Otherwise, the installer will tell you that This software cannot be installed on this computer.

It was also the version that Apple first used on its Intel Macs in 2006.

Because the Intel version came out in 2006 after the PowerPC version had already been in stores, its kind of a weird release.

It was only bundled with the first Intel Macs before 10.5 Leopard came out in 2007.

And technically, its against OS Xs license agreement to virtualize it (same with the non-server versions of 10.5 and 10.6).

With that said, I really doubt Apple cares about such an old version of OS X these days, and I think creating a VM of it is a really cool thing to do for educational purposes.

Who knows maybe its still useful for certain developers who still need to test how things work on 10.4 without keeping an old power-hungry machine around that is capable of running it.

This is mostly just a compilation of information available on different parts of the internet.

I would like to give credit to the following sitesforums for helping to explain various pieces of the puzzle.

Vmware Player 12.5 4 Os X Mac OS Xs License

Once again, this is because Mac OS Xs license agreement only allows you to run Mac OS X on Macs.

If you really dont care about following the rules on this, there is an unlocker that you can run to modify VMware Player or VMware Workstation to support OS X guests on Windows and Linux.

As Ive already mentioned, the Intel build of 10.4 was never released as a retail copy.

Youll need a 10.4 install DVD that originally came with an Intel Mac from that era.

Id recommend shooting for version 10.4.7 or higher.

My MacBook Pro 17 Core Duo (MacBookPro1,2) came with 10.4.6, and its installer disc will not boot a VMware VM.

Vmware Player 12.5 4 Os X Drivers For The

I think it is missing the proper drivers for the storage controllers emulated by VMware, because it gets stuck waiting for the root device when I try to boot the CD, regardless of whether I make the CD drive SATA or IDE.

An install disc for a Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro (MacBookPro3,1) with 10.4.10 works fine with no modifications.

You also have to install the 10.4.11 combo update onto the hard drive before it will be bootable, because the kernel installed by the older disc ends up having the same problem.

Finally, you need access to a newer install disc that has a compatible kernel you can borrow, so it makes more sense to just use the newer disc to install it in the first place.

Im going to walk you step-by-step through the process of fixing each little glitch as we run into it.

Set the guest OS to Mac OS X Server 10.5 32-bit.

Theres nothing really special about the setup at this point.

Ive found other workarounds online that involve adding files to the CD and hard drive to fool VMware into thinking its booting to a server install, but theres an easier approach: use a custom EFI firmware that doesnt perform this check.

This custom firmware is called efi32-srvr.rom and is included with older versions of the unlocker I mentioned earlier.

The efi32-srvr.rom file is pretty old, and VMwares own EFI firmware has probably been updated quite a bit in the meantime, so youll be missing out on some fixes.

Despite that concern, it seems to work fine in my experience.

Note that if you are virtualizing OS X on a Core 2 Duo, you probably wont run into this problem.