Mac OS X 10.5.5 (iDeneb) on IBM Thinkpad T42

Introduction

I have always been interested in having a Mac. Not so much for the machines, but for the OS in itself. One of the things that most attracted me was the seamless integration between the user interface with the *nix underneath.

So, before I bought a Mac I thought of trying it on a Intel PC. With a search on OSx86 Project I found out that I could do it with an old IBM Thinkpad T42.

It is not a perfect Mac. With the native screen resolution there are some artifacts appearing on the screen and the scroll on some windows also scrambles the window, but by pressing the F11 key twice the screen returns to normal.

Here is what I did to make it work.

Mac OS X Setup

1. Partition disk using GUID
2. Select the following packages:
   1. AC97 Audio
   2. Kernel 2.0 SpeedStep
   3. Atheros WiFi Adapter
   4. ACPI-Fix
   5. x Cpus=1-Fix
   6. x IOUSBFamilyFix
   7. PowerManagement
3. Install (you can skip DVD disk verification)
4. After installation it is possible that the IDE disk isn’t recognized. Message “Still waiting for root device” appears when booting with option “-v”. If this happens one solution that worked for me was to copy all extensions from the install DVD to /System/Library/Extensions/ of the volume where Mac OS X was installed. In my case, I had to extract them from /Volumes//System/Library/Extensions.mkext first to a folder using the following command:
   

   mkextunpack [-d output_dir] mkextfile

   or

   /Volumes/<MacOSInstallDir>/usr/sbin/mkextunpack -d /Volumes/<MacOSInstallDir>/System/Library/Extensions/ /Volumes/<MacOSInstallDir>/System/Library/Extensions.mkext

   Don’t forget to reset ownership of the extensions by using the command:

   sudo chown –R root:wheel /Volume/<MacOSInstallDir>/System/Library/Extensions/*

   Also, remove file /Volume/<MacOSInstallDir>/System/Library/Extensions.mkext with the following command:

   sudo rm /Volume/<MacOSInstallDir>/System/Library/Extensions.mkext

   Then reboot the system with options “-v” (verbose) and “-f” (force load of drivers).

5. After system reboots successfully, remove file /System/Library/Extensions.mkext. Next time you reboot (without “-f” option) the system should start without problems

Configuring Video, WiFi and PCCard

Video Card

To configure the graphics card for the native screen resolution of the T42, edit /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.Boot.plist and add the following lines inside <dict></dict>:

<key>Graphics Mode</key>
<string>1400×1050x32</string>

WiFi

For the wireless to work, go to folder /System/Library/Extensions/IO80211Family.kext/Contents/PlugIns/AirPortAtheros.kext/Contents/ and open the file Info.plist as super user (sudo vi Info.plist). Add the following text within <IONameMatch> in the key-section <Atheros Wireless LAN PCI></Atheros Wireless LAN PCI>:

<string>pci168c,1014</string>

Then save and close the file. Set the right permissions

sudo chown -R root:wheel /System/Library/Extensions

and clean the cache

sudo kextcache -k /System/Library/Extensions

Then, reboot (preferably with option “-v”).

PCCard

For the PCCard problem (skip the 5 minutes waiting during boot) you will have to replace kexts for IOPCCardFamily and IOPCIFamily at the same time. Just copy the ones found here to /System/Library/Extensions. Don’t forget to backup the old ones. This information was obtained from here.

Then, remove /System/Library/Extensions.mkext and reboot with “-f” flag.

And that’s it! You’ve got an almost perfect Mac OS X.

Of course, if you really like Mac OS X, buy a real Mac. That’s what I did!