Turning An Old Dell PC Into A Mac

Posted on May 20th, 2006

Ever since Apple ported OSX to the Intel x86 architecture, bootleg copies of the PC-compatible OS have flowed through peer 2 peer networks like a pandemic virus. In fact, an entire community of PC “Mac users” was born almost overnight, devoted to the cause of running OSX on mainstream PC hardware.

Being the curious lad that I am, I have longed to experience first hand how OSX 10.4 Tiger performs on generic PC hardware. All in the name of research of course. As I’m sure you have already figured out, I’m quite a Mac fan. However I still remain largely a PC user. Much as I love Apple and Macintosh platform as a whole, I still have a parallel affinity for the PC side of the computing market. Windows XP, despite its numerous flaws, is a viable and fairly reliable platform that I use daily, right alongside my Mac. It’s not politically correct to endorse Windows or Microsoft, but then again I’ve never been politically correct.

(Behold…the ancient Dell Dimension 8100…in all its…uh, glory?)

Back in November of last year I built my own kick-ass gaming system/creative workstation for personal and professional work. That system was an upgrade from a rather antiquated PC I have been using since 2001; a Dell Dimension 8100 equipped with a first-generation 1.7GHZ Pentium 4 (Willamette) processor, 768MB RDRAM, 60GB hard drive, and an ATI Radeon 9700 (AGP) graphics card). While that machine still performs yeoman work in basic computing tasks, it sucks for gaming and content creativity. Needless to say I was eager to upgrade. Since that time, the old Dell workhorse has been sitting in a corner literally collecting dust. What on earth can I do with an old system like that?

So begins my evil plan…

Soon after Steve Jobs stunned developers at the 2005 World-Wide Developers Conference by announcing plans to move to Intel processors, leaked copies of OSX for x86 began appearing in the wild. Developers and technology enthusiansts began reporting thier expereinces, and what they found was nothing less than earth shattering; a massive performance increase over the PowerPC architecture. Both the operating system and associated applications performed blazing fast, according to witnesses. Could Apple’s long standing claim of superior performance over Intel processors been nothing more than smoke and mirrors? That got me thinking…what if I can turn this old Dell into a Mac, and find out for myself?

My current Mac system is a 1.2GHZ PowerPC Mac Mini with 1GB of RAM. For basic computing tasks like web browsing, email, and photo editing, it’s perfectly acceptible. Beyond that realm, it’s not very effective at high-end tasks like video editing. Needless to say, after reading so many possitive experiences with OSX x86, I decided to download a bootleg copy and try it out for myself. Now, before I begin this journal, let me first post a disclaimer. In no way do I advocate stealing OSX and cheating Apple of its much deserved revenues. Mac OSX is far and away the best desktop client operating system under the sun. If you like OSX I encourage all of you to do the right thing and BUY a Mac. As for myself, I have given Apple more than its fair share of revenues. Over the past three years I have spent probably close to $3,000 on Apple hardware. In addition to the Mac mini I also own a gorgeous 20″ Widescreen Apple Cinema display, keyboard, and mighty mouse. Prior to the mini I have owned 15″ G4 iMac (Luxo lamp model). And my ultimate plan is to purchase an Intel-based PowerMac (or whatever it’s destined to be called) later this summer when Apple rolls them out, which will no doubt set me back another two grand.

Looking for love in all the wrong places

Having said that it’s not like I’m looking to pirate OSX or anything. But curiosity got the best of me. This “FrankenMac” experiment, if you can call it that, was destined to be a holdover system at best. Something to tide me over until the blessed arrival of Intel Conroe-based PowerMac systems sometime in August. Well, that was the plan anyway.

A few weeks ago I decided to download a bootleg copy of OSX for x86. After configuring, or rather reconfiguring, the Dell’s I/0 drive jumper settings, I attempted to install OSX. My first attempt ended in failure, being able only boot into Darwin, the core of OSX. The install screen didn’t even show an available mountable drive to install the OS on, but a quick trip to the Disk Utility app enabled me to reformat the drive and continue of with the install process. It took me a while to figure out why the installation had failed, until i realized that OSX for Intel was compiled for the current generation of Intel processors which support SSE3 instructions, something my vintage 2001 Pentium 4 does not support. After reading the though the official OSX x86 Wiki, I discovered that I needed to enable a special patch included with the Install DVD which emulate SSE3 instructions on older Pentium and AMD processors, which only support SSE2. The end result was a complete success. After applying the patch, I was greeted by the OSX welcome screen which then guided me on my way to configuring the OS, and setup user accounts.

I have become death. Destroyer of worlds

(The lovely OSX desktop. Even on an ugly Dell PC it still looks impressive.)

(Setup complete, and OSX up and running smoothly. There’s something about seeing OSX running on a Dell PC that just seems so wrong.)

Upon first boot I was blown away by the speed of OSX x86. Even with 1GB of RAM, my Mac mini can take several seconds to launch an application. On this “old” Dell PC applications launched in less than one icon bounce in the dock. I kid you not. Click on Safari, the icon bounces once, and opens immediately. Click on iPhoto…boom! On the Mac mini apps launched in 4-5 bounces, and that’s on a good day. Even connecting to the iTunes music store seemed remarkably faster compared with the Mini. Downloading songs went blazing fast. How can this be? The answer is obvious. Apple has worked long and hard to optimize OSX for x86 processors. But the level at which OSX x86 outperforms its PowerPC counterpart is truly remarkable.

Pictures don’t lie

(I had to reconfigure the I/O drives in order to get the OSX installation disk to boot off the DVD-ROM drive. Don’t ask me why. It should have done that with no problem and no need to configure.)

(It’s alive! It’s alive!)

(Proof that Bigfoot does exist. Take that, urban myth!)

Trouble in paradise

I transferred all of my Mac applications to the Dell and what a profound experience it proved to be. Microsoft Office under Rosetta, OSX’s emulation layer, was quite palatable. It performed noticeably, but by no means unacceptably, slower than the PowerPC environment. Kudos to Apple for Rosetta. Overall application responsiveness, even under Rosetta, was snappy.

Unfortunately, there were problems. Given that running OSX on non-Apple hardware is not officially sanctioned by Apple, a serious lack of hardware support exists.I couldn’t connect this system with my 20″ Widescreen Apple Cinema display at all. It failed to see the unit. And the default screen resolution, in fact the ONLY available screen resolution, was set at 1024×768. No other optional resolution was available, and in fact the only way I could bump that up was to manually edit a system extension (kext file) known as com.apple.Boot.plist via Terminal, and entering some key strings into the config file. Not for the faint of heart, needless to say. Even then I was only able to go no higher than 1280×1024. That meant being stuck using an old 19″ Dell UltraSharp display I had on-hand for emergencies such as this. This stems from the fact that OSX detected my AGP-based ATI Radeon 9700 as a PCI-based card instead. Oh the humanity.

Another issue I ran into was lack of I/O drive support, namely that it wouldn’t see my DVD-ROM drive as a DVD-ROM drive, just a generic CD-ROM. Tragic indeed. My attempts to play DVD movies or other media ended in miserable failure. I also noticed numerous bizarre visual artifacts in iPhoto, which displayed some image thumbnails as grainy distortions. iWork would do anything but. Clicking on the Keynote or Pages icons resulted in a bounce…then nothing. The application windows never opened. iWeb didn’t work either, but that was no great loss.

Fin

Despite these many serious issues, I was absolutely stunned at the enormous speed improvements. OSX on Intel hardware is a screamer. Now for the million dollar question; will the Dell replace my mini as the Mac du jour in my computing environment? Initially I thought the answer to that question would be a resounding YES! But after several weeks with this system, I now know that’s not going to happen. OSX running under generic PC hardware is completely unsupported, and aside from the ethical implications (you’re stealing something that you haven’t paid for) too many technical issues exists to enable you to use OSX on your PC as a serious operating system. It’s simply too unpredictable. And you cannot access basic functionality such as System Update, without having to repatch the OSX otherwise it will fail to boot properly.

My original plan remains the same; to wait (impatiently) for the arrival of Intel Core 2 Duo based PowerMac systems. I’ve had a delightful time converting my old PC into a Mac, but in the end it was nothing more than an experiment. I’ll stick with my Mac mini for now.