After a long weekend of trials and errors I’ve finally managed to properly install Leopard 10.5.6 on my laptop.
I have Leopard on my desktop along side windows 7 and is running fast, really fast. Although I knew from the start that installing on my Presarion A944 it will not be as easy as on the desktop I just couldn’t help it.
First of all the prerequisites for this adventure :
- iPc Leopard DVD (search your favorite torrent site for it)
- One piece Compaq Presario A900 laptop (get it from wherever you prefer). Mine is A944CA.
- A complete list of hardware items that your Presario has. Here is my list:
- Intel GMA X3100 videocard
- Intel ICH8 chipset
- Atheros wireless card
- Realteck RTL8139/810x network card
- Conexant Audio
OK. Here we go:
- Insert the DVD in the tray and boot the computer. Hit F9 when the message appears in order to change the boot priority and select the DVD.
- After selecting the language for the installation, in the next screen open the disk utility.
- select the HDD you want to use and choose “partition”
- partition the disk as you like but in “options” area choose GUID (here you loose all data on the selected HDD so please be careful what you want)
- select one partition and format it as Mac Journaled
- close the disk utility - Hit Continue until you have the “Customize” button available, then hit “Customize”
- Drivers >> Video >> Intel >> GMA x3100
- Drivers >> Chipset >> Intel ICHxx
- Drivers >> Audio >> Others >> Conexant
- Drivers >> Ethernet >> RTL8139 (something similar, I can’t remember exactly the string)
- Drivers >> Wireless >> Atheros (for some reason wireless is not working… yet, but I’m a persistent son of a … so I’ll post updates on that)
- from fixes I only chose Keyboard PS2 as it seems not to work without it (no keyboard attached message)
- hit “Continue” and the installation should go perfectly fine for… 10 minutes tops. - This is really important.
After the installation is finished, after restart press any key at OSX boot, enter -x at the prompt and hit the return key. This will boot Leopard in safe mode.
After completing the installation with all the required data (user name, pass, etc…) you will have to perform a special trick to get the Video working in normal mode (as opposed to working only in safe mode).
Navigate to System > Library > Extensions and remove 2 kexts (actually move them somewhere to have a backup):
- AppleIntelIntegratedFramebuffer.kext
- AppleIntelGMAX3100.kext - Restart the Computer
- Enjoy
What is not working:
- Video does not have QE support (not yet as far as I know)
- Wireless not working (although I have an 80% sure bet on the reason… will investigate)
Everything else works as expected and I’m actually quite please with the performance.
As a warning for the hackintosh newcomers: If you’ve never done this kind of testing installation before, find someone who did to help you out because you may have different hardware setup than I do and that would change step 3 completely. It’s always better to have someone experienced around the first time (yeah, that works for computers too 
).
For those of you that are really serious about the PC OSX business, http://www.osx86project.org/ is the place to find everything you need to know.
That being said, please don’t blame it on me is you lose your data or crush the computer.
