Hackintoshing a CF-3110778CM

[thewanderlustking]

Before I go any further, I looked and didn't see anything in the FAQs. Is this a restricted kinda discussion? EDIT: I did a search and actually pulled up a decent handful of threads, so I am going to assume it is a safe subject until told otherwise!

My CF-19 has caused me enough grief for now. So I want to tackle a FUN project! I figure this can't be too much worse than manually installing 11 pages of drivers.... My 2012 MacBook is getting a bit tired. And software wise, it has been badly broken since a recovery. It needs a serious refresh for hardware too. Shell is a bit damaged and the screen is loose. I have a spare machine, but it is a slightly older spec with a slower processor. It also has an older OSX version on it, a good thing. I have enough parts to fix up my current MacBook, but it is basically going to take a full strip down of two laptops to do it. And the software issues, ick.

Or.... I put about the same amount of effort into hackintoshing the CF-31 and probably end up with a much nicer solution! I am not happy with the CF-31 on W10. Well just not happy with W10. For a daily use machine, W7 is obsolete.

Yeah, I know sure pop Linux on it. But linux isn't OSX. Close, but no. I like the integration my iPhone and MacBook share. I like being able to answer texts on my Mac. Or answer calls. I like the way my Mail works. I LOVE Aperture, although that doesn't work on the last 2-3 OSX versions. I love iTunes 11, 12 sucked.

Anyways, I didn't find a list of forbidden subjects. So I just want to make sure this is an allowed one. There are some awesome tutorials. I think I can follow them and get most, if not all the way there. But I am probably going to come across some odd BIOS types of questions. Or something else specific to our little oddball machines.

[thewanderlustking]

I am dumping my original post here about basically nothing, to discuss my biggest concern. The whole elephant in the room EULA issue.... A violation of this is not illegal or prosecutable, unless copyright laws are broken by downloading music and selling it for instance. Or if I were to download OSX and resell it. I simply need to have a legally obtained version. I have this.

It is that same grey area we might deal with on getting the older Toughbooks onto activated versions of Windows.

I have my own issues with Apple's side of this agreement. I paid for Aperture, and an OSX upgrade. So I expect to still be able to use them. Then Apple started releasing the upgrades, for free. Sore whatever I can live with that, but then they made Aperture obsolete. Which is fine, things have a shelf life I guess. But I am now denied access to even re-download it on my current MacBook. Aperture was pretty expensive software at something like $299 when it was released too.

There was plenty of warnings before the upgrade occurred. But when Apple finally did the upgrade, it was a forced silent one that I didn't accept, and then I couldn't back out of. Then I fixed the compatibility issue with a patch, and another minor upgrade bricked that.

I am a hobbyist photographer. It is important enough to me that I paid for Aperture, but I don't make a living doing it so paying constantly for an Adobe subscription, is out of the question.

Apples problem is they hit a golden era and started making their products TOO GOOD. Now, they are stopping that... Currently, I am typing away on my 2012 MacBook Pro I have had since it came out. It has had only a couple small issues. I think I have replaced the trackpad twice and maybe a keyboard. Still, this has survived 10yrs of constant use. The only physical things wrong with it right now are a slightly damaged case from a drop about 2yrs ago, and loose screen hinges that I can't get to tighten up. Probably also caused by the drop. I have upgraded the HDD and the memory. But if I went and bought a new MacBook, I would be stuck with whatever I bought. And SSD drives are proving that while faster, they can't handle constant I/O. And platter drives also had a shelf life. So if I bought a new MacBook, I would either be forced to use their cloud services when I ran out of space, or buy another MacBook. I can't simply upgrade my drive.

Our world is damaged enough. If I can save old tech and keep it relevant, I should be allowed to do this. I shouldn't be forced to replace something because a small part fails or becomes obsolete. It simply isn't responsible.

Panasonic is going away from that too, and it saddens me. I think what all of us here love the most about our Toughbooks, is the repairability and upgradability of them.

[thewanderlustking]

Alright, I am registered! Time to start working through the process and ask LOTS of questions... I will do my best to limit the ones here to Toughbook specific issues.

My first SOLID read through is the Vice/Motherboard article here: How to Turn a Windows Laptop Into the Touchscreen Hackintosh of Your Dreams They are using a HP Spectre x360. This article is dated April 26, 2019.

It is seriously in depth with the second half of it requiring coding and all sorts of goodies like that. Stuff I am not really good at. I can follow it to the letter and be okay, except that it is written for doing this with the HP Spectre x360 and so a lot of it would require some reverse engineering to sort out. It might get a little over my head.

Over on the tonymacx86 forums though, there is a good article here: UniBeast: Install macOS Catalina on Any Supported Intel-based PC This article is newer and dated January 6, 2020. It actually seems so simple, like I could have this online in only an hour or so, simple. Perhaps a little too good to be true...

I think the big difference in the two install apparent complexities, might simply be dual boot vs a fresh single boot. So I need to figure out the best approach. My first set of questions for my fellow Toughbook hackers is here: CF-31 UEFI version, and what exactly IS UEFI?

Another big problem to solve, is I lost two programs that unhappily altered my life. iTunes and Aperture. I have MASSIVE music and photos collections. Since loosing iTunes, I have not been able to really access or listen to my music. And since losing Aperture, I haven't picked up a camera. I have backups of my libraries, so I should be okay.

I want three things, these programs back, and as close of an experience to the current Mac OSX Catalina as I can get. I would like for things like iMessage and handoff to work. I would like to have iTunes 11 back too. It worked better than 12. Finally I just want my older apple tech, to work again. I am not going to go out an uy a new shiny iPad. I have 3-4 older ones that still function nicely. I don't have the newest iPhone, and I am happy with the one I have. I miss my iPod nano 6th gen, but without iTunes, it was junk before it got damaged. I want to grab another one.

Except maybe for iTunes 11, all of this is quickly solved by simply going back to Seirra. This is yet another rabbit hole... I am going to try and get an older version of OSX. Upgrading is MUCH easier than downgrading. Able makes downgrading basically impossible, forcing planned obsolescence.

I edited the second post to put in my EULA thoughts.

[thewanderlustking]

I will edit this post as I find more. But I wanted a place to put some of the articles and videos I am finding and enjoying.

This Vice article was linked from the one above, and is a very good read: Are Hackintosh Users More Passionate About the Mac Than Apple?

Paul Chato is a long time Apple superfan and Hacintosh guy. Good video: Paul geeks out on hackintosh and freaks out on Apple

More to come, I am sure!

[OldGator]

But if I went and bought a new MacBook, I would be stuck with whatever I bought. And SSD drives are proving that while faster, they can't handle constant I/O. And platter drives also had a shelf life. So if I bought a new MacBook, I would either be forced to use their cloud services when I ran out of space, or buy another MacBook. I can't simply upgrade my drive.

While you can't upgrade the factory drive, don't forget you have the option of daisy-chaining external drives through one of the Thunderbolt 3 ports. You can add terabytes of storage that way (SSD, spinning HD or both), either in a single multi-bay unit or in daisy-chained individual units. While that may not be optimal for on-the-go use, it works well on-site. For field use you can get external terabyte SSD drives that are tiny.

If you buy a new laptop get the largest factory drive you can and off-load lesser used files to external storage. Thunderbolt 3 is so fast you don't pay much of a speed penalty - I would think much less of a speed penalty than using cloud storage. I have a friend who is a professional videographer/photographer who uses this system and he says it works well with his huge video files.

I'm not trying to discourage you from your Hackintosh experiment, but the limited internal drive in a laptop is no longer the issue it used to be.

Wally

[thewanderlustking]

It’s the whole throw away ecosystem that Apple has become that bothers me….

[theoak2]

Which MacBook Pro 2012? Retina, or non-retina? Non-retina can take up to 16 GB Ram, and at least a 1TB SSD, (maybe more). I have personally used Crucial MX500 1TB (with Big Sur via OCLP) and SK Hynix Gold S31 1 TB (with Catalina -- no fudging necessary). I am using Catalina on MacBook Pro 2012 non-retina to post this. I have been following OCLP support for Monterey, but Apple needs to get back on their game. Monterey is, at this point a pre-mature baby for many. I figure by Fall of 2022 they will get promised features working and bugs out.

I also have installed Kubuntu Linux 20.04 on CF-31 and used themes to make it look like MacOS. (I have always admired the looks of OS X, since Panther, I think). There are Linux alternatives for Aperture, but I am talking out my rear, since I am not a photographer to know how well these work. But, if you care to check into it, Dark Table, DigiKam rate highly for Linux alternatives. I find myself happiest (currently) with Kubuntu 20.04 on CF-31. I also have separate drive caddies with Windows 10 (working very nicely) and Windows 11. I am not yet impressed by Windows 11. It has also been released prematurely, with promised compelling features (Android support is only thing that I found interesting) not yet working.

[thewanderlustking]

OldGator, I am a hobbyist photographer, writer, and artist at best. External drives become more of a headache than they are worth. My writings and most critical files like that fit in the space a free Dropbox account gives me. And as such I can keep it synched to 3-3 computers seamlessly. I also use this as a quick way to move my tuning files around. As far as actual drive space, a 500gb drive seems about perfect. So this isn't an issue of space and drive size, it is an issue of hardware and me keeping laptops for long periods of time.

I have gone through 2-3 HDD over the course of owning this. If it is a soldered on drive, how am I replacing it? I do not want to pay the Apple Tax to have the privilege of owning a laptop that I can't repair myself, can't upgrade, and can't downgrade the OS to use older legacy software I have paid a small fortune for.

I have 30-40gb of photos on this that I currently can't access. Why? Apple decided they were replacing my Aperture with whatever they wanted. Only a very small percentage transferred over into their new app. Like 1-2gb actually got transferred. This is following Apple's own instructions on how to do it.

theoak, I have a MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid 2012) non-retina, Intel HD Graphics 4000 1536 MB, 16gb ram. It says something hat this 10yr old machine is still MORE than fast enough for the way I abuse it. I still have a page up with 20 tabs from NBR of threads I wanted to reference. I have probably 5-6 pages up total, each with 10+ tabs of stuff I am sorting through and reading.

I like Linux for sure, but Mac OSX is something special, as you know. I like the seamless integration with everything, handoff, iMessage, calls. It all works really nicely. There is a lot I don't want to loose on this MacBook that I already can't access (easily).

It all comes down to two things.

1) I am not going to spend $2700-3000 upfront for a laptop that might not last much past 5yrs. Or that I can't replace basically ANYTHING on.

2) I have legacy software that is still well worth me using for what I use it for. My Aperture library is perfectly organized.

And also as I mentioned currently there is a lot broken software wise on my MacBook. I will have to go through as much trouble fixing it, while risking my data, than building/hacking a Toughbook into this, with zero risk to my data. A new Mac forces me to use the never OSX release. And I loose software and data because of it? Not happening.

Besides, this is a fun project!

[thewanderlustking]

Hummm… The hackintosh portion was a fail, but I now have Windows 7 on it lol. I have to activate it, but that shouldn’t be too hard. I swapped the other drive in I had cloned off the CF-19. It won’t load the drive unless I force select it in BIOS. But whatever. I might spend a little time fixing that install, then go back to the hackintosh and setup a dual boot. It might actually be that the drive needs to be partitioned first with a Mac ready partition. Not sure. Time to do some more reading!

Making the installer USB wasn’t too bad. But it isn’t actually loading. I may try to make it again and select the legacy bios option. If that works, I will go back and try to figure out what setting is stopping it from the UEFI boot.

[thewanderlustking]

The irony is I am having to use 2 MacBooks to do all this. And I have a third charging up on the desk... I am using this guide: UniBeast: Install OS X El Capitan on Any Supported Intel-based PC

I think I know what went wrong. Every version of OSX seems to handle disk utility functions differently. I had no option for GUID map or any partitioning options with my 2011 running Sierra. Thats what I needed. But it created something else even though the drive data portion seemed to be correct. I managed to get the right data and GUID map on my 2012 running Catalina. I the put the USB back into the 2011 and it is building it again. We shall see what happens here shortly. Supposedly it only takes 10 minutes to build these drives, but it stalled twice last night at about the 25% mark. I think I let it sit there the second time for half an hour before it finally finished.

Well I am going to dinner and walking away.