Hackintosh! (Or What To Do With All My Spare Monitors)

I got to thinking that after the office's transition to Macs, I would be left with a number of unused computer monitors.  I plan to keep at least a PC or two running, so that I could refer back to Softdent for Windows, but that would leave me with a number of mothballed displays.  Sure, I could give them away or e-recyle them.  But, as I stated before, it got me thinking . . . I know of a potentially fun way that I could make use of a retired monitor.

Hackintosh: A little side project that came to fruition this past weekend. For awhile, I've been a bit intrigued with the concept of running the Mac OS on a PC. You see, before I was a "Mac Guy", I was one of those who enjoyed building my own PC piecemeal, using the latest and greatest parts. Although I wasn't much into gaming, I'd still would desire the top shelf video card or largest capacity hard drive of the day. Likewise with the CPU. Of course, six months would pass by, and my system was no longer state-of-the-art.  Time to upgrade (again).  I can't recall when this "hobby" began to fade, but it probably coincided with the time that I purchased my first Dell.  

A few weeks back, I put together I list of parts in which to create my first Hackintosh. If you haven't gathered by now, a Hackintosh is simply a PC that is made to run a Mac OS. In my case, I chose Mac OS X Lion.  I must say that much of the credit goes to someone known as tonymac86x, who has a blog and forum dedicated to everything Hackintosh.  After a bit of lurking, I found a sub-forum named "Golden Builds", which had a number of working examples, along with the ingredients to create your own Hackintosh. One of Tonymac86x's blog entries is essentially a Buyer's Guide, listing recommended parts to purchase in order to build your own compatible Hackintosh. In the end, I pieced together components from this guide, assuring me that I'd end-up with a working Hackintosh. Here is my parts list:

• Motherboard:      Gigabyte GA-Z68MA-D2H-B3 Micro ATX
• Video Adapter:    EVGA GeForce GT220 Graphics Card
• Hard Drive:          Western Digital 1.5TB Caviar Black SATA 6
• CPU:                   Intel Core i5-2500K Quad-core 3.3GHz 
• Case:                  SilverStone FT03S Micro ATX 
• Power Supply:     SilverStone ST75F-G 750 Watt Gold PFC
• Optical Drive:      SilverStone SOD02B Slot-Load CD/DVD-RW
• Keyboard:           Maccally iceKEY USB Slim 
• Other:                  SilverStone PP05 Short Power Supply Cable Set

When choosing the case, I really liked the simplicity and clean lines of the SilverStone FT03 case.  It has a bit of a Mac-like aesthetic,especially if you go with the silver finish, and although smaller than your typical tower, it is surprisingly roomy. The side, front and top panels come apart easily, and without tools, making the innards very accessible.  I really love the hot-swappable 3.5" drive bay, along with the small footprint.  Cases have come a long way since the days when I was building PCs!  Note that this case will only accommodate a trayless optical drive.

SilverStone FT03S case

On With The Build . . 


Tonymac86x has a couple of pieces of free software that greatly assist in the installation of the Mac OS onto a PC.  I elected to build a PC the runs Lion, Apple's latest and (some say "not so") greatest OS.  I'll spare you the fine details, as there are a number of YouTube videos and other website tutorials that detail the installation process ad nauseum. But to summarize, I first created a USB Lion Install thumb drive using Unibeast. I also downloaded another tool (to be used later) called MultiBeast 4.2.0, which I also placed on the thumb drive. After changing a handful of settings in the Gigabyte's BIOS, I used this newly-created USB installation tool to boot to the Lion installer. I first formatted the internal hard drive using Disk Utility, as a Mac OS Extended (Journaled) partition.  I then proceeded with the Lion install.  After the install was completed, I rebooted, again using the USB thumb drive.  Once booted into Lion, it was time to run MultiBeast. This smart tool installs a boot loader, allowing the machine to boot directly into Lion without having to use the USB thumb drive. It also installs various drivers or "kexts" (kernel extensions) that are user-selected according to what specifications your particular motherboard comes with. In fact, there is a constantly-updated database of motherboards specification "files" known as the DSDT. I used MultiBeast to install a DSDT specific to my motherboard, almost guaranteeing that I'd be able to run Lion, albeit with a bit of effort.  By the wee hours Sunday morning, I was greeted by this fine sight:

Lion! (Yes, that's a Dell monitor)

If anyone wants to join the "Hackintosh Club", feel free to contact me for any assistance.