How to upgrade from Snow Leopard on GA-EP45-UD3P?

[Edvins]

Hi -

I'm seeking some help as I have been happily using my hackintosh, but I've been out of the Hackintosh building game for a while. I built the infamous Adam Pash Lifehacker Snow Leopard on GA-EP45-UD3P system based on this guide:

http://lifehacker.com/5360150/install-snow-leopard-on-your-hackintosh-pc-no-hacking-required

It has served me well, however I think it is time to update to a more current version of OS X. I've done a fair amount of reading, but am a bit confused. It seems like this system is buil using the Chameleon bootloader. It also seems that Clover is very popular today.

I've tried as a first step to download the current version of clover and make a bootable USB flash drive to see if I can switch bootloaders as a first step, but I am failing to boot from the Clover USB.

I ultimately want to upgrade this GA-EP45-UD3P system to the most current that I can - Sierra, if possible. I am not sure of the best way to do that is. I have read that some people do a clean install and migrate the User, which I understand includes the data as well, but I am not sure.

Any guidance to get me re-started would be much appreciated!

Thanks!

Ed

 

[Going Bald]

The first thing you will run into is that you cannot download any version later than Lion. You have to purchase, download and install Lion first - after that the upgrade downloads are free, but only for the latest version unless you have downloaded it before and the record is in your app store software purchased list.
Then you run into the problem with the change in the location and renaming of mach-kernel to kernel.
Then you run into the problem that with a Mac Pro 3 system definition you cannot download Sierra and maybe El Capitan (cannot remember where the break point is). You could probably get to Mavericks on your hardware, but Apple will not let you download anything but Sierra for free right now if it is not in your app store purchased list.
Suggest new hardware if you want the latest version of Mac OS.
Change the system definition of your SL installation to iMac 14,2 and try if you can download Sierra.

 

[Edvins]

The first thing you will run into is that you cannot download any version later than Lion. You have to purchase, download and install Lion first - after that the upgrade downloads are free, but only for the latest version unless you have downloaded it before and the record is in your app store software purchased list.
Then you run into the problem with the change in the location and renaming of mach-kernel to kernel.
Then you run into the problem that with a Mac Pro 3 system definition you cannot download Sierra and maybe El Capitan (cannot remember where the break point is). You could probably get to Mavericks on your hardware, but Apple will not let you download anything but Sierra for free right now if it is not in your app store purchased list.
Suggest new hardware if you want the latest version of Mac OS.
Change the system definition of your SL installation to iMac 14,2 and try if you can download Sierra.

Thanks a ton for your response Going Bald! It sounds like I am ahead of you in the hair loss category, but you are by far ahead of me on the hackintosh knowledge space! I appreciate the time you took to write that detailed response. Sound like a lot of "Problems." I would like to delay the purchase of new hardware (Two kids in college!) so I think I will clone my drive and see if I can either get a hold of Lion, or change the SL installation to 14,2 and try to download Sierra.

I believe that this Lifehacker build was based on Chameleon. I've tried to boot off of USB/Clover, but have not been successful. Is there some trick to it? Since this is an older build, do I need an older version of Clover? (The version of Clover that I tired was the latest one on Sourceforge at this time.

thanks again!

Ed