So you want to build a hackintosh?

Over the years, I have built several hackintosh PCs, I enjoy the challenge of getting something to work where it isn’t supposed to. When I speak of a challenge though, I do not mean writing drivers for the parts that do not work, I mean going through the countless forums out there and finding which parts are supposed to work and finding the drivers that are already written by more experienced individuals. I then put everything together and hope for the best. When that fails, it is usually time to read and research some more.

There is a huge community of PC users out there that try and in many cases succeed in installing OSX on their Windows laptops and desktops.
My first attempt at this was early in 2008 with the release of Apple OSX Leopard. I used an old Dell computer I had lying around and successfully installed OSX on it: I was thrilled! I had not used an Mac OS since my archaic Apple II c.

My latest attempt was about 2 weeks prior to this post, the system components where powerful enough to make a Mac Pro user jealous at a fraction of the cost. I did it for the challenge but ended up selling the system with Windows 7 installed a week later to a gamer. There are also a couple of laptops and netbooks I installed OSX on, most worked like a charm but the ones that did not had problems like no audio, no WI-FI or no sleep. Enough about me though, here are some resources to get you started on your challenge.

A great resource for Apple news and great forums to help you with installing Mac OSX on your PC. I would recommend creating an account (free) and get started by familiarizing yourself with how the forums are setup.
Before asking any questions, be sure to read read and read some more to know exactly what you are asking for.
InsanelyMac osx86 Forums

An other great website for those wanting to build a hackintosh is tonymacx86; again, start by creating an account (free) and go through the forums to see how the site is setup.
I like tonymacx86 for their Pre-Installation sub-forum, here they have 3 sections: Buying Advice, The Basics and User builds. These where the forums where I spent most of my time before ordering the parts I needed.

I think that with these two websites, even a novice can achieve a good install provided that the components bought are compatible.

Here is a list of terms you will encounter when building your hackitosh:

OSx86: OSx86 or hackintosh,  refers to a PC running OSX on it.

Kext: Kexts, or kernel extensions are drivers that are installed to /System/Library/Extensions/.Kext files often have the “.kext” extension and allow for extra hardware support and and in the case of OSx86, to replace Appleʼs original drivers with ones that are optimized for use on PCs.

Kernel: A kernel is in short terms the “core” of the operating system. It controls basically all low level operating functions. Kernels exist in all Linux and UNIX based systems, including Mac OS X. In Mac OS X the kernel is located in the root of your hard drive (/) and is named “mach_kernel” by default. If you have a vanilla based system (see below) then replacing the kernel is most likely not necessary, however if you have an AMD or SSE3 incapable processor then a patched kernel will likely be required.

DSDT: DSDT is a part of ACPI. Actually DSDT tells OS how to interact with the hardware (simplified way of telling it). OSX has an incomplete ACPI implementation which supports only a subset of DSDT. By replacing DSDT we can declare essentially the same interface but in the way that OSX understands. This potentially can solve nearly any ACPI-related problem (except if OSX bypasses ACPI). Other usage case is emulating by the means of DSDT features or hardware components not present on your system. But this is limited to devices that use ACPI.

DSDT Patch: DSDT is a table found in your computerʼs BIOS that controls ACPI (power, time, etc.) functions. Starting at OS X 10.5.6 Apple decided to start checking for faulty DSDTs when it boots. Obviously the PCs DSDT comes back as faulty so it will not boot. The only way to counteract this is to make a dump of the DSDT in the BIOS and patch it properly for Darwin. First of all, you need a modified bootloader that will support DSDT override.  You also need a patched DSDT file that will be copied to / dsdt.aml. To create DSDT dumps you can use a DSDT Patcher but this is an advanced method, and often UOI plugins will include a DSDT file that you can install easily with this installer. However beware, even if you have the same motherboard DSDTʼs can vary by BIOS version so try to make sure that you have the same BIOS version as what is specified in the plugin.

EFI: EFI is the Extensible Firmware interface found in real macs. EFI is basically the BIOS in a Mac. For a computer to be properly recognized as a Mac and to be compatible, it must have EFI. The problem here is that PCs do not have EFI so developers counteracted this problem by using EFI emulation which enables basic EFI function calls through a specially modified bootloader. EFI distributions for OSx86 include PC_EFI, Chameleon and Chimera. Nearly all OSx86 installs have some form of EFI emulation installed, so this is not necessarily something to worry about. EFI emulation is required to use vanilla ( kernels and kexts, and to use GUID partition maps and EFI strings.

Vanilla: A vanilla compatible system is a computer capable of running OSx86 with minimal modifications (no patched kernel, compatible with Apple software updates). You can have a vanilla capable system if  you have an Intel  based processor.