Mac OsX on a PC

kryystkryyst Ontario, Canada
edited August 2005 in Hardware
This isn't entirely new news (it's about 2 weeks old) but for those out of the geek circles. Mac is switching to i86 architecture next year. However they have already shipped developer versions of it out to ummm developers. Anyway like all things computer these developer versions have been leaked and hacked and made to work on non-developer PC's. Yes that means - the computer you are using right now can run a hacked version of OsX. The only conditions are it has to have at least SSE2 instruction set on the cpu and if you want to run certain PPC required apps (itunes for example) it needs SSE3. Most new P4's and AMD64's are all SSE3, older P4's are all SSE2 and beyond that AMD or Intel it's a gamble. Also the more ram you have the better 256 will run but it'll swap like made. 512 is the running average and 1 gig is recommended.

There are plenty of sites that tell you how to do it and given the nature of it I'm not sure if it's kosher with Forum policies to put the how's and to's on here since it does require pirated software - no way around it.

However just to show that it works, here is a screen shot of a system I got up and running. It's a del gx240 (borrowed from work) it's a P41.5 ghz and 256 ram. Basically the bare min to just get it running. Also it's SSE2 based so itunes wouldn't work but other apps did. It detected the Ps/2 keyboard/mouse and onboard lan no problem. It didn't have onboard sound and the video card was basic so I couldn't do any real power testing on it. But it does work.

Comments

  • RA_WILL_KILLRA_WILL_KILL New
    edited August 2005
    www.osx86project.org
  • NorthstarNorthstar
    edited August 2005
    That's very cool Kryyst, althought I thought I read something somewhere (I wish I could remember) that Jobs said about running OSX on Windows-based hardware. Something like, it wouldn't be possible. Well, I'm glad to see he's been proved wrong, although this is not the final version, and hacked to boot like you've mentioned.

    I know a lot of Mac hardware owners are very excited about the Intel switch, and the possiblity of thowing Windows on their Macs so they can play some of the games they've missed out on over the years, and I suppose other Windows only based apps like 3DSMax.

    We'll see what happens.
  • Nive11enNive11en Europe
    edited August 2005
    Very interesting.

    Although Microsoft made a brilliant move some time ago, deciding to make DirectX. No other system is compatible with so many games.
  • kryystkryyst Ontario, Canada
    edited August 2005
    The official version when it gets released won't out of the box run on a standard off the shelf PC. However spec wise the new macs are basically going to just be PC's with basically a security chip the OS will look for. So there is a very good chance they'll hack the OS and you'll be able to install it on a regular PC. The good news though is that it's still looking like you will be able to install XP on the new Macs so you can dual boot freely between them.

    Direct X is good for M$ bad for game design in general. OpenGL is a far better architecture because it's platform independant. Directx does allow games to be made faster because of the compiled libraries. But for any company that is doing cross platform design it's useless.
  • verselloversello New
    edited August 2005
    Yep, read about OSX working on the x86 platform.

    I've also been buying stocks in Apple since they announced the switch. :p
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