Advice needed

[tbwrench]

Good morning all (or evening/afternoon if you are in different timezones ),

 

I am wanting some advice please. I am a total newbie to the Hackintosh Scene. Should I try and get SL running on my D630 w/ Nividia, or should I try Lion?

 

As I said, I am a total newb to this scene. I have never used Mac before. I do not have another Mac. Everything I do to get this up and running will be done using a Windows PC. I have never used Linux b4 either. I have been looking through some older posts and also reading the wiki. Unfortunately, I must be a bit dense, because the wiki is not totally clear to me.

 

Some questions.... I know that Apple does not support this, and even if you buy your copy of OSX, its still iffy. If you get this up and running, can you use Itunes or App store, or does Apple servers determine that you are not legitimit and black l;ist you? WIll updates install?

 

I have d/l the SLD430USB.img.bz2. I wil continue to seed for a bit to help out as well. I aslo found and d/l 'Mac OS X Lion.dmg' from the Bay. There was a lot of choice on there, so I chose the on with the most d/l-seeds. I am not sure what the proper size of Lion should be so not sure wich was legit. Lion seems better cause its the newer but you may have all the bugs worked out for SL so its a tough call for me. I also have no idea what kexts, etc or how Apple file directory works. I do have an 8gb usb stick, but some of the howto's almost sound like you are installing OSX onto the stick rather than the HDD of the laptop.

 

Well, here's hoping someone will help! and thanks!

[tbwrench]

Also, I have noticed that there are some alternate 'Custom Bios Updates'.

 

1) Do I need to flash/update the BIOS? I know the page says;

 

"OSXLatitude have made a bunch of BIOS updates, these is made from the latest bios update from the vendor and contains the latest DSDT from EDP and SLIC support.

 

The benefit is a more vanilla-like system, better performance and higher stability."

 

What is a "Vanilla-like sytem"? I am supposing that Vanilla would mean plain, but do not know what is Vanilla and what is not, so unable to compare.

 

2) If I flash/update the BIOS, can I still install Windows on the PC?

 

3) Can I flash the BIOS from within Windows DOS (I currently have Windows XP on the PC) or does it require freedos?

 

4) I currently have Dell A17 BIOS. If I install custom BIOS, can I reinstall the original BIOS later?

 

5) I do not really know how to use DOS. IS there an instruction someplace?

[tbwrench]

NO response yet:( . Maybe I need to ask a different way? OK, here goes.

 

Trying to follow wiki. Have d/l'ed bzip2-1.0.6.tar, dd-0.5 for Windows & SLD430USB.img.

 

NOw what? What do I do with them & how. I am sorry, but I do not understand;

 

'Windows (Thank you jbell):

 

1. Download bzip2 for windows, bunzip the file

2. Download dd for windows http://www.chrysocome.net/dd

 

and then run

 

dd –list (to find your usb drive)

dd bs=1M if=sld430usb.img of=\\?\Device\Harddisk1\Partition0 –progress '

 

Thanks!

[Bronxteck]

Hi, do you have access to osx on a computer already?

both snow and lion run just as well on the machine. so your call with you want to run... but the new edp's will be for lion as 10.6.x is at it's end.

custom bios is not a requirement, but is an optional enhancement... it injects a dsdt modded for osx use and slic 2.1 for windows dell media restore disc.

itunes and app store seem to work fine no blacklist.

 

dd –list (to find your usb drive)

dd bs=1M if=sld430usb.img of=\\?\Device\Harddisk1\Partition0 –progress '

place the output location of your thumb drive from the dd -list where the ? is.

[tbwrench]

Hi, do you have access to osx on a computer already?

both snow and lion run just as well on the machine. so your call with you want to run... but the new edp's will be for lion as 10.6.x is at it's end.

custom bios is not a requirement, but is an optional enhancement... it injects a dsdt modded for osx use and slic 2.1 for windows dell media restore disc.

itunes and app store seem to work fine no blacklist.

 

dd –list (to find your usb drive)

dd bs=1M if=sld430usb.img of=\\?\Device\Harddisk1\Partition0 –progress '

place the output location of your thumb drive from the dd -list where the ? is.

 

Hi Broxteck & thx for the reply! No I do not have access to osx on a computer . I think I am going to try to get SL up & running then move onto Lion.

 

Please bear with me. Bzip2 seems to be a compression program/utility. If so, I usually use Winrar. Is it the same type of program? From step one, what file am I supposed to bunzip?

 

From step 2 - I was able to open 'dd-0.5 for Windows' using built in windows utilty. Was this the file I was supposed to bunzip from step 1? If so when I open dd for windows and double click on dd.exe a command prompt opens. I take it that in that command prompt I am supposed to enter;

dd –list ? (If I do this the only think that seems to happen is that dd - list appears under where I typed it, I do not get a list of drives on my computer)

[Bronxteck]

you uncompress the image. sld430usb.img so you need to put the path to the file to uncompress it. would be easier if the path was on the root of the c drive like c:/sld430usb.img. I'm not sure if winrar would do it but you can try. I'm not too familiar with the windows process of installing the image. try reading through this thread it's were jbell found the solution https://osxlatitude.com/index.php?/topic/415-create-usb-image-using-windows/