Mountain Lion 10.8 post install review

[Vanja1382643826]

Mountain Lion post installation brief overview.

 

1. OS USED

Genuine Mountain Lion 10.8 bought from AppStore ($19.99) with MyHack USB 8GB install media.

 

2. INSTALLATION PROCEDURE

All went very smooth, took about 20 minutes. No freezes or kernel panics. The only problem was that Chamaleon bootloader was not installed correctly on my drive. Have to install it manually later.

 

3. FIRST BOOT

Have to boot with -v -f pci=off (IOACPI kernel panics) and PciRoot=1 (my internal laptop screen is not recognised when loaded with graphic card drivers)

 

4. POST INSTALLATION

The system is quite stable. No crashes and freezes. Only sometimes for a couple of seconds the OS stops responding and the loading wheel starts to rotate, but this is not a big issue to be concerned with.

 

5. HARDWARE COMPATIBILITY AND LOADED DRIVERS

The main hardware work pretty good and stable:

LAPTOP MODEL: Toshiba Satellite L-675-10v (recognised as iMac 8.1)

CPU: Intel Core i3 the cores and the speed are correctly recognised by the system

RAM: 6GB (Kingston 2GB, and Mushkin 4GB, DDR3 modules at 1033Mhz)

VGA: Ati Mobility Radeon HD5470 512 MB (Cedar Pro, 0x100268e0)

when connected to an external output (HDMI, VGA) the card works properly (QE/CI support, and hd resolution works). The card is loaded in Chameleon with AtiConfig=Shrike (Hoolock or Eulemur are not operational). I modified the kexts related with my deviceID to make it work. The drivers I used are not the stock ones from myHack.

NETWORK: both WiFi (Atheros A2895) and wired work (Realtek 8xxx). The drivers can be found on internet.

AUDIO: Intel HDA compatible device. Voodoo.kext loaded manually, won't load on boot. I had to remove the other entry from the kext for my HDMI output to make the kext and internal device operational. The sound quality is even better than in Ubuntu 11.10.

USB HUB: works correctly (all the devices are recognised)

TOUCHPAD and LAPTOP KEYBOARD: Are operational, thanks to the Voodoo drivers that came with myHack.

Bluetooth, webcam, card readers and so on...I don't care about. I have never used them.

INTERNAL MONITOR: works only on PciRoot=1. I think that the EDID should be patched, but there is no need for that I have an ext 25" full HD monitor.

 

6. CONCLUSION

The system works pretty good, with a couple of bugs that can be resolved. The battery works but no information about it in the OS (The VoodooBattery.kext leads to kernel panics). When the system goes to sleep freezes and must be restarted. The VoodooHDA has to be loaded manually, and after that in VoodooHDA preferences the InputGain has to be minimised (if not the speakers output some sounds like a CPU fan).

I have a dualboot with Ubuntu 11.10, on a MBR partition layout. Chameleon did its job and everything works by default. No need to tweak anything. The Share partition is HFS+ and is recongnised in Linux (mounted in /etc/fstab as hfs+ with default options).

 

7. MAC EXPERIENCE

This operating system is a Unix beast with an User interface that leaves you breathless. The ease of use and the relation user-os is hansom. Easy to use, easy to customise. And the most important stable for a hackintosh.

 

SOME TIPS:

Every time when you install a new driver reboot with pci=off to escape the IOACPI kernel panic.

Do not let the system go in sleep mode, it will freeze.

Be patient and do not rush. At the end everything (if your hardware is compatible) will be set up with some tweaking and the always working "try and fail method".

 

PS: If you would like to use this operating system as it should be used, buy a legal copy of it in AppStore, is not expensive (only $19.99). Install it with myHack and enjoy it. Precompiled distros and such staff are maybe OK for a beginner, but later you will notice a lot of issues. First thing the software is not genuine and the system is pretty unstable and many times useless.

 

Thats it! Hope someone will have use of this brief review.