Casting for the Hackintosh
Hey cats and kittens,
I have a buddy in LA that wants to build a hackintosh within the next few months. I'd like to help him very much (because it'd be very fun to do), and of course I think it'd be fun to document the build here.
Here's the deal:
He predominantly wants to use it for FinalCut Pro with big sexy 1080 HD footage. That means she's gotta be big, and bad, and have a beefy video card.
Now, me hearties, I don't know jack about workstation cards. I've only built gaming rigs. What sort of video card would you recommend for this sort of thing?
Also, from old Hackintosh threads on other sites (I know, I'm a whore), I know macs get real cranky with different types of hardware. Do you guys have any thoughts on this? Anybody tried it yet?
Finally, if anybody's got any hookups they could offer a couple of guys who would be willing to exchange a writeup or something like that for (or even just a check, if the price is right!)... let me know!
I have a buddy in LA that wants to build a hackintosh within the next few months. I'd like to help him very much (because it'd be very fun to do), and of course I think it'd be fun to document the build here.
Here's the deal:
He predominantly wants to use it for FinalCut Pro with big sexy 1080 HD footage. That means she's gotta be big, and bad, and have a beefy video card.
Now, me hearties, I don't know jack about workstation cards. I've only built gaming rigs. What sort of video card would you recommend for this sort of thing?
Also, from old Hackintosh threads on other sites (I know, I'm a whore), I know macs get real cranky with different types of hardware. Do you guys have any thoughts on this? Anybody tried it yet?
Finally, if anybody's got any hookups they could offer a couple of guys who would be willing to exchange a writeup or something like that for (or even just a check, if the price is right!)... let me know!
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Comments
I haven't seen a Mac with a workstation-class GPU recently. The best they've got right now is a Radeon 5870 which should do nicely. That's probably about the best card you'll get working without tons of effort.
Your best bet is probably to stick to the Hackintosh web sites/forums for guidance.
Edit: Your friend could also try a Mac Mini in an Apple Store and see if it's got the guts to do the job. It should be a reasonably capable system.
For the cost just get a mac. The current gen of 27" imac's are awesome and I'm assuming will be getting even more awesomener after the upcoming show.
Here's hoping it is.
Just keep it as similar to apple hardware as possible (xeons or i7's are usually fine) and look up each component you decide on to double check that someone's already incorporated it into a hack build. It's much easier than it was three years ago.
As previously stated, there are no workstation offerings from Apple in the video department. They are very particular about what hardware goes in, and for whatever reason, they haven't granted passage for workstation GPUs.
It's a terrible, terrible decision on their part, with as much "pro" attention that they receive.
You could put a workstation GPU into this rig you're building, but I really cannot guarantee that it would work. Getting the device to play nice could potentially be quite the headache. I am only speculating with this, but knowing the differences between consumer and workstation drivers alone, I can't imagine it being an easy transition.
The video card runs about half the speed that Windows runs it... You can't just load the OSX drivers from nvidia, I end up with boxes instead of a usable desktop. Cuda doesn't work and sound is a black magic hack...
an i7 with a fairly recent FireGL or Quattro might be different...
Like previously stated keep whatever hardware as close to apples as possible or better yet like kryyst said
27" iMac = Awesome.
Quadra 840AV & Radius Thunder IV GX those were the days...
CPU: 400MHz G4-7400 -> 2x 1.3GHz G4-7455 $180 Sonnet Encore Duet used from Ebay.
VGA: 16MB ATI Rage Pro -> 128MB Radeon 9800 Pro $20 (used PC version flash modded to Mac)
HD: 10 GB -> 2x80GB $0 I already had
RAM: 128MB -> 2GB SDRAM $40 used from Ebay
PSU: Antec 500W $0 after the upgrades 237W original PSU was insuffficient since the computer started drawing 200W on the wall. I modified an ATX PSU I already had for Powermac pinout.
DVDROM -> DVD-RW $0 already had.
OS: Mac OS 9 -> Mac OS X.5.8 This is the last version that supports PPC. I do not see much difference most of the time with 10.6.4 on my wife's Macbook.
The computer is now running my everyday tasks smoothly. It is even able to play 720P movies with VLC player and some old games like Halo. I think I can use it several more years until when the latest software are not available for 10.5 anymore. The disadvantage is that it is slow for some tasks such as video processing (compared to my other PCs) and some software is not available for PPC such as Chrome, Picasa, Firefox 4. But there are other good alternatives. I had a lot of fun during this project. You can also find a Powermac G4 MDD or Powermac G5 (compared to my first generation Powermac) on Ebay for less than $200 while you have a PC on the other side with Windows
Based on Geekbench results, this Powermac is 6x slower than my other PCs but I do not feel it most of the time since MacOS X is so much more nimble than Windows.
I did not document, since maybe I am the last person doing all these.
The first thing I had to do was to update the firmware on Mac for dual processor. It was available on Apple's website but required Mac OS 9. Luckily, it was installed on the original harddisk. Then, I learned that not all of the Powermacs were supporting dual processor. The Powermac G4 AGP Graphics requires a motherboard with Uni-North ASIC revision higher than or equal to 7. I found the utility at the following link to check the ASIC revision.
http://www.newertech.com/downloads/UniNorthASICChecker.sit
RAM:
Next, I ordered PC100 (PC133 is OK) SDRAM. The DIMMs need to be lower density and 512MB max.
Harddisk:
After that, I have replaced the 10GB disk with two 80GB IDE disks and installed Mac OS X.4.11 temporarily until the processor is upgraded since x.5 requires 733 MHz minimum. There is a way around this limitation, actually.
Graphics card:
I had ordered a 128 MB Radeon 9800 Pro to upgrade the extremely weak Rage 128 Pro. After the Radeon arrived, I flashed it with Mac BIOS on the Mac via remote VNC connection since I did not have an AGP PC or PCI graphics card. Here are the links for required files and information.
http://themacelite.wikidot.com/start
http://thomas.perrier.name/graphiccelerator.html
CPU:
After searching high and low for a CPU replacement, I settled on a dual 1.3GHz processor upgrade made by Sonnet. Its installation was very easy. I just had to download a utility from Sonnet's website to prepare the firmware for this processor. The installation instructions are there as well but I did not need them. After the CPU upgrade, I have also installed OS X.5.
USB 2.0 and front panel USB and audio ports:
After all these upgrades, I felt one very important missing capability, USB 2.0 and front panel USB ports. I had a very old PCI USB 2.0 card (ALI chipset!) that had never worked reliably on any of my PCs. I tested it on the Mac and to my great surprise it worked flawless at full speed without any driver requirements. I have backed up the complete system on a USB hard drive and it did not fail. For the front USB ports, I have removed the unnecessary ZIP drive and installed a self-powered internal USB hub that I bought for just $8. I had to do some dremel work to enlarge the plastic faceplate of the ZIP drive for the USB ports. Next, I wanted to have front audio ports and I bought this USB audio adapter which also worked without any drivers.
PSU:
I noticed that PSU was heating more than I have seen with my other computers. I checked the power draw with a kill-a-watt device and saw that 200W power draw was too close to the maximum 237W rating of the original PSU. For replacement I used a standard ATX PSU after modifying the pinout of 20-pin power connector using the information at the following link.
http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/systems/ATX_G4_AGP_conversion/G4_AGP_to_ATX_case_pg2.htm#next
I added a couple of pictures below you can let me know if you have any specific questions.
This 'flashing the graphics card' thing is something I've somehow missed in all the little hackintosh run-throughs I've checked out. I gotta read closer.
I'd love to build a hackintosh someday. Love OSX
Ars