Let’s start this post the Sie Khai way.

What is messy? What is Messiness?

mess·y
adj. mess·i·er, mess·i·est

1. Disorderly and dirty: a messy bedroom.
2. Exhibiting or demonstrating carelessness: messy reasoning.
3. Unpleasantly difficult to settle or resolve: a messy court case.

Alright, I’ve not been cleaning up my room and table this holidays and look what it has became~

Tabletop filled right up to my keyboard. Leaving just a little space for my mouse movements and keyboard. Urgh..

Mouse over the picture for some tags! I’m testing a new feature here =P. (à la Facebook)

W00t~ the first gift I received today was this! LOL from Hugo Boss.

Argh, I’m getting old..

p/s : Aiyean, where’s my gift from Great Eastern?!

Retail Snow Leopard Installation on Gigabyte GA-G31-ES2L with ATI HD4670 QE/CI.
- A simple guide on how to get Snow Leopard running on your hackintosh.

Unlike others, this method does not require a Mac machine prior to installation.

What you’ll need.
-  A retail Snow Leopard $29 DVD Disc
- An Intel Core Duo/Core 2 Duo/Core 2 Quad/Core i5/Core i7 processor
- Gigabyte G31M-ES2L Rev 1.x F10
- >1 GB RAM (you wouldn’t want to run it if you have less than this)
- Sapphire ATI HD4670 card
- SATA HDD
- Prasys – Empire EFI v1.085
- 64bit VoodooHDA drivers (for 2 channel sound)
- Netkas EFI 10.5 bootloader
- Mac OS X 10.6.2. combo update
- Beta Universal 46xx drivers

and all the other necessary drivers for your other devices.

Let’s get started.

• Download the Empire EFI iso and get it burned onto a rewritable/writable CD.
• Assuming that your pc has the HD4670 in it already, boot up the Retail Mac OS X Snow Leopard DVD by replacing the Empire EFI cd with it and press F5 to refresh the bootloader. Boot -x because you’ll get a kernal panic if it is booted normally.
• Load up the setup and format your hard drive with the GUID partition. Proceed with installation until it comes to halt where it says there’s something wrong with the startup disk. Ignore that and reboot.
• Boot up the Empire EFI disk again because we have yet to install Chameleon. Start -x and configure your hackintosh. After configuring, switch it off and pull out the HD4670. We’ll use the integrated GMA 3100 now.
• Start the pc and boot up normally. Install the 10.6.2 update. Then run the “Post-Installation” folder in the Empire EFI disc then run MyHack. Select “com.apple.plist , graphics enabler, legacy apple rtc, nullcpupowermanagement,open halt restart, platformuuid. Install that and then replace your boot file with netkas boot file. After that, install the beta universal 46xx drivers. Shut down. Fix the HD4670 back into position.
• Now with Chameleon installed, you’ll no longer need the Empire EFI disc. Keep that aside for future usage. Boot up with -pci1 .  Notice that now Snow Leopard is able to boot up with the ATI card showing only 256mb and no qe/ci support. Fixing disc permissions could solve this issue but you could also do this method below

Launch terminal and key in the following
sudo -s
(type password)
cd /System/Library/Extensions
chown -R root:wheel *
chmod -R 755 *
kextload ATIRadeonX2000.kext
kextload ATI4600Controller.kext

• Reboot with -pci1 and now you’ll have full QE/CI support with Snow Leopard displaying 512MB video memory.
• To enable 2 channel audio, add the VoodooHDA.kext file into /System/Libary/Extensions and then do this in terminal.

  sudo chown -R root:wheel /System/Library/Extensions
  sudo chmod -R 755 /system/library/extensions
  sudo diskutil repairpermissions /volumes/NAMEOFHDD
  sudo touch /System/Library/Extensions

• Run the 64bit prefpane and reboot.

There you have it, a fully workable hackintosh PC. I know there are many other shorter methods out there, but this is how I’ve done mine and it works. Basically, this is a compilation of the many many methods available with trial and errors.

This guide only brings you to a workable Snow Leopard but you’ll have to figure out how to enable 7.1 surround and make this thing sleep. Yes, its on steroids now and once you set it to sleep, it sleeps forever. Perhaps installing sleepenabler.kext would work, but I’ve not tried that yet. Note that there is the CMOS error when it is booted up. Messing with the DSDT will fix this problem. It won’t be explained here though.

Here’s a benchmark I did on this rig. You can compare the results with the other macs here.
Nowhere near the MacPros though =P

And a video of the hackintosh performance. You’ll notice that it starts to suffer when more than 100 web browsers are fired up.

Oh yeay! Finally, a real hackintosh Snow Leopard running on my $300 desktop pc.  QE/CI on the graphics card works perfectly here, we have sound, wifi, etc.  Performance wise? Between the 21.5″~ 27″ iMacs.  The real iMac’s costs $1199 (the cheapest). I’ll post up a guide on the installation soon.

My specs:

3.2ghz Core Duo (yeay!)
4gb 1066mhz ram
500gb 7200rpm hdd
512mb ATI HD4670 (256mb more!)
Cheapo USB Wifi
6 USB ports (yeay! we have more than the iMac)
Razer DeathAdder

A real iMac specs? here!
Well, in the screenshot it shows there 800mhz ram. Its actually running at 1066. Have to fix it..

Sound output is at 2 channels currently. Don’t intend to get 7.1 running unless I have the speakers..

and all I need now is an Apple Cinema Display… =P

f/5.6
1/15s
ISO 100

You can’t find these kind of swings often nowadays..  =)

Alright, there was this Samsung T400 phone lying around because the screen was supposed to be “not working” . Sent it to the repair shop for a checkup and was told that RM80 would be needed to get it fixed. The ribbon connecting the main board to the LCD screen was “supposed” to be broken.

Heck.. for a 7 year old phone, RM80 isn’t worth the money. So lets get dirty and break it up.

The Samsung T400 was only secured by 5 screws on the lower part of the phone while only 2 screws held the screen in position. Unscrew them, un-clip the plastic holders securing them together and its open. Easy huh?
The phone consists of only 2 parts which are the screen and the main-board. LOL.

Once opened, the whole board looked like a “forest” of IC’s and pins. I’m no expert in this so I’ll just have to do it the usual NBTD way, which is to remove all removable pins/plugs and simply clean the device. The chances of getting your stuff repaired this way are close to ZERO but then what else can be done? Just trying my luck.

The phone was simply powered up to see what comes out and *pooof*
It lights up!

Before assembling back the parts together,  the keypad of the phone was slightly modified by adding some supporting pads on some of the keys. Due to wear and tear, some of the keys are no longer that sensitive and they needed more contact pressure to work.

There you have it, another device brought back to life!  My X1 would be having a good rest now while I’ll get this Samsung T400 up to a good stress test.

Happy New Year!

I have 16 14 12 11 10 9 8 6 invites to Google Wave to give away. Anyone wants them? Just drop a  comment here with your email address and wait for the confirmation email from Google. =)

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