Back In My Mini 1001TU's Arms

It's been exactly 16 days since that fateful night that my Mini 311 got bricked. And that's also how long I've been living with my Mini 1001TU for survival. Imagine how pitiful I could've been without a laptop of my own!

Ok, the HP Mini 311 is still a netbook technically and so is the Mini 1001TU. But the last "real" laptop I had was an 12" IBM Thinkpad A21e:

Obviously, the image above is not an actual picture of the machine I owned (credits to netlabs.net). True, I was madly in love with that Thinkpad as it was the first laptop I bought with my own money (about the same amount I paid for my MSI Wind back then) but its charms weren't quite enough to send me into shutterbug fits like my dear netbooks did. Actually, the habit started with the Mini 1001TU which remains a gorgeous piece of gadgetry to this day in my own opinion. 

And by the way, my A21e had a 700MHz Celeron CPU, 12" LCD screen, 20 GB hard drive, and 256MB SD-RAM.

The point is, judging from my computing habits and from my portable computer history, my requirements are pretty basic. In fact, my EeePC 701 which now belongs to my cousin, with its 900MHz CPU can still fill my plate quite adequately in terms of performance. I can hardly imagine why 900MHz would choke up on blogger.com anyway. In fact, if not for the agonizingly minuscule screen and keyboard of that very first netbook, we would still be together now. Since then I've progressed gradually to an 8.9 incher in the form of the EeePC 900, next to 10 inchers like the MSI Wind and then HP Mini 1001TU. My first HP Mini hit the sweet spot for me in terms of keyboard typing experience but I still got the Mini 311 for the larger screen mainly - Ion and Atom N280 were merely icing on top of the cake.

A large keyboard and a comfortable 11.6" LCD screen with 1366x768 resolution in a package less than 1.5 kg spell nirvana for me.

Thinking back to the days gone by with the Thinkpad A21e and comparing the experience with my 10" netbooks, I've come to realize that it's actually the vertical screen real estate that breaks and makes the deal for me; I was content with the A21e because it had 768 vertical pixels. 1024 pixels horizontal is fine by me but not that "600" part of the equation. Sends shivers up my spine.

And then I am suddenly forced to go back to the quagmires of 1024x600.

On to the meatier OSx86 related stuff. It turns out I'm not the only one who's unhappy with the 600 vertical pixels - Mac OS X doesn't really dig that resolution config as proven by windows cutting past below the dock (already set to auto hide, mind you). And one particular app that just stands out in its obvious disgust of that shortage in vertical pixel real estate is (drum roll please):

GarageBand '09

I posted about this problem before and in the end, was just resigned to reverting to GarageBand '08 which though still didn't quite dig the 600 vertical pixels, allowed me to move its window around the screen, similar to "panning" movement and thus gain access to those control buttons at the bottom. GarageBand '09 in contrast just wouldn't budge - no panning and certainly just pissed me off when it refused to show me its bottom panel controls despite of how small I made its scale factor.

As I've said, I'm no great musician but I do fiddle with GarageBand once in a while and because I've OCD (or at least, I think I have it), being aware of this little glitch just cannot give me peace. But thankfully (another drum roll please) Zooom comes to the rescue!

image from coderage.com

The app can be downloaded for a 30-day trial period and a license can be had for $19.95 USD.

Zooom is Leopard (10.5) and Snow Leopard (10/6) compatible and is very easy to adapt to. There's even a demo that'll help you get acquainted with the key strokes for moving windows around, resizing windows and maximizing them the unconventional way - that is, in relation to the Mac OS X conventional way of course.

So give it a try or you might even wanna consider shelling out $19.95. I imagine it's gonna be a whole lot useful for those of you who have 1024x600 hackintoshed netbooks so that $20 bucks is money well spent. Hopefully I get back my Mini 311 before the 30-day trial period expires.

P.S. Coderage did not pay nor ask me to promote their app so don't feel all weird reading gooey, cheesy, marketing-like stuff like these on my blog - it's not the first time I did something like this. In fact, I seem to be in the habit of advertising stuff here and there without as much as a dime or cent to my name. Well this whole "HP Mini" mania is evident on this blog anyway hahaha.

Oh and though I do not condone software piracy, if you're on for a little easter-egg-hunting, you can check out my mediafire account for little Zooomy little present. ;) 

Snow Leopard 10.6.3 on the HP Mini 1000

UPDATE (09/03/2010): There were still issues with 10.6.3 and I never go to sort them out. Now, I no longer have my HP Mini 1000 with me. My recommendation is to stick with 10.6.2 at the highest version with this guide for best results.

I admit that I've been neglecting the HP Mini 1000, my very first MacBook Mini. It was borked out for a period of time and was just recently resurrected from the land of the dead. But I still haven't played with it for quite a while - never had the patience to figure why it wouldn't sleep in 10.6.3.

Good thing a forumer named lollipop from the myhpmini.com Mac OS X forums has been keeping the "project" alive (I'm now used to calling Mac OS X efforts on specific netbook builds as "projects" because of the HP Mni 311 Darwin Project). It'a very good guide for updating to 10.6.3 but we can take it another route; EFI Boot.

To understand why the obsession with EFI boot method, click here; also aside from being EFI, with this guide, we won't be using any modified/hacked mach_kernel as we're gonna use a version of Chameleon bootloader that auto-patches the kernel for us on the fly during boot up.

This means we can get our Mini 1000's Atom processor pass of as valid Mac Intel procies for use with Mac OS X and avoid the dreaded "boot loop" while using original mach_kernel - one less thing to worry about in future updates.

So without further ado, here's Snow Leopard 10.6.3 on the HP Mini 1000 à la LeMaurien19 :D

What You Need:
1. USB flashdrive or external hard drive - at least 8GB
2, .Snow Leopard Retail DVD (dmg or .iso or .cdr)
3. A working Mac or hackintosh
4. NetbookBootMaker 0.8.3 (we're still using v0.8.3 because 0.8.4 is still in Release Candidate version)
5. MacOSX10.6.2ComboUpdt.dmg (we're NOT using the v1.1 update as that version may cause WiFi probs more this only refers to connection quality issues, if your Mini does not have a Snow Leo compatible card, this unrelated to that) *Apparently, 10.6.3 Combo Update which is not v1.1 is no longer available, please update to 10.6.2 first and then update again to 10.6.3 again later if you insist on getting the non v1.1 10.6.3 update
6. HP Mini 1000 EFI Auto Setup for 10.6.3 (HP Mini 1000 EFI Auto Setup for 10.6.3 is compatible with 10.6.2)

What To Do:
A. Create your bootable USB installer:

1. With your USB drive plugged in and a copy of an image of Snow Leo Retail DVD handy, launch Disk Utility which can be found in Applications > Utilities.
2. Click on USB drive from the list at the left panel and format it as "Mac OS Extended Journaled". You can name it anything you want but for this guide, we're gonna name it "SnowDVD"
3. Click on the "Restore" tab. You should see 2 fields on that tab's panel: "Source" and "Destination". Drag the "SnowDVD" volume you just formatted and drop it to "Destination" box. Drag the "Snow Leopard Retail DVD" to "Source" box.  (If the Snow Leopard Retail DVD image is not listed at the left panel of Disk Utility, simply drag it to that panel)
4. Uncheck option "Erase destination" (so as not to overwrite name "SnowDVD" for the USB) and then click on Restore button. If Disk Utility gives an error message, it's most likely that the Snow Leopard Retail DVD image has not been scanned for restore.  You scan the image by high-lighting the image from the left panel list, then on Disk Utility's menubar, click on Images > Scan Image for Restore... 
5. Once Snow Leo Retail DVD has been restored onto the USB drive, launch NetbookBootMaker and apply it to "SnowDVD" volume.                                                                     We're almost done but we have to do one thing more to make the installation process smooth.
6. Press Command+Shift+G and go to location "/Volumes/SnowDVD/System/Installation/Packages". Delete "OSInstall.pkg" and rename "OSInstall.pkg.orig" into "OSInstall.pkg" - just delete the ".orig" portion of the filename. You now have a bootable USB installer.

B. Install Snow Leopard on the HP Mini 1000

1. With the bootable USB Installer plugged into one of the USB ports, turn on the HP Mini 1000 and press on F9 to get to the boot menu.
2. Choose your USB device from the list and press Enter.
3. You will get to the Mac OS X Installer program; after choosing your language, go to the menubar and click on Utilities > Disk Utility
4. Look at the left panel and click once on your Mini 1000's internal hard disk to highlight it. And then, at the right panel, click on Partition. You should click once on the main topmost drive icon for this to work, and not on any sub volume/partition.                 
5. For "Volume Scheme" choose "1 partition". For "Volume Information", name it "Macintosh HD" (like in real Macs :D). For "Format" choose "Mac OS Extended Journaled".
6. Click on "Options..." button below Volume Scheme block and in the dialog sheet that will appear, choose "GUID partition table". Click on OK.
7. Back at the main Disk Utility window, click on "Apply" button at the bottom to format your hard drive, ready for Snow Leopard. 
8. Once done, quit Disk Utility.app and proceed to Snow Leopard installation. Choose your newly formatted "Macintosh HD" as installation drive. You can also customize which packages get to be installed by clicking on the "Customize" button. At this point, you know what to do. :D
9. The entire installation will take quite a while - take a walk, watch TV, get some coffee - you can leave your machine while it installs OS X but remember to have it plugged to electric source to avoid battery draining out before the install finishes. Also at the end of installation, you'll get an "Installation Failed" error message. This is normal, it just means the hard drive is not bootable - yet well get to that later. But Snow Leopard is indeed installed on your hard drive, don't worry, so just ignore the error message and restart your machine.

C. Initial Boot, Updating to 10.6.3 and EFI Setup

1. With your bootable USB installer still plugged in, turn the HP Mini 1000 and press F9 choose the USB from the boot devices list and press Enter to boot from it.
2. Press any key before "SnowDVD" gets automatically booted up. You'll notice that a "Macintosh HD" has been added as bootable volumes. Use arrow key to highlight "Macintosh HD" and press Enter to boot it up.
3. You'll get into the Mac OS X setup assistant page. Create your User Account as you would on any Mac. At some point, you maybe asked to setup your network, just click on "My computer uses different setting/connects differently" and choose "My computer does not connect to the internet" in the meanwhile. You can configure your network later.
4. Once logged in at the desktop, run the MacOSX10.6.3ComboUpdate installer. You will prompted to restart but DO NOT RESTART YET.
5. Run the HP Mini 1000 EFI Auto Setup for 10.6.3. After that's done, you may now restart your machine.

Congratulations on your new Mini MacBook Air (I had the smbios.plist make your Mini 1000 disguise as a MacBook Air 2,1).

If you get a kernel panic after restarting from C.5, just shutdown your machine and restart again.

What you may notice that the machine may not be able to restart after C.5 when you click on shutdown or restart option. Don't worry, this is fixable. 

Download UpdateEFI v1.3 and click on "Basic Changes". Open a Finder window and click on the "EFI" disk at the sidebar, digg through the folders until you reach /Volumes/EFI/Extra/Extensions. The kexts responsible for shutdown/restart/reboot functionality are:

1. OSXRestart.kext
2. EvoReboot.kext
3. OpenHaltRestart.kext

You can experiment with a combination of these kexts or just replace OSXRestart and EvoReboot with OpenHaltRestart. Click on Finish button on UpdateEFI to update the contents of the EFI partition.

Actually, shutdown/restart is something that is known to be an issue for the HP Mini 1000 since before 10.6.3. What's most important is that there's now finally a resolution to sleep and speedstep after sleep issues.


Will update this post once I figure out the shutdown/restart.


Shutdown/Restart is working fine.

HP Mini VGA Adapter

So now I'm a whiny HP customer. What happened to the "laude ad astra" blab I've been showering all over HP's brand (without even being asked, let alone paid for the relentless plugging) like some anointing oil.
This:

Right. That's the HP VGA Adapter cable for the Mini 1000 and Vivian Tam series. Don't get me wrong; it's a beautiful piece of hardware or computer accessory. From the rubber finish, to the silver printed HP logo it shows the company accords ample attention to detail and customer satisfaction. In the spirit of Hackintoshing and aspiring to be Apple-like, I can even say the cable reminds me of my Apple iPod's cable - sans the fancy plastic pin cap and stark white coloring of course. In short, it seems to be a sturdy piece of accessory that'll last or perhaps even outlast, your HP Mini 1000's life cycle.

But what's the whining all about?