• My Hackintosh

    August 15, 2009 / No Comments

    So if you have been following me on Twitter you would know that I just created a Hackintosh. What’s a Hackintosh? It’s a regular PC that is running Apple’s OS X. I love OS X, but wish Apple made a desktop PC that is powerful enough, without a monitor, and affordable. The Mac Mini is a little underpowered, the iMac has a monitor built in, and the Mac Pro is way to spendy. For years I have been wanting a headless Mac that is priced between the Mini and the Pro. My Mac Mini was in desperate need of an upgrade, so I built my own.

    There are many ways to do it, but many of them are unreliable and break when Apple puts out an update. The way I did it, and think it’s the best, is to purchase an EFi-X dongle. It’s a little device the plugs into the internal USB header on your motherboard. You set your BIOS to boot from it, and bingo, OS X thinks it’s running on a Mac. All the updates work just like it’s a real Mac. The EVi-X dongle actually works as a really good boot manager too. I could add Windows and Linux drives to my system, and the EFi-X dongle will act like a boot manager. The only place you can currently get an EFi-X dongle as is ExpressHD.com.

    To run OS X though, you are limited to certain hardware. Thankfully it’s all pretty good hardware, and they have nice a compatibility list. There is just a handful of Gigabyte motherboards, nVidia Geforce video cards, and you have to use SATA hard & DVD drives, and USB mouse and Keyboard, and you are set.

    For my system I used:

    • Motherboard: Gigabyte EP45-UD39
    • CPU: Intel Core2 Duo E7500
    • Video Card: PNY GeForce 9800GT
    • RAM: 4GB
    • Hard Drive: 1TB Western Digital Blue
    • DVD Burner: Cheap Lite-On SATA burner
    • Case: Antec Three Hundred

    I love the Antec case that I put everything it. It has a nice clean look just like a real Mac would have.

    I am not sure on the legality of this, but if you purchase a full copy of Apple’s OS X, I don’t see anything wrong with it, but I am no lawyer. If you plan on doing this though, I would recommending getting the EFi-X dongle while you still can. On episode 97 of Tekzilla, Colleen from TWiT goes through the process step by step. It’s really a simple process.

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  • Tweet From Your Dashboard

    October 9, 2008 / No Comments

    It’s been months since I have actually “used” twitter. I take that back, I read my tweets on my phone through Twitter, but that is all. I use Ping.fm to do my posting to Twitter, and use FriendFeed to read all my Tweets on my computer.

    For the longest time I have been using a Ping.fm gadget on my Google homepage to do my posting. I always have a browser open, and my homepage is just a few click away.

    Well, yesterday I was getting sick of those “few clicks”, and made it even easier to post to Twitter.

    This trick can only me done on a Mac. I am using the Web Clip feature of Safari. It’s simple, just click on the Web Clip button and select the portion of the Ping.fm site that you need to make your posts, click add, and bingo, you have a Dashboard Widget for Tweeting, or posting to whatever social network you want to post to.

    I seldom use the Dashboard in OS X, and always forget about the Web Clip feature. Now all I have to do to tweet is hit F7 and start typing away.

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