Computers 1000mr. Mac's Virtual Existence

The goal is to acquire a basic knowledge of the way a computer 'thinks' so that if for some reason a computer in your vicinity stops working you will have some competency to fix it and not drop it off at Best Buy. Hopefully by the end of the course you will have the knowledge to fully dissassemble and reassemble a computer and have it work for you. Macs are the only computers that allow you to run Mac OS X Lion Server (or any OS X flavor) along with Windows and Linux. Virtual machines on non-Apple PCs can’t run Mac OS X. Apple doesn’t permit running Mac OS X on non-Apple hardware in its user license agreement, so the virtualization software makers don’t enable it. I have already written a How To guide on all the installation and configuration process for using Mac OS on your windows PC. Virtual Box; Virtual Box is a free virtualization software provided by oracle. Since it is a free software, there are some limitations to the usability and advanced features you get on other applications. Mac Virtual Machine Software 101. Virtual machines, or hypervisors as they’re also known, allow users to emulate additional operating systems called a “guest operating system” in separate app window on their existing computer. A guest OS runs on top of the existing operating system, which is called the “host”.

  1. Computers 1000mr. Mac's Virtual Existence Key
  2. Computers 1000 Mr. Mac's Virtual Existence Center

Computers 1000mr. Mac's Virtual Existence Key

Now that you've installed VMware Unlocker, open up VMware.

The 2nd step is for VMware Workstation people only. VMware Player people can skip to the next step

  • Select 'Create a New Virtual Machine'.
  • Choose 'Typical (recommended)' and press 'Next'.
  • Select 'I will install the operating system later'.
  • Select 'Apple Mac OS X' under Guest operating system and choose 'macOS 10.14' under Version.
  • Under Virtual machine name: 'macOS 10.14' will automatically be typed in. You can change this if you want but I'll keep it at the default. Don't worry about Location: unless you know what you're doing.
Computers 1000 mr. mac
  • Under Maximun disk size (GB): the default is '40.0'. You can change this size if you wish but I'll keep it at the default size. Keep in mind that macOS requires about 12GB of space to install, so don't go lower than that. Don't go crazy with the virtual hard drive size as this file will be stored on our actual hard drive, so make it a reasonable size. Choose Store virtual disk as a single file and press 'Next'.
  • Press 'Finish' and your VM should pop up in VMware.
  • Select 'Edit virtual machine settings.
  • The Memory section should be selected by default and should have 2 GB of RAM entered by default. This is a very low amount of RAM for macOS and will make macOS run very slow. If you have 8 GB of RAM in your PC or more, it is recommended to increase the VM's memory to at least 4 GB (4096 MB) which is what I'll be doing.
  • Select Processors and select Number of processors: to '1'. Under Number of cores per processor: select the amount of cores that you want to allocate to your VM. You want to have minimum 2 cores allocated and maximum however many cores your CPU has. With virtual machines, you need to allocate some resources like RAM and CPU cores to your virtual machine while still keeping enough for your host operating system.
  • Press 'Add...'. Select Hard Disk and press 'Next'.
  • Select SATA and press 'Next'.
  • Select Use an existing virtual disk and press 'Next'.
  • Press 'Browse...' and select 'MojaveAMD.vmdk' from wherever you downloaded it. Press 'Finish' and press 'OK'.
  • Navigate to your Documents folder/Virtual Machines/macOS 10.14 (or whatever you named your VM to) and open macOS 10.14 (or whatever you named your VM to).vmx in a text editor.
  • Make a new line and add this: bios.bootDelay = '2000' (measured in milliseconds). This will delay the BIOS boot up time by 2 seconds giving you a chance to get into the UEFI BIOS if you need to (which we will need to in a minute).

This step is for Ryzen users only. If you have an FX or A-Series APU, skip this step.

  • Make a new line and add this: cpuid.1.eax = '0000:0000:0000:0001:0000:0110:1010:0101'

Computers 1000 Mr. Mac's Virtual Existence Center

  • Save the changes. You've now successfully made your virtual machine. Now time to install macOS on it.