple tried to close down osx86project forums. It was down for a while and I don't know how that whole situation was resolved but osx6project has been up and running since I started checking it out back in mid 2007. Insanelymac is a part of osx86project and you'll find open discussion of OSX cirucumvention there which I serioulsy doubt Apple is unaware of. Either they don't really care all that much anymore or somehow it was decided that there wasn't a violation of DMCA. I don't know. In any event, now that Apple is essentially using off the shelf PC parts for their systems it just seems a bit silly to say that their OS can only be put on that hardware when they themselves have put it all together.

Brady how is the OSX bootloader handled? I am wanting some of the apps that are only available on mac, and feel I could get it installed. Only question is how are you dual booting?

You can use a bootloader like Grub or even Vista's to boot into both Vista and Leopard. I just installed OSX on a second hard drive and when I want to boot into it I just use the BIOS to switch which drive is seen as the primary one. It's a lot easier than configuring bootloaders. I had some trouble booting into Leopard using EasyBCD and so I decided to go this route. There's another advantage to doing the way I've done it and that's that you can reformat and reinstall Vista or Leopard without having to worry about one or the other overwriting your MBR.

For those interested, your best bet is an Intel motherboard as opposed to nForce. You can get it working with an nForce board but, from what I understand, it's a little trickier than with an Intel board. When I built this system at the end of last year I did so with OSX compatability in mind.

[bacon12]

Thanks I am using EasyBCD right now for booting XP/Vista/linux I may build me a linux/mac quad core media machine soon. Will be looking for the processor but in the mean time will the newer x38/x48 intel boards work well?? I see you have a P35 and I may go with one, just curious about the newer ones.

I will also most likely retire my 8800gt to that machine when the new Nv cards are released, and I know there are mac drivers for it.

[brady]

Thanks I am using EasyBCD right now for booting XP/Vista/linux I may build me a linux/mac quad core media machine soon. Will be looking for the processor but in the mean time will the newer x38/x48 intel boards work well?? I see you have a P35 and I may go with one, just curious about the newer ones.

I will also most likely retire my 8800gt to that machine when the new Nv cards are released, and I know there are mac drivers for it.

Check the OSX86 Wiki for a list of compatible motherboards. P35s are popular because they are cheap, reliable, and very compatible. If you're really hardcore you could build a system based on the Intel 5400 server chipset with dual LGA771 sockets. The current line of Mac Pros use Intel 5400 motherboards. You can get quad core Xenons for for as cheap as $200 and end up with a pretty inexpensive 8 core system. Even if you went with a fast Xenon Harpertown chip, like the ones in the Mac Pros, you would still end up paying less by building on your own. Of course, you will have to troubleshoot your own machine since Apple obviously won't be helping you out. So far, I've not run into any major problems and the things I've encountered have been fairly simple to resolve. It took me less time to OSX up and running with everything working properly than installing Vista on this machine. (nana2)

[nekrosoft13]

well, there is protection involved that is circumvented to allow the software to be installed on an x86 machine. isnt this a violation of the DMCA?

isn't a mac running on x86 right now? only difference is that mac hardware have that TPM chip.

[Single Player]

holy cow, i had no idea! i just did know you can run OSX on the pc/ that's a great news..I'm gonna do that// wow

[S.SubZero]

Most forums I frequent will lock any thread that involves running OS X on non-Apple hardware.

However, www.insanelymac.com won't.

Running OS X on a PC is not a "pop in a disc and install it and be happy" affair. It is tedious, involves some hacking, and is basically shoehorning the OS to work somewhere it's not intended to work. There's no official driver repository to run to for drivers for your oddball hardware, and even very standard devices tend to need some coercing to get going with any functionality. Sound support is especially rough, I don't know anyone that really has a 100% working setup. Stereo output (and no input) is about the best most people can get.

I ran OS X on a couple of laptops but wasn't too impressed with the shortcomings. I ended up buying a Macbook Pro.

[brady]

Most forums I frequent will lock any thread that involves running OS X on non-Apple hardware.

However, www.insanelymac.com won't.

Running OS X on a PC is not a "pop in a disc and install it and be happy" affair. It is tedious, involves some hacking, and is basically shoehorning the OS to work somewhere it's not intended to work. There's no official driver repository to run to for drivers for your oddball hardware, and even very standard devices tend to need some coercing to get going with any functionality. Sound support is especially rough, I don't know anyone that really has a 100% working setup. Stereo output (and no input) is about the best most people can get.

I ran OS X on a couple of laptops but wasn't too impressed with the shortcomings. I ended up buying a Macbook Pro.

With my setup it actually was pretty much a "pop in a disc and install it affair." I just used the recommended kext for sound and used the kext autoinstaller and that was that. True, I don't have 5.1 out even though optical is working but that's not too big a deal right now. It took me less time to install and get 10.5.1 up and running with sound and full 8800 support than it takes to install Vista x64 with the SP1 already slipstreamed. If you build a machine with compatability in mind it's really quite simple and you hardly need any 1337 skills to get it working.

[nekrosoft13]

don't you have to apply some patches/hacks to the iso before even trying to install?

[brady]

don't you have to apply some patches/hacks to the iso before even trying to install?

Well...yes, that does need to be done but you may not need to do it.

[Single Player]

Well...yes, that does need to be done but you may not need to do it.

thats cool, but what about sound? i found iso image just pop in a disk and install. onboard sound?

[wollyka]

i used it on an my rig in my sig, however no sound for X-fi, i have to use it with onboard
other than that, everything works :)
PS: yes n and the nforce LAn doesn't work also but u can add a Realtek PCI one and problem solved