How does the installation process work in this situation?

[diablo9333]

Sorry if this is in the wrong section. Im new to this forum and I am looking to build a Hackintosh. If there is a more suitable section and a moderator happens to be viewing this, feel free to move it. Thanks.

Anyways I currently have a white 2010 Macbook. It is getting really old, it is running as if it is really old, and Apple officially discontinued it with the release of Mountain Lion. With all that in mind I want to make a Hackintosh. I am looking at various videos and such but I am more concerned about the software portion. Since the idea of Hackintosh has been around for a while now, it is 2012 and people have made it easier and easier to make one, mainly because of this community. The installation seems pretty easy to me except for a few small details.

I was watching a few videos on Youtube of people going through the install process and one of them showed the person updating their motherboard to F5. I heard that this can be dangerous and mess up your system. I also looked at a video by Cpukid00 on Youtube and he doesn't update his motherboard(he probably already did it since he ran a Hackintosh before). I was wondering, is this necessary or could I leave it as the default version?

The second question is the actual install of the OS. Since I have a Macbook could I just clone my Macbook hard drive with a Lion install and then just use that and skip most of the process? I heard from a few videos that iBoot is only compatible with 10.6. Would I even need it since I already have Mac OS X installed on my hard drive(which would then be cloned to a larger hard drive)?

Also if anyone else could provide any helpful information for Hackintosh that would be nice as well.

Thanks,

Jake.

 

[neilhart]

Your first question is about reflashing the BIOS and is it necessary. The answer is that for most cases you do not need to flash the BIOS. For experienced 'hackers' the process may be common place and I have upgraded (reflashed) the BIOS on hundreds of machines at my place of employment and have never lost a machine because of it.

Your second question is about installing the OS X from a Mac by cloning. This is possible but usually not recommended. Once you have a cloned hard drive you need to prep it for booting on a non-mac motherboard. You need to install a boot loader, the /Extra sub-directory that is read by the boot loader, and the minimum set of kexts. The software tools and guides available here on this forum make your propability of success very high if you follow the recommend process. The answer to your question is yes it can be done but if you are inexperienced with the 'art' of hackintoshing you are bound to have a less then enjoyable experience.

neil

 

[diablo9333]

Your first question is about reflashing the BIOS and is it necessary. The answer is that for most cases you do not need to flash the BIOS. For experienced 'hackers' the process may be common place and I have upgraded (reflashed) the BIOS on hundreds of machines at my place of employment and have never lost a machine because of it.

Your second question is about installing the OS X from a Mac by cloning. This is possible but usually not recommended. Once you have a cloned hard drive you need to prep it for booting on a non-mac motherboard. You need to install a boot loader, the /Extra sub-directory that is read by the boot loader, and the minimum set of kexts. The software tools and guides available here on this forum make your propability of success very high if you follow the recommend process. The answer to your question is yes it can be done but if you are inexperienced with the 'art' of hackintoshing you are bound to have a less then enjoyable experience.

neil

Thank you for the response. I have watched many videos on Youtube now of people going through the process and to me it seems pretty easy, however how easy would you say it is for someone inexperienced with making Hackintoshes? An employee at Tiger Direct informed me that to him Hackintoshes are unreliable and not worth the time spent, would you say that this is true?