hackintosh query!

[loslosbaby]

re: Shuttle: sure, if it worked for you, cool. I'm just saying for the non-propellor-head, the lack of support is a deal breaker. There is no such thing as "saving money"...its just re-allocation from one thing to another, i.e., less time to make money because of more time spent making the thing work.

I've had two hackintoshes and I know you know that whenever a dot update comes out it gets broken..and must be kept running with a lot of attention like a hand-built race car.

re: Rubbish: I would love to live in the world where things work in a binary way--but I've been putting together systems since they had 1/100th the power of a ipod shuffle and nothing is worse than a flakey computer. I'd rather they just caught on fire than lock-up, or have memory corruption whatever.

The mac is an appliance, and, like appliances, they come all ways...macs are expensive, but, so are a lot of fine things. What the mac gives me is a beautiful, quiet, comfortable workstation to make money on, have fun on, and make art with.

Lately I use my mac to control all my other machines remotely. I have linux machines, a sun workstation, and two PC's too, but, I leave them at home, turned off and bring my mac with me.

I've transferred almost all my "research machines" into virtual machines on my MBP17 with 4gig (last pre-unibody model). I'll be upgrading in a couple months, and I'll have 8gig to run a virtual linux and/or windows and big, fat apps in the mac world too.

Its all just tools, and, I like my Snap-On better than my Craftsman, but, I have intense emotional connection to my first hand tools, and, they're all Craftsman. I also miss my first Fatmac and my Leading Edge PC (with NEC V20 at EIGHT MEGAHERTZ MAN!) as well.

Apple Care + Pro Care: The Pro Care card is awesome, check it out. It has gotten my mac fixed in 2 hours and couriered to my hotel room, for 100$/year. MS doesn't sell that card, and their buddies (HP/Dell) don't have stores all over the place with the stuff I need either.

(shrug)

Horses for Courses.

G.

[svrider1000]

I am running 10.5.8 on a core2 duo Hacintosh. I think this site could help out a lot. http://pcwizcomputer.com/ipcosx86/

[svrider1000]

Yeah I cant imagine them being 100% stable and have never read about anyone using one with traktor. It will be probably something out of interest if I do end up making one.

[gh987]

Well looks like theres certainly some mixed opinions about hackintoshs on this site!

I've had two hackintoshes and I know you know that whenever a dot update comes out it gets broken.

Why would you want to update the thing though when its working? I never intend to go online with a hackintosh so updates wont be an issue. From what I can tell LAN/WIFI are the worst devices to enable, apart from other things.

Thanks for all the advice people and the suggested sites. I will definitively give it a try before buying a new mac as I simply dont have the money at the moment. It shouldnt cost anything as my friend has the same laptop I will buy if it works and will test it on his first.

svrider1000 - expect a private message

[nem0nic]

...less time to make money because of more time spent making the thing work

I've had two hackintoshes and I know you know that whenever a dot update comes out it gets broken..and must be kept running with a lot of attention like a hand-built race car

I know this is the battle cry for the typical Apple user, but it's simply not true. ANYONE who had a computer they rely on for more than just their morning email turns off automatic updates and updates manually. They DO NOT blindly grab generic update X just because it's yipping in your dock like a hungry dog. Most recently, there have been issues with 10.5.7 that cause a myriad of problems (including random freezes and overheating). You research your updates. So if I'm in the habit of researching updates, whats the difference between researching on MacAddict and the Apple forums, or on InsanelyMac and OSX86? If you pick a hardware configuration from the beginning that isn't wall supported by Kalyway, then of course you'll have problems. But if you spend 10 minutes looking for highly compatible hardware, then everything works extremely well. And what you get for that small investment of time is a computer that gives you all the benefits of OSX, running on the same hardware as it's native brethren, at a FRACTION of the cost. It also gives you the ability to quickly, cheaply, and easily update that hardware in the future so you're not stuck with outdated junk (hello Mac Mini and iMac).

Apple Care + Pro Care: The Pro Care card is awesome...

In the time you waste going to the store and waiting for sparky behind the counter to figure out you have a hardware problem, I would have diagnosed my problem, sourced replacement parts locally, and repaired the problem. I need downtime in hours, NOT days.

MS doesn't sell that card...

Because they sell software.

and their buddies (HP/Dell) don't have stores all over the place with the stuff I need either.

Are you kidding? Did you really compare the accessibility of Apple Stores with the myriad of places someone can buy parts for PCs or have them repaired? As for service, I've had Dell overnight replacement hardware to me, cross ship various items, and in general give me stellar service (and amazing pricing). Of course, a Hackintosh isn't a supported system in anyone's book, but they're very easy to work on if needed. And with the money you save in the initial purchase, you can certainly afford to hire it out if you need to (and if you're building a Hackintosh in the first place, this is unlikely because you'll do the repair yourself).

[Jack Bastard]

+1 to all of that. I'm used to being my own support for OS and hardware issues.

I'm about to give it a go on my Dell 9400 for research purposes, looks like iDeneb 1.5 should have everything I need, do you have any advice nem0nic? I know that I probably won't have wireless but that's not really important tbh.

[nem0nic]

I had the best luck with the Kalyway distro, and it looks like it supports the Dell 9400/Inspiron 1705 (the major variable being the graphics and wireless chipsets installed). You may be scrambling for a few kext files (especially if you're using an Intel graphics chipet), but it looks pretty do-able.

[loslosbaby]

I know this is the battle cry for the typical Apple user,

I don't know what typical is, and, I'm not fighting, "I'm just sayin'" (Snoop). I am replying to this thread only in the context of having reliable hardware to pull off performances that (may, in all our dreams) be connected to big 6-7 digit outlays of promoter cash.

All I can say is that I used to build all my PC's and felt exactly the way you do, and, I don't anymore.

My clients depend on me, my associates and subcontractors. And let me tell you from the one lawsuit I have been in (as a sub) from front-to-finish that home-made machines with unsupported OS's won't fly. The other two didn't last past the first appearance. This is part of being a service provider--getting sued (one piece of advice: never, ever, just "do nothing").

The word is "reasonable"...as in "would a reasonable person expect it to be reliable"...that's what will come up.

I used to build my motorcycles too, etc. etc. etc. I have a friend who won't buy anything (even an ipod) unless he can hack it and put in his own version of an OS, and is never happy with it and when it "works" it crashes and locks up.

This guy bought a ford Flex, a pretty neat car. Because he insists on messing things up, he hacked his previously really neat Microsoft SYNC display, and now when he drives around, it shows "Corrupt Boot Image: 0x401 0x001"...since he messed it up, its also at full brightness.

That's just a little bit boring for me.

Re: "Sourcing parts locally" let me (finally) put it like this: I was a mac developer in the old, old days and those don't count. This time around, in the last 4 years, I've personally had 3 macs, always two-at-a-time, and in our business (counting quickly) we've had 11 more. Out of all those, we had these failures: 2 HD's, 2 PS's (laptop), one battery, one fan (Xserve). I personally lost my HD on my PB17 (first new mac) and that was a big bummer. Recovered a lot of files, but, not all, after paying 1000$ to a disk recovery house. Time Machine/Carbon Copy/dd/tar would have taken care of that and its 100% my fault for not having a backup strategy.

Barring my disk-loss (the other one was covered by Time Machine), we have had no other loss of data, or significant downtime. Part of that is standardized parts...we have some laptops that use the 65W PS, but, we stock two spare 85W PS's and those work. We have 85W PS's sprinkled around the office at various couches and in the meeting room too. All machines covered by TM, and with Carbon Copy as well.

That's it...not shockingly better than an average PC fleet, ...just a lot easier.

I used to be a big windows shop, and I had a coven of guys that wouldn't let me run an iphone on my own network, wouldn't even try mySQL, wouldn't really get into linux enough to evaluate it for (JUST!) a SMB server etc. I too thought i was saving money....I really did.

But, when I wanted things done, when they folded their arms, made pouty faces, and explained why it was impossible/not smart/too expensive to do basically anything, I started getting sick of it, started keeping track of their responses, thumbs-up/down, and, in the long-run, it was 90%+ thumbs-down. I recognized this from the mainframe era, the techno-priesthood of the Big Iron...so,...

...I laid them all off.

...I sold all our MS servers to our ISP.

...I replaced 40% of the desktops with macs (so far). I bet we'll go to about 50% in the long-run.

...and now I have one person, staffed as "the IT person". I just looked up in our hours billing system and she has billed me 19% of her time in the last six pay periods under the "Internal IT" job code. 19% is totally workable instead of 100% (and overtime) for the Three Stooges and their excuses.

re: Updates, yeah, 3 years at Sun, and lots of time with Suns afterwards made me very wary of updates...for a while. Lately, we take the updates in the later parts of the OS cycle on a couple machines, wait a while, and then just apply them. Did I upgrade to SL yet? We have one mini, and one laptop and yeah, there's problems with both. We use both parallels and vmware for "our legacy software" (apps on Windows not yet replaced) and those are both no-go on SL right now.

When my time was my own, and money was hard, I did it all myself. Now that my time is something I whore out, I delegate. I am delegating the "making personal computers" task out to Apple and others. I feel pretty good recycling the MS-Monks out to the world of crashing zone controllers, registry corruption, MS-SQL lockups and all that. Fooey.

Ultimately you're talking about saving money . You say "FRACTION" but not really. Its just a matter of a couple thousand dollars across two dozen macs. Basically you're asking me to trade small, quiet, attractively-designed macs supported by a company that is publicly traded for a "rag-tag fugitive fleet" of different PC parts from different eras, supported by hack crews out there, in the Internet.

Besides being UNLAWFUL, I'd rather support a company that gives a damn about how things work.

"Hokey religions and ancient [pc hardware] are no match for a good [mac] at your side, kid."

End of line.

G.

[Jack Bastard]

But with all due respect, I don't need it to be part of an enterprise network or run as SQL boxes, I basically need it as a host for Traktor.

If a hackintosh can hack it then I'll use that.

[nem0nic]

I get it los, you live in a delusional world where your participation in the Kool Aid drinking seems totally justifiable, and you think there's no one else in this thread that's made their living relying on the ability of a computer to reliably reproduce audio. Your long winded stories are duly noted.

If what you say is truth in your realm of existence, then I'm happy that you've found a solution that suits you. But your solution isn't suitable for everyone, or even particularly compelling. The "features" you pay dearly for I get for little or free (I've had automated backup on my network protecting several computer's data for YEARS using some basic scripting, SyncToy, and Task Scheduler - with backups to multiple local drives and an internet share). I get the same hardware, better performance, and longer life from that hardware. And as convinced you are that Windows is horrible, I'm just as convinced that OSX is a bloated mess of dodgy APIs in an OS that's built specifically to get in my way as a user.

Also, I don't remember ANYONE asking you to build a Hackintosh. Lord knows we wouldn't want you engaging in any UNLAWFUL activities on the intarwebs. The turtleneck police might find you and revoke your Pro Care card.