My MacBook Wind

So here I am with this latest post, chronicling my experience with installing OS X Leopard on two different machines, the Asus 1000H and the MSI Wind. Both run OS X Leopard great but based on my experience, the MSI Wind, though lacking in "aesthetics" points (depending on each's own opinion) gives the more pleasant OS X experience in that I'd had significantly more trouble installing the OS in the Asus 1000H.

Just see my previous post. 

True, the webcam on the Asus 1000H may be less laggy than the one on the MSI Wind, provided that it isn't one of those nasty Bison v .03's which aren't compatible at all, but the over all user experience is albeit better on the Wind. 

As far as I'm concerned it's only the internal mic that's still totally not working on the Wind. It's the same case as in the Asus 1000H, but with the Wind, you get the volume, brightness, and all the other fn + Fx controls working after doing an install from the msiwindosx86 DVD. With the Asus, you gotta do some further hacking and it ain't easy.

I didn't even bother to get the controls working on my roomie's 1000H because that would mean another significant dent in my time schedule. True, as it is ,my hackintosh skills are hardly acceptable so I may just not have the ability to do that but it's undeniable that the said task does require working on.

Another thing is sound. Okay, what about audieee? Sure that did wonders and my roomie can now even use her iPod's earphones with her Eeepple 1000H (that's what she's decided to call her hackintosh) and I couldn't use it without even installing CHUD first and then running some scripts in Terminal etc...

But the main point of the fact is that without audieee, the 1000H's internal speakers wouldn't work at all. And audieee at that wouldn't have perfomred the big miracle it did without having to install the Developer Tools on the 1000H first. 

Perhaps all this is becoming a pain in the eyes to read and a lot more painful to the brain to process for it to make any sense at all so here's a better summary:

After installation from msiwindosx86 DVD :

MSI Wind

*No preps needed. Boot from DVD and install

What works right away:
1) Sound through internal speakers
2) Correct resolution 1028 x 600
3) Trackpad
4) Keyboard
5) Sleep (close lid and system automatically goes to sleep, press power button to wake-up)
6) Control keys (brightness, volume, etc.)
7) Bluetooth (both built-in or dongle/usb type)

What works but requires tweaking (fixes enclosed in parentheses):
1) Webcam (Sonix, update Quick Time to 7.5 or latest)
2) WiFi (download and install corresponding WLAN Utility)
3) Audio via headphone jack (follow guide here) (it's actually for the Lenovo S10 but it's the same procedure)

Asus 1000H 

1) Pre-installation requirement : Do not install patched kernel
2) Bypass setup by doing this trick:
after installation, during boot up, hit any key to stall default booting into OS X, at the prompt:

-s
/sbin/fsck -fy
/sbin/mount -uw /
touch /var/db/.AppleSetupDone

of course, you enter these lines one by one. Get a better idea of what to do with a guide with pics here

What works right away:
1) Correct resolution 1028 x 600
2) Trackpad
3) Keyboard
4) *Sleep (not verified)
5) Webcam
6) bluetooth

What works but requires tweaking (fixes enclosed in parentheses):
1) Webcam (Sonix, update Quick Time to 7.5 or latest)
2) WiFi (download and install WLAN utility)
3) Audio via headphone jack (follow guide here)
4) Controls (brightness, volume, etc.  might work by researching here) * not confirmed

Apparently it does seem cool to have Mac OS X Leopard running on a PC, a netbook at that. Well, at least that's what my roomie thinks.

She bought herself a new Asus 1000H and requested that I transform it into a Mac. Short of explaining to her that I really am not transforming her netbook into a Mac, since installing OS X is different from transforming her hardware into an Apple one. It would require magic and my powers were limited to hacking techniques I didn't even invent in the first place. 

To cut the story short, this entire week was devoted to installing Leopard on her Asus 1000H. And boy was it difficult!

First, I only had the msiwindosx86 slipstream DVD installer which is customized specifically for the MSI Wind, not the Asus 1000H. But I still trudged on, crossing my fingers and hoping against all odds that it would work.

1 try:

I plugged in my external DVD drive to the Asus 1000, slapped in the msiwindosx86 DVD and rebooted. Darwin loaded but I got stuck at a cryptic line along the way, never getting to the graphical installation program.

2 try:

Again, I went scrounging the net for some clue and found out that you can't install OS X on the 1000H without flashing your BIOS with a compatible one that you get from here.

It worked. All but sound. And try as I might, there wasn't anything I could to make audieee work.

So, being true to my nature, I opted to do another fresh install as I thought this glitch might be caused by the fact that I didn't uncheck the patched kernel during install. According to the tutorials, it's important that the vanilla kernel be used if you want audieee to work.

3rd try:

Reinstallation success with the patched kernel left unchecked. But I got stuck at the welcome/configuration step, where I kept getting the Spinning Beach Ball of Death when I clicked on "Do Not Transfer blah blah" option.

I hit the net again, and found that I needed to interrupt Darwin during loading and at the "boot:" prompt, type:

-s

/sbin/fsck -fy

/sbin/mount -uw /

touch /var/db/.AppleSetupDone

(entering each line one by one)

and the change root's password so I could log in to the system later.

passwd root

After several tries, and I dunno why I had to try more than once since it's supposed to work at the first try, I was rocking :D

I installed audiee, which was just a matter of dragging the unzipped app to the Applications folder.

And hop-la! We got sound! :D