SingPost

And thus my hypothesis is tested and the experiment given conclusion: the Singapore Post is way more efficient than the Philippine Post.

Alright, that's a given truth and so needed not be proven in the first place.

I ordered an extra battery pack on eBay for USD 28.99 with free shipping worldwide last November 11 and here I am, just 3 weeks after I placed the order, testing the new battery pack for the HP Mini 311.

Imagine the joy of someone who was used to waiting at least 8 weeks minimum.

Placed side by side, the two battery were identical. The replacement battery pack (one without the distinctive black "replace with HP spare" sticker) was surprisingly well built. The plastic is quite on par with the original one, although it didn't quite match that of the original's glossy parts.

As for the more substantial part of this description, the capacity differs in between the two packs even though both contain 6 cells.

Indicated on the battery itself:

1. Original HP 6-cell : 4910 mAh indicated
2. replacement 6-cell : 5100 mAh indicated 

As detected by battery management utilities, I'll let you just look at these screenshots:

1. Original HP battery : 5100 mAh

2. Replacement battery : 4400 mAh 

(but apparently currently extended to 4567 mAh)

The description on the seller's page on eBay on the other hand remains honest and lists 4400 mAh.

If you're interested to check it out, you can visit this link on eBay.

NVidia Ion 1st Gen or GeForce 9400m

It is no big news that the HP Mini 311's NVidia Ion graphics chip is basically the GeForce 9400m. While that is true and tested while I was on the Windows side - 720p .mkv files would play fine, as I remember it - it doesn't seem to be that way on the Mac OS X side.

Earlier this year, my worst experience with playing those HD video files (I was watching "Iris", yes, it's a Korean action drama), was that there would split-second freezes here and there but no green artefacts littering VLC's video window like I see now.

Perhaps it's CUDA driver related? Maybe. I should get some time to test whether that's the root of evil. It's either that or the 512MB rated for the Total VRAM is only eye-candy.

Update: Nope, it is not eye candy. Use Plex player for Mac OS X and you'll see that the Mini 311 can handle 720p .mkv quite smoothly.

Battery Battery

We've been together for almost 2 years and it's only now that I get to know what's happening deep inside you :D

And it reads:

"Your Apple notebook battery is designed to retain 80% of its original capacity at up to 300 charge cycles. Your battery capacity is currently at 89%, and you have already overcome 300 cycles (you have done 371 cycles)."

Wow...

Linux, Linux, How Do I Love Thee?

Linux, Linux, how do I love thee?
Let me count the ways;
I love thee with a love that makes Ubuntu a permanent resident in my USB flashdrive
With the depth and height of Grub that is able to boot Snow Leopard on /dev/sdaX
When Chameleon is out of sight...
I love thee to the level that I might consider a dual boot with 10.6.8
Most quiet need, by dd if=boot1h of=/dev/sdaX that distroyeth MBR (but then I remember, I'm on GPT so giveth what?!?)
I love thee with a love that seems to lose
ultimately to no one else but a hackintosh. :D


It's amazing that even though I sabotaged Chameleon on my internal hard drive trying to update to 10.6.8 and apply THeKiNG's 09032011 pack, I only needed my trusty Ubuntu 11 USB stick to boot OS X up. Of course, it's a given that the necessary files are installed correctly - most importantly those kexts to be put in /System/Library/Extensions. There just was not anything "broken" on my system aside from the boot file installation on my hard drive.

Saturday Musings

It's a Saturday again here in this tiny tiny island. That means the week has just flown by and gone in a blink of an eye. I always tell friends and family one thing when asked about how I find life here in Singapore: fast.

Being Filipino, I'm used to lazy afternoons during weekends and mellow evenings from Monday to Friday with short treks from the work place to the nearest Starbs or CBTL joint and chat with office friends about work or life in general over a cup of coffee.

I miss the cappuccino at Alexandre, an authentic French café in Bonifacio Global City; they have these cool freebies every now and then for their VIP members and being a member only takes giving them the right to spam your email inbox with coupons.

That picture seems a remote reality here in Singapore though. Everywhere you look are people in hurry to get somewhere, on time. We do have Starbucks at Clementi Mall which is but a short 3 to 5 minute walk (depending on my mood that sets my pace ;D). However, it's always brimming with people and the interaction with the baristas isn't quite like the same in Manila. I still haven't totally erased my slight aversion to that questioning phrase: "Wha' you wan' ah?" and the look and the body language that go along with it compelling my psyche to hurry up. Who wouldn't feel a bit harassed?

So today, as with all Saturdays, I tried to sleep in upto lunch time if possible. Yes, it may be construed as rebelling against the precipitous flux of SG life and I'd rather be called stubbornly unadaptable than embrace this cult of time pounders.

But guess what? The HDB management decided that work on the "lift improvement" project should also include Saturdays and I'd gather that's to be more time efficient and get the job done faster.

Why is it just always about getting something over with right away when after all that hype, there's only something else to get over with again? Where is that rainbow after that storm (of pounding and pounding)?

Perhaps that is an alien concept here.

And thus, dismayed with not getting my 14 hours of sleep as planned, I resorted to a reconciliation with my cabinet drawers. Sorting out the mess that has acquired in there for some time revealed that 2 GB Kingston stick that I pried out my MacBook Mini because it was dead and caused it not to boot up.
Without anything else to do and unable to go back to sleep because of that jarring noise of jack hammers and drills that shook our whole HDB, I decided to push my luck.

I put the 2GB stick back in. The first try, it wouldn't boot. But I tried again and voilà!

Hello again there, 3 GB 1066 MHz DDR3 :D

Maybe that memory stick has acclimated to dry hot weather. Will I follow suite?

Should I try updating to 10.6.7 next? I don't reckon 10.6.8 was ever sorted out clean for the HP Mini 311 anyways...

Smartphone Updates - Arrggh and Aaah

When I got my LG Optimus One early this year, I was but a marginalized member of society who couldn't afford an iPhone. And so, with little persuasion from my officemates back in my previous company in Manila and the stupid notion of getting the same phone that Gil Ra-Im in the K-drama Secret Garden would infuse some of the beauty of Ha Ji-Won in me, I became an Android fan.

Of course, I still secretly pined away for a white iPhone - a dream that was realized in this microscopic island of Singapore.

Fast forward to just last Wednesday, I updated Hae-Rim (yep, I named my 32 GB white iPhone 4 courtesy of Singtel and its name is 해림 in the Korean alphabet). The whole iOS 5 update was as worry free as could be.

I set my iPhone in French as you know and Droidy (my Android phone is a little boy while the iPhone is a little girl, together they make up my brood of gadget babies) is no exception.

Wanting to be loving mother, unbiased therefore, to both children, I decided to also update Droidy. Gingerbread was just rolled out (finally - I was waiting for it since March) by LG and I was all about making sure that both my kids got equal chance with all the updates they could possibly get their hands on.

But alas, I guess it's just not meant to be for while Hae-Rim is now rocking iMessage (loving that blue message bubble by the way - a vast improvement over the ghastly green one) as if nothing happened and she had always had iOS 5 in her little ethereal white system, Droidy sadly did not make it through the update via LG Mobile Tools Update which I did on my Windows 7 HP EliteBook 8460p laptop issued by my current company.

I'm suspecting it's because Droidy was still set to French when I ran the update that things got screwed up.

Was it my fault? Was I such a useless parent - why did I choose to make them speak French instead of just plain English? Why?

And it breaks my heart to look at My little boy with its screen stuck at that LG logo for hours on end until it just runs out of battery....

Enter the iPhone 4

So here I am in Singapore a country so tiny that, quoting our Singaporean trainer at my new company, "pilots need to really be careful (when landing) or else they end up in Malaysia", and after a month, I still haven't been able to update from 10.6.6. A lot of factors count in the delay: work, life, moving flats and everything in between just happened.
I missed the I.T. sale and therefore missed the S$ 6.00 Belkin case for iPhone 4.
You might be wondering so I'll explain: the very day I got my IC/Employment Pass card from the EPSC - which is very efficient by the way compared to POEA in the Philippines, I applied and got approved for a very decent data plan from SingTel. That's S$56 per month 12 GB limit but which I got S$10 discount for thanks to our "corporate account" promo.
The cheapskate casing that I got $15 from one of the curiosity the town center environs is still pretty nice :D

And I must say, aside from the 3G and phone and SMS features, my iPhone 4 experience doesn't have that much edge over the iPod touch 4th gen.

Dead

My HP Mini 311's 2 GB DDR 3 Kingston stick has finally died on me. Just exactly after a year and it's ready to say goodbye. Perhaps it didn't take to the Singapore weather as well as I thought it would. Or maybe that's the consequence of my installing Windows 7 on it which turned to be of no use at all since nobody at the Changi Airport Terminal 2 whatever OS I was running on my netbook.

But I'm still not giving up on my 311 even though my new company issued me a nice HP EliteBook 8460p laptop for work and which I can bring home from work for personal use.

I'm thinking of scouring the shops in Sim Lim and Bugis this weekend to get a new 2 GB stick. Hopefully, this one will last.

Changes!

Nothing is the same as it was before.

All the Mac-centric sites that I love reading have ceased to talk about Snow Leopard. Clearly, Lion is now the darling of the crowd, living perhaps to the reputation of the actual feline this latest version of Mac OS X (pronounced as "Mac OS Ten" - y'all knew that, right? ;D) where it got its name from, Mac OS X Lion is now the king of the Mac jungle, Hackintosh outskirts encompassed in the territory.

My HP Mini 311-1002TU no longer runs Snow Leopard; it's on Windows 7 Starter Edition. And before you post your violent reactions on my sudden "traitor streak" as comments on this post, the current arrangement is but temporary. 

LeMaurien19 is no longer working as a French translator for a US based IT company here in the Philippines. I've tendered my resignation after working there for almost 4 years just a few weeks ago as I have accepted a job opportunity in Singapore to join once more the ranks of customer service representatives (CSR's). If you didn't know, I used to be a call-center agent - that was my first job. Back then, it wasn't labelled as such; my position was stated as "BPO Analyst". Really now?

But I think the new job (3rd job), though less prestigious in print compared to the translation job (2nd), is still up one level from the 1st; at least I don't have to answer calls. Just e-mail. E-mail licence key and claims related  matters in French. I've got a feeling my dormant Italian will be exploited (and I mean exploited in a quite negative way). Plus the pay is better and I get to experience working abroad, amid different culture.

I'm putting Windows 7 on the Mini 311 and gonna put up with it until after I pass the immigration and customs at Changi airport this weekend.

I stayed up all night and until almost 3AM this morning experimenting with USB's and OS X Snow Leopard.  But this drain on my bodily energy (I woke up today with a nose still congested from allergies) proved to be a gain in hackintosh knowledge after all. Or make that "personal hackintosh knowledge". If a GPT formatted USB flashdrive won't boot your 311 even with Chameleon already installed, try using MBR instead.

Looks like it's time to make some new How-To. I hope I get the time and chance.

http://finmath.uchicago.edu

So there you have it: this gal is moving to Singapore and hasn't finished packing yet. 2 more pairs of shoes to shove into that valise, and it's all ok. I hope so.

Oh, and I lost my iPod touch by the way. It happened Friday last week while I was shopping for a suitable luggage/suitcase to bring with me. I'm still brokenhearted over the loss. But hey, I'm going to Singapore whose Sim Lim Square is a purported tech/gadget haven. Hopefully I can replace my beloved iPoddy and then, who knows, get my first Mac (finally)!

Official Pack for 10.6.8

Again, please direct your thanks to Tetonne, who took the effort to put together this new pack for us. Thanks, tetonne! :-)

New Pack for 10.6.8 Update

File name is "Mini311 Retail Pack 20110630v1.

Your feedback is important. Please post them as comments in the Hp/compaq Mini 311 - Project Page to let tetonne and the developers know about how this new pack works on the different Mini 311's.

10.6.8 Update to Snow Leopard

Follow the changes and it's *safe to update to 10.6.8
WARNING: Do this if you know what you're doing. I haven't the time write a n00b friendly, detailed version yet (will go the beach - Boracay, yay! - this weekend, so really busy with real life). When I get the time, I'll update the Installation Guide with 10.6.8 incorporated. Hopefully by that time, our friend Tetonne has come up with a more organized "official" package. :D

If you can access the files in the ProjectOSX page for the HP Mini 311, download the latest attachments of THeKiNG - new dsdt and mach_kernel.

I'd probably get flamed again by doing this, but for those who want to get started right away with testing - please do post your feedback in the Project Page - I've put everything in a zip file.

Current Config HP Mini 311 10.6.8 please say thanks to THeKiNG not to me; or if you're to thank me because of unknown personal reasons (because you just feel like it for ex.) - I reiterate, I did not edit the DSDT nor the mach_kernel. :-)

1. Run the 10.6.8 ComboUpdate (or delta if you're already on 10.6.7). DO NOT RESTART YET.
2. Install the kexts inside the "kext" folder with Kext Utility. NOTE: you can opt to just install AppleHDA and FakeSMC. 10.6.8 brings in a new AppleHDA kext which does not play well with our Mini 311. The FakeSMC in the zip is edited - it no longer includes IntelCPUMonitor plugin because that causes prob as well.
3. Replace the Extra folder with the Extra folder in the zip. Or you can opt to just swap your current com.apple.Boot.plist with the one in the zip. ALSO copy the new DSDT1068.aml.
4. Copy the "mach_kernel_1068_i386.patched" to root folder "/". If you're wondering where that is, it should be in the same level as your Boot file and the OS X system folders: Users, Application, System, Library.
5. Restart.

*in my case that is, as well as the others in the forums.

DO NOT UPDATE to 10.6.8 yet. Reboot loop.
Edit: from netkas.org
"Change _ADR to _UID in the PCI section of your DSDT to fix."

Or use 10.6.7's

1. IOPCIFamily.kext
2. AppleACPIPlatform.kext

Apple has finally released 10.6.8 Update to Snow Leopard.

image from Cult Of Mac.com

In the beta versions of this update, there have been reports that problems with "PCI Bridge" arose for HP Mini 311 hackintosh users. Now that the official Delta and Combo Updates are now available to the masses, we'll see how things fare.

Hit up the links: Delta Update (from 10.6.7), Combo Update (10.6.6 and below). (link corrected)

Or then again, you can proceed with the update by just clicking on the Apple Menu > Software Update.

I'll be updating my Mini 311 later tonight. That is, if I get home without being washed away in the strong winds and rains that typhoon Falcon has been wreaking on the metro these couple of days.

Crux

It's the rainy days once again here in this archipelago. That means a much awaited break from the excruciating heat of the tropical sun has come. I hope though that the sun comes back for a few days when July kicks in so my (1st) Boracay experience can be what a beach vacation should be - with lots of reasons to get outdoors to sink in the blue blue waters and white white sand, and to slap on SPF rated stuff - lots of them.

Aha! And so Boracay (and my dreams of donning proper swim wear - finally!) would be the culprit of my ditching the OSx86 world for some time now! - you'd probably say. Truth be told, sorta. It's not unknown that I'm in graduate school right now and which I get in two flavors: physical school ("en présentielle") and virtual/cyber ("à distance") and this DU ECDF thing along with my M.A. French Translation from UP Diliman share the bigger blame for my inactivity within this hacking community that I consider myself to be part of.

I'm taking up pen and paper - or in this case, keyboard and blogger editor - to write about hackintoshing again. Why now? Well, for one, June spells the end of the academic year in French universities and my virtual one is no exception. I just took eight - yes, that's "8" - final exams from May 26 - June 6. The French call them "épreuves sur table" but they're really more like "torture sur table" with my being tortured right there and then on the table where I filled up a blank sheet of paper with my answers to just a couple or so of questions that should sum up to a score of 20/20 if I get a perfect score.

This is the time when I evaluate my goals in life: should I pursue the M.A. levels (M1 & M2) from the Sorbonne Nouvelle for FLE?

And perhaps as has gotten so entwined my life with OSx86, coincidentally, OS X Lion comes looming in the horizon as well. Should I and the HP Mini 311 pursue the unsure and quite unattainable iCloud heights where Lion is?

Both in my love for the French language (which I myself have a hard time to understand the reason why) and for hackintoshes, I have come to the crux.

At least for hackintoshing, I am more or less clear about my next action. With OS X Lion, Apple has moved further away from Atom netbooks - from the HP Mini 311. It's crucial apps - especially the Finder - being written in 64-bit has never made anything so clear and bright as sunshine as this: yes, there may be possible hocus-pocus to fool Lion in thinking the Atom is a Core 2 Duo which is its least requirement in CPU, BUT the community will have to re-write Lion system apps because it's dropped 32-bit support (at least in the current "DP" - Developer Preview release).

Indeed, the world's most advanced desktop operating system has advanced further and it has left my 32-bit Atom 280 behind without as much as regret on its poker faced mien as it closed the door to leave.

Honestly, I've come to a point where my hopes of seeing Lion in action was on Apple retailer stores here in the metro or on a Core 2 Duo machine that I hope I can get my hands on to hackintosh. No longer on my HP Mini 311. Yes, I've accepted that it's just gonna be me and Snowy HP Mini 311 from now on.

Moving forward, the biggest pre-occupation I should have from now is a good 10.6.8 update;  to be on the look out for ways to improve the experience of Snow Leopard on the 311. And perhaps really get serious with saving for a Mac.

Which brings to mind another important crux in my life - Singapore and S$ 3,000?

Lion

Blame it on too much K-drama and too little time devoted to things hackintosh. For those who don't know, "K-drama" means Korean soap. Yeah, sometimes the lack of a Y chromosome gets the better of me and I prefer enduring sleepless nights trying to finish an entire 20 episode drama.

Perhaps if there's any positive observation that can be derived from that, it's my consistent character. That is; consistently subjecting my body to lack of sleep in any endeavor, be it for the glory of geekhood, dream of becoming the feisty stuntwoman that is Gil Ra Im in Secret Garden, or for pseudo-intellectualism through FLE or FLES.

I'm currently about to face hell week because "les épreuves sur table" are starting on Monday and I'll have to take them at the French embassy here in Manila. And so I'm blogging about Mac OS X Lion.
Right. Call it escapism.

If Jose Rizal, the Philippines' national hero (who's celebrating his 150th birthdat on June 19 by the way) quoted Marx in one of his two novels (not so sure as I write this which specifically of the two) that "religion is opium for the masses", I'd say "hacklintoshing is opium for a language major who dreads her exams next week".

I've downloaded Mac OS X Lion DP2 (Developer's Preview 2). It's what's available in the bay of pirates as of the moment.

I've tried launching OSInstall.mpkg, meaning to install it on a USB thumbdrive but got thwarted with the now all too familiar snobbish error message: "Mac OS X 10.7 cannot be installed on this computer". And by computer, it refers to my HP Mini 311.
Been lurking in the forums and I've downloaded some modded mach_kernel_APIC files.
Restored the installer image to my 8GB GUID partitioned thumbdrive.
Now which bootloader to use?
Am I even in the right track?
I know that D5G12 Grec, D6O26 Évaluation en langues vivantes and many more vile subjects are waiting for me to read and review them...a fork in the road...

Pad

And so I've discovered that I got a failing grade on one of my papers from last semester at the Sorbonne Nouvelle (8,5 / 20) for Grammaire et enseignement (Teaching grammar - French) - it turned out I didn't have the slightest clue on how to teach definite and indefinite articles to students whose mother tongue does not have those elements. My papers for the other three were OK:

• Greek : 16/20
• Analyse des interactions (like Discourse Analysis) : 14,5/20
• Méthodologies, matériel et pratiques en didactique du français (Methods, material, and practices in teaching French as foreign language): 10/20

Subjects which are focused on teaching - which compose my major subjects - I got lower scores. I guess pedagogy is not my calling.

Never in my life did I get such mediocre grades. Well, never in my life since grade school did I exhibit such disinterest in my subjects at school as I did for "Grammaire et enseignement" and "Méthodo, mat et prat". Seems fair 'nough.

But I've never gotten more fulfillment in any other past time such as hackintoshing - or let me rephrase that before I got flamed again for assuming myself deserving to be called a hackintosher. I've never gotten more fulfillment than in personally trying out on my gadget what I've read on forums and other blogs and sites that is related to hackintoshing. There, all's fair.

Anyhoo, before I plunge into another crazy period of cramming for writing all those papers due on the 26th (yep, that's Monday next week) or what I and my study buddy (yep, there's another soul out there who's as demented as I am to be interested in this scholarship from the French embassy and Université de Paris III - Sorbonne Nouvelle) our own version of a "sacrifice" for the Lent season; I'd like to take this brief pause in my deadline swamped life to discuss with you about the HP Mini 311's trackpad.

Anyone who has tried the latest pack from Tetonne experienced a similar issue whereby, after the Mini 311 has been waken from sleep, the trackpad does NOT work at all - as in NO cursor?

I'm currently back to "my current setup".
Disclaimer: before I get another member of royalty and the general human race irate, let me clear that by saying "my current setup" I do NOT intend to claim ownership NOR credit for any element contained in there, BUT that that .zip file exists or has been compiled only to make the how to guide simpler - it is just a way of referring, like in Windoze parlance, to the "last known good configuration" for which I am eternally grateful to the great powers that be of the hackintosh/OSx86 community.

10.6.7

With my current setup, I had no problems whatsoever with updating to 10.6.7.

Just like a real Mac user - or I think, because I've never had a real Mac let alon be able to update one - all I did was run Software Update from the Apple menu and restarted.

For those who are starting from scratch (following the current setup guide) or are skipping point updates, grabe the ComboUpdater from Apple's Site.

Anyways, 10.6.7 doesn't seem to be deliver any major system changes like USB management, power etc. - details listed at the site are only:

• Improve the reliability of Back to My Mac.
• Resolve an issue when transferring files to certain SMB servers.
• Address various minor Mac App Store issues. 

So there.

Patience Is A Virtue

I lost my marbles, admittedly. And on something that didn't merit it because it was really juvenile. Yep, as juvenile as a little toddler throwing (the usual) tantrums. Being, I presume, a year or two older or perhaps a bit more, I wasn't supposed to cave in. But a Neanderthal is also human. Err...human-like?

I've witnessed individuals get bruised by naturally abrasive people. It all added up and like a teapot, steam just had to get exhausted somehow.

After taking a relish out of biting back and it was a bit fun really - kinda like squeezing on a stress ball, you know, it bounces back to its shape; resistence - and after making sure I neither have to make one name into a banner for this blog nor append it to every sentence I write on each post like a punctuation mark, I guess the initial irritation just needed some venting which was also in behalf of all who endured a similar ordeal, and hopefully, I'm back to my happy, pleasant self.

As a line from my fave Korean serial says: "There's no guideline on irritable nerves!"

I can still write about my experiences as an owner of an HP Mini 311 running OS X Snow Leopard here as freely as I've always had. I was once afraid that menacing hands would rip this sort of tech diary that I keep. Thanks for the comments; I realized that "Hey, this is my diary! People can write their own diaries if they don't like what they read in mine." and I really should not be affected - as if anyone can stop you from writing on your own journal right?

We know that we are mere n00bs in this frightening OSx86 world. We know we are forever indebted to those who have the genius and the talent that make this hobby possible. We know that very well and we're not taking credit for anyone else's contribution but rather just spreading word about it.

10.6.7 is out. I should update asap.

This is goodbye

I thought this blog has direction - provide a means to bridge the all too technical world of hackintosh pros and common language of the hackintosh newbies to lessen the fear of initiation. I thought that since not all have the resources to get pass the "newbie stage", then perhaps not all is expected to get elbow deep in hackintoshing i.e. develop their own kexts and tinker with their own DSDT.aml's. There's a role like a mediator that needs to be filled out.

After all, the masters get pissed off when a newbie asks "stupid questions".

But then the harsh reality gets more, well, real. That newbies are not at all welcome to the hackintoshing world if they're not willing to advance. To be honest, there was a time when I felt this way too. Why do I need to write careful guides anyway? Why do I need to answer those "stupid questions" anyway? I felt that I was one of them "masters" too. But, thankfully, I woke up from that reverie. For aside from a little DSDT.aml editing, some shuffling of kexts from one location to another, the occasional AppleScripting and PackageMaker projects, I was way way way behind in terms of knowledge in comparison to the most brilliant of minds.

And so I told myself that as a way of keeping that humble realization in mind, I'd keep this blog in which to record my experience in trying out what's out there, share how I translated tech stuff that sounded practically jibberish at first for me, so that the next person interested in this hobby could skip the headache of having to decipher jibberish just to get started.

And so I gave way, playing the role of an understanding older sister, willing myself to be stepped on, labelled as imbecile for my queries so I could understand something new on the forums in behalf of the misfortunate few who are indeed less well-versed in this kind of activity but with no lesser gusto to get into the game.

But there comes a time when people get tired; get tired of people being pissed off with them, get tired of being categorized under the "mangled-brains-cannot-understand-simple-Chameleon-compiling-instructions"; get tired of paying reverence to the shrine of the masters.

There is no such thing as making hackintoshing newbie-friendly. For simply put, there is no place for newbies in the hackintosh world. They will only forever be crushed under the giants' feet if they're not giants themselves from the get go.

Why do I feel the need to make the different ends of the OSx86 ecosystem meet and understand each other when there's no mutual desire from both ends to be able to communicate well?

It will always be that the newbie has to become less of a newbie.

Logically, that has some valid points. Plus who am I to say otherwise?

Neanderthal Goes Back To Her Cave

Apparently putting up a donations link turns out to be a very bad idea even though publicized otherwise by a friend of mine at work. She told me: "You're putting effort and time in making detailed explanation available to people who don't have time to put the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle together or simply don't wanna make the effort themselves. Perhaps it's not a bad idea if you create a way for some of them who would like to say thanks for that effort, in other ways, like in moolah, ya know."

Having had a bad experience with donations link in a previous site I blogged for free for (a donations link was up and making people think I was the direct beneficiary without me knowing and me, ending up having to provide support to people who donated to that site - which I won't mention anymore), I was reluctant. Make that very reluctant.

But then, in the end I got convinced that my friend had a valid point; that what I did was actually a bit  of "research". Information to make stuff work is already out there and knowledge that something is possible is already known. What I did, according to that convincing argument, is get a hold of that information, study it for full understanding in order to transform it to a coherent entity that's accessible to more people because it's in a more easily digested form. Plus the personal affirmation that such and such does work would add to the positive demographics that could help, in its own little way, further establish the information as fact.

Now the question is: Can that "effort" of research and transformation really merits being considered a valid value that could indeed be credited to me?

It seems that the answer is "No".

As of this moment, I feel like I've no right whatsoever to write anything pertaining to the Mini 311 without mentioning in every post a certain indiviual's name. Because no, I cannot just "reduce" that person to the generic "brilliant minds from the forums" or let his contribution be as understood, be read between the lines of each post, along with the pioneers of this field, that we, as hackintosher-wannabes, are forever thankful to.

Would I need to make a banner containing that name for my blog as sort of my "licence to write" about the Mini 311 even if I'm only describing my own personal account of how I pieced together what they, the masters, created and which is a fact that I never did and never will intend to undermine? If so, I'd simply run out of time in this short life time enumerating other great names such as netkas, prasys, stell, etc. etc. etc. ....

No thanks. I've bigger stuff to tend to like Université de Paris 3 - Sorbonne Nouvelle.

This Neanderthal is tired of baby-sitting and if she can't write freely, then she'd rather just go back to her cave.

Another Update

It's that time again for updates!

There's a new Retail Pack :D Guess what, it's now Tetonne who's maintaining packs released originally by MowgliBook.
(I'm not sure whether there's been another explosion in the forums...but let's move one, shall we?)

This one's gonna be as short as I can make it.

What You Need:
1. Latest Retail Pack for the HP Mini 311
2. Lizard  and Kext Utility - you know where to get that (see the guides section)
3. Bootable Mac OS X installation on a USB stick.*
*Yes, right - I'm talking NOT about a Mac OS X USB Installer but a fully functional installation of Mac OS X 10.6 on a USB stick or external USB hard drive. Here's why:
- If you've been following this blog and I assume you've got the same system config as I've got, that is; kexts are in /System/Library/Extensions and the Extra folder is in the root directory "/", if anything goes awry in that setup and for some reason it won't boot up on it's, chances are - based on my own experience - you won't be able to boot the system up with an emergency, i.e. in the form of just the Mac OS X USB Installer. That's because the kexts are in /S/L/E and they will almost always be included in boot up once that volume they're installed on is chosen to be booted up.
Plus, I've observed that Chameleon will always pick up the Extra folder once it sees its presence in the chosen volume's root directory "/". So let's say you've got a bootable USB with a working combination of kexts and stuff, all neatly set up in an Extra folder on its own, here's the bad news: although it's that USB's Chameleon you fired up, once you tell Cham to boot the afflicted volume who's got its own Extra folder, Cham will simply pick up that Extra folder and all those kexts in /S/L/E of that volume instead of the "known good config" in the USB booter. Got that? Or if you didn't...well, it's a long story that I'll have to tell some other time.

So anyway, here's What You Do (and I assume you know what you're getting into right? *wink*)
1. Unzip the Retail Pack
2. Delete all the colored kexts in /System/Library/Extensions and then dig inside the "kext" folder in the Retail Pack you've just downloaded and unzipped, copy them all to /System/Library/Extensions.
3. Run Kext Utility.
4. Also from inside the Retail Pack, copy the entire Extra folder to your root directory "/" and replace any existing Extra folder in there.
5. Go to your root directory by clicking on your main volume, ex. Macintosh HD, and delete the Boot file.
6. Fire up Lizard. On the "Install and Update" tab, click once on your main volume to highlight it. Now in the section "Select Chameleon (bin) folder", click on the "Select folder" button and navigate upto the "Bootloader" folder inside the new Retail Pack. A new section will be added below and click on the "Install Chameleon" button.

If you want to install the Trackpad.prefPane, there are instructions inside the Retail Pack. You can actually go without it, if you don't wanna make the effort. But you know, you've come this far, why not go all the 9 yards?

My Current Setup

Okay, so after some deliberation, I finally decided to ditch the "official guide" route and just give you an account of how I'm running OS X Snow Leopard on my HP Mini 311 at the present.

For your reference, here's how I installed Mac OS X Snow Leopard (10.6)

Now to update to 10.6.6, once I've booted to my desktop (I used the USB booter to boot up the 311 but chose my internal hard drive instead), I just ran Software Update (Apple menu > Software Update) and rebooted.
Up to this point, the USB Installer with Retail Pack 0.9 installed would boot up 10.6.0 up to 10.6.6 with no problems at all.

But of course, we wanna stay on the bleeding edge so we're gonna follow the progress made by the developers.

Note though that there are different setups and up until now, we're all stumped at why the user experience is so inconsistent even among those who have practically identical hardware specifications like RAM amount and WiFi card. So, please don't assume this is supposed to work flawlessly and then complain :)

And as this is about sharing my current setup with you - if you wanna try it - I've taken the liberty of just getting the stuff I currently have in my system and then zipped it up to be able to discuss things the simplest possible way I can.

Pack:
HP Mini 311 05 Feb 2011

IMPORTANT!
I am no longer booting with EFI. Before proceeding with this, make sure to initialize/delete that 200MB partition from your hard drive. To do this launch "Terminal" and type this command:


sudo newfs_hfs -v EFI /dev/disk0s1


Press Enter. Type in your pasword when prompted. Enter.

My HP Mini 311-1002TU added specs:
3 GB RAM
Atheros N 9280 in half height PCI slot
Stock HP Broadcom 4312 with integrated Bluetooth (the WiFi part doesn't work, only BT)

Tools Needed:
- Lizard
- Kext Utility

What To Do:
1. Unpack the zip file you just downloaded and you'll get a folder named "HPMini311_05022011". Inside this folder, you'll see the following:

2. Launch Lizard. In the "Install and Update" tab, "Select Device" pane, click on your Mac OS X volume to highlight it. Then, at the next pane titled "Select Chameleon (bin) folder", click on the button "Select Folder":

3. In the window that will pop up, navigate to the same "HPMini311_05022011" folder. Click on "Open".

4. Back in Lizard, you'll notice that a new section "Bootloader's file" has been added. The components "Install Boot1h", "Install Boot0", and "Install Boot" will be enabled. Click on "Install Chameleon" and enter your password when prompted, just follow the onscreen messages that will follow.

5. After quitting Chameleon, go back to the "HPMini311_05022011" folder and copy the file "boot" and the "Extra" folder to the root of your internal hard drive, volume Macintosh HD for example:

*replace the boot file, when you're asked

6. Still in the HPMini311_05022011 folder, copy the contents of the "kexts" folder to your /System/Library/Extensions/:

*Be sure there are no VoodooPS2Controller.kext in /System/Library/Extensions

(else you risk a Kernel Panic later when you reboot)

7. Finally, launch Kext Utility. Enter your password to run the app. Wait for it to finish its job and then restart.

Tip: When you first restart after this, boot with the flags -v -f just to be sure. After doing this once, you can boot normally afterwards. This is just to help makre sure your kextcaches are rebuilt, no residues left.

What To Expect:

In my case, I'm on hibernatemode 0 with secure virtual memory disabled (sleepimage deleted from /var/vm/) I don't have the blank screen on wake.

Everything else is as what has always been with the HP Mini 311 - the only bane is that there's no ethernet after sleep.

Also, with this new ApplePS2Controller, I've got scrolling with Alps trackpad. You can't disable tap-to-click though (something I've never been able to disable since way back, even with all the different PS2Controllers, both Voodoo, ApplePS2 I've ever tried, so I guess this is irrelevant).

Next Up - Between OSx86 and Study and Work too

It's been about a week or so since my emancipation from a most harrowing experience: writing four papers in French about teaching French...great.

And then the 2nd semester has now officially started. How so? Two of my four subjects this semester have uploaded the course material and that only means one thing: we, students, should start getting back to work!

I was meaning to get right back to hackintoshing after January 25th, as in devote myself and time to this activity. However, such does not prove to be feasible at all - when I got accepted for the 3-year program from the Université de Paris 3 - Sorbonne Nouvelle, I actually committed myself to 3 years of all that FLE grind, in hopes of the French embassy here in the Philippines deciding to fly me to France in my 3rd year (M2, if I survive). So, there's no such thing as completely detaching myself from the clutches of the academe world and to fully go back to OSx86 world.

No, siree.

So, before those other two subjects become available and I get swamped up with tons to read again and, heaven forbid, papers to write (although of course, judging from my experience from last semester I can confidently declare that I'll have papers to write and submit on or before April 24th), I'll do my best to update the installation guides here in My MacBook Mini.

I'll give you guys a hint:
Don't expect automated .pkg installers anymore from me, or I meant, I'm no longer in the capacity to promise delivery of those :)

Musings on HP Mini 311 - After A Hiatus

This won't be a long one.

Just that in the current state of things, all kexts are now installed directly in /System/Library/Extensions/ and  we no longer have EFI.

And since that is the case, I'm actually thinking if I'd want to use automated package installers when I configure my system from scratch because, by nature, I'm someone who'd very much prefer to be hands on and know exactly what happens and when that happens in my Mac OS X file system.

That said, I prefer using Lizard and Kext Utility to do the job for me very brilliantly.

Kappy is continuing the development of automated installers - yep, he has much more perseverance and talent and intelligence in figuring out Package Maker than I can ever hope to do - and has been posting packages for people to test.

Kappy's Mediafire

As of now, direct installation in /S/L/E using automated package installers remains dodgy and one still has to run Kext Utility after running the installer to get things up to snuff.

I'm Back!

cdt podbean.com

And indeed, from the "let-me-suck-your-wits-outta-ya" swirling vortex of teaching French as a foreign language, I am back!

So what's up with the HP Mini 311 Darwin Project, you ask?

Well, it's no secret that the project thread at InsanelyMac exploded while I was turning myself into stew with my studies. After that, contributors - and might I add, very very valuable contributors - migrated to ProjectOSX forum and continued development there.

I'd gather that with the InsanelyMac thread closed and my lack of activity on this blog of mine, many of you are clueless as to the current situation of HP Mini 311 as a hackintosh. And I share the same fate as yours; after being gone from the scene for nearly 3 months (without active participation), I'm currently in the process of picking the bits and pieces as I try to catch on.

The good news is that there's progress and quite a lot too.

I'm currently mulling on whether to re-open/re-create the InsanelyMac project thread or not. I thought that if the valuable contributors are already carrying out the discussion at the new forum, then that would only mean 2 project pages, which is pointless.

Perhaps we should just keep the Support Thread from now own and then as usual, I'll document what I can here in My MacBook Mini in hopes of making the hardcore "dev" stuff a wee bit friendlier for my fellow noobs.

And now, I'm looking forward to an OSx86 weekend.