What hardware do I need to install OS/X?
Byron172
Adelaide, South Australia Member
I have recently been given a copy of Apple Panther OS and need to know what makes a computer Apple/Mac compatible. Do I need a specific mobo or specific processor and if so where is a good place to look. Or can I maybe install on one of my older towers that were running Windows, if I wipe the hard drive clean and format to Mac's filing system? Excuse my ignorance it's my first real look into Mac software and the like.....Cheers.
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Everything else is just an illegal hack. If you're determined to do it, you can (I have), but your old spare hardware won't do it.
And even then, once you get it installed, you can usually not update without botching the install. Right now it is truly something for enthusiast or to just mess around with. It definitely won't cut it for a 'daily driver'
And while it may be against the EULA to my knowledge apple hasn't launched suits against anyone who has done so.
From what I understand that flash drive is only going to be available in certain countries.
Can I build a Mac (without hacking a PC) or do I have to buy one?
Thanks for all the advice......:)
Because Mac OS has no idea how to talk to anything but EFI without significant alterations to the disc's contents (And illegal ones at that), Mac OS doesn't work terribly well on a PC.
If you want a Mac, you must buy a Mac.
Thinks I might go with Ubuntu for the time being as an alternative to Windows and look into OS/X down the track......Cheers.
It'd be nice to be able to have a Windows, an OS/X and a Linux OS all on the same PC so that you could boot into whichever took your fancy at the time but it seems like too much trouble. Thank the computer gods for KVM switches.......:D
Yeah, some would say it's also the same software that makes Vista a copy of a Mac
For the majority of mac ownsers it's not so much about enthusiasts as it is about ease of mind. You buy a mac it works. You buy it and you use it works and just keeps working until the day it dies. It's like buying an appliance.
It sounds cliche but generally speaking when you get a mac you don't have to mess with it and it'll typically last you for years without needing to deal with upgrades or anything else. It's a pure out of the box experience.
You can do that on the new imac's easily. They even have a built in program to install windows into it's own partition. Throw in parallels into that frame as well and it's a great multi-os experience. You can also add linux into it as well, though that is more tricky.
You can do the same on a PC, but you need to do a hackintosh setup and that will work with varried success depending on your hardware.
If Apple's hardware costs were more realistic I'd have a real Mac (probably a Mini or iMac) but until I get a promotion it's a VMWare Mac for me...
I think Kryyst's suggestion of running Windows on a Mac is a great idea, but how hard is it to get Ubuntu or Mandriva running on this type of set up?
First I replaced the base 160gig hdd with a 40gig hdd (I should note that this is not a simple upgrade and it does void your warranty). I also upgraded from 1gig of ram to 3gigs which does make all the difference when you are running vm's.
I should note that I first attached the 400gig hdd externally then used carbon copy to transfer my original osx install to it. Then I didn the harddrive swap.
I used the bootcamp program and it created a 60gig partition on the imac and you follow the promps put in the windows cd when it asks and it installs windows on it. You can then dual boot into the windows partition when you want.
Because the windows partition is 60gig it's got to be NTFS, OSX can read, but not write to ntfs so from osx the partition is viewable but not writable. However there is a third party program that allows you to write to ntfs.
I then installed paralleles and told it to use my windows bootcamp partition and made a windows virtual machine of it. So now from OS X I can run my bootcamp version of windows when i don't need major graphics (bascially non-gaming) or I can reboot into windows if I want to run games, but in either case it's the same version of windows installed on that 60 gig partition.
I then created a linux virtual machine in os x. I could have split up that 60 gig partition and installed a linux partition into it so it'd tripple boot at the startup, but I don't see a need. The only need to boot into windows is for full direct x parallels only supports up to DX 8. Linux doesn't use direct x so there are no graphic limitations when it's running as a virtual machine.
Also the 3 gigs of ram is key. With 3 gigs of ram the host OS (os x) and any virtual machine I'm running all run happily together. With less then 3 gigs of ram you notice some lag, which may be annoying.
On other option is to use an external drive and just put your other OS's on it and boot to the external drive. Imac's play very well with external boot devices and are happy to boot off them without any problems. But if you are doing anything intensive you probably want to have it mounted through the firewire connector and not usb2.