gogogadgetearl . leopard on my amd machine
2008.05.03
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right now i'm looking at my htpc and i've got 4 minutes left on the leopard os installation. i'm sure you've all read about making a hackintosh computer, using a modern intel chip. but what you may not have heard of, is someone has even been able to get it to install on a system that uses an amd processor. i find this quite impressive. and just because i want the bragging rights to say i've at least tried it, i figured i'd download the installer and see what happens.
only a minute left on the install.
when apple decided to start using intel chips, everyone knew it would only be a matter of weeks before some ported it to a non-mac machine, as long as it was an intel chip. sure enough, it didn't take long. i was quite excited about the idea, as i absolutely love mac os x. it's true. i am a 100% convert (though i still do love xp pro). of course, i am not yet able to lay down the cash on a mac, so spending a few hundred bucks on a hackintosh sounded great to me.
woohoo, install successful.
but things happened, and rather than devote any effort or cash to such a system, i opted for an hdtv. i mean my current system is great, why pay 1500+ on a system that wouldn't get fully utilized, hooked up to a 20" screen? but then today, while browsing the newsgroups, i cam across "Leopard for AMD" and my mind was blown. how could i not at least try it? at worst, if for some reason, the installer might corrupt my xp os and i'd have to format the whole drive. big whoop. all it's used for is video playback. and with installers already floating around with all updates, including sp3, it would almost be doing me a favor.
ok, system restarted. i chose leopard at the startup selector screen.
i'm still not sure if this will work. i read in one guy's description, he had to modify his bios to make it play nice. but even if i can get leopard to run on my amd machine, i'm pretty confident there will be big issues. i have a wireless card for my desktop. i searched a little on google. nobody has a workaround for wireless access. of course, that would be okay, as i would only use it for video playback, just like it's being used currently within xp. also, xp can often blue screen just because my hardware doesn't always play nice. why would it be any more reliable on an os that's designed for specific hardware? no, this ragtag setup is anything but comparable to apple's chosen hardware.
well, now it's just sitting there with some code on the screen and some system info. it's not anything i can understand. but there isn't any "kernel panic" error showing (which generally means os x is hosed).
earlier today i found a os x tiger installer for vmware fusion. it's technically not possible to run tiger virtually on any system (whether it be tiger, leopard, or otherwise), but, once again, someone has found a way. and because i'm that kind of guy, i figured i should at least see if i could get it to work. i could. it was quite easy. but its loading screen looked very similar to the one my amd machine is now showing. it also took a few minutes to load. but this one has gone on too long. it's been like this for about 5 minutes now. i'm pretty sure it's not going to go any further.
i was really hoping it would work. and it just might. but it will probably require some bios tweaking. yippee.
comments
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- [ 2008.05.04 | 11:46:04pm ]
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I could start off with the usual "ZOMG! MAC SUXXORZ! !@&*#!^#"...instead, I'm just gonna say good luck and keep us posted.
- [ 2008.05.06 | 10:20:06am ]
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Last update for a while:
In the last week, I was able to get the resolution up to 1280x1024, but without an actual driver (called a kext in the Mac world), the display couldn't go any higher and there was no graphics acceleration. I tried a bunch of variables, but nothing worked. Then a friend showed me a site he had found that listed a bunch of hardware that had been tested with the OS. A card like mine, made by a different company, was shown to not work--it had the exact same results as mine. But also on that page was compatibility for the Tiger OS. My video card looked to be compatible there, but I didn't pay attention to the rest of the hardware list. I got a Tiger install disc for AMD machines and loaded it up. The installation would not work. Multiple attempts resulted in the same outcome: "Installation failed. Please try again." So I gave up, figured I'd live with XP for now, until someone comes up with a compatible version of Leopard for my card (or I get a new card that works). Unfortunately, when I restarted and chose XP to boot, it wouldn't work. XP would get to the "Welcome" screen and continually attempt to login and immediately logout. I used the XP installation disc to repair the installation once before (after the original failed Leopard install), so I thought it might work again. It didn't. So, like I posted originally, I just scraped the whole thing and installed XP with SP3 built-in. That was Friday. Everything's been smooth since then. But I know a day shall come when I'll be running a Mac OS without any issues ... I just don't know when that will be.- [ 2008.05.11 | 9:42:20am ]
After being frustrated with no results. I did some searching. It didn't take long. I found out the installer I had was old. Thankfully, no BIOS modifying necessary. There are multiple groups out that have released better installers. I downloaded a couple. Had trouble with both, one more so than the other. But the one with less trouble--I played with it a little and was able to get Leopard to install and run. So it is functional as an OS. Right now, however, my 1080p tv is only getting a 1024x768 signal. That's gonna need some work. And, like I suspected, my wireless card isn't being picked up. But whatever comes of this, I can say that I did it and was at least moderately successful.