. : Looking through the eyes : .

I know there’s a TV show @ AXN which is called Breaking the Magician Code; but I will instead writing on Hacking the Snow Leopard code. As written on my recent post, I had bought a new iMac which comes with the latest version Apple OS X, Snow Leopard 10.6. In the meanwhile my 3 yr old macbook have been upgraded to Leopard (OS X 10.5) from previously pre-installed Tiger (OS X 10.4). So what I have in mind is to have the new version of Snow Leopard to be installed on my macbook. I was not attempting to hack the code at the first place, but the later events follows after that lead me to do so.

Reminder: This article is not written to encourage you to get Snow Leopard illegally nor for you to distribute it through illegal channels. Please get the legal copy for yourself either through apple retailers or through the apple store.

The 1st attempt

Some of you might not know that in order to install an OS X on a mac computer, you do not need any serial numbers to activate the software, unlike the Microsoft operating system (XP, Vista, 7 etc). Due to that i have assumed that if you have a legal copy of Apple OS X which comes with you mac, you can install it on any other mac machines. Therefore, since I have the Snow Leopard DVD installer which came with my new iMac,  I inserted the DVD into my 3 yrs old macbook and assumed that the installation will go flawlessly.

How wrong was my assumption! When I tried to install, a pop window appear on my screen and mentioned something about the OS X is not being able to be installed at that particular machines. Hmm… so my first attempt failed.

Second Attempt

After my first attempt, I knew that there must be a way to accomplish my goal. So I googled around and found out this great ‘how to’ article to install Leopard (notice: not Snow Leopard) on unsupported mac. Well, his method was working for Leopard, so I think it might work on Snow Leopard and decided to try it.

Things you will need

• A Mac (which I already have)
• Decent DVD burner, DL is best I decided to boot it using USB drive (16 G since the image file is around 6-7 G). The method you can get here.
• A clean Snow Leopard disc or official dmg
• A decent image manipulator, Carbon Copy Cloner or disc utility
• Darwin Ports with xar installed, if running Tiger or below. Don’t need this if running Leopard.
• Terminal knowledge, helps, but I will give commands too. Mainly don’t be afraid to do some things manually.
• Patience

As mentioned above, for step by step method, I used the guide provided here.

I follow all the steps diligently, and managed to get my version of .dmg.

Well the moment of truth, I boot it using by 16G USB drive. The snow leopard installer screen appeared, and I thought i have it. But then, the same thing as the 1st attempt happened again. A pop window appear on my screen and you could know what the message is.

Third and Final attempt

Well, I did not gave up so easily. Since the method given was specifically for Leopard and my attempt was on Snow Leopard, I may need to tweak a little bit of the guide given. After several attempt, I thought of one possible solution.

This is the important tweak

If you read the guide, there’s a part on hacking of the code. So what I did was, instead of  changing the value ‘return false’ to ‘return true’ for only selected codes, I decided to replace all of ‘return false’ to ‘return true’.

I repackage the image, prepare the bootable USB installer, and give it another try.

The moment of truth! It work! Hehe…

I continue the installation until finish without any hiccup. Walla! Now I have Snow Leopard on both on my machines.

Below is the screenshot of my machine: