Specification
This guide was tested with the retail Snow Leopard retail disk and the following specification:
Model: Dell Dimension 9200 / Dell XPS410
Chipset: Intel P965 Chipset (ICH8R)
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo
Graphics: ASUS nVidia EN8400GS 512 PCIe
Ethernet: Intel 82566DC
Wireless: Belkin (Broadcom)
Audio: SigmaTel 9227
Here is the LSPCI readout if you want lower level information.
If you have a setup completely different to this then turn back now. You’re better off looking for a guide that matches your spec.
Prerequisites
You will need the following:
- A working OS X installation. I used my iPC 10.5.6 installation. You could potentially use a friends.
- Snow Leopard DVD
- An 8+GB USB Flash Drive & spare hard disk
- Chameleon 2 RC3 Boot loader Package
- EFI studio
- Kext Helper
- A decent text editor, like TextMate
- Some patience. This guide probably looks quite long, but in reality it takes no longer than an hour
- The attribute of following instructions carefully.
You will also need the following, which I can provide:
- A DSDT
- A few driver kexts
- A boot list file, also known as com.apple.boot.plist
Click here to get all of these.
BIOS settings:
- ACHI mode (RAID off)
- SpeedStep off
- USB as priority boot
Preparation
Restore DVD to USB
1. Boot into your existing OS X installation, insert the Snow Leopard DVD & USB drive, and open Disk Utility.
2. Use Disk Utility to Restore the Snow Leopard DVD to the USB drive by:
3. Selecting the Flash Drive
4. Select the Erase tab on the right and then set Format to Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Name the partition you’ll be creating Snow Leopard Install DVD so you can keep track of your installation device. After you’ve done this, click the Erase button.
5. After Disk Utility finishes erasing your old data on the flash drive and setting it as a new partition, it will be ready for the Snow Leopard install files. Select the Restore tab at the top and then drag the Snow Leopard DVD to the Source field. Select your USB device, now called Snow Leopard Install DVD for the Destination file. Click Restore and wait for the restoration to finish (about 20 minutes).
Boot loader & Kexts
1. Install Chameleon 2 RC3 Boot loader using the package installer to the USB drive where you restored the Snow Leopard DVD to. Not your working OS X installation.
Snow Leopard Install DVD post Chameleon Install
2. Copy the ‘com.apple.Boot.plist’ & ‘dsdt.aml’ to the Extra folder in the root of the USB drive.
Content of Extra
3. Create a new folder called Extensions within the Extra folder. Copy all the kext files to the Extensions folder.
Contents of Extensions
4. Open Terminal and run diskutil list This will list out all mounted drives. Look for the one that corresponds to your USB drive and note the drive number and installation partition. In this example below, the disk number is 2 and the partition is 2, also written as disk2s2
diskutil list
Now run diskutil info disk2s2 You’ll need to substitute in your own disk and partition number after the info.
diskutil info disk2s2
5. Copy the Volume UUID identifier from the information listed to you clipboard or somewhere safe.
6. Now lets go back to the Extra folder on the USB drive. Using that decent text editor I mentioned earlier, you’ll need to open up com.apple.Boot.plist.
7. We are now going to tell the boot loader which disk to boot based on the disk identifier we just retrieved. After the last </string> and before </dict> enter
<key>boot-uuid</key>
<string>000000000000</string>
8. Replace 000000000000 with your own disk identifier that should still be in your clipboard. Save the file and exit.
com.apple.Boot.plist content
9. Navigate the Extensions folder within the Extra folder. Open up UUID-platform.kext in your text editor. Go to the contents folder and edit the info.plist.
10. Look for <key>PlatformUUID</key> and paste in your disk identifier in the <string>In Here</string> below it. Save the file and exit.
info.plist inside of PlatformUUID.kext
Graphics
1. Start EFI studio and locate your graphics card from the drop down. For EN8400GS I had to use the 7600GS EFI string. If you have trouble locating an EFI string, just have a Google around.
EFI Studio Interface
2. Click Add device. Then click Hex String to Clipboard.
2. Now back to the Extra folder on the USB drive and open up com.apple.Boot.plist again.
3. After the last </sting> which should be where you entered your disk identifier, start a new line and input:
<key>device-properties</key>
<string>000000000000</string>
4. Replace 000000000000 with your own EFI string that should still be in your clipboard. Save the file and exit.
Complete apple.com.Boot.plist
Permissions
1. Open the Terminal and run sudo –s at which point you must enter your password. Sudo allow us to run programs with the privileges of root.
2. If you’ve followed the instructions exactly to this point, then you should be able to copy and paste the following commands. You may have decided to follow the guide slightly different up to this point. If you have, then you’ll understand what you need to change here.
cd /Volumes/Snow\ Leopard\ Install\ DVD/Extra
chown –R root:wheel *
chmod –R 777 *
If any of these throws an error then either I’m terrible at writing instructions, or you’re terrible at following instructions. No time to argue anyway, on we go.
Installation
1. Reboot your machine and if you’ve set your USB to priority boot the Chameleon boot loader should appear.
2. Select ‘Snow Leopard Install DVD’, which funnily enough is your USB drive and hit enter.
3. Fingers crossed within a few moments the Snow Leopard installer will appear.
4. If you get the ‘no smoking’ sign after a while then something’s gone wrong. Reboot, and at Step 2 this time, type -v before hitting enter to boot in verbose mode. This will then output an error message. From here, you’ll have to use your friend Google to help you.
5. Choose your required language.
6. Before continuing with the installation program we’re going to prepare that spare hard drive I mentioned you needed in the prerequisites. Open the Disk Utility under the Utilities menu.
7. Select the spare hard disk.
8. Select the Erase tab on the right and then set Format to Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Name the partition you’ll be creating Snow Leopard. Now click the Erase button.
9. Now exit the Disk Utility and continue with the installation
10. Choose your newly formatted disk Snow Leopard as the destination and install. The installation should take around 15minutes or so.
11. It should be noted that sometimes the installer would display an error after completion. You can ignore this. I’m sure someone out there has an answer why this happens, just Google it if you’re that bothered.
12. Reboot!
First Boot
1. Leave your USB as the priority boot device as we’ll be using the chameleon boot loader installed on there to boot our Snow Leopard installation.
2. When the boot loader appears, you should see the Snow Leopard installation. Select it but don’t press enter yet.
3. Currently the boot loader is always going to look for the USB drive as the root device, remember we set this earlier when editing the apple.com.Boot.plist.
We now need to tell it which device we would like to boot this time. Now I can’t tell you exactly for your system what this is going to be. For me this was disk0s2. With Snow Leopard selected, enter rd=disk0s2 and hit enter. If this fails, it is worth trying the following: disk1s2, disk2s2, disk3s2 etc
4. If you’ve reached this point then you must be totally buzzing. You’re almost there, nice one.
Post Install
A lot of this is going to be the same procedure as in the Preparation section but we’re putting the Snow Leopard disk in place of the Snow Leopard Install DVD. I’ll write it out again for consistency.
Bootloader & Kexts (again)
1. Install the Chameleon boot loader to the Snow Leopard disk using the package installer.
2. Copy the ‘com.apple.Boot.plist’ & ‘dsdt.aml’ to the Extra folder in the root of Snow Leopard.
3. Create a new folder called Extensions within the Extra folder. Copy all the kext files to the Extensions folder.
4. Open terminal and run diskutil list This will list out all mounted drives. Look for the one that corresponds to your Snow Leopard drive and note the drive number and installation partition. In this example below, the disk number is 0 and the partition is 2, also written as disk0s2
Now run diskutil info disk0s2 You’ll need to substitute in your own disk and partition number after the info.
5. Copy the UUID identifier from the information listed to you clipboard or somewhere safe.
6. Now lets go back to the Extra folder on the Snow Leopard drive. Using that decent text editor I mentioned earlier, you’ll need to open up com.apple.Boot.plist.
7. We are now going to tell the boot loader which disk to boot based on the disk identifier we just retrieved. After the last </string> and before </dict> enter
<key>boot-uuid</key>
<string>000000000000</string>
8. Replace 000000000000 with your own disk identifier that should still be in your clipboard. Save the file and exit.
9. Navigate the Extensions folder within the Extra folder. Open up UUID-platform.kext in your text editor. Go to the contents folder and edit the info.plist.
10. Look for <key>PlatformUUID</key> and paste in your disk identifier in the <string>In Here</string> below it. Save the file and exit.
Graphics (again)
1. Start EFI studio, locate your graphics card, copy hex to clipboard. For EN8400GS I had to use the 7600GS EFI string. If you have trouble locating an EFI string, just have a google around.
2. Now back to the Extra folder on the Snow Leopard drive and open up com.apple.boot.plist again.
3. After the last </sting> which should be where you entered your disk identifier, start a new line and input:
<key>device-properties</key>
<string>000000000000</string>
4. Replace 000000000000 with your own EFI string that should still be in your clipboard. Save the file and exit.
Sound
- 1. Open the Kext Helper.
- 2. Navigate to the Extensions folder under Extra on your Snow Leopard disk.
- 3. Drag the VoodooHDA kext into Kext Helper.
- 4. Click install. You’ll be prompted to enter your password.
Kext Helper ready for me to click 'Easy Install'
Reboot!
1. Now reboot and set your Snow Leopard disk to boot priority.
2. Chameleon should appear; select Snow Leopard and hit enter.
3. If everything’s gone to plan, and I’ll be honest, first time it probably won’t have, you should have a fully functioning Mac OS X Snow Leopard Hackintosh system.
Update
Just hit the Apple Software Update. It will download the latest package, which at the time of writing was 10.6.2. The updates will automatically be installed and then OS X will reboot. Job done.
'About This Mac' post update
follow your instruction, I’m install success on my Dell Dimension 9200, but after the first boot, My osx can’t boot again. Use the -v to boot , It will show the message”waiting for the boot volum uuid….”, then stop at still wait for root device, the uuid is the partition id of my snow leopard.
Model: Dell Dimension 9200 / Dell XPS410
Chipset: Intel P965 Chipset (ICH8R)
Processor: Intel Core 2 duo q6600
Graphics: 9600gt 512M
Ethernet: Intel 82566DC
Wireless: Belkin (Broadcom)
Audio: SigmaTel 9227
@Flyer29
For the XPS420 I’d direct you to this thread: http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?s=9e483be2062a799c6cdcd137c1e8bbc0&showtopic=28138
Go to the later pages which are packed with up to date info for the 420
The ‘waiting for root device’ is generally a major hurdle and it could be any number of things.
I’ve always found setting up the correct UUID for your boot device whether it be a hard disk of USB drive usually solves this issue.
Hope you manage to get it working
Moz
@Bruno
The link for the chameleon installer should be working again.
Give that a go and let me know how you get on
Moz
@freenat
Have you tried booting with any of the following:
rd=disk0s2
rd=disk1s2
rd=disk2s2
or even
rd=disk0s1
rd=disk1s1
rd=disk3s1
You have to do this after the installation. You’ll edit the UUID after the first boot.
Try different combinations are see how you get on.
Note: During installation the UUID of the boot device can/will change.
Moz
Moz
How to install Chameleon on to flash drive? Just as written at README file?
@Moz
Hey Moz, thanks for all the time you have given… I am getting a kernel panic. I have tried several guides with no luck. I have a Dimension 9200.. I have followed your guide and the only thing I couldn’t do was the chown command under permissions (gave me an invalid argument). I have tried several different tweaks including chameleon rc4 with the adjustments mentioned in the comments, but I still get a kernel panic. I can send you the screen shot via e-mail of the -v run through… any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Coke
@Coke
Just dropped you an email
@Ermolay
The link is to an installer package
@Andrew
Thanks for your email.
The screen shot of the kernel panic always makes thing so easier to understand.
If you look towards the bottom of the readout, you’ll see a ‘dependency backtrace’.
Now I notice that it appears to be an issue with the network card kext. The one I provided was ‘Intel82566MM.kext’ Are you using this?
I think in the comments someone else was also having the same issue. Have you tried removing this kext from the extras folder and booting again? This of course will mean you won’t have (wired) networking but we can try sorting that later.
Try this, and let me know how you get on. Any differences in the kernel panic, send me another screen shot.
Moz
Im gettin’ kernel panic. Can you help?
panic(cpu0 calller 0xffffff800053e932):”Unable to find driver for this platform: \”ACPI\”.\n”@/SourceCache/xnu/xnu-1456.1.25/iokit/Kernel/IOPlatformExpert.cpp:1389
Debugger called:
Backtrace (CPU 0):
0xffffff802f5a3ce0 : 0xffffff8000204ae6
0xffffff802f5a3de0 : 0xffffff800053e932
0xffffff802f5a3df0 : 0xffffff8000522e60
0xffffff802f5a3e40 : 0xffffff800052356b
0xffffff802f5a3ee0 : 0xffffff80005238d9
0xffffff802f5a3f40 : 0xffffff8000523ac4
0xffffff802f5a3fa0 : 0xffffff80002c3eb7
BSD process name corresponding to current thread: Unknown
mac os ver
ker ver
system uptime
That sounds crazy but i did typed everything)) HALP ME
I cant create DSDT, because i dont have mac running on my 9200. Gonna try to remove it.
Deleting DSDT didn’t help at all. Same panic, same memory adresses, same line in .cpp
I tried Google ofc, and no luck. I am not experienced in this “topic”, don’t really know what to look for.
Sorry for all this help stuff. I am really glad you’re helping us. Thank you very much!
Followed your instructions closely and slowly. I have successfully installed Snow Leo on a Dell XPS 420 Factory with Nvidia 9800 GT 1gb. THANKS SO MUCH! I can now get back to work on writing iphone apps…
@jjc667g – Glad it helped.
@Ermolay – are you running a Dell system?
Yes I do, Dell Dimension 9200. nVidia 7900 GS, Intel 82566DC Ethernet, no RAID, SpeedStep OFF, 1 Hard drive plugged in SATA0 port without any MBR on it, USB Device is first on boot sequence.
Could you pastebin com.apple.Boot.plist file, because your instructions on editing it misguide me. Screenshots of com.apple.Boot.plist aren’t represent what I get after doing your instructions.
Yes a Dell XPS 420
The one issue at the end of the installer was that it was unable to start Snow Leopard as the startup disk.
Restarted using rd=disk0s2 and it booted into Snow
I do have one question about entering the uuid and just to make sure i did it right
when i open the com.apple……
it already has a line with a UUID
do i leave it remain and add to it or not?
One application I would like to also give credit to that I used immediately after my 10.6.4 update is
Multibeast
it fixed my issue with booting and repaired all my permissions on disk
hers is the link
http://tonymacx86.blogspot.com/2010/02/multibeast-ultimate-post-installation.html
Thanks once again MOZ and let me know if I can do anything to help
I get upto
“Installation
12. Reboot!”…then
When I reboot I get messages saying:
drive 0 not found: serial ata, sata-0
drive 1 not found: serial ata, sata-1
Alert! failed to detect one or more drives during POST.
strike f1 to continue, f2 to run setup utility f5 onboard diagnostics
I have my snow leopard dvd in the drive, usb (snow leopard dvd) plugged in and hard drive (snow leopard) also attached.
i have unplugged my windows hd’s also.
Maz, I think the info you provided in this tutorial is priceless. I cannot thank you enough. NOW, if I could just get my ATI HD 4650 graphics card working, I’d be really really happy!
Any chance I could pay you to help me get it working? I am a total NOOB, but have gotten my machine to run OSX Snow Leopard, and have already updated to 10.6.4!
Please?
Diggi
I followed your guide and worked great except for the 9400 PNY Verto 512Mb graphics card for dual monitor. The screen always goes blank. So, I tried the following:
- installing nvenabler, but the primary screen goes blank after it boots.
- adding Graphics Enabler to the com.apple.boot and that too didn’t work.
- update the DSDT in your package using DSTDSE, but that came up with 7 errors using this guide ( http://tonymacx86.blogspot.com/2010/01/advanced-dsdt-fixes-nvidia-graphics.html )
Any help would be appreciated.
Forgot to mention that it’s dual dvi
Glad to find this page! I’ve been trying to get SL installed and have Dell Dimension 9200.
I get iPC 10.5.6 installed and follow the directions above.
iPC requires me to install the 9.5.0 Voodoo Kernel, Intel ICHx Sata Drivers and Chameleon 1.0.11 with SMBIOS/DSDT.
When I boot from the USB drive, Disk Utility is showing only the USB drive. I do not see my hard drive. So I’m stuck.
Any ideas would be appreciated.
Extra steps I took:
1) Install Leo4All *ATA*.kexts to the USB drive before the booting from USB drive for the install
2) After the install, install the Leo4All ATA kexts to the SnowLeopard drive
3) Used MultiBeast to get things booting from the hard drive.
Thanks for the guide!
I wanted to note that it must be a retail DVD that you use
Truly excellent guide, Moz–thanks. However, I still can’t for the life of me figure out how to get that idiotic MacOS X installer to see my SATA drives.
I followed your instructions down to a tee; BIOS set to disable RAID (the ‘RAID Autodetect ATA’ setting), placed the extra kexts under /Extra/Extensions with the right perms set.
Still only see the USB drive when booting and running Disk Utility.
I’ve tried different port settings for the drive(s) (experimented with 1 & 2 drives + DVD-ROM), but to no avail.
Also tried manually loading the relevant kernel extensions in a terminal window after booting the installer, but it refuses to do so and just throws a
‘failed to load (libkern/kext) authentication failure (file ownership permissions); check the system/kernel logs for errors or try kextutil(8)’
‘kextutil’ I believe is not present on the Install DVD. (at least I couldn’t locate it with “find”)
All the permissions are set to root:wheel with rwxrwxrwx (777) perms from /Extra and all subdirs.
Really at a loss here as I’ve been trying to get the Dimension 9200 up and running for days now. I’m almost tempted to try the Lion installer instead; but have a feeling it would be even harder than the Snow Leopard installer.
@Martin – sounds like you know what you’re doing, which is great. Have you tried opening up your box and running the hard drives on different SATA ports? I think this just involves swapping the cables over.
Otherwise, you could try using an external disk drive over USB and seeing if that’s picked up. Then you could install to that, boot from it and hope that full blown OS X picks up your internal drives. Then use a tool like Carbon Copy Cloner to copy over. Might be worth a try.
I’m sorry I can’t be of more help – fingers crossed you get it working.
@Moz – thanks for the quick reply. I did try to swap around the SATA cables and did another round doing this just now.
No matter which ports are being used (SATA-0 to SATA-5), the OS X installer never sees any of the two drives, or the two DVD-ROM units. Obviously I’ve tried unplugging them and leaving one drive, etc.
Booting into Linux I am able to see everything (no big surprise there).
Really puzzling that it should be so difficult to set this up, but I am partly blaming the lobotimized Dell-BIOS for it.
Still–it would be nice to just be able to insert the kext’s after the thing has booted up, but for some reason it just throws this security error.
I’ll keep trying for a bit, but I am wondering if the added effort is worth it–especially if there would be more twiddling required post-installation (I am, ironically, setting this up for a non-technical family member who likes Macs!)
Still haven’t got the keyboard to function properly on a different laptop where I did get it installed (‘@’ in particular is located next to enter)
I have tried using a USB-caddy to image the installed drive over to one of the internal ones on the Dell system, but I have yet been able to detect any of them even using this method.
This working system died after installing the Chameleon bootloader earlier today. (Even when reinstalling it completely the OS X installer apparently left the bootblock alone!)
Btw. — you haven’t by any chance been brave enough to attempt upgrading/reinstalling the Dimension9200 with Lion, have you?
@Martin – this sounds really strange.
When you get to the installer, run the Terminal and what is the output from diskutil list ?
I’m going to give Lion at go at some point – to be honest with you, the Dell is currently sitting in a box waiting to be setup as a testing machine. I’ve now got a tiny Samsung NC10 running Snow Leopard – I love it, as well as one of those new Macbook Air’s running Lion.
Let me know how you get on.
Also, a quick note, it might be worth trying to get newer versions of the AppleAHCIPort & AppleIntelPIIXATA kexts, plus the latest version of Chameleon.