For those running a Hackintosh (a PC built to unofficially run Mac OS X) who haven’t upgraded to or installed Mac OS X Lion yet, your excuses to delay the 10.7 update are dwindling. The newly released Unibeast tool from the ever-resourceful TonyMacX86 makes the entire process easier than ever. The requirements for using Unibeast are simple:

• 8GB+ USB drive
• Mac OS X Lion Installer (download from the App Store) or an OS X Lion USB drive – Tip: from a Mac running 10.7 Lion, you can re-download OS X Lion from the App Store without having to buy it again by simply holding down the option key when clicking on the “Purchases” tab.
• Compatible Hackintosh PC hardware build

Follow the full Unibeast installation guide on TonyMacX86

The walkthrough covers setup of the installer drive to BIOS adjustments and post-install fixes with MultiBeast to enable ethernet, sound, GPU, everything. If you’ve made an OS X Lion USB installer drive before you can use that for the drive requirement and you’ll find some of the walkthrough familiar, but even without any such experience it’s easy to follow.

Remember the Hackintosh? Mostly consisting of modified netbooks running Mac OS X, the movement became fairly popular until Apple stepped in with the iPad and then MacBook Air to effectively redirect everyones attention back to official Apple hardware. But the hackintosh community isn’t dead – far from it – in fact you can still build a really powerful hackintosh for just about $600. If you want to build your own unofficial Mac, here’s what you’ll get:

$600 Hackintosh Build Hardware Specs

• Core i3 3.06GHz
• 4GB RAM
• 1TB 7200 RPM hard drive
• nVidia GeForce GT240 with 512MB VRAM
• DVD burner

Not a bad machine at all, especially when you consider the current Mac Mini costs $699 and is stuck on a boring old Core 2 Duo CPU with 2GB of RAM and a 320GB drive.

Lifehacker borrowed the infamous TonyMacX86 walkthroughs and updated it slightly into a single page of easy to follow instructions, they even included a video (embedded below) showing exactly what to do in the BIOS which makes it even simpler.

Oddly enough the guide was published just weeks before Mac OS X Lion arrives, so you’ll probably have to tweak a few things in the near future if you want to run Lion on the machine. Nonetheless, TonyMacX86 is usually on top of all this stuff pretty quick, so you can almost certainly bet that Lion will run on the machines.

If you’re going to be building a PC in the near future anyway, why not build one that is Hackintosh compatible? Add it onto your list of geeky Apple things to do this next weekend.

Check out LifeHacker’s easy to follow guide and make one yourself
Read more »

A friend of mine just got a free HP Mini 1000 from his job and was bored stiff with Windows XP, he couldn’t really think of a use for the netbook so I suggested installing Mac OS X on it. The little machine is an excellent candidate for a hackintosh, and the setup is just a matter of patience and following some good instructions like the one at MyMacNetbook: Guide to Snow Leopard on a HP Mini 1000. A few hours later and he’s running Snow Leopard on a tiny Hackintosh Netbook!

Did you know that with DolphinProjects, you can run Mac OS X Leopard on a Sony PSP? Me neither, I think I’ll stick with my hackintosh. Anyway, this might not be the most useful hack in the world, but it is pretty cool. Here are some screen shots, as you can see it is remarkably squished with the PSP’s screen resolution of 480×272, but somehow the DolphinProjects folks managed to make it work (sort of).

[ screenshots via QJ Forums ]

All good things must come to an end, and the favored Hackintosh netbook, the Mini 10v, has been discontinued. TUAW reports that they spoke with a Dell representative who told them the Dell Mini 10v reached the end of its product life and a replacement model will be out soon.

The Dell Mini 10v has long been a favorite in the Hackintosh community for it’s ease of installation, full compatibility, solid performance, and it’s vaguely MacBook Pro-ish appearance.

So the Hackintosh communities question is, will the new model be as Hackintosh friendly? Let’s hope so.

If you have a Hackintosh desktop or Netbook, you may want to do a bit of research before jumping into the Mac OS X 10.6.3 system update. Users around the web are reporting everything from easy success to catastrophic failure, which isn’t too surprising considering the hardware diversity of Hackintosh systems.

Simplest advice: Follow the path of someone who has done the update on a machine that is either identical or closely mimics your own build. For anyone that uses sleep, if you want to minimize the likelihood of troubles when updating to 10.6.3 it’s a good idea to move the old SleepEnabler.kext since it will almost certainly cause a kernel panic on reboot when it butts heads with the new kernel.

It is absolutely essential that you backup your existing Hackintosh Mac OS X 10.6.2 install before attempting to 10.6.3 update!

Resources for updating your Hackintosh to 10.6.3:

Prasys: Straight Forward 10.6.3 Upgrade Guide – a nice and easy to follow step-by-step walkthrough with screenshots on updating to 10.6.3

TonyMacX86: Mac OS X 10.6.3 update – Great general advice and information on the 10.6.3 update, what has been problematic, what works, and more importantly: SOLUTIONS to known problems. Highly recommended resource.

Google Spreadsheet: 10.6.3 update and hardware – this is a great spreadsheet maintained by TonyMacX86 that shows hardware and known problems. Definitely worth a look.

LifeHacker: Update a charm to 10.6.3 – for Desktop Hackintosh users who followed the LifeHacker guide in particular. Not particularly informative other than a ‘it worked for me!’ so a strong YMMV, read the comments for a slew of user problems (and successes too).

TonyMacX86 Forums – if you’re banging your head into the wall to figure out what went wrong on your desktop Hackintosh update, this is a great forum to check out.

InsanelyMac Forums – another good resource for questions and answers to various Hackintosh install problems, less personal than TonyMacX86 though.

MyDellMini: Official Mac OS X 10.6.3 update thread for Dell Mini 9 and Dell Mini 10v – if you have a Dell Mini, go to the experts. An excellent guide on updating your Mini to 10.6.3, don’t miss it.

NetKas: Advice on updating to 10.6.3 with ATI cards

Meklort – a leader in the Hackintosh world, most relevant to Netbook users.

If you happened to have followed the LifeHacker guide to build a Hackintosh Desktop you may have the easiest update as a desktop user, although some users in their comments are reporting update troubles with identical systems. Various Hackintosh Netbook reports vary widely, but the Dell Mini 9 and 10v is fairing well thanks to the folks at MyDellMini forums.

If you’re a bit squeamish or don’t want a hassle, waiting a few weeks to update to 10.6.3 may well work in your favor as the Hackintosh community continues to refine and update their techniques.

Here’s a unique Mac setup, a Hackintosh Dell Mini 10v hooked up to a 42″ LCD flat screen, and the same Mini with an external 22″ Dell display doing iPhone development! Ok ok, so it’s not really a Mac setup, but it’s running Mac OS X and it’s also our favorite Hackintosh netbook, so I had to include it.

If you want to get a Dell Mini 10v running Mac OS X yourself (How does about $215 for a Mac sound?) check out our guide to getting a cheap Hackintosh Mini. Don’t expect it to replace your main Mac in terms of power, but they make pretty great road warriors for writing, blogging, email, etc.

[ via Flickr ]

Mac OS X 10.6.2 has been released, for most Mac users this is great news because it fixes over 40 problems and bugs, including the rare but very problematic user account deletion bug. If you have an official Apple Mac then go right ahead and update to Mac OS X 10.6.2, but if you have a Hackintosh Mac Netbook… well you will want to hold off. It has been confirmed that the final release of 10.6.2 kills Intel Atom support officially. Hackintosh Guru StellaRolla reports:

The netbook forums are now blowing up with problems of 10.6.2 instant rebooting their Atom based netbooks.

A quick glance at the Hackintosh forums on MyDellMini.com confirms this:

So, I can tell you 10.6.2 DOES NOT WORK with the Mini10v.

OSX tries to start, but it hangs before you can see the apple and system ist trying to boot again … you are in a loop…

StellaRola goes on to note that the OSx86 community is pretty crafty and a modded kernel will likely surface in the near future. In any event, if you have a Hackintosh, hold off on the official 10.6.2 until more information is available.

You can read more about the Mac OS X 10.6.2 Update from Apple.com

[ Sources: Gizmodo: 10.6.2 bug fixes and StellaRola: Official: Atom Not Supported in 10.6.2 and MyDellMini.com Forums ]

Not to sound like a flip-flopping broken record or anything, but it is now confirmed that the latest 10.6.2 build 10C540 does not support the Intel Atom chip, the processor that is so common in Hackintosh Netbooks. Popular Hackintosher StellaRola has confirmed this with his sources, and he even includes a video of a MSI Wind U100 trying to boot 10.6.2 but it is stuck in a continuous reboot (shown below). With how fast things are changing (supported, unsupported), it’s a mystery as to whether the final release will include support for the Atom chip, but as we said before, if you’re a Hackintosh user you should probably avoid the update until it has been confirmed one way or another.

StellaRolla via 10.6.2 kills support for Atom processor

It’s baaaaaack! Like a relentless zombie in a bad horror flick that just can’t be killed, the Intel Atom chip is now supported again in the latest developer build of 10.6.2, 10C53. This doesn’t mean much since it’s just a developer build, but for now Hackintosh Netbook users can feel a bit better about their uncertain future. StellaRolla reports:

…the latest development build Atom appears to have resurrected itself zombie style in 10C535. The Atom lives another day, but nothing is concrete until the final version of 10.6.2 is out.

So that’s all fine and dandy, but will the Atom truly survive? Time will tell.

Thank you to OS X Daily reader Tony for notifying us of this change!

[ StellaRolla via ArsTechnica ]