Snow Leopard on Hackintosh Second Method

In a couple of previous posts I mentioned having problems with my original Snow Leopard hackintosh install. Most appeared to be related to permissions, with certain settings reverting after a reboot. For example, I change the background colour of my finder windows to grey instead of white, and every time I restarted this would change back to white again. I also always got a few unrepairable permissions errors when using Disk Utility’s repair function. Nothing major, and while everything important worked fine there were enough minor irritations to start me looking at an alternative install method.

Snow Leopard on Hackintosh Guide

28th March 2010 – This install guide has been replaced by Snow Leopard On Hackintosh Second Method. The new install method is simpler and faster than this guide, but uses a boot CD that may not be compatible with all hardware.

Released on the 28th of August 2009, Snow Leopard is described by Apple as ‘Better.Faster.Easier.’ It’s a fairly accurate label, and once I got over my initial problem upgrading my Macbook the new operating system has been stable, fast, and a pleasure to use. The Family pack I bought from the Apple Store allows installation on five computers, so this covers my Macbook, original hackintosh, home cinema hackintosh (HTPC) and the Intel Atom server I recently built. I know the EULA doesn’t allow for installation on non Apple hardware, but I paid my £39 so I’m as legit as is currently possible.

Before I start listing the steps I took to get Snow leopard working on my original Hackintosh, it’s worth mentioning backups again. During the install I tried things that screwed up Snow Leopard and stopped it working correctly. Having a full backup meant it was easy to reinstall and restore user data. My recommendations for backup software are SuperDuper, which I bought a couple of years ago, or the excellent donation-ware Carbon Copy Cloner. If you intend to use Carbon Copy Cloner with Snow Leopard make sure you have the latest V3.3 beta 5, as I had major problems with version 3.2.1. Superduper version 2.6.1 is described as compatible with Snow Leopard, my testing has shown no problems so far.

Backups done, on with the install. I used a separate hard drive for my Snow Leopard install, and the first part is done from my existing 10.5.8 installation. There’s a great 10.6 Generic Retail Guide at Insanelymac that lists three methods of installing Snow Leopard on non Apple hardware:

1. Chameleon bootloader with a hidden EFI partition
2. Boot-132 Disc with a patched boot file
3. Chameleon v2 RC1 USB bootloader with Netkas PCEFIv10.1 patched boot

Intel’s Larrabee and the future of GPU’s

Just when the GPU war looks like continuing indefinitely as a two horse race, Intel comes along to stir up the market. It’s Larrabee processor is due in 2009/10, and if initial speculation is anything to go by this could change the way GPU’s are used. There’s already been much talk about the use of the parallel processing power of current GPU’s for non-graphical tasks. Physics simulation is an emerging role, and Apple’s next OS, Snow Leopard, will include the ability to easily harness all that GPU power for programmers.

Larrabee is different to GPU’s currently available due to its use of multiple Pentium cores. They’re much improved over the original pentium cores, running a lot faster and incorporating newer technologies. The difference between Larrabee cores and a CPU like the Core 2 Duo is complexity. Larrabee is a simpler design that occupies a much smaller space, making a large number of cores in as small package possible.

Just how much the Larrabee chip can do is still a little fuzzy, and some sites are suggesting it will run applications as well as perform GPU and large number crunching duties. Does this mean current systems using a Core 2 Duo/Quad and Graphics card will be replaced by a Larrabee processor? From Dailytech.com,

Larry Seiler from Intel says, “What the graphics and general data parallel application market needs is an architecture that provides the full programming abilities of a CPU, the full capabilities of a CPU together with the parallelism that is inherent in graphics processors. Larrabee provides [that] and it’s a practical solution to the limitations of current graphics processors.”

If Larrabee performs as well as suggested this could be the biggest shake-up in system architecture for a long time. Convincing users that putting all your processing into one package is a good idea would be another matter.

Read more at

Engadget – Macworld – Macrumors – Dailytech – Wikipedia

A full introduction to Larrabee at TrustedReviews.com

Hackintosh hardware prices

I’ve had some positive comments recently from people who have built a hackintosh using the same components I used. For anyone looking to base a system around the Core 2 Quad Q6600 Aria have a deal on as I type this (16:31 in the UK) for the Q6600 at £129.19 including VAT. Only 20 left at that price, and it’s the cheapest quad core processor I have seen so far. I’ve commented on my experiences of this previously so I won’t repeat it all again, just mention that mine is running great at 3Ghz with a heatsink and fan.

Hackintosh part 4

I finally had enough waiting yesterday and ordered the components for my hackintosh. And as if by magic 10.5.2 was released. I changed the motherboard from the GA-P35C-DS3R to the very similar GA-P35-DS3R. The only difference I can see is that the P35 board doesn’t support ddr3 memory, which I wasn’t interested in. I also ordered a 500Gb Sata hard drive. I paid the extra for AM delivery and started planning the build and OS install.
As expected, the parcel was delivered at 12:06. Why are these couriers never earlier than they have to be? An hour later the motherboard, CPU, fan and memory were installed in the CM stacker and the power went on. I was a bit nervous as this was the first time I had used a Core 2 quad, and they are tiny. Hard to believe there are four processors in there with a huge heatsink and fan sitting on top.

So the power went on, and nothing