Installation on Optiplex 360

[Badger-man]

Hello. This is my first post, so I would like to ta say hello. I am a little green in MacOS, but I will attack with a few questions.

 

I innitially need a OSX for learning purpose - in work there is a huge disproportion of Mac's, so I need to upgrade my knowledge.

 

I have an old PC :

Optiplex 360 ( Intel^® G31 (ICH7) Express Chipset, , E8500, 4GB RAM DDR2-800, 500GB HDD, GF GT440, Integrated Broadcom^® (BCM5784M) Gigabit LAN. I want also use Realtek RTL8188EU Wireless LAN 802.11n USB 2.0 Network Adapter )

 

Is it possible to run El Capitan (and in the future - Sierra) on that configuration ? I know that there is a thread with non UEFI system on Dell.

What steps should I do first ? I have an access to both - OSX and W10 systems. Finally, I would like to obtain machine with 4 OS'es: OSX, W10, KodiBuntu, Linux (I did not decied yet which one - Debian/Ubuntu/Arch. I have the most experience with Debian, so I think that it will be my choice).

 

I know that I need to set drive as GPT. I would like to have one "storage" partition to share among all systems for videos, music and documents. Should I use exFAT (I mean - system must allow files larger than 4GB, and must be natively supported by every of mentioned systems) ?

 

If above system will not fit to El Capitan - If somebody know how fresh OSX can I run on it ? If this computer do not fit to OSX at all, I have also Fujitsu Siemens Esprimo V5505 with 4GB of RAM and Intel T7200, I have read that it is possible to run 10.6 on it, but does anybody know how new OSX can I run on it ?

[Whosondephone]

I'm working on getting Yosemite working using Chameleon running on my Optiplex 360.  You can check my progress here.  The OS boots however only using -f kernel flag.  QE graphics seem to be working good.  The system is a little sluggish but i'm only using 2GB or RAM.  I need to edit kexts in order to get sound and network working.  I am against El Capitain and newer because System Integrity Protection SIP keeps me from doing small customizations.  I had a hard time disabling on my MBP because I do not have a recover partition.  I hear you should be able to boot all four OS's off one disk using Chameleon or Clover tricking them into thinking the system uses EFI.  Although I don't have experience with that.  Chameleon seems to have dropped DVD booting, or not support it on this system without modification.  Perhaps usb installers will work fine.

 

I'm near ready to give up on this project and experiment with clover on my new Intel Bord with AHCI.  I'd like to come back to this project however I'm probably going to drop off the face of the planet soon for a carer change.

[Whosondephone]

This is not something we strongly encourage here however I have been wanting to do a reinstall using "yosemite zone" or "Yosemite Restore". It might be both names or one or the other.  That was my first experiment with this machine.  The wiki offers what boot parameters to use.  I remember having a successful installation from that.  I was wondering what installation options I selected to get it working.  If you could find that out I would appreciate it.  Look for ICH 7 patches.  PATA patches.  I remember considering fix "waiting for root device"  I don't know it it is necessary.  That may give a clue as what is wrong with my setup.  I haven't the time to mess around now.  Plus Ive got a hybrid MBR and GPT setup I don't want to touch.

[Whosondephone]

To answer you question I do believe you can get the latest Mac OS on it.  I have Yosemite running swimmingly with network, QE, and sound using clover boot loader.  There are many quirks with running Windows and Mac OS on the same drive.  You have to make a hybrid GPT and MBR.  MBR only allows 4 partitions.  Mac OS creates a restore partition.  You may need to use the command line tool Gdisk A.K.A. GPT fdisk from a working mac.  I do not have the clarity of thought to go into more detail at this time.  I hope to post about my setup with a zip of necessary files.