G5 Hackintosh - Bobby's Build

[BobbyNewportPandR]

Hey guys, so this has been done to death... there are G5 mods all over the various mac forums- but time for one more!

So having decided last week to build my own budget pc (max about £200, only so I could finally play all the windows games I love without my MBP gasping for air..) and I saw a G5 case going for £15- if only the rest were history.. It was only after I'd bought it that I decided to take a look at what lay ahead, and I wasn't exactly prepared for the sheer amount of work ahead- but I'm not one to back away from a challenge!

I'm really only just at the starting point of this project, with most of my crucial parts still to come. I've decided rather than forking out for the (albeit fantastically-made and very presentable) quite expensive laserhive option, to do as much of the work as I can myself- although I did order one of BlackCH's cables. I'm trying to change the look of the case as little as possible, so no cutting of the mac case itself. Instead, my plan is to take apart the dummy case I've ordered, affix it to the mac case (I'll figure out how when the dummy gets here) and have cable extensions running from the motherboard to the relevant I/O port holes on the back of the G5. I only really need the 2 USB ports, audio out and the RJ45 connection working so that's likely all I will do. So, here's the beauty right now:







Also, as the pictures demonstrate, the G5 case would make a perfect 15" MBP stand. I don't know if anyone's done this, bit of a waste of a G5 case, but it does look pretty cool.



Finally, before I sign off on this project for the evening, the individual parts that I've ordered for this project:

Powermac G5 case
500w PSU
Arctic cooling Alpine 11 fan
WD Caviar 500GB 7200 RPM
4x2GB 1066 OCZ DDR2 RAM
Core 2 Quad Q6600 CPU
GTX650Ti 2GB GPU
Asus P5K-VM Mobo
DVD rewriter
60GB SSD

JB Weld
Velcro
Risers
Corsair case fans
RJ45 & power cable extensions
Stereo Jack, DB9 & USB extensions
AVP M88 Case (dummy)
HDD cooler fan
BlackCH's cable mod
SSD to HDD mount

The final aim is a machine booting to a 4-partition SSD
1. 22GB for Vista 64 bit
2. 18GB for Mac OSX Yosemite
3. 10GB for Linux
4. remaining ~ 10Gb for frequently used apps (browser, MS office etc.)

With the secondary device operating using 4 partitions too:
1. 70GB HFS+ Mac storage
2. 100GB FAT32 Mac/Windows/Linux shared storage
3. 310GB NTFS Mostly Windows, but with the help of a few tweaks Mac and Linux can write to NTFS
4. 20GB FAT32 Linux Don't know what else to format this partition for Linux, but I may run into the 4GB size limit issue...


Well that's me done for the day- hopefully a few more parts come tomorrow so I can get a bit more done!

 

[akhilv1]

The final aim is a machine booting to a 4-partition SSD
1. 22GB for Vista 64 bit
2. 18GB for Mac OSX Yosemite
3. 10GB for Linux
4. remaining ~ 10Gb for frequently used apps (browser, MS office etc.)

With the secondary device operating using 4 partitions too:
1. 70GB HFS+ Mac storage
2. 100GB FAT32 Mac/Windows/Linux shared storage
3. 310GB NTFS Mostly Windows, but with the help of a few tweaks Mac and Linux can write to NTFS
4. 20GB FAT32 Linux Don't know what else to format this partition for Linux, but I may run into the 4GB size limit issue...

All that partitioning is not going to be fun, also the that's not going to be enough to hold all the OSs on the ssd, trust me, you don't want to dual boot with a single OS drive, especially for OS X.

 

[stiligFox]

All that partitioning is not going to be fun, also the that's not going to be enough to hold all the OSs on the sad, trust me, you don't want to dual boot with a single OS drive, especially for OS X.

Going to agree with this! For each OS I wouldn't recommend anything less than 40GB for each one, more if you are going to store anything more on them. Id also seriously consider not using Vista - 7 is much more stable and less resource intensive, and can be had fairly cheaply! Also keep in mind that if you have windows 7 you'll get to upgrade to 10 for free.

 

[BobbyNewportPandR]

Wish I'd known that already- went for Vista as I got a good deal on an OEM disk. Tri-booting looks possible, so long as I don't use Boot Camp (there are some really good instructions around detailing how to do it, including resolving all the issues with MBR/GPT and Chameleon) - but is 40GB for the OS really necessary? It looks as though Vista takes 20 during installation and 15 once installed, and I can't find much on yosemite other than it taking about 8GB... Maybe I'll consider two 30GB partitions for Yosemite and Vista, and installing Linux on a small partition on the HDD.

*Risers and velcro arrived today... was hoping for something a bit more exciting... I have, however, ordered W7 Ultimate 64 bit, perhaps I can sell on my Vista disk...

 

[Schmov17]

While tri-booting a single drive is possible it's...messy, at best. Especially with a Hackintosh thrown in the mix. I've played around with it before and it takes a lot, lot, lot of tinkering with to get it working right. And then one of the OS's gets a major update and will inevitably break something on one of the other OS's.

And while Vista only has a ~20GB footprint for the OS, that's how much just the OS takes up. If you're going to be installing programs on it and, generally, using the OS, it's going to need some extra HDD space for breathing room. Update installation files, misc OS/application/user caches, winsxs...all that accumulates disk space quick. I personally wouldn't go any smaller than the full 60 for a Windows OS that you're going to be using on a regular basis. Maybe as low as 40 for OSX.

 

[BobbyNewportPandR]

I personally wouldn't go any smaller than the full 60 for a Windows OS that you're going to be using on a regular basis. Maybe as low as 40 for OSX.

Woah, that's crazy! I mean you can boot Linux from a USB, right? Surely that can only take a few gig then? Shame, anyway.. I would have gone for a bigger drive had I known, just that looking on the recommendations pages for each OS it came up with 15 GB for Vista (now getting Win7 64 bit Ultimate, so 20Gb... Maybe 30GB for that partition?) I've read that for a clean install of Yosemite 40GB is recommended... For that could I just install it on a partition on my HDD, and copy it over somehow to my SSD? For Ubuntu, I'm seeing system requirements of 5GB for a fresh install, but now I may consider putting it on my HDD if it's going to be so much hassle. I can deal with that when I come to it though.

Edit*

What I've been reading:

Triple booting with OS X, Win 7, & Ubuntu-
http://lifehacker.com/5698205/how-to-triple-boot-your-hackintosh-with-windows-and-linux

Copying a boot drive to SSD-
http://www.lifehacker.co.uk/2014/06/02/migrate-solid-state-drive-without-reinstalling-windows

I'm thinking if I install OS X on my SSD first, before I partition the drive, I can see how much space it needs, partition the drive appropriately and decide what OS needs to go where. Noting, that programs etc. are fine on my HDD if there is limited space for the OS'.

 

[BobbyNewportPandR]

As for today's progress...



Not the best quality pictures I know.. But I'm affixing the fans with appropriate (and very small) bolt and nut sets. I need longer ones, and for aesthetic reasons I'd rather ones that have the hexagonal heads on them, so I'll see if I can find those somewhere. More fans coming along with the board and cables for the front sockets. I've also got the risers set up on my motherboard ready for assembly when the dummy case comes

 

[stiligFox]

The thing to keep in mind is that while OS's can boot from USB drives, it's hardly idle and due to the low space is suited for emergency booting or for booting from a PC on the go. Each OS will grow and the first time you'd do an OS update you'd see the lack of space immediately. OS X will even warn you once you have less than 10GB of space left over - it needs at least that much to provide a safe buffer for caches, the RAM swap disk, etc.

 

[rehpotsirhc]

Wish I'd known that already- went for Vista as I got a good deal on an OEM disk...

If you got a disc that came with an OEM PC then it's not going to come with a license. You pretty much paid for just the installer media, not a serial number. You might want to check out the windows 10 technical preview for now.

 

[BobbyNewportPandR]

If you got a disc that came with an OEM PC then it's not going to come with a license. You pretty much paid for just the installer media, not a serial number. You might want to check out the windows 10 technical preview for now.

It's ok, I'm not quite that inexperienced. I have the (unused) COA, and it was unopened on arrival. *Edit: OEM disks as sold by themselves do always come with the serial number, but come with no support whatsoever from Microsoft. But if you were to buy an OEM disk as was provided with a PC, you're correct the serial number wouldn't be usable or transferrable.

My order for Win7 was cancelled yesterday, apparently an issue with their supplier. I'm thinking of just buying an unused COA (there are plenty of legal channels to do so) and downloading the OS myself, creating an installation boot USB. Less waiting, too.

The thing to keep in mind is that while OS's can boot from USB drives, it's hardly idle and due to the low space is suited for emergency booting or for booting from a PC on the go. Each OS will grow and the first time you'd do an OS update you'd see the lack of space immediately. OS X will even warn you once you have less than 10GB of space left over - it needs at least that much to provide a safe buffer for caches, the RAM swap disk, etc.

Hmm, I see what you mean. Well I'll start with Yosemite probably, see if I can get that working first of all and if that's problematic I'll just get Win7 installed and see what I can do with the space left etc.