Ok, in this post there is a couple things I want to address that I have seen people asking about all over the comments.

Q: Why minimal kexts and no drivers? Why not include a whole resource of drivers so users don’t have to scour the net looking for them? Isn’t that what helped make iPC admirable compared to other releases? Its support for many drivers?

A: It is simply impossible to keep up with all the updated drivers and files that are being released on a regular basis. I could go all out and include every driver I could possibly find, but this isn’t going to help a ton of people, and I’m going to receive complaints about “outdated drivers” (and for the people that already complained about this, keep in mind that iPC was made MANY months ago, and the drivers included are the ones that were current AT THAT TIME. I do not have the time to keep updating this stuff with PPFs)

Q: I would have difficulties finding drivers for my hardware. Or is there a good, simple way to get these?

A: The harsh reality is that there is no easy way to do this. I have made my share of attempts at providing an easy way of doing this, but to no avail. OSx86 is hit and miss, just keep trying.

Q: [can you] attempt an autodetect script that diffs the lspci to the drivers list and takes a lot of guesswork out.

A: This has already been attempted in OSx86Tools, and while it works to a certain extent, some devices have the same ID and it is impossible to differentiate between them even though they require different drivers. Not to mention the time and effort it takes to keep these respositories maintained, and the money it takes to host such files.

Q: Why is this no longer posted on InsanelyMac?

A: I have stopped posting completely at InsanelyMac. There are a select few people there that ruined the sense of community for everyone through their discouraging comments and consistent trolling. Any attempt to post anything about this distro will probably be removed. And some claim that this distro causes more trouble than help. The reason for this? iPC is one of the (if not THE) most popular Leopard OSx86 distro to date. That means more users. That means more newbies. And that means more problems. The fact that people want to use the distro is not something I can control.

Q: Why are you making this harder than the traditional iPC DVD?

A: Quite honestly one of the reasons is just to keep newbies that are unwilling to learn from using it. They cause endless forum spam and problems. If you can’t figure it out, then you shouldn’t be using it.

Q: I am having X problem with iPC X-DL. What can I do?

A: iPC X-DL is based on a very early rc.liveboot script. I probably released this edition of iPC prematurely. If you don’t have bandwith to burn, its fair to not want to use it. It seems to be a hit and miss experience for many. Unfortunately I cannot assist with this because the problems seem to lie in the script itself, which I did not write.

Hopefully this addresses some of the most common issues. If there’s anything else please feel free to comment.

admin iPC OSx86 DVD

This is the first update in a while, but as we all know Snow Leopard is out. I want to make one thing clear: There will be NO new iPC DVD for Snow Leopard. Hacked DVDs are the way of the past, and retail installations are the future.

What I’m planning to do is to create a patcher script for the original retail DVD that modifies the DVD to be able to boot on a PC, then adds a couple new packages to the options to install the bootloader, some minimal kexts, and patched kernels if necessary. There will be NO drivers included with the release, only the minimal components needed for you to boot Snow Leopard. The rest you have to do yourself. Does this sound good? Chime in with your feedback and tell me if this is a worthwhile idea.

admin iPC OSx86 DVD iPC, snow leopard

Just a quick reminder for users to update their bootloaders to the newest versions. Downloads: (install instructions included)

Chameleon 2.0RC1
PC_EFI v10

Happy OSx86ing!

admin iPC OSx86 DVD

Well this is the first update in a long time. But what I do have to say is that the chances of a brand new ISO for 10.5.7 are slim. I may be releasing a repacked installer package that can update current iPC 10.5.6 installations to 10.5.7 but even that is not guaranteed. Summer is approaching soon and hopefully I will have more time to work on projects like this.

Once again I appreciate your continued support!

EDIT: I forgot to mention that all of the current update methods will work fine with iPC. The method you use depends on your system configuration, various guides are available on the internet (Google it)

admin iPC OSx86 DVD

Well, no update in a while. That’s because you already have enough iPC goodness to keep you  going through 10.5.6 For the future of iPC, I have some interesting things planned, and just check back once in a while to see what’s happening. Right now I am busy with my new theme manager app for OS X, called Magnifique.

admin iPC OSx86 DVD

iPC Customization Pack 1 by Daverto Design

Many thanks to Daverto Design at http://daverto.com for providing this package! This pack contains 4 high resolution wallpapers, 3 boot images, and the iPC Logo. Download here (4.7MB).

admin iPC OSx86 DVD

See the official release page here.

admin iPC OSx86 DVD

The new code name for the iPC Dual Layer DVD: iPC X-DL. For iPC OS X Dual Layer. The  10.5.6 version has just been tested, and we’re brushing up the last few things for a release in about 2 days. Hara Taiki has posted his experience with the DVD here, and he is currently shooting a video showing the DVD at work! Thanks for everyone who stayed along for the ride

On another note, every OSx86 user should see this. The new release of Chameleon is absolutely mind blowing, and in my opinion takes over GRUB as the greatest most customizable bootloader in the world. I wanted to include this new release of Chameleon on iPC, but it looks like its still going to be a while until the actual release of the bootloader. One thing is for sure: The wait REALLY paid off.

admin iPC OSx86 DVD

I managed to solve the issues with rc.liveboot I had been experiencing. Basically what I wanted was an rc.liveboot where I could input RAMDisk Size. spartango kindly sent me different versions of rc.liveboot to try and solve this issue but I couldn’t get them to work. Me and spartango had been discussing using the ramdisk size input into rc.liveboot as a global variable which could then be accessed by different parts of the script to make the RAMDisk, rather than passing on the variable from function to function where it could theoretically “get lost” somewhere. So I took the original rc.liveboot and modified it to accept the RAMDisk Size as a global variable like this:

sh /etc/rc.liveboot init 2000000

Where “2000000″ is the RAMDisk size in 512 byte blocks. I made this into a 2 step procedure and created a binary called “bootlive”. This binary is placed into /usr/bin and so when you go to the single user mode prompt and type in “bootlive” the binary will give you a prompt to input a RAMDisk Size. If no RAMDisk size is set then it automatically sets the size to 2000000 blocks or 1024MB and feeds the information to the rc.liveboot script. I just tested this and it seems to work really well! And so while I am doing a little more testing on the dual layer DVD before release, I’ve uploaded the rc.liveboot and bootlive binaries I used here so you can try and use them in your own binaries. The procedure is exactly the same as the normal LiveDVD creation method except you use the modified rc.liveboot instead of the original one, and you place the bootlive binary  in the /usr/bin directory of your LiveDVD partition, and instead of typing sh /etc/ stuff at the single user prompt just type “bootlive”.

admin iPC OSx86 DVD

After testing the newly generated ISO I ran into a few issues with the new rc.liveboot V2 I got from spartango. He kindly cleared up all the major issues, and there is just one tiny glitch left with specifying the RAMDisk size. Everything appears to be good, and I have pyrates testing the Extensions.mkext used in the new DVD to test its compatibility with nForce systems. ISO size is subject to change a few hundredths of a gigabyte as I redo the DMG several times.

Keep watching!

admin iPC OSx86 DVD