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As a guide to Hackentosh newcomers wishing to utilize OS X on an nforce3, I have decided to write about my trials of getting my nofrce3 to play nicely with OS X. My system consists of the following:
- AMD Athlon 64 3200+ @ 2.4 GHz
- Gigabyte K8NS with nForce3 250 chipset
- nVidia GeForce 7900 GS OC AGP by eVga
- 2048 mb of DDR 3200
- 2 x 200 GB IDE HDD / 1 x 30 GB IDE HDD / 1 x 74 GB SATA HDD
- Windows Vista x32 Ultimate Edition with SP1
- Kalaway Leopard v10.5.2
After many attempts to get a bootable operating system… here I am!! I am blogging from ScribeFire for Firefox on Mac OS X Leopard 😛
The biggest problem I had faced during installation attempts was due to me having an nforce 3 chipset…. This was solved by useing the VIA SATA kext, along with totally leaving out the nforce package. My setup options were composed of:
- BIOS: disable SATA during install
- AMD Patch 1 + Legacy flag
- sleepkernel
- lastsmbios
- All chipsets EXCEPT nforceata
- forcedeth / network
- ac97 / audio
- nvinject 256 / vga
- USB fix
After the initial setup has completed, I re-enabled SATA via the BIOS.
Boom! Worked without needing flags. The only fixes I had to apply were the PS2 controller permissions, as I am useing a PS2 keyboard combined with a usb mouse.
Upon getting used to my new configuration and testing the features for issues, I report the following
- I applied the v10.5.4 Combo Update via Zephyroth’s ASU (AMD Software Update) with full success.
- iCal and Chess are operable via Rosetta emulation (other wise they both crash)
- “Software Update” updates iLife, iTunes, and Quiktime with success and full functionality
- Photoshop CS2 and Lightroom 2 are fully functional
- “About This Mac” works and reports the correct CPU speed
- “System Profiler” fully functions
- My NTFS drives are fully readable / writable via Paragon NTFS
Techtronic Thoughts 
August 20, 2008 at 12:43 pm
Hey, followed your guide, and I got my amd/nforce3 machine working! Thank you! Now, how can I get os x installed on my sata hard drive? Is there a way I can move the installation on the ide drive to a different disk?
August 21, 2008 at 6:41 am
Thanks Nick 🙂 Glad it worked for you
As for the SATA transfer, I was wondering the same thing…. I do have a 74 gb STA I would rather use and keep dedicated totally to OS X, but I have not had any luck with Disk utility / Create Disk Image.
I was thinking of possibly trying Clonetool or Carbon Copy Cleaner to try it
November 18, 2008 at 2:50 pm
you da man…. nvidea turn of worked a treat..!!!!
January 1, 2009 at 10:41 pm
Hoy you disable the nforceata chipset? im triying whit kalyway but always get an error whit the Nforce
February 17, 2009 at 3:07 am
I’ve been trying to get mine going for days!! Can’t believe I had not seen this guide before ! Thanks a million.
Crazthonfry – press F2 on boot and in intergrated thing there is a sata something enabled…If you have an nforce chipset you’ll work it out 🙂
July 14, 2009 at 9:26 pm
10.5.2 works great on the K8NSc nForce3 250. However, it could be even better if not for the lack of a working AGPGart. Those with this setup, check your Graphics info in profiler. See whether it’s detected as PCI or AGP.
November 10, 2009 at 2:57 am
Firstly, the word is “Hackintosh”, not “Hackentosh”.
Lastly, I dont have any IDE HDD so can I also Install on SATA using same method as mentioned here?