In this guide I will describe and teach you how to install Mac OS X Tiger for Intel (x86) on your PC, with as few problems as possible. After the installation we will work on getting your new Mac running as smooth as possible (SAP). I recommend that every one, even you they don't use any guides here, read the parts about fixing problems. They will help!

The Hardware

When I first heard about a succussfull installation of Mac OS X Tiger for Intel (x86) (A.K.A. OSX86) I started looking for cheap hardware that was supposedly 100% compatible with OSX86. I have since succeeded in finding the perfect combination. My plan was to use my existing case, cd rom drive, 30GB hard drive, and 512MB RAM stick, since almost every type of the aforementioned items where compatible with OSX86. For motherboard, CPU, and the like I bought these items:

1. Motherboard -- Reports are floating around that the motherboard in the machines using Intel that Apple was giving to developers was very close to a Intel D915GUX motherboard. That motherboard uses the following chip-sets:

Intel?915G Chipset

I/O Control

LPC Bus I/O controller

Audio

Intel?High Definition Audio subsystem using the Realtek ALC860 audio codec.

Video

Intel?GMA900 onboard graphics subsystem

LAN Support

The board provides one of the following:

Gigabit (10/100/1000 Mbits/sec) LAN subsystem using the Marvel* Yukon* 88E8050 PCI Express* Gigabit Ethernet Controller

10/100 Mbits/sec LAN subsystem using the Intel?82562EZ Platform LAN Connect (PLC) device

After some researching I found this motherboard: ASRock 775Dual-915GL Micro ATX Intel Motherboard. The 775Dual-915GL has a Intel 915GL Northbridge, and an Intel ICH6 Southbridge, the same stuff the Intel board has. The 775Dual-915GL has a Realtek ALC850 8 channel AC'97 audio codec chipset, pretty close to what the Intel board has. The 775Dual-915GL also has a fully compatible Ethernet chipset and SATA chipset (I have not tried SATA, yet). The biggest thing about 775Dual-915GL is that it has an Integrated Intel Media Accelerator 900 video card, the only card that is fully supported by OSX86 because it is the one that the Intel Developer Machines (sold to developers by Apple) have. It has Core Image and Quartz Extreme automatically enabled on the installation of OSX86, and it supports high resolutions. Sure, the card is nothing compared to the latest and greatest from Nvidia and ATI, but the fastest of videos cards will run like a used bargain-basement model under OSX86 because there are no fully-functional drivers for any Nvidia or ATI cards in OSX86.

2. CPU -- Okay, so the word is that both AMD and Intel CPUs work great, as long as they are SSE2 and SSE3 enabled. You can use a CPU with just SSE2, except you will need to do some hacking to get only some PowerPC applications running, and your general computing experience will be slower with SSE2.

After some research, I figured it would probably be best to get an Intel CPU for two reasons. (1) The low-end CPUs in the Intel line had SSE3, while low-end AMD CPUs had only SSE2, and for my tight budget that makes Intel my friend. (2) It appeared that most problems people were having were only happening with non-Intel products. The CPU I chose was: Intel Celeron D 330J 533MHz FSB LGA 775 Processor. I would recommend, if you happen to have some extra cash, that you get a Pentium 4 with Hyper-Threading, note the bold.

Other Important Prerequisites

Now, onto the stuff that does not brake the bake. I installed OSX86 on my PC by transferring the "Deadmoo" image to my PC's hard drive using a hard drive case connected to my real Mac, I will get to how I did that later, a long with other ways that I did not try. Here is what you will need for my method (you will need all -- if not most -- of this stuff for other methods). I recommend you follow parts of this guide even if you don't use anything close to my method to install OSX86 on your PC.

Required Stuff

1. tiger-x86-flat.img Commonly referred to as the "deadmoo" image, it can be found on bittorent sites by searching for "VMWare files for patched Mac OS X Tiger Intel" or "tiger-x86-flat.img" or "tiger-x86.tar.bz2" Find this file! It is the disk image that contains OSX86.

2. There are now ways to install OSX86 on a PC with Windows already on it (linked guides to follow), but I would recommend a new hard drive with at least 8GBs storage.

3. Now, if you will be using the real Mac method you will need to get a hard drive case, if your Mac does not have a spot for a 2nd hard drive. Hard drive cases can be found pretty cheap.

4. If you will not be going the real Mac route, you will find that a lot of the guides ask for you to burn yourself a Linux LiveCD. I would use Ubuntu.

5. Remind myself to delete number 5.

The Guides (and most importantly, my guide)

There are many different guides for many different kinds of situations, some use one hard drive, with Windows install already on it, some assume you bought a new system and hard drive. This little guide, meant for use with a hard drive that can be erased, is as simple as it can get when it can get when it comes to the basic installation of OSX86 on your PC. Again, this guide is meant for those with real Macs. Thanks to Vinc0r for writing what my guide is based on. I am going to have to "translate" this guide for Linux users, I also have some really cool ideas about over-the-network installation. On with the show guide!

Before we get to the actual steps in the guide you need to:

1. Using any method you want, get your blank (or erasable) hard drive connected to a Mac.

2. Have the tiger-x86.tar.bz2 on your computer!

Lets get started!

1. We need to get the disk image out of tiger-x86.tar.bz2, unfortunately Stuffit Expander corrupts this particular compressed archive, so we will use the Terminal (in Applications/Utilities ).

Type this into a Terminal window: tar -jxvf then type a space, then drag the file "tiger-x86.tar.bz2" onto the window. Press "ENTER." The computer will show NO activity until it is done, this is normal! Depending on how fast you computer is, just go for a walk, or reread your favorite computer manual for an hour.

2. Okay, so now you should have a folder named "tiger-x86" in the same folder were the "tiger-x86.tar.bz2" file was. We have to make sure that the contents of that folder are not corrupt.

Go back into Terminal and type ls -l then type a space, then drag the "tiger-x86" folder into the Terminal window. Press "ENTER." You should now see this in the Terminal:

ls -l [where your tiger-x86 folder is]

-rw-r--r-- 1 [username] 33479 9 Aug 20:00 vmware.log

If you don't have 6441910272 next to tiger-x86-flat.img you either downloaded some bad file from a bittorent site or you decompressed the archive wrong, and you should just stop right here.

If you do have 6441910272 next to tiger-x86-flat.img you are pretty much home-free! Time to install Tiger!

3. Go into Terminal and type df. Hit "ENTER." You should now see something like this in the Terminal window:

df Filesystem 512-blocks Used Avail Capacity Mounted on

/dev/disk3s3 77903136 51976704 25926432 67% /Volumes/OSX86

My target disk is the "OSX86," so it is /dev/disk3s3, but don't use the "s3" bit because it is about partitions. I will call my disk /dev/disk3. Find out the /dev/disk of the disk you want to install OSX86 on, all info on this hard drive will be deleted. Just make sure you don't target the wrong disk, if you do you might wipe all data on your hard drives.

4. Before we copy the disk image to your hard drive unmount the target hard drive in the Finder by dragging its icon to the Trash. If you don't you will get a "device busy" error when copying.

5. Lets copy the disk image to your erasable/blank disk!

Open up a Terminal window and type "sudo dd if=" then type a space, then drag the "tiger-x86-flat.img" image into the Terminal window, then type "of=/dev/disk43 bs=16k". Change the "/dev/disk43" to the location of the hard drive you got in step 3. Hit "ENTER." The computer will show NO activity until it is done, this is normal! Depending on how fast you computer is, just go for a walk, or reread your favorite computer manual for an hour. This might take a few hours. You might be able to change the "bs=16k." I do not know yet.

The Terminal will spit out some text when it is done.

The tiger-x86 disk will be remounted on the Desktop when the copying is done.

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