Hackintosh tablet

An old Dell Latitude D600 laptop reborn as a touchscreen tablet that boots three operating systems: OS X 10.5 Leopard, Windows 7 and Lubuntu.

Status: Working again; case design in progress
Base: Dell Latitude D600 laptop
Operating systems: OS X 10.5.6 Leopard (32-bit), Windows 7 and Lubuntu, chosen from a GRUB menu
Storage: SSD, replacing the original hard drive
Touch: Add-on USB touch panel, sized to the D600's screen
Network: Kept offline: none of its systems get security updates
Case: 3D-printed, my own design (rough draft)
Skills: Hardware troubleshooting, RAM diagnosis, multi-boot setup (GRUB), running macOS on non-Apple hardware, Windows and Linux, disk cloning, touchscreen calibration, security risk assessment, CAD and 3D printing

A black 3D-printed tablet frame around a bare touchscreen, lying on a cutting mat. — The rough-draft case from the front, printed in two halves around the screen and touch panel.

The Dell D600's bare chassis on a cutting mat, showing the screen, RAM slots, fan and wireless card, with a small green controller board and its cables beside it and the battery at upper right. — The D600 stripped to the essentials, with the touch panel's controller board at left.

The goal

This project started more than 15 years ago, when I was still in high school. Someone gave me this laptop for free, and I wanted to experiment and see what I could do with it. Getting OS X to boot on a Dell felt like a win, but I kept pushing to see what else it could do: first a triple boot, and later a touchscreen "Mac".

How it works

I stripped the D600 down to the essentials and cloned its hard drive onto an SSD. A USB touch panel, the same size as the laptop's screen, turns it into a tablet, and everything goes into a 3D-printed case I'm designing.

At startup, a GRUB menu picks between OS X 10.5.6 Leopard (32-bit), Windows 7 and Lubuntu, and the touch panel works in all three.

How it came together

Once the triple boot worked, the laptop sat for a few years. When I came back to it, I ordered a cheap touch panel from China, took the chassis completely apart and, since SSDs had gotten cheap by then, cloned the hard drive onto an SSD. After I calibrated the touch panel, it sat again for years: my fabrication skills weren't yet good enough to make a case I'd be happy with. Once I got a 3D printer, I came back and printed a rough draft of a case, only to find the laptop wouldn't boot.

Key decisions

OS X on a Dell, for the challenge. macOS isn't supposed to install on non-Apple hardware, and that was exactly the appeal.
Three systems to cover my bases. Lubuntu and Windows 7 joined OS X so one tablet could run Mac, Linux and Windows.
Offline on purpose. None of the three systems gets security updates anymore, and all three have well-known vulnerabilities, so it stays off the network. I could swap Lubuntu for Debian if I ever wanted it online, but this project is more about proving it could be done than about making a daily-use tablet.

Problems and fixes

It stopped getting past the BIOS. Right after I printed the draft case, the laptop wouldn't boot. To track it down, I pulled every stick of RAM and the internal backup battery, held the power button to drain any leftover power, then tried booting with one stick at a time. That turned up a faulty stick.
Pulling the bad stick wasn't enough. I'd already tried booting without that stick, and it still wouldn't start. It only booted once I removed the bad stick and drained the power. Lesson learned: after changing RAM, fully drain the power before ruling a stick in or out.

Where it is now

All three operating systems boot and work with the touch panel again, and I've printed a rough draft of the case. Finishing the case design is next.

The back of a black 3D-printed tablet case on a cutting mat, with a round cutout near one corner showing the laptop's fan. — The back of the draft case, with a cutout for the cooling fan.

The edge of the black printed case, with an Ethernet port at left and a vent and round charging port at right, the laptop battery sticking out below. — One side: the Ethernet port, the vent and the charging port.

A corner of the black printed case with a long slot and a round hole, next to a loose round metal power button on its wires. — The other side, where the power button and USB ports will go.

What's next

Finish the case design, now that the hardware works again.
USB-C charging. An adapter from the laptop's barrel plug to USB-C, so it charges from a standard USB-C cable instead of a specialty plug.
Maybe a RAM upgrade. I haven't decided yet.