(Chaos)
Today is a day full of surprises when snippets of info here and there with the postman not returning my Php 5.00 change can be life altering. Alright, it's obvious I'm waxing poetic here so to cut the chase short, let's just say today has a general air of happiness all around.
My MSI Wind U100's keyboard - yes, the keyboard made from no-more-thicker-than-a-disposable-plastic-cup-material - died on me after 18 months of use and abuse. Not that the machine is now beyond recognition as what it was when new but I haven't been giving it the exact same amount of tender loving care that I do (or did) its other siblings - the newest HP Mini 311 and the HP Mini 1001TU (bless its silicon innards and may it rest in peace while I put its WiFi card in better use on the 311).
Back to the keyboard of the MSI Wind. I used to think that stuff are delivered faster when they're sent to Metro Manila addresses and so I always had my ebay orders from Hong Kong to be sent in Makati. I remember I received my HP Mini 1000's replacement keyboard around 1 month after I ordered it online. I ordered an EeePC 701 keyboard for my cousin as well but I got the item after 1 and 3 weeks. Now I'm getting evicted from where I'm staying in Makati so I had the MSI Wind's replacement keyboard sent to Bulacan. My mind was set to embrace the possibility of seeing the keyboard in summer or after 3 months in April this year.
But this afternoon, my assumptions were overruled and I got the white keyboard 17 days after placing an order in ebay. And what's even better is that I didn't have to pick it up from the post office branch in our municipality like I had to in Makati cause a guy riding a motorbike drove by this afternoon at our house and handed me a box packaged in a familiar way a la My NoteBook World (ebay seller where I get my stuff from; a very trustworthy seller) way laced of the delivery guy's reeking cologne. When he said he didn't have change for my two Php 20 bills (the customs' fee is Php 35), I was more than happy to let him keep the Php 5.
My MSI Wind has Snow Leopard installed now, EFI as well but recently, I had to install Vista to watch a fave drama as it aired live in Taiwan via PPLive. (It's really a pitty that there's no PPLive equivalent in Mac OS X, at least none that I know of). Vista screwed up Chameleon but this is something that's expected and so I really wasn't surprised or upset. I realized I wanted to go back to dual-booting OS X and Windows XP and so I've partitioned the Wind's 160 GB HDD into 2 using MBR table. And now I'm restoring an all Vanilla Snow Leopard installation on the HFS formatted partition. I'll see later if I'm successful in putting Snow on MBR then I'll get XP on the other, topping it off with an application of NetbookBootMaker to boot it all up. It's a lazy man's strategy - all have Snow Leo inside the Wind already the way I want it will all my apps and configs done.
My HP Mini 311 suddenly couldn't turn on the Mini 1000's WiFi card. I tried booting off a live usb Ubuntu 9 stick as well as Mac OS X Leopard installation off an external hard drive to turn on the card but no avail. I then proceeded with restoring the stock card and then installing Windows XP - even with the necessary drivers for the integrated WiFi Bluetooth module, the HP Wireless Assistant told me the card was disabled - it cannot turn it on. Bluetooth though was turned on fine. I ended up restoring the 311's stock Windows 7 installation and WiFi card was functional again. Oh geez, HP and its soft switches are driving me nuts!
So I'am for the moment I'm without an OS X machine. I'm writing this post off Leopard on a 20 GB usb external drive plugged into the Wind. Chaos.
My old NVflash.exe strategy is completely turned over as the app refuses to acknowledge the Ion being a true blue nVidia card. That said, I don't have a ROM to create an NVCAP string with to put into the boot plist to enable Quartz Extreme on Leopard on the Mini 311. I'm gonna go another route.
A fellow forumer at myhpmini.com reports that he got his Mini 110's wifi working in Snow Leopard even though that's perceived as practically impossible by MacBook Mini owners around the globe. He said he's originally got a Leopard installation running on his 110 and he's got WiFi as is normally expected for the 110 in Leo. But what he did is did an upgrade to Snow Leo and installed this Mac OS X version on top of his existing Leopard installation and BAM! WiFi works, he says.
Now it may well be that his 110 has a different card from the other 110 - a card that's 10.6 compatible but I think I'm gonna try it on my 311 just the same to check things out. Who knows? Maybe this is the pleasant surprise we've all been waiting for. Maybe we only need to install Leopard just "in passing" to take care of the "enabling" the WiFi card but still with the ultimate goal of Snow Leopard.
4 comments:
hey speaking of keyboards..my sound icon keys on my hackintosh mini311 dont work unless i hit the function key first. When i first hackintoshed i thought this was reversed? I would rather hit fn+f8 to get spaces or expose instead of important one keystroke commands like volume and sleep. Any ideas? Reversible?
On my 311, I've always had to press fn+F10/F11 to adjust volume. I don't really understand the issue you're experiencing...
On my 311, I've always had to press fn+F10/F11 to adjust volume. I don't really understand the issue you're experiencing...
When I first loaded the windows 7 beta on here, it kept hard crashing on me. Wireless Keyboards , wireless mice etc all of which produce an electronic cacophony that can have a mutually canceling effect. If you have zillion other things to take care of and your WiFi network .... replace this) of chaos I too will be willing to listen and learn.
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