The DIY rack cabinet (v.2) has finally been moved into its home. Permission was granted for space next to the fridge and it fits perfectly! Its amazing how quiet the bedroom is now!
If you want to make a 19″ rackmount cabinet, all you need are IKEA ‘Lack’ tables, optionally some casters and you have a very cheap and expandable system!
This is a quick write up on my Hackintosh experiences. [SUCCESS]
My computing choices and views have started to change recently. Since having the Macbook pro, I’ve become increasingly dis-satisfied with my Windows & Linux desktop operating systems. (Don’t get me wrong, Debian still is my main server choice!)
I was fed up with slowness, poor hardware support & broken updates. What I needed was desktop OS that is tested with specific hardware to make sure that everything is compatible, fast and works with minimum fuss.
Apple computers fit that bracket, but they have one major downfall – the cost! I simply cannot afford an Apple system (preferably an Apple Pro – they start at £2041 without a monitor!!)
There is another option to gain an Apple system for lower cost – a Hackintosh. This is the method of installing Apples operating system on standard PC hardware.
I chose to go the hackintosh route, to see if my hardware would work and I could get OSX (Lion) booted and working.
I followed an excellent guide here to create a bootable USB Lion install disk. In fact that www.tonymacx86.com site has a wealth of resources that any hackintosh fan should digest!
So after a lot of learning I have created an OSX Lion hackintosh system on the following hardware:
The motherboard and chip are not that new, and need to be upgraded, but it works fine.
Things you need to have:
BUY OSX Lion from the App Store (on another MAC) or get the retail USB key.
Tonymac Uniboot USB bootable drive/disk.
Multibeast – Tonymac post install utility.
TIP: It would be really handy for this process if you know what chipsets your hardware has. If you’re a Linux geek, use lspci to get a nice hardware capture.
TIP: As soon as you have a working OSX system, back it up!! (Use Apples built-in Time Machine to another partition or harddisk) You WILL break you system trying to get everything working!
The first working install (There were many more after this! Remember to backup!)
Upgrades coming soon:
i7 chip & board, 16GB RAM 
This is a video of the actual system below:
