[GUIDE] Mac OS X Snow Leopard on the Acer Aspire X3400

[Lacedaemon]

Hello everyone,

After lots of tinkering, searching, and long nights, I've hunted and narrowed down the necessary steps to successfully install Mac OS X Snow Leopard on the Acer Aspire X3400 PC. This method has been tested with my specific model (which can be found in my signature), although it can work with similar models with a couple modifications.

Before you begin, you'll need:

• A retail Snow Leopard .dmg
• A flash drive with at least 8 GB of space
• A working Mac (whether it be another Hackintosh or a Virtual Machine)
• A nawcom modCD
• Any Linux LiveCD

Also, before you begin, make sure you have these files on a CD or DVD:

• IOUSBFamily.kext
• Kext Utility
• Chameleon Bootloader
• /Extra folder
• Legacy Kernel for OS X 10.6.0
• OS X Driver for Ralink RT3090

The Chameleon Bootloader, /Extra folder, and the Legacy Kernel can be found in the guide below.

1. Follow this guide: http://www.philtesone.com/hackintosh.html

Note: If your Acer PC is instantly rebooting at or after the "DSMOS has Arrived" stage, and you recently installed a graphics card in the PCI-E x16 slot, I've found it to be extremely helpful to simply remove it while booting the installer. However, if you have a graphics card that does work with the installer, please report back here and post your graphics card model, just so we can save some users some headache.

2. When you're done following his guide, don't boot from the flash drive. Boot from your nawcom modCD with the following parameters:

cpus=4 busratio=16 arch=i386 -force64

3. When you're inside OS X successfully, swap your modCD with the CD with all your files in it.

4. Copy the /Extra folder to the root of your hard drive, and install Chameleon.

4a. Delete the dsdt.aml file within /Extra, because for our motherboard's sakes, we don't need it.

4b. Open up the com.apple.Boot.plist inside /Extra and edit the <string> under Kernel Flags with the same parameters you used to boot up, minus the "-v" parameter.

4c. If you don't want to see the Chameleon boot screen, you can add the following code to boot straight into the Apple logo:

    <key>Quiet Boot</key>
    <string>Yes</string>

5. Install the legacy_kernel from Phil Tesone's website.

6. Install the IOUSBFamily.kext so you can ditch the CD, and the AppleAzaliaAudio.kext located in /Extra/system for sound. You can do this by copying both to /System/Library/Extensions. Shortly after you do, though, there will be an error message saying that they were not installed correctly, and thus cannot be used. Do not fret, we're about to fix that. Enter the following code into the Terminal:

cd /System/Library
sudo chmod -R 755 Extensions
sudo chown -R root:wheel Extensions
sudo touch Extensions

If Extensions.mkext and Extensions.kextcache don't exist, that's fine. Move on to the next step.

IMPORTANT: If you have a hard drive that does not use 4k sectoring, skip steps 7-8!

7. Now, boot into your Linux LiveCD. Connect to wifi and download this.

8. Once downloaded, write it to your Snow Leopard partition using this:

sudo dd if=boot1h of=/dev/sda2 bs=4096

FYI, replace "boot1h" with wherever you saved it. When you've typed "sudo dd if=", you should be able to drag and drop your file into the Terminal.

9. You should now be able to ditch the modCD and boot straight from your hard drive.

10. Install the Ralink Wireless Utility you should have grabbed from the Materials section. Personally, I had it on the data CD that I created when I started the installation process, but since USB should now be functional at this point, you can transfer the utility from either USB or CD. After you have wifi working, update to the latest version of Snow Leopard by grabbing this. Don't restart when it tells you to, because you have to first install this.

After the 10.6.8 update, your "About Mac" should show your AMD Athlon II X4 645 as an Intel Core i5 and it should also show your RAM.

At this point, your Mac App Store may not be letting you sign in, so here's how to fix it:

1. Create a new location in your network preferences by going to System Preferences > Network.

2. Remove all network interfaces by selecting them and clicking the minus button.

3. Delete /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/NetworkInterfaces.plist

4. Reboot your Hackintosh and add back Ethernet and Ethernet Adapter (en1) to your network preferences.

After following this guide, you should have a relatively functioning Hackintosh with the following limitations:

• No QE/CI, which would majorly hinder applications like iWork, iLife, and Preview. Flash content like Youtube is also affected.
• No front I/O panel (Media Expansion Bay)
• No Boot Camp

To remedy the QE/CI issue, you'll need to purchase a separate video card. I personally picked the ATI Radeon HD 5450, but you can take your pick after reading through this and watching this video. Like reviewerashley said, make sure you buy a low profile card when shopping for one. Anything other than that will not fit in the small space that the PCI-E x16 slot is allocated.

Thanks for following my guide, everyone! If you have any problems, or just want to comment, please post all your thoughts in this thread. Thanks to Phil Tesone for the installation guide in part one, and everyone on IRC who made this possible. Check out the guide's website for more comprehensive, and in some cases, more up-to-date information on installing Mac OS X on your Acer PC!