Haxx0rtosh: Or, the Sub-$800 Mac You Always Wanted!
Author: Ockshun Jockson
When Apple went Intel, the haxx0rs of the world went to work at getting PCs to run OS X. There was one version I saw that involved a bit of leg work on your end, and I wasn't really into it. Now, that same team has made the entire thing plug-n-play. Lifehacker has an easy step-by-step:
Haxx0rtosh lul lul lul
The author setup a great little Newegg wishlist with all the parts you'll need. The cost as of today is $777 (last week it was ~$650 with sales, drats!).
Apparently the most important part is the motherboard, which the author catered his install instructions to. The rest of the parts are apparently open to customization. While other motherboards will work, the hardest part of the install is optimizing your bios for OS-X. Since the author already made those modifications to this particular motherboard, there's no guess work on your end if you choose to go with that piece of hardware (just copy his bios screenshots).
He ran some benchmarks, but they are pitifully setup: He doesn't have anything common in the units by way of ram, video cards, etc and clockspeeds are all mis-matched and shit.
STILL, this is nice to know. I grabbed a copy of the install disc for the archives. If anyone decides to build a Haxx0rtosh, let me know. I unfortunately don't have the room for another box at the moment.
cool.
I suspected this was possible, since Apple went Intel. Personally, I'm leery of such a setup.
Sure it works now, but what about one or two
software updates from now. I would have rather spent the extra money to avoid the hassle and keep
working. The PCMAC would have to cost $200-300 bucks for this to really be feasible, IMHO.
Having attempted several times to build / upgrade older macs I know how specific the hardware requirements can be for modern OS's. I always thought one of the reasons or benefits to buying a Mac (besides the inflated price ; ) was that all the hardware / software comes integrated from one manufacturer, always guaranteeing a basic level of compatibility and support. Also the near lack of harmful worms, bugs or viruses on the Mac OS- knock-on-wood. The resale value on
Macs I would have to think is a little better, esp
if you plan ahead to trade up in a year or two.
It seems only a matter of time before Apple will either officially market the OS to "PC platform" or build in some sort of Mac-only hardware key on new Macs that the OS will look for on booting.
Still, I dig that ppl are doing this-
I think it's a tinkerer's project.
But it's nice to have options, right?
"one of the reasons or benefits to buying a Mac (besides the inflated price ; ) was that all the hardware / software comes integrated from one manufacturer"
in one regard i agree, that is a positive. but ultimately, it's a chain around the user's neck. not being able to upgrade anything? that means if you want better hardware, you need to buy a whole new mac. dude? i hate that. i think it's wrong to do that to consumers, especially when the prices on mac hardware are at a premium.
granted, as you say, re-sell prices on macs are higher. that's nice. but i just bought a "shell" case for my pc and i can swap any manner of part in that bitch and always have up-to-date hardware.
as far as hackertosh updates, i'm sure they'll make hacker patches available online. i'm not really up for all that. but whatever apple's play into the pc market will be, i hope it's not much longer. vista man? no way. i'm pretty much done with windows. i'm very happy with my xp, but the OS-X straight slaughters it.
It depends on your Mac. I don't know about the current Mac Pro, but i used a G4 tower from early 2000 till late 2006. It started out running OS 9 and still has 10.4.X on it. Over the course of its useful life (it still works, just pokey) i added RAM, upgraded the processor, video card, added a USB2.0 card, added an upgraded HDD controller card and added faster HDDs.
It got to the point that the motherboard was just too slow to bother with anything else. I feel like a 6 year old computer still able to run the latest OS was not so bad of a run.
I don't know about the current towers, but the old ones had a lot of 3rd party options for upgrades. Actually at WKDU i did upgrades on a lot of Macs going back to an SE/30. Offhand some of the Macs we upgraded were: SE/30, 6100, 7100, 8100, 5400, 7600, 8500, Rev A iMacs, Rev B iMacs, G3 tower. It's what you do when you don't have the budget to upgrade machines.
Not nearly as upgradable as a build-you-own PC, but there are more options than people think. Laptops are another story i guess.
Ocks: sure, anything is possible. I guess it
depends on how much your time to debug
or upgrade a HaxxOrtosh is worth to you.
Patches are Patches - temp fixes. There are
still some user upgradeable components in
most Macs, but here too... you have to weigh
the pros and cons of the cost and time.
In my previous post about my DVD-R / Cable,
I talked about spending hours on trying
to clean / fix my inoperable recorder.
I'm glad I tried, but I can't get that time back.
JP: It really comes down to your use and needs.
I know some of the audiophiles out there are
still working on OS 9, because it works well
and all the software is pre OSX. It's also a huge investment to upgrade everything. More power
to them. Graphics and Video works are sort of
a different ballgame, with their increased requirements. If the machine in question remains "an island", than it prob doesn't matter what you run, but trying to integrate and exchange with other users on more contemp machines can be troublesome.
I was all about upgrading-till-up-can-upgrade-no-more, it goes with my packrat nature.
I had two beloved Power Macs- an 8500, possibly the best AV machine Apple made (cira 1995) and a B/W aqua G3 (1999)- an excellent DV edit box for it's time. I had even spray painted the 8500!
I upgraded each twice over. The trouble was the last time I tried to upgrade (early 2004) with RAM, larger HD, new processor, better display card-
with less than satisfactory results, the cost quickly exceeded that of the latest low end mac. I hated selling those machines, but they had both been loyal machines and had a good, productive life.
Now I just try to take care of my laptop with the plan of trading in every two years or so.
If I can get close to half of what I paid,
I think that's pretty reasonable for rather
trouble-free operation. I take heart in knowing
that someone else, possibly with lesser requirements, is getting some use out of
my old box.
Having seen docs about the toxic, heavily polluted, impoverished fringetowns in China where ppl live in huts and dissect old computers for survival...
I think we need to be tougher on the technology industries and ask for renewable, upgradeable devices... as counter intuitive as that is in a capitalist regime. "Disposable" makes me sick.
Footnote- I still have my Atari 800XL (1983) and 5200 (1982) boxed up in the lab... don't know if I can ever part with them.
hey with time machine, do you know if it will be easy to clone your entire disc image and "transfer" it over to a brand new mac in, say, 5 years? i'm talking a verbatim disk copy: os, files, everything.
?
I don't know about Time Machine
specifically (or how it backs up)...
But if you mount your Laptop as
a volume from another
machine (in Firewire Target mode)
and do a straight copy or make
disc image and copy... you can
drop that "frozen" volume back onto
an existing machine. To my knowledge
you can never totally clone an
incarnation (OS and all) while
running off the same volume.
i don't know if Time Machine will work on a different machine. That's a good question. I have already read a few posts where people take their MacBook or MacBook Pro that is running Time Machine, swap in a new (much larger) HDD, and let Time Machine take care of the restoration. Supposedly the upgraded laptop will function exactly like it had, but with more storage space.
My OS X knowledge is not solid enough to tell you if it would work on a new machine, but I am guessing no? My thinking is that every time Apple releases new hardware, they have to release a specific version of the OS to work with that new hardware. Your "frozen" disc image would not have drivers etc for Macs that don't yet exist, unless you are mothballing current hardware for the apocalypse? Maybe you could use the clean OS on the new machine and have it access the old archived backup, but i am not sure? That ability kind of exists with the Migration Assistant.app, but i don't know if Migration Assistant would be happy sucking data off an external HDD.
If you have a specific need to do this, there are 3rd party apps. I know many power users write off Time Machine for something that will make bootable backups, as well as support off site backups. There are far more options in the 3rd party solutions. They consider Time Machine adequate for "grandma" and other people that are bad about backups (like me!). Offhand i don't remember the names, but i heard them talking about the options on a podcast called MacBreak Weekly. A bootable backup should be closer to what you are thinking about? Time Machine is Apple simple. If you hook up any random external HDD to a Mac running 10.5 it will ask if you want to use it as a time machine. If you click yes, the machine will just set up default options and get started making archives based on that one mouse click. Kind of awesome for non-techie people.
As for the MacBreak Weekly picks, there are a few unofficial sites that collect their weekly software picks, one is: http://mbwpicks.com/
I got sucked into podcasts a year or two ago when i had a bunch of long drives.
P.S. my dad used to have a Scout II. That thing was a tank. We're pretty sure its construction saved his life when he was t-boned by a Cadillac at top speed. Unfortunately the Scout II didn't make it. He replaced it with a Travelall, and then Jeep Grand Wagoneers.
heh. yea, for a while i really wanted a scout. they're fairly common here in the pacific norf west. which is ironic because i think they rust like a muhcuka?
so, my new macbook that i bought at the end of november? i noticed a crack was appearing where the "lid" closes onto the palm rest. i did a google and found out it's a largely known design flaw. they call it "Crackbook".
i took it to the apple store (the so-called "genius bar") and they fixed it without incident -- replaced the entire bottom part, keyboard and all.
i hope this replaced part permanently fixes the problem. there are entire Crackbook flickr groups and shit. pretty nasty design flaw, imo.
design flaw: Yeah, that sucks. Sounds like the hinges
and screen connect on my first Tibook. Cool they
replaced. I guess it was still well under warranty.
Do you have Applecare?
Hey, where's the Land Cruiser love, yo.
The Beast is now 20 years old!!!
I just hit 260K and it runs great...
despite the cancerous rust in places.
JP: very sad, just went home and saw my
parents cracked the Grill, front end and
headline benzel (!) on the Cherokee.