Advertisement Installing While Mac OS X works well for most tasks, there are times when it just can't do what you want it to. More often than not this means running Windows on your Mac., but did you know you can install macOS on a PC? It’s not a project for those who don’t like to get hands-on with hardware, but with the right combination of components and effort, it is possible.

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In order to It's really easy to save the macOS installer to avoid multiple downloads, and worth doing even if you only have the one Mac., you’re going to need to use another Mac to Microsoft offers a simple tool to create a bootable USB on Windows, but there is no such tool for Mac users. Fortunately the process is pretty easy, if you know how. You’ll also need access to the Mac App Store to download macOS in the first place. So let’s take a look at how it’s done. Before You Begin Back in the day (, to be precise), this tutorial explained how to install (what was then) Mac OS X on a Windows PC without the need for a Mac. This is no longer possible with modern versions of macOS.

I powered on my old netbook (gonna trade it in or e-recycle it), and I almost forgot I made it into a Hackintosh. — Corbin Davenport (@corbindavenport) Apple strictly forbids the use of macOS on any machines other than its own, whether it’s a modified version or not. You should be aware that by doing this, you’re violating the terms of the macOS license agreement, and that you do so at your own risk. If you have an older PC, you’ll be pleased to know you can install every version of macOS (or OS X) from 10.7.5 Lion right up to 10.12 Sierra. Whether or not your older machine will be compatible is another story entirely.

It's official, updating my hackintosh/getting it to work is officially the most frustrating thing I've ever done — Alex Walling (@AlexWalling) It’s worth reiterating that installing macOS on a non-Apple computer is hard work. You may encounter hardware problems, card readers and Wi-Fi might not work, and you’ll need to go the extra mile if you want to use features like iMessage or audio-over-HDMI. Things You’ll Need To install the latest version of macOS on your PC, you will need. a PC with compatible hardware.

Creating bootable USB flash drive. Download and install WinRAR. Right-click on the Windows 7 iso file and select Extract files. Extract the files to a folder (you can name the folder any name you want, but for illustration purpose, I name it win-7) in your desktop. In your command prompt, cd to the windows 7 folder. Apple Recovery Iboot Usb Driver driver installation manager was reported as very satisfying by a large percentage of our reporters, so it is recommended to download and install.

a Mac running the latest version of macOS. the.

free apps. an 8GB or larger USB drive. patience Don’t worry if you’re unsure about anything on the list, we’ll explain these requirements in the steps below. If you haven’t got a Mac, ask to borrow a friend’s for a few minutes (you won’t need it for long, though make sure you get the root admin password).

Ensure Your PC is Compatible The best way to ensure compatibility is to build your machine to specification. By doing this you’ll be using hardware that’s the same or very similar to what Apple puts in its own machines. You’ll be able to build a high powered machine for a fraction of the cost of a new Mac. Alternatively, you may want to install macOS on a laptop or PC that you already have lying around. This route is harder, you might have to work around issues that arise, or you may have incompatible hardware.

Feelin' proud– just finished an almost one-week quest to turn a $100 used Dell into an 'iMac'. — WS (@shortwill).

Assuming you’re currently running Windows, you can download free app to get a Even if you’re not overly geeky, you probably have a rough idea of how much memory and what sort of processor your computer has. But what about its other statistics?

For example, do you know. You can then use the following resources to ascertain compatibility:. — a well-maintained resource for hardware components and pre-built laptops and desktops that play nicely with macOS. — a constantly-updated “shopping list” for building macOS compatible computers in a variety of form factors. Online forums — check out, and if you want to ask questions or search for builds similar to your own. Download Your Software Once you’re confident your machine is compatible, grab your Mac and launch the Mac App Store. Search for the latest version of macOS and hit Download. The file is around 4.7GB in size, and once downloaded appears as Install macOS Sierra in your Applications folder.

Leave it there for now. Next head to and register an account, which will grant you access to the. From here you should download the latest version of UniBeast. At the time of writing is designed purely for Sierra, while previous versions work with earlier editions of the OS. You should also download the version of MultiBeast that corresponds with your macOS version. For macOS Sierra, this is.

You can unzip it and leave it in your Downloads folder for now, we’ll need it later. UniBeast is a tool for installing any legally downloaded version of macOS from the Mac App Store on compatible hardware. It can also be used as a Mac (or hackintosh) system recovery tool in a pinch. Extract UniBeast and Switched to a Mac and getting to grips with the basics? Wondering how to install software from the command line? Got old Windows apps that you simply must run on your Apple computer? By dragging it to your Applications folder.

Create Your USB Installer Insert the USB drive you’ll be using into your Mac and launch your Mac’s in-built Disk Utility application. Everything on the drive — including the partition itself — will be removed so make sure your data is safe before proceeding. When you’re ready, select your USB device in the list on the left and click Erase.

Give it a name and choose Mac OS Extended (Journaled) under “Format” and GUID Parition Map under “Scheme” then click Erase. Your USB device is now ready to become a bootable macOS installation drive. Launch UniBeast and follow the prompts — you’ll have to click Continue about four times, then Agree with the software license agreement (above). When you’re prompted for an install destination, select the USB drive you erased with Disk Utility (below). The installer will now prompt to choose the version of macOS you downloaded from the Mac App Store earlier (below).

For this to work the Mac App Store download needs to have finished and the Install macOS Sierra file should stay in your Applications folder. Next you’ll need to choose Bootloader Options (below). According to the UniBeast documentation, choose UEFI Boot Mode for UEFI-capable systems (most modern hardware) or Legacy Boot Mode for older machines that still use BIOS ( Sometimes when troubleshooting, you'll need to know whether your PC uses UEFI or BIOS.

Here's how you can check with ease.). The penultimate step is to choose a graphics card manufacturer if you’re using an older card (this step is optional). You can then click Continue, make sure your settings are correct, enter your admin password, and UniBeast will write the macOS installer to the drive.

Wait for the image to be written to the USB drive. The last thing you need to do is to copy MultiBeast to the root directory of your USB drive. Install macOS on Your PC Now you’re ready to begin installing macOS on your PC. Turn on your PC and press and hold the Delete (or equivalent) key to bring up your UEFI or BIOS settings. This is where things get a little tricky — the recommends the following:.

Set BIOS/UEFI to Optimized Defaults. Disable your CPU’s VT-d, if supported. Disable CFG-Lock, if supported. Disable Secure Boot Mode, if supported. Disable IO SerialPort, if present. Enable XHCI Handoff.

Disable USB 3.0 UEFI/BIOS settings are a common cause for issues when trying to install macOS. You’ll probably need to hit the forums if you experience issues here, as each manufacturer does things a little differently. Save and exit once you’ve configured your BIOS/UEFI, then power the machine off. Insert the USB installer we created earlier into your PC, preferably into a USB 2.0 port. Power on your PC and while it boots press the boot device keyboard shortcut — probably F12 or F8. When prompted, choose your USB drive, then on the Clover boot screen select Boot Mac OS X from USB. The installer will now launch, and you’ll first need to select a Language. As you’ll be installing macOS from scratch, you need to prepare the installation volume.

Click on Utilities at the top of the screen and open Disk Utility. Choose your target destination for macOS, then click on the Erase button. Give it a name (e.g Hackintosh), choose OS X Extended (Journaled) under “Format” and GUID Parition Map under “Scheme” then click Erase.

You can now continue with the installer, making sure you choose this disk when prompted for an installation location. That's right — nick.js (@npsmith90) Assuming it all goes to plan, you should be able to see the installer through to the end at which point your Mac will restart. 5. Finishing Touches Now you’ll need to make your Mac install partition bootable, so you’re not depending on the USB bootloader. Restart your machine and hold down the boot device select key (probably F12 or F8), then boot from your USB device as you did last time. At the Clover boot screen, select your installation volume (e.g. Hackintosh) and follow the instructions to finalize the macOS installation. When you eventually boot into macOS, navigate to your USB installer and run the MultiBeast app.

For fresh installs, click on Quick Start and choose between UEFI Boot Mode or Legacy Boot Mode (for older hardware), then select relevant audio and network options on the Drivers tab. You can see even more options under Customize before saving or printing your chosen configuration.

Now hit Build then Install. If you’re using unsupported NVIDIA hardware, now is the time to and install them.

The final step is to restart your Hackintosh and remove your USB drive, as your macOS installation partition should boot automatically from now on. Now the Fun Begins There are so many things that could go wrong with this process. It’s unlikely you’ll make it all the way without a small snag or larger setback, and at the end of it all you’ll still need to fiddle with things to get some features working the way you’d like. If things aren’t quite working for you, hit up the relevant forums for advice tailored to your predicament. You can also try the comments below. Have you ever built a Hackintosh?

Did it go well? Was it worth it?

. It’s holiday time, and as such, the geek within is restless. Today’s task is to prepare an OS X installer on a USB drive, starting from an Apple Disk Image (.dmg), without access to a Mac. (Note: the limits imposed above were purely for the fun of it – I have access to a functioning triple boot Hackintosh, but realise that many people trying to create such a Hackintosh for the first time do not.) The next few posts will chronicle the necessary steps to complete a triple boot (Windows 7, Ubuntu 10.10, OS X 10.6.5) setup on a (non-Mac) notebook. Background: For the above mentioned setup, a modification is required to the Snow Leopard installer so that it will accept an MBR (master boot record) type destination disk, instead of only a GPT (GUID partition table) type destination disk.

The need for MBR stems from Windows, which is currently unable to boot from a GPT disk on a non-EFI system (although, Windows 7 does recognize GPT disks). As a side note, there are two ways that can be used to install Windows on a GPT disk:. It is possible to install an implementation of EFI (e.g. EDK2/tianocore), however, the success rate tends to be low and the complexity is high. A more practical solution is to use a hybrid GPT/MBR drive, which is easy to setup, and works well. The problem with this is that Windows can only see 3 (4 with EFI) partitions (which, as I typically have 5 partitions in addition to my operating systems, will not work) Most Windows tools are unable to work with a DMG file, and from my experience, those that can, have difficulty with the OS X installer.

Furthermore, since we will need to modify the installer, a more complex route would be needed if a piece of software can only burn the image to disk (and not modify it). Overview: The best way to get the contents of a DMG image onto a USB drive is by using Mac’s Disk Utility. Since we are doing this without accessing a Mac (we are starting on a Windows machine), we are going to use the Disk Utility on the Snow Leopard installer, and will access it through a virtual machine. Despite the seemingly long procedure that follows, the steps take less than 15 minutes to follow (plus the 1 hour wait for the DMG to extract). OS X will not natively install on an AMD as far as I know – you will need a modified kernel and modified installed (much like the OSInstall modification used to install on MBR). I know that many people have had success using AMD CPUs, however, I have no first hand experience with them.

In theory, anything you would do to successfully boot from the iBoot CD on the real PC, may be needed to get it to work on the virtual machine – but I do believe that iBoot does support AMD CPUs, and white it might take a bit of trial and error, you should be able to make it work – check out the iBoot site or try another boot CD such as the Empire EFI boot disk, the other steps would remain the same. Remember that this guide is only to prepare a USB installer without access to a Mac, not to actually install it on a computer (although, the latter guide should be easy to come by). This guide is awesome! But i’ve encountered a problem: my usb drive is not recognized in disk utility at step 8 well, maybe i missed something on the configuration of the vm. If i try to enable it from the bottom icon on virtualbox selecting “sandisk cruzer micro” (my usb flash drive), i get this error “failed to attach the usb device Unknown Device to the virtual machine”.

Should it work with a different usb drive or i did something wrong? Edit: plug-unplug-plug-unplug-plug-unplug-plug-unplug-plug, and it just works:’D.

Thanks for the comment – glad you liked the guide. I did find the USB step to be a bit unusual at time – you can actually get it to work without first adding a USB filter – it will still work. When I encountered the problem you had, I found that closing and reopening VirtualBox was helpful, or sometimes a complete restart of the computer – typically, if Windows (Explorer) showed the drive before starting VirtualBox, I had no problem adding the drive in VirtualBox; sometimes if the drive was added while using VirtualBox, the program was a bit more finicky as to whether or not it would recognize the drive (but, as mentioned, a restart would fix that). Good to know you got it working for you in the end. Well, this guide doesn’t actually use the ComboUpdate – that was meant for a second guide about actually installing OS X, but I haven’t quite decided whether or not to write that one (they are fairly common online).

This guide is just about how to make the installer starting from a DMG without access to a Mac, once you have the installer, you can install the operating system (boot the USB drive using iBoot), and then update it. Unlike Windows you cannot integrate the updates into your installer, they must be installed after the installation is complete. In other words, you shouldn’t have a problem using the latest ComboUpdate – but you might want to check that it will work with your hardware – it is a step to consider after you have managed to install OS X. There does appear to be some luck needed with the USB part, but it usually seems to be related to VirtualBox, not to OSX.

The step with the filters is, in retrospect, unnecessary. You must be able to add the USB drive through VirtualBox, if the USB drive doesn’t show up in VirtualBox’s list (look at the ) then you might need to eject the drive from Windows (which sometimes allows VirtualBox to recognize it). I would suggest trying the following if VirtualBox is not recognizing your USB drive(s): Close VirtualBox Eject and unplug any USB drives Plug in both USB drives and wait until they appear in Windows Explorer Start Virtualbox Start the Virtual Machine I found that having the drives plugged in before VirtualBox started increased the success rate significantly. When VirtualBox recognizes the drives they will not longer be visible in Windows. Hopefully it works for you.

Hrm.have been playing with this for a few days now and since I didn’t have a dual layer DVD handy, I figured I would try this method. It’s worked better than any other method I’ve found so far but when I restore to USB it starts the process and then kind of freezes. Right now it’s been stuck with “59 minutes remaining” for the past hour. I’m going to let it go for a while longer anyway but the LED on the USB stick isn’t flashing to indicate transfer anymore. The VM hasn’t frozen, it just doesn’t seem to be restoring anything anymore. Thanks for the comment. Glad to know you are seeing some success with the method (I was actually in the same scenario the first time I tried it, no DVD-DL handy).

While I was setting up my own machine, I ended up going through this procedure a couple of times, one of those times, I did notice that the progress appeared to freeze – more specifically, it didn’t move smoothly – it would be stuck on a number for a long time, and sometimes, moving the mouse would help, other times, it made no difference. If I recall though, it did finish successfully in the end. The lack of USB light is a bit unusual, I think mine remained on constantly (not flashing) throughout the process. Good luck with it, and let me know if it works out for you. Glad you found it useful, thanks for the comment. Great tutorial.

The other websites only tell you how to do this when you already have a Mac or a Hackintosh. For people wondering how to get the USB to boot, visit this website: Of course you don’t have access to the Chameleon installer mentioned in the second video on that website (i.e. Boot iatkos S3 Snow Leopard USB). You can do the boot loader installation by downloading the Chameleon boot loader from its official website and following the installation instructions in the README, using the terminal in the virtualbox. Finally, after successful installation, visit this link to get your graphics card working properly The only extra thing that I had to do was to also copy the com.apple.boot.plist to the /Extra folder. The links are to an external site that has recently changed its available files. As the files are not my creation, I will not upload them, however, if I get a chance over the next few days, I might generate a diff for the original files that you can apply to patch your files to be MBR compatible.

Ipad Iboot

In the meantime though, you shouldn’t have too much difficulty finding the two files online – just remember to include ‘mbr’ as well as ‘snow leopard’ in your query (the files are at least somewhat version dependent). Alternatively, you can ask the to make them available, or you can install to a GPT drive (which will only work if you aren’t booting Windows). If the error message you got was a kernel panic, the likely reason is because Pentium processors are not officially supported by Apple.

OSX runs well on systems that have CPUs that Apple used in its own devices – primarily the Core 2 Duo and later (e.g. Core i3/5/7) – they never used Pentium processors. To make the Pentiums work you need a modified kernel. As far as I know, VirtualBox passes the instructions directly to the underlying CPU – it is only in rare cases that it will perform any recompilation.

You may look into using – but I can’t offer any advice on how to make your setup work on it. Since you will need to look into alternate options, consider starting with, and for ways to get OSX working on a Pentium. Sorry I can’t offer better news. I got much farther this time, however, I meet yet another error.

I am in Terminal, I type ls, I change my drive to “cd AE” (without quotations as there is no space), everything seems okay until I type the lengthy command. I’m typing: cp OSInstall '/Volumes/OS X Install/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Install.framework/Frameworks/OSInstall.framework/Version/A/OSInstall' and I get the error: cp: /Volumes/OS X Install/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Install.framework/Frameworks/OSInstall.framework/Version/A/OSInstall: No such file or directory Any suggestions? I’m thinking it could be possible my install image may differ minutely from yours, and therefore the location is different? Maybe that isn’t likely.

I don’t know! But whatever is going on irks me; hopefully you can shed some light.

Thanks, Anthony. I’d suggest that the problem lies in the name of your disk – chances are that your disk is not named OS X Install Under step 11.E.iii and 11.E.iv, there is the equivalent of the following command: ls /Volumes Running it should list the names of the volumes you have mounted. Check the name, and replace OS X Install in the path I used in the command. If you have the same volume name but it still doesn’t work, go through directory by directory until you find where the command fails. For example: ls /Volumes ls '/Volumes/OS X Install' ls '/Volumes/OS X Install/System' The ls command lists the contents of a directory, while the cd command changes to that directory.

Essentially, with the above set, you are checking directory, by directory, the contents and whether the next directory exists. With each command, the next directory should be in the list that is displayed. (Note that quotes are needed around paths that contain spaces). High praise indeed – especially if ‘intelligence is the key to everything’.

Glad to see you found the problem and were able to get past it. I suppose that the irony here is that a) this article (one of the most popular on this site) is one of the least technically interesting and b) I am more of a scientist than a computer person. Then again, for me, as long as I have a good problem, I am quite content – computer problems just happen to be the most abundant and easiest to prove.

Perhaps such deduction is my little digital mimicry of Sherlock, since I lack the requisite powers of observation in daily life to aspire to such a persona. Enough introspection for the moment, however – thanks for the problem (and for following up). (I will concede that the deduction was a fairly straight-forward one – the error message was quite clear (the path did not exist) – presuming you copied and pasted it, there was a low probability of typos – the only variable would, therefore, be the disk name (/Volumes is a fixed path, as is the rest of the path) – when you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.). When you boot chameleon, you can specify some – it may take some trial and error to get it right. For me, I needed to specify the busratio in order for the system to boot. If you have an Intel processor, you can find the bus/core ratio by looking up your processor on their site (for instance, my laptop has a Core i5, 430M processor – it’s ). There is also a handy list of some of the first generation Core i3/i5/i7 processor bus ratios,.

So, if I want to boot my installer, I have to specify busratio=17 at the chameleon prompt. Other than that, try a few different settings (and perhaps a different version of iBoot – there used to be some versions for specific chips, and I believe I used one of the non-standard versions in the end. I think they might have done away with that though, and gone with a single version). It has been quite a while since I setup Snow Leopard, however, your steps do sound mostly correct. Operating system not found is an unusual error – sounds more like what the BIOS would say than an iBoot message.

I’d recommend taking a look at one of the other available guides that detail how to proceed once you have the installer. You can find a wide variety of them on the.

For instance, should mostly continue where this article left off (except you don’t want to partition as GUID if you added the OSInstall files). Good evening, I am attempting to set up my first hackintosh on my older laptop (Dell M1530) and I have been following your guide. But when I attempt step 6C, I see the image start to load and the virtual machine goes gray with a dark gray apple in the center. Then I get the following message, “A critical error has occurred while running the virtual machine and the machine execution has stopped.” Then the virtual machine closes. I believe the only difference from your instructions is that I created an iso image (7.9 GB) of snow leopard from a retail dvd using Infrarecorder as recommended by another guide.

I am kind of stuck since my internal dvd drive died and my system bios does not support booting from a usb dvd drive. So I have to get this onto a USB drive in order to install this OS. Also, I disabled speedstep in my bios as directed in other guides as well.

My system Specs: Intel Core 2 Duo T9300 @ 2.5 GHz 4 GB RAM NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT Thank you for your help!! Offhand, I suspect that the problem lies with the CPU not being natively supported. It has been a while since I worked on this, but I seem to recall that the processors before the Core i3/i5/i7 line (including the Core 2 Duo) require some additional steps to make things work. Since virtualbox is passing instructions through to your processor with a minimum of modification, this is likely to be the issue. Unfortunately, I don’t have any suggestions that I really believe will work. None the less, here are some ideas to get you started: 1) if you aren’t certain about the image you created and are using a USB dvd drive, you can read directly from the drive instead of using your image (Step 6A, choose the drive instead of the image, e.g. ‘Host Drive D:’); 2) Look at the options for iBoot – when I did this, there were multiple versions of iBoot available, some were better suited to certain hardware than others.

I believe that they have since combined all the versions, but an older more specific version may be helpful none the less. Also, look at the chameleon. For instance, once of them is the busratio, which may be relevant in some settings (I need it when booting from the disk I create, but not in the Virtual Machine). I believe has a busratio of 12.5.

3) You may explore other methods of virtualization such as QEMU. 4) You could try using dmg2img to convert the file into a format that Windows/Linux can work with a bit better. There may be some other approaches (mostly involving a second computer, and/or more hardware solutions, but I’ll leave those to you). It does seem unusual that a computer will boot from a USB drive, but not a USB DVD drive, so you may want to verify that before going much further. Thanks to your help, I have gotten a bit further. But still no luck. Using the -v flag along with a iboot specifically for my computer and snow leopard, I see all the drivers load and then the following is posted before the system crashes: “starting darwin x86.” I have tried various flag combinations with no luck.

Also, I was able to use my external usb dvd drive with the retail copy of snow leopard in Virtual Box if I set the passthrough flag for the IDE primary drive!! If you have any suggestions on how to get past the darwin error, I’d appreciate the guidance! Thanks again!

Just thought I would let you know that things magically started to work. I tried everything you suggested and also everything I could find in various forums to no avail. So I decided to burn iboot to a disk and try it on a friends computer to see if we could get it to boot on his. While I was burning the disk, I found another suggestion involving Mac drive. So I installed that after my burn finished, which required a reboot. I walked away from the computer while it was going through the boot process and when I came back, there was the iboot boot loader in all its glory!

I had not removed the disk from my EXTERNAL USB DVD DRIVE! Mind you, I tried booting from my Windows 7 DVD multiple times and read numerous articles that said you CAN NOT boot from an external usb dvd drive with a Dell M1530!!

So for that one person out there that has been searching for a solution to this for the past 3 weeks, like myself. Here is how to boot with an external usb dvd drive on a Dell M1530. I have bios version A12 and my external drive is an ASUS SBW-06D2X-U. The M1530 has 3 USB ports, 2 on the left and 1 on the right. The drive must be plugged into the one on the right, for some reason my M1530 will not boot from the DVD drive connected to the 2 left USB ports.

In your bios, set your boot order to 1. Internal DVD, 2. Internal HDD. I had ripped my internal DVD out of the laptop since it ate a disk a while back, the bios will just ignore it. If you set the bios to first boot USB, it will get stuck in an infinite boot loop and you wont get to where you want.

Reboot, and while the bios post screen is up, hit F12 and select to boot from USB device. It will not boot, you should see a flashing cursor in the upper left corner. Hit CTRL-ALT-DEL to reboot, this time around that blinking cursor will start spinning and you will shortly see the iboot boot loader screen! I just swapped in my retail copy of Snow Leopard, hit F5 and booted/installed following Tonymacx86.com’s install guide. No boot loader flags were needed. This surprised me since I was unable to get the software to boot in the VM. I still have not solved that problem.

Thanks again cyberx86! Though its old guide but as i am trying to install older version of OS X so it is the perfect one for me.

I’ve Dell XPS 17 system with i7, 16gb ram, 3gb graphics with 3d support, 2 internal hard disks, yes it support 2 (one SSD recently bought and other 500 gb SATA with Win 7 ultimate on it). I want make the SSD tripple boot i.e. OS X (ultimately mountain lion but starting with snow leopard), Win 7/8, Linux (Poseidon 4 64bit). Basically i’m researcher, working on neural networks and also want to do some web development. So probably most of the time, i will be working in Peseidon. However i need some flavor of OS X for web design and also old user of Win. Well, coming to the point I followed your steps as stated till 10-E and skipped those which i thought would be unnecessary i.e.

Iboot Legacy

Like my SSD has GPT so no need the steps for MBR. In the next step i created bootable CD from iBoot ISO image. Now i can successfully boot from iBoot and can choose the USB drive to install OS X but i get error about kernal panic. Important point is that it didn’t happened when i did the same in virtual box but here it happens. I tried many times but same error. I would like to ask, what possible solution can be for this error?

Thanks in advance. Firstly – let me just say how cool it is to have someone with such similar interests comment on my site. I am a big fan of artificial neural networks, although I don’t get to play with them as often as I would like.

There is a good chance that the problem relates to the ‘busratio’ of your CPU. The kernel recognizes some busratios by default, but any non-standard ones must be specified manually. When using iBoot (which last time I checked, was based on the Chameleon bootloader), you can specify at a command prompt before booting a system. If you have an Intel processor, you can find the bus/core ratio by looking up your processor on their site (for instance, my laptop has a Core i5, 430M processor – it’s ).

There is also a of some of the first generation Core i3/i5/i7 processor bus ratios, here. So, if I want to boot my installer, I have to specify busratio=17 at the chameleon prompt. Other than that, try a few different settings (and perhaps a different version of iBoot – there used to be some versions for specific chips, and I believe I used one of the non-standard versions in the end. I think they might have done away with that though, and gone with a single version). Typically, OSX will only run on chips Apple has used in its products (which means that running it on a Intel Pentium, or AMD chip requires special modifications to the installer). Good luck with the setup.

First of all, nice to know that you are also interested in ANN. I wrote few research papers on improved NN. Well, i found busratio for my processor from intel’s site (Link: ) i.e.

So i followed your instructions and wrote busratio=13 (it appears at the bottom left corner) but still the same result. I tried some other dmg files like iAKTOS etc. But same result. I don’t know whats wrong.

I eagerly want to install OS X and actually want to install “Mountain Lion” also the problem is that there is NO outlet where i can buy the retail DVD, though i want to buy one! And u know IT guys can’t wait so long to install and try and try (it has been more than a week now). So when i see the msg similar to kernel panic i also get panic:P. Now seriously thinking to forget OS X and install Win & Poseidon but its not my type. I still wanna fight with OS X!!!

Any other suggestion please? Oh, and do i forget to mention that my system is 64 bit? And i remember somewhere it was also advised to use -v flag. Whats that??? I have always been fascinated by neurobiology (my degree is in biology) – my love of computers makes ANNs a natural combination of the two interests (I’d love to build a ANN on an FPGA some time actually). I have toyed around with some ideas of implementing distributed ANNs in the cloud, but find that models such as back-propagation are extremely inefficient compared to the actual basis for biological learning.

With regard to OSX, -v is for verbose – it will show more details as to why something doesn’t boot. (Not specifically related to 64bit processors). You could try arch=i386, which will let some other hardware work in 32bit mode (even though you have a 64-bit processor). Also -x – which turns on safe mode, is a handy one to try. Chances are that some combination of boot parameters will get you booting successfully.

If you managed to get the installer booting in VirtualBox, it has the capability to work, and is limited by discrepancies between its expectations and your underlying hardware. Check out the lists of boot parameters and and see if you have any luck with them. (Also note down the specific kernel panic – might shed some light on the problem). Its great to know that we are from same school of thought.

In fact my interest is COGNITION (anything related to brain) so i do read some literature about brain physiology, psychology, philosophy etc. And always been interested about how brain perform certain functions and how those can be mimic in computer and i am still on the quest sounds like we can work on some common interests 🙂 about the OSX part, i tried different flags but there is no use.

Below is the information i get at the end where the system halts: Panic (CPU 0 caller 0x27c1c5): 'pmapstealmemory'@/SourceCache/xnu/xnu-1504.9.17/osfmk/vm/vm.resident.c:757 Debugger called: Backtrace (CPU 0): Frame return address (4 potential arguments on stack). (some memory address lines here) BSD process name corresponding to current thread = unknown MAC OS Version: Not yet set Kernel Version: Darwin kernel Version 10.5.0: Fri Nov 5 23:20:39PDT 2010, root:xnu-1504.9.171/RELEASEI386 System up time in nanoseconds: 0 Hope this information will be helpful. The brain is truly a fascinating thing. Just looked over the details you posted a bit more carefully – is your kernel version 10.5.0 or 10.6.0?

If it is 10.5.0, it won’t boot without a lot of modification (while 10.6.0 should work okay). A couple ideas come to mind, not sure what you have explored already:. Ensure your BIOS is set to use AHCI. the from your BIOS, apply some modifications to it, and point your bootloader at the file.

iBoot used to exist in some modified versions – try one of the non-standard ones, I know that those worked better for me than the original iBoot disk. Read over the suggestions from, and try the forums on TonyMacX86 – they definitely have a wealth of knowledge. Try upgrading the kernel to a more recent version. If you have eliminated your CPU, then it is likely either one of your cards (e.g. Graphic, PCI, etc) or your motherboard – see if you can find some specific hints for the necessary setup on your motherboard.