Thinkpads Forum

Now, I'm no slouch with computing and operating systems, dabbling in OS/2, Linux, Window$ ... Heck I've even tried a Mac once (wasn't actually mine), but there wasn't enough emotional pain involved with running the system so I reverted back to something that gave me regular headaches.. the PC..

How is this possible? OS-X on a PC? I was always under impression that the hardware was somehow, well, special. How can someone just grab a copy of OS-X and install that on a ThinkPad? Is it easy? (heck I may have a go at this). What's involved in such an installation, and would a dual-boot be possible?

Awaiting your answers ...

Well, it's a long story but here's a synopsis:

Apple decides to convert to Intel processors, rather than the previous PowerPC (they require different sets of instructions, that's why software built for a PPC will not run on an Intel, and vice-versa). Thus, they must rework their operating system (OS X) so that it will work on an Intel core (ie. x86). Naturally, they resease a version of the x86-compatible OS X to developers, one (or more) of whom leak the release to the public, and boom, we have people dual-booting OS X and WinXP on their Thinkpads.

If you want to read more, check out these sites:

http://www.osx86project.org/

http://www.xplodenet.com/blog/

http://developer.apple.com/opensource/index.html

A dual boot is possible and people have gotten OS X to run on Thinkpads (Finally, a Trackpoint for OS X! ) Look through the links posted and you will find alot of useful information.

Ah sweet!

I'll have to give this a try! My favourite - experimenting with an operating system to see what it has to offer!

Interestingly, just a few hours after someone posted a full guide for installing 10.4.4 from the System Rescue DVD, the OSX86Project forums were served with a DCMA notice and shut down. Apple seems to have snapped:

http://forum.osx86project.org/

Ah nuts!

The osx86 forums are now up -- not sure what happened with Apple!

icantux, post your results if you don't mind i downloaded cpu-z to see if i can do this on my t42 spare hd.

well I installed Tiger (10.4.4) on my T42 on a dedicated 40GB drive (hitachi travelstar 5400rpm) and it's working very well so far at 1024x768 with full sound without any tweaks. One sore point is that I can't get the OS to boot from the hdd - the DVD has to be in the drive otherwise I get a PXE-M0F: Exiting Intel Boot Agent error.

Works:
screen res at 1024x768
sound - out of the box
mouse, trackpad, ultranav (no problems)

what doesn't
no hdd boot - fixed, look below
no wifi - yet
no ethernet

haven't tried:
sleep, hibernate, etc..
... anything else???

Time to figure all that out.

Here are my system specs:
T42 (2378-reu)
1.8Ghz
1.5G RAM
15" sxga 1400x1050
ATI Radeon Mobility 9600 64MB
40GB hdd in the belly (eventually will go in an 2.5" enclosure)
IBM a/b/g atheros 5212
external microsoft notebook optical mouse 3000

update:

Got the OS to boot from the harddrive - the dvd is no longer necessary. It seems that the installer/erase utility forgot to mark the drive active and thus I couldn't boot from the harddrive. I quickly fixed the problem with fdisk. Thank goodness for my knowledge of linux in this respect.

After installing MacOS a second time, I booted with the DVD in the drive and invoked a single-user mode right after boot:
- pressed f8 to get prompt
- typed "-s" (without quotes)
- typed fdisk -e /dev/rdisk0
- typed "print" to see what the problem was with the boot partition
- noticed the partition wasn't marked active
- typed "flag 1" to mark the partition active
- rebooted from hdd everything worked fine.

I suppose any fdisk utility would have done the trick (linux livecd, win98 cd, etc...). I just preferred to fix the problem in the native way.

..... Now to get the ethernet and wifi working.

And who ever said that Mac was plug and play... Sure this is a thinkpad, but still. With all those extensions already included, it should easily recognize the ethernet (intel 8254x). pfff