Psystar's Rebel EFI -- Snow Leopard on a PC

26.10.2009

I also thought it would be pretty cool to try it on a convertible tablet/notebook computer. For the experiment I chose a , which includes a 2.26GHz Intel Core 2 Duo P8400 CPU, 1.3-megapixel webcam, a 13.3-inch WXGA LED backlit display, a 120GB hard drive, a DVD/CD-RW optical drive, a fingerprint scanner, high-definition audio, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, a multitude of ports and an Intel GMA 4500 integrated graphic controller.

One note: Psystar is very light on information and support -- you won't find an installation guide, compatible hardware list or anything of that nature available from the company. I had to rely on a small on the Web site to figure out the install procedure. That document only covers the basics -- you will need a bit of PC technical knowledge to pull off an install.

The installation process started out easily enough -- I had to boot the PC from the Rebel EFI CD that I had created. Once booted, Rebel EFI prompted me to either run Rebel EFI or to insert a Snow Leopard DVD to install the operating system.

I placed the OS X DVD into the optical drive and Rebel EFI automatically started the install. Since the system I was using already had an OS on it (Windows Vista), at this point I had to partition and format the hard drive to prep it for OS X (using Mac OS X's Disk Utility to set up the partitions). It proved to be pretty simple using OS X's own tools.