Leopard on a PC: Why would you want to?

Because it might give you enough of a taste to want to make the leap to a real Mac! As a follow up to my previous article, here’s some first-hand experience of the try-before-you-buy approach…

Actually, installing Leopard on a PC is understandably, just not that easy. However, it seems there are quite a few technical-types that have now had a go, and stumbled their way through the various obstacles. Here’s a few tips that I found (by trial and error) that might make it a bit easier for you…

Note: Some reasonable knowledge of the unix/linux command line is required here - however the referenced instructions are pretty good if you are brave enough to give it a go!

(1) If you’ve got the download quota, save yourself some pre-work - download the pre-hacked Leopard install DVD. I tried creating the DVD myself (from instructions) and while eventually successful, its just a whole lot easier to download it. You should find one on any of the popular Torrent sites - I used “ToH_x86_9A581_RC2.iso”. Not sure who ToH is, but he or she did a great job! The file size is 4.3Gb so it may take a while… Then, burn the ISO file to DVD.

(2) Use the most recent instructions you can find - I found updated details here. Another good page is here. Even if you have downloaded the pre-patched install DVD, you will still need to download the zip file containing the patch files. The patch file I download was “nateleav76_mod_p5k3_patch.zip” - about 11Mb. Un-pack the zipped files to the root of a USB hard-disk or thumb drive (must be formatted as FAT32 or HFS+).

(3) Make sure the PC you are going to use is reasonably modern (ideally less than 2 years old) and that any data you want on the hard disk is copied off - the Leopard install is destructive! Then boot the PC from the newly burnt DVD - making sure you press ‘F8′ when the Darwin bootloader shows up, and add the following boot options: ‘-v -x’. This part is essential. Eventually (after quite some time) you should come to the standard Leopard installer screen. (You may even see some daunting errors - don’t worry. Just be patient and let it continue.)

(4) Another critical step: select your language and make sure you hit CUSTOMIZE. Unselect all packages there!!! (The DVD has been cut down to fit on a single-layer DVD, so much of the optional code is missing.) And, before you start the install, you must Format the internal hard-drive so that it’s prepared to receive the Leopard installation. So go to Utilities in the menu bar and select Disk Utility:

1. Select your hard drive in the left sidebar.
2. Click on the tab labeled Partition.
3. Select a one-partition Volume Scheme, name the volume ‘Leopard’, and choose Mac OS Extended (Journaled) as the format.
4. Last, click the Options button and choose Master Boot Record as the partition scheme.

When the format is complete, you can start the install process. When that’s complete (around 1hr), again reboot from your DVD drive - DON’T boot into Leopard yet!

(5) This is where the post-install patch script needs to run. When the welcome screens shows up, select UTILITIES-TERMINAL to run the terminal application. Browse to the external USB Drive and run the ‘9a581PostPatch.sh’.

(6) You should now be able to reboot into Leopard from the PC’s internal hard-drive. However, at this stage, only if you boot from the DVD and DON’T push F8. (For some reason the install process doesn’t seem to make the newly created Leopard Partition bootable - well at least, it didn’t for me.)

(7) To make the partition bootable, you must do the following:

1. Reboot from the install DVD again.
2. Open Disk Utility, click on the Leopard Partition and click Info. Write down what disk it is: diskXsx (example Disk0s1). Then Unmount the ‘Leopard’ partition and close Disk Utility.
3. Open up Terminal and run ’sudo fdisk -e /dev/rdiskX’ (replace X with the disk you will restore the image to i.e. rdisk0 if your disk is Disk0s1.) Then type ‘update’ and hit ‘enter’. Then ‘f 1′. Then ‘w’. You should get the message ‘Device could not be accessed exclusively. A reboot will be needed for changes to take effect. OK? [n]‘. Type ‘y’. Then ‘q’. If successful, he partition is now marked ‘active’.
4. Next, in terminal, browse to the /files/i386 folder inside the 9a581-patch folder. Then type this:
’sudo dd if=boot1h of=/dev/rdiskXsx bs=512 count=1′. This puts the “boot1h” file at the beginning of the partition.
5. Then, type this: ’sudo /…9a581-patch folder…/files/startupfiletool -v /dev/rdiskXsx boot’. This embeds the boot code.
6. Finally, change to the /files folder and type ’sudo bless -device /dev/diskXsx -setBoot –verbose’. This ‘blesses’ the partition.

So, piece-of-cake right? Now you can finally run Leopard on your PC… assuming of course that the PC you chose doesn’t require a peculiar Kernel Extension not provided for by Apple. I used an HP DC7100 desktop - and the things that didn’t work were the onboard Sound, NIC, and Firewire. Apparently, if you are REALLY keen you might be able to get these working by finding solutions and help on the various forums - but really, don’t waste your time. Think of this as just a look-see experiment. If you like what you see in the OS, take my advice - BUY A MAC! None of the above is required!!!