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My second hackintosh build.
This build uses the same motherboard as my first hackintosh, a Gigabyte GA-Z68X-UD3H-B3. That's largely because I bought a spare unboxed version for $59.
I intend to give this one to a family member when it's completed. I have not purchased all of the parts yet, but the machine is up and running.
Below is the list of hardware I have purchased.hackintosh 2 hardware
Software by Date
August 30, 2012
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Part Description P/N Qty. Unit Price Total Microsoft Office 2011 Office 2011 for Mac Office 2011 for Mac 1 $9.95 $9.95 Total $9.95
August 5, 2012
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Part Description P/N Qty. Unit Price Total Numbers Spreadsheets Numbers 1 $19.99 $19.99 Keynote Presentations Keynote 1 $19.99 $19.99 Aperture Photos Aperture 1 $79.99 $79.99 Total $119.97
July 26, 2012
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Part Description P/N Qty. Unit Price Total HyperDock window management bindings, window previews from Dock, etc. HyperDock 1 $9.95 $9.95 Total $9.95
Totals by Date
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Date Total Aug 30, 2012 $9.95 Aug 5, 2012 $119.97 Jul 26, 2012 $9.95 Total $139.87
Wish List by Category
hardware wishlist
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Part Description P/N Qty. Unit Price Total card reader AFT PRO-55U All-in-one USB 2.0 Card Reader PRO-55U 1 $51.99 $51.99 CPU cooler fan Noctua NF-F12 PWM cooling fan NF-F12 PWM 1 $19.49 $19.49 horizontal case fans Noctua NF-A14 FLX cooling fan NF-A14 FLX 2 $22.95 $45.90 vertical case fans Cougar CF-V14HB cooling fan CF-V14HB 4 $16.99 $67.96 mouse Microsoft L2 Sculpt Touch Mouse 6PL-00003 1 $39.99 $39.99 Total $225.33
Totals by Category
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Category Total hardware wishlist $225.33 Total $225.33
Pictures
Manuals
BIOS
Diary
- February 16, 2013
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I got the FL1009-based USB 3.0 card working in my hackintosh. I believe
the issue with mom's hackintosh was that I forgot to remove the PXHCD
and/or CalDigit kexts. I should be able to get it working on her
machine without trouble.
I ordered Sanyo eneloop AA batteries with a 4-location charger so mom can start using them for her Magic Trackpad.
I also ordered a Satechi Premium 4-port Aluminum USB 2.0 hub for her, with a 3-meter extension cable. The extension cable will let her plug it into the back of the machine if she doesn't want to plug it into her Apple keyboard. The advantage of this hub over others is purely cosmetic: it matches her Apple keyboard and trackpad. The disadvantage is that it's bus-powered, so it can't be effectively used for anything that draws a lot of current. It should be fine for thumb drives and the like.
-
I got the FL1009-based USB 3.0 card working in my hackintosh. I believe
the issue with mom's hackintosh was that I forgot to remove the PXHCD
and/or CalDigit kexts. I should be able to get it working on her
machine without trouble.
- February 13, 2013
-
I installed the TP-LINK TL-WDN4800, at mom's place. It appears to work
fine. She's now up and running.
The FL1009-based USB 3.0 card caused the machine to not finish booting. Got to the gray screen, then it hung. Might have been due to not having the molex plug powered. I didn't power it because it's going to take a little work to make the cabling tidy. I left it out for now, I'll get one working in my machine and then duplicate the work on mom's machine.
Mom's Mac Mini was running OS X 10.4. There's a long list of things I need to show her. I don't expect her to remember everything from a crash course, but she'll likely remember a faint inkling of their existence and be able to find and use them herself once she knows they exist. It's not like there isn't a lot of helpful information online, and she can always call me for help.
-
I installed the TP-LINK TL-WDN4800, at mom's place. It appears to work
fine. She's now up and running.
- February 10, 2013
-
I put the second coat of polyurethane on the rolling platform. I also
picked up the casters and wood screws from Lowe's. After the second coat
dried to the touch, I installed the casters and applied the third coat
of polyurethane on the top. I don't intend to put a third coat on the
bottom.
For some reason I thought mom had a wired ethernet connection to her Verizon internet connection. She doesn't; she's using wireless because she had her LTE modem placed in one bedroom but moved her computer to a different bedroom. So she needs a wireless card for the hackintosh. I ordered a TP-LINK TL-WDN4800 since it supposedly works out of the box. If that turns out to not be true, I will likely just run some wired ethernet for her with drops from the attic and wallplates.
I also ordered some Fresco Logic FL1009-200 USB 3.0 PCI Express cards. These supposedly work out of the box with Mountain Lion. While they're slower than some other cards, they're still much faster than a typical USB 2.0 port.
-
I put the second coat of polyurethane on the rolling platform. I also
picked up the casters and wood screws from Lowe's. After the second coat
dried to the touch, I installed the casters and applied the third coat
of polyurethane on the top. I don't intend to put a third coat on the
bottom.
- February 8, 2013
- Tonight I started building the rolling platform for this machine. It's almost exactly the same as the one I built for my first hackintosh build. The ony difference is that it's 1 inch shorter since my original one was longer than necessary in case I one day get an even bigger case. I can't imagine mom ever wanting or needing a bigger computer case than the Arc Midi (it's already bigger than needed), so it made sense to reduce the length of the platform. It's all glued up and rough-sanded, I'll finish sanding it and start putting the finish on it soon.
- February 7, 2013
-
I picked up an Apple wired keyboard at the Apple Store in the Twelve
Oaks Mall. I have no idea if mom will adjust to using it. But it's
fully functional, it's sleek, and it matches the Magic Trackpad. I continue
to wish that Apple would offer a wired keyboard with no numeric keypad.
Some of us aren't fond of batteries in something we never move and hence
don't need wireless, but would like to have our trackpad closer to the
keys we use. I never use my numeric keypad. I realize it's important
for some people, but many of us could do without it.
Since I've been having trouble with lynx2mac's ethernet driver for some time (it sometimes fails miserably when waking from sleep), I've switched to using the Realtek driver for Lion. So far, it's working fine.
-
I picked up an Apple wired keyboard at the Apple Store in the Twelve
Oaks Mall. I have no idea if mom will adjust to using it. But it's
fully functional, it's sleek, and it matches the Magic Trackpad. I continue
to wish that Apple would offer a wired keyboard with no numeric keypad.
Some of us aren't fond of batteries in something we never move and hence
don't need wireless, but would like to have our trackpad closer to the
keys we use. I never use my numeric keypad. I realize it's important
for some people, but many of us could do without it.
- February 5, 2013
-
The das keyboard arrived, but it's the wrong keyboard. I should've
paid attention to the negative reviews for Amazon Warehouse Deals. They
sent a das keyboard Ultimate inside a das keyboard Model S Professional
for Mac box. The box had been opened. I assume someone else scammed
them, then they scammed me. What sucks is that it ties up funds
on my credit card until the return arrives at Amazon plus another several
business days, and it wasted my time because you can't use the online
return form for Amazon Warehouse Deals (actually, I suspect that form fails
to work for most things, not just Warehouse Deals).
This is the second time I've received the wrong item from online ordering in the last several months. Maybe brick-and-mortar stores have a fighting chance if companies like Amazon and NewEgg can't seem to send the items that were ordered. I know I've recently moved to buying locally at MicroCenter whenever possible for this reason. Paying sales tax and driving there on my way home from work is still less hassle than having to repackage an item and go to the UPS store and have my funds tied up just because an online vendor can't get its act together.
On a positive note, I picked up the Magic Trackpad from the Apple Store at Twelve Oaks Mall. As usual, a very pleasant retail experience. In fact it has me leaning toward getting a Mac wired keyboard for this machine. It's a lot cheaper, it takes up less desk space, and if mom doesn't like it, I'll keep it for myself as my spare.
-
The das keyboard arrived, but it's the wrong keyboard. I should've
paid attention to the negative reviews for Amazon Warehouse Deals. They
sent a das keyboard Ultimate inside a das keyboard Model S Professional
for Mac box. The box had been opened. I assume someone else scammed
them, then they scammed me. What sucks is that it ties up funds
on my credit card until the return arrives at Amazon plus another several
business days, and it wasted my time because you can't use the online
return form for Amazon Warehouse Deals (actually, I suspect that form fails
to work for most things, not just Warehouse Deals).
- February 4, 2013
-
The Seasonic X-660 660W power supply arrived. I installed it.
I'm almost done with the internals for the moment, but I don't like the
fans that came with the case and the power connector on the fan
controller is flakey. I'd like to replace most of the 140mm case fans
with Noctua NF-A14 FLX fans. Or at least the two mounted horizontally,
and the rest could be Cougar CF-V14HB.
I created a new SSDT with a turbo overclock to 4GHz. It works fine, and I never saw CPU temperatures get out of hand running all cores at full tilt. They levelled off around 55C.
I set up Carbon Copy Cloner, and ran the first backup.
I set up Hyperdock.
-
The Seasonic X-660 660W power supply arrived. I installed it.
I'm almost done with the internals for the moment, but I don't like the
fans that came with the case and the power connector on the fan
controller is flakey. I'd like to replace most of the 140mm case fans
with Noctua NF-A14 FLX fans. Or at least the two mounted horizontally,
and the rest could be Cougar CF-V14HB.
- February 3, 2013
- I installed the CoolerMaster Hyper 212 Plus. I also installed the Western Digital 1TB drive, giving it a 300G partition for Carbon Copy Cloner backups and a 700G partition for Time Machine.
- February 2, 2013
- I picked up the CoolerMaster Hyper 212 Plus CPU cooler and the Western Digital 1TB disk drive from Microcenter.
- January 31, 2013
- Hackintosh 2 is alive. Using an old Thermaltake power supply, I got things running. Clover bootloader, OS X Mountain Lion 10.8.2 installed on a new Samsung 840 Pro Series 256 gigabyte SSD. There were some issues here with FakeSMC (I had to install the latest), and I had to make a minor tweak to Clover's config.plist (set GraphicsInjector to false). Other than that, things went smoothly. The OS installation was actually done by using Carbon Copy Cloner to clone my original hackintosh, since it was the fastest way to get everything copied over.