mini-itx + intel osx

Not only would it be blasphemous, it would also be illegal, not easy to do well, and fairly expensive.

...would it be nice to see the outcome of your adventurous idea. post some pics when you're finished!

Do I detect some mixed signals?

Typical Mac users, eh? Uh, it's illegal... but post the pics when you're done!!!

Seems you're being reminded that what you're about to attempt is blasphemy and illegal, but you're being cheered on... And should probably expect others to attempt similar projects once you've finished... Mac users recognize a cool thing when they see one.

even though it is illegal to hold the copied DVD, there will be a lot more switchers to Mac once they release the intel-macs. People that have never had a chance to use Mac OS X before this, are now able to do it for free. Think of what that means for Apple.

Sure, someone is doing stuff with their OS that they are not supposed to be doing, but I imagine that people will be more hard-drived to get a mac once the switch is made. My friend which has teh OS X on his intel box, says that once the intel-macs come out, he will be getting the cheapest desktop one. He likes the OS now, before this, I was the only one he knew that was into Apple. And, I am not around him too much for him to be able to experience it.

He was originally thinking of building a general purpose PC with windows for webbrowsing and email, but since he got to play around with the x86 OS X, he will now be going Apple from now on. He actually says that it is stabiler than his windows box. and it is safer for him to be on.

that being said, there are a lot of people that will definately going to mac, now that they have had the chance to experience it. If my dad was able to do that a while ago back in OS 9, he would've definatly jumped ship from windows and hit the mac. Now, he comes to my house and uses our G3 DV iMac, but is planning to get an intel-mac once they hit market.
When a user gets to use a mac after a certain amount of time, something snaps and says "hey, these things are the coolest!" and they are sold. Apple may not realize, but that leak is a blessing in disguise

I agree with you totally, Coius. Not only that, but there's not a whole lot that people can do with OS X for Intel at the moment. It's like the good old days when you had the machine and the OS but no software. If you wanna do something with it, you gotta create your own software or wait till the official stuff starts rolling out. In a way, it's a dream come true for the true computer nerds that long for the good old days.

It's almost like a rebirth of the computer industry; the slate has been wiped clean and everybody gets to start fresh with a really cool and stable OS. Imagine the possibilities here... One of the most secure operating systems on the planet being pioneered by hackers

This is how Apple started!!!

Having seen and used this OS X for Intel release I can say the following.

1. It is ridiculously difficult to install. The install takes hours on a fast machine.

2. It has NO hardware 2d or 3d video acceleration. It crashes when using ATI cards unless you boot in safe mode.

3. It crashes frequently even on hardware that is a virtual clone of the devkit machines.

4. Even on a 3.0 with 2gigs of RAM the performance is terrible.

5. You cannot run it on SATA drives yet.

6. LOTS of hardware does not work / may never work on the OSX Intel devkit release.

Other than that, its neat to see... but, once you go in the system profiler and see it running on an Intel CPU the neatness is gone and you once again return to your familiar G4 or G5 goodness that you are using now. It is wierd to see it boot with a BIOS though. After learning that Apple was developing Darwin each step of the way on x86 as well as RISC, I knew that an Intel / PC release was not too far off. I wonder if it will ever be truly usable on a homebuilt PC. I personally stopped using Mac when I got into gaming but still find their designs and innovations to be better than anything in the beige PC world. I am currently working on a really amazing Apple Network Server 500/132 mod (Intel 3.6 2 gigs ram 4 sata drives in raid with X800XL video). It will run WinXP and Fedora 4 Core linux. heh.

Why bother with all the trouble of going the Intel route? Just use a Mac mini in place of the mini itx. There can't be much difference in the size, and you would have absolutely no trouble installing & running OS X on it.

And no pangs of guilt either.

I already did that 3 years ago.

I used a Laptop CD, a Flex-ATX motherboard a PIII 1GHz, 256 ram, and a POS ( Point of sale ) 10" trinitron monitor actually branded Pisces. Still have it, though my poor case ventillation caused the monitor's board to overheat and fry.

While the actual internal pics are gone with the death of the site I used to write for PC-critic.com, I do still have it here if you would like some internal pics. It's one hell of a jigsaw puzzel to get it all in there.

Here's all that's left of the montain of info I origionally posted on the build.
http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y40/Shoehorn/paint.jpg
http://www.aoaforums.com/forum/showthread.php?t=2159

Why don't these guys get arrested?

It doesn't matter how hard it is now... its only going to get harder...
I'm paying attention to what's do-able, not how hard it is...

The custom mac people are in a minority... were no threat to Apple's sales... because no one in their right mind would buy brand new premium HW just to rip it apart and create what they wanted it the first place. That being said... I think the Color Classic looks like a plate of @ss.

What makes the x86 hack so damn difficult is finding the right dang board that will work. (I think the rest of the stuff you can plod through, just following the receipe.) Even if you weren't looking for an itx, it is so blessed annoying how insane PC distributors are about, well, for one, their web pages suck entirely too much, and for two, finding the HW you want is a PITA. There are so many products that are so similar... and there's hardly any way to differentiate unless you are a CE, and even they get tripped up by how confusing it is.

You just can't beat the mini's price... and that you don't even HAVE to rip it apart to use it for that hack... just a way to secure it inside the box with the SuperDrive facing in the right direction, and a bunch of extender cables for the ports to the back.

I'm currently posting from blasphemy, then.

Not to condone such behaviour, to voice the Mac fanboy double standard as Manage...er Vantage Point stated, but the install is pretty easy if you get ahold of the generic install DVD.

But yeah, there are plenty of disadvantages as stated that render the dev. install nothing more than a toy.

But if you're still interested, go here to check compatibility lists for motherboards, etc. (the list of what works is actually pretty big)

Now, if that rumour of being able to install Windows on a MacTel hold true, then there's a reason to hold out (and spend extra) on a MacTel in the future.

Double standard? Did I express a double-standard? Hmmm...

Reminds me of the joke about the American businessman in Japan -- The Japanese still laugh at the Americans, wondering what is meant by wrong hole.

Never heard that joke...

Hey, Guys, the legality / practicality / complexity of running Mac OS X on Intel hardware is way off topic for this forum. Putting Intel hardware in a CC case, with whatever display is OK, but please keep discussion to that issue, please.

Stuart

huh i was thinking of modding one of my beige G3 AIO's but still have a Mac mobo somthing on the lines of a G4 mobo like a sawtooth and above in it but i dont know cause of the size of the mobo's could be to big to fit in the AIO's case.

Actually scott,

1. The difficulty depends on your hardware. Some hardware is incompatible.
2. It does have acceleration for ATI cards and for intel onboard video.
3. Didn't crash for me. My friend is running the X86 beta on his G4 imac with some quirks here and there, but nothing major.
4. Was for me as well, but that was due to no acceleration with my Geforce card.
5. You can run it on SATA.
6. A lot more hardware is now supported with the 10.4.3 leak.

How could an X86 OS run on a PowerPC G4? I'm assuming the x86 release is cross
platform at the moment.