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 :)