First let’s start by looking at the specifications of the HP / Compaq NC8000 laptop that install Mac OS X Jas 10.5.4 on.
- Processor: 1.6 GHz Pentium M 725 (Mac OS X recognizes it as a 1.5GHz)
- RAM: 1.5 GB DDR 333 MHz (1 X 1GB + 1 X 512MB)
- ATI Mobility Radeon 9600 Pro 64MB Video
- Hard Drive: 40 GB IDE
- Ethernet Network: Integrated 10/100/1000BASE-T
- Wireless Network: Broadcom
- DVD Drive: 8X DVD-ROM
The distribution of OSX86 I used is called “Jas 10.5.4″ so basically a hacked
version of Apple’s Mac OS X operating system version 10.5.4 which works on Intel and AMD based computers / laptops.
To get this distribution, you need to go the internet and find it. It is as simple as going to Google and type “Jas 10.5.4″, the result will probably be from some Torrent website, in which case you will need to install a Bit Torrent client software to download it.
Once, you get it you will need to burn it onto a DVD and you are ready to get started. Boot the HP NC8000 with the CD. What you will on the screen after you boot up, is essential a bunch of lines of white font writing, status…console output over black background. This is OK, just let it do its thing, it may take up to 20 minutes for the grey Apple logo and spinning status wheel to show up…go and grab a coffee.
After a while, possibly up to 25 minutes you will get the Apple Mac OS X install screen . Before you click on install, there are a few things you must do. First of all, go to the Utilities menu, up top and choose Disk Utility. From the left, choose the hard drive that you want to install OS X on and choose “Erase” from the Disk Utility options, for “Format:” choose “Mac OS Extended (Journaled)” not Case Sensitive, give your hard drive a name then click the “Erase” button.
After the Disk Utility finishes erasing and formatting the hard drive close it. You should be back at the install screen. From here, you will need to click on the “Customize” button. This will bring up a screen with a bunch of options, don’t be overwhelmed just go through them and find these options and check them off.
- StageXNU
- AC97 Audio
- ICH and PIIX controller
- Atheros Wireless Adapter (this didn’t work for me, cause it was a Broadcom Mini PCI-E wireless card in my HP NC8000, both didn’t work)
As mentioned above none of the internal Wi-Fi cards worked for me, so I basically bought a USB Wi-Fi adapter, one that has Mac OS X drivers. The one I got had the RealTek RTL 8187 chip, and it works flawlessly with the 10.4 Mac OS X drivers.
After selecting the above options, start the Mac OS X installation…now this may take a long time, so go and watch some sports, tv shows or a movie. When you come back, the screen should say “Installed successfully.” At this time you will need to reboot the HP laptop.
It might take a few minutes to reboot, however there is a fix for the startup time, which I will detail later. You can use the Startup options: -v -f to load up faster without drivers(kext), so that you can install new drivers or kext file.
You need to get a hold of a tool which will help you install Mac OS X drivers known as “kext” files easier. Without the tool, generally you would have to go into a terminal and start typing in a whole bunch of commands, very tedious stuff. The graphical tool that I use is called “KextHelper7″
Use KextHelper to install the following kext / drivers:
- AppleAC97Audio.kext.zip (Audio Card)
- AppleBCM5751Ethernet.kext.zip (Internal Ethernet)
- ApplePS2Controller.kext (laptop keyboard)
- IOPCMCIAFamily.kext (PCMCIA slot)
- 10.48.-ATI-ATI9600Mobility.tar.gz (ATI video)
Looking at the specifications of the HP NC8000, you can see that it isn’t a very powerful laptop (1.6 GHz Pentium M) and there are limitations in particular video. Because of the crappy ATI Radeon 9600 video. More powerful laptops with better internal video cards will do better with video, however I found a workaround for the video. It seems only MP4 and .Mov video will play in QuickTime player. Even using VLC Player for Mac OS X I cannot get .avi video files to play…strange. 
So I installed “CrossOver” which lets you run Windows programs on Mac OS X. Then I installed VLC Player for Windows, which then will play .avi files…although because of the ATI 9600 video card the video plays as long as you don’t have lots of other programs open.
All in all, this HP Compaq NC8000 laptop with Jas 10.5.4 OSX86 Mac OS X installed on it is a pretty good hackintosh, for your standard task like surf the web, blogging, do some word processing and downloading torrents and stuff and I used it on a daily basis for just that in my living room. Right now it is the go to hackintosh for just looking things up on the internet and the great part about it is I don’t have to worry about viruses.
For more heavy duty task, I have a Quad Core computer built that is going to be turned into a hackintosh stay tuned for that.
Please comment or ask any questions if you got any. 
MoneyAccumulator.com » Blog Archive » I’ve Just Built One - HP NC8000 Laptop Hackintosh Mac OS X Clone on April 22nd, 2010 at 6:29 pm says:
[...] me a while but following the instructions found on MacOSXonPC.com, I was able to take an old HP NC8000 laptop my brother gave me and turn it into MacBook clone with light specs. Great for surfing the [...]
steve on June 17th, 2010 at 5:04 pm says:
ok the install went fine on my nc8000 but when it rebooted and came up to the welcome screen with the music it told me that there wasn’t a keyboard and mouse and i couldn’t continue until i plug one in. you wouldn’t happen to know the reason for this? any help wold be great.
steve on June 17th, 2010 at 7:32 pm says:
Ok I have the keyboard and mouse working didn’t realize i had to hook up a external keyboard and mouse and install the ApplePS2Controller.kext with kext helper. but one question for the 10.48.-ATI-ATI9600Mobility.tar.gz. Can it be installed with kext helper or does it need to be done with command line. i installed it through kext helper but don’t know if there are any changes.. don’t notice any..
Editor on June 27th, 2010 at 3:39 pm says:
You will be required to use a usb keyboard and mouse first, and then install the “ApplePS2Controller.kext ” (laptop keyboard) to get the HP nc8000 laptop keyboard working.
Editor on June 27th, 2010 at 3:53 pm says:
If I recall correctly the “10.48.-ATI-ATI9600Mobility.tar.gz” cannot be installed by Kext Helper7 it will need to be done manually.
You will need to be “root” user in the Mac OS X Terminal to do this.
In the Terminal type:
1. sudo passwd root <– Executing this will ask you for the password of your own account and then for the new password for the root account.
2. Once this is done type the following: su -m <– This will change your user-id in order to become the super-user. You’ll have to type in the password you just set in order to gain the previliges. If it was successfull the username from the end of the commandline will change from your username to root.
3. Once you’ve become root we can start to install the drivers. Type the following:
rm -rf /System/Libary/Extensions/ATI*
rm -rf /System/Libary/Frameworks/OpenGL.framework
rm /System/Libary/Extensions.*
mv Desktop/10.4.8-ATI9600Mobility.tar.gz /
cd /
tar xvfz Desktop/10.4.8-ATI9600Mobility.tar.gz
Basically, after extracting you will need to make sure all the extracted files end up in the right place (/System/Library/) area.
Hope it helps, sometimes installing drivers / kexts for Mac OS X is not straight forward. Mac OS X is based on BSD Unix after all.
Jacob on October 15th, 2010 at 9:31 am says:
I recently acquired one of these Laptops, well the nc6000 version, but I was wondering if you were able to get QE and CI working on the 9600. I have read forum posts from before stating that it wouldn’t work in 10.5.
Editor on October 22nd, 2010 at 6:51 pm says:
Hi Jacob,
sorry for the late..got lots of blogs to manage
You are correct I could not get the HP NC8000 QE/CI to work no matter all the different drivers / kext I tried. To get around that to play .avi and other videos…what I did was install “CrossOver 8″ or version 9, and run a Windows version of the VLC Player. This worked and I could play video of all types. As well Photoshop would not work unless you have QE / CI so again use CrossOver to run a windows version of Photoshop , earlier version of course like 6.
Hope this helps.
tom on October 26th, 2010 at 5:23 pm says:
Hi
I installed this also on my nc8000 but OS X won’t boot. The install went fine, but during the boot I only get the apple logo and that’s it. The spec of my laptop are the same but I only have 512 Mb of RAM. Could that be the problem.
Any suggestions ?
Thanx
mike on November 17th, 2011 at 3:36 am says:
how do you make start up faster??
Editor on December 23rd, 2011 at 9:09 am says:
Hi Crazy Mike,
Try the suggestions on this link:
http://www.ehow.com/how_5748994_make-os-computer-run-faster.html
Points #3,4,5 might be your best bet to get your Mac OS X installation to start faster.
Regards,
Editor
Editor on December 23rd, 2011 at 9:13 am says:
Fist off, extremely sorry for the uber late reply.
Chances are 512mb RAM is too little for 10.5 Leopard or during hackintosh Mac OS X installation certain hardware options were not set up correctly.
Editor