(Almost) Perfect Mini MacBook Air

Click here for the new HP Mini 311 Snow Leopard Guide 

Please disregard this post/guide.

This guide is available for download in .pdf format.

One night, after another day in the office, you decide to check out the gadget expo in the nearby mall. And though you haven't envisioned yourself buying anything (cause hey, you're there just to unwind some), you still find yourself carrying a black box that's quite heavier than when you last got your Mini 1000. That shiny new Red master card? Swiped. Despite and in spite of your resolutions to be a more sensible consumer (or perhaps to quit being a consumer at all since belonging to that demographics has proven to take a very considerable amount of toll on your financial well-being), you still have that smug look in your face, unable to hide a smile: you've just been made the proud owner of snazzy Ion equipped netbook rig in the form of the HP Mini 311. Then after playing with Windows 7 it came installed with, you're at a lost what to do with the machine cause it's the third in your growing netbook family (five actually - the first two EeePC's gone off to better hands to care for them) and you just don't need another to be honest - you just want it. 

Well good news, cause as it turns out, the HP Mini 311 makes for one perfect MacBook Air substitute - almost. (Apple fanboys and fangirls, please, for the love of humanity, I'm not contesting the fact that is the superiority of the Mac - real Macs rock the whole universe and beyond). And the procedure is literally a no brainer.


i. What You Need
(1) *Download the CD Booter iso image and the Snow Leo 10.6.2 Combo Updater - Burn the iso image onto a blank CD-R (in Windows or Mac or Linux - be sure to use lowest burning speed as precautionary method to avoid a failed write and adding to your growing collection of funky over-sized coasters)
* New "HF4" release courtesy of the HP Mini 311 Darwin Project at insanelymac.
** You can also use this alternative method if you don't want to burn the ISO.

(2) External DVD drive - the LightScribe drive enclosed in a HP logo bedecked black case (that's equally chic as the Mini 311 itself, let's admit) will do the job just fine.
(3) Snow Leopard Retail DVD - though I'm not sure if the 10.6.2 default ones are already out in the market in shrink-wrapped boxes, I can only attest to this method working on the first batch of Snow DVD's i.e. "10.6" cause that's what I have.
(4) HP Mini 311 - the results described in this step by step installation documentation are based on the HP Mini 311-1002TU model. Tech specs of which can be found here.

A. Install Snow Leopard
(1) Boot up with the project CD - Put in the CD Booter that you've just burned a while ago into the external DVD drive. With the DVD drive plugged into one of the Mini 311's USB ports, power up the machine and press F9 to bring up the boot selection screen. Use the arrow keys to highlight the DVD drive and press Enter.It will take a while for Chameleon to completely load - around 2 minutes - be patient.
**Or if you chose to go with the alternative method (without burning .iso to CD), just plug in the usb, when you press F9, choose that USB to boot from. 

(2) Boot into the Snow Leopard Retail Install DVD - Manually eject the CD Booter from the DVD drive and put in its place the Snow Leo DVD. Wait for the drive to load the contents - 10 seconds or so would do - and then press F5 to refresh Chameleon's boot selection listed in a row. A new entry named "Mac OS X Install DVD" will be added; use arrow keys to highlight it and press Enter to boot into the installer.
**Again, if you chose to go with the alternative method, just plug in the DVD drive and load the Snow Leo DVD. Press F5 to refresh list and then choose the Mac OS X Install DVD; press Enter.

I'm referring to a "row" since I didn't bother wiping out the stock Win 7 partitions which my 311 came with out of the box; the Mac OS X Install DVD entry was added at the far right of the row. Also, the image above shows my list of volumes as they are now - when Mac OS X Snow Leo is already installed in my 311 (the FAT32 drive is supposedly for Win XP) 

(3) Install Snow Leopard as you normally would - Format the Mini 311's drive first as GPT "GUID Partition Table" (Menubar > Utilities > Disk Utility), leaving standard Mac OS Extended (Journaled) as default. I suggest naming the new volume "Macintosh HD" like in real Macs.

GPT because Snow Leopard by default installs only onto hard drives partitioned using that table. MBR could be used but that's via a custom modded installer which we won't be covering here. Besides, we're going Vanilla so we need that 200 MB hidden EFI partition that's created under GPT. The method used in this guide doesn't work on MBR.

B. First Boot and EFI (Boot Loader/Environment) Setup
(1) As in the first step when you installed Snow Leopard - "A.(1)" of this guide; boot with the project CD or CD Booter, as I've come to call it. (Restart the Mini 311 and press Esc, swap the Snow Leo Install DVD with the CD Booter and hit Ctrl+Alt+Del) This time choose "Macintosh HD" as the volume you want to boot. Or whatever it is you've named your installation volume.

(2) After watching the welcome video (no sound at this point, by the way), go through Setup Assistant and configure your user account. As usual, choose "Do not transfer my files" option and "My computer doesn't connect to the internet" to get to the desktop faster. All that, we'll deal with later.

(3) Once in your Desktop, if you haven't unplugged the DVD drive, you'll see an "HPM311 Darwin Project" disc mounted. Go inside this disc and run the "HPM311 Darwin Project.pkg" installer.

(4) Install updates and support files - (a) go to System Preferences > Security to uncheck "Use secure virtual memory" option and run the MacOSX10.6.2ComboUpdate.

It's done, congratulations! You've perfect Mini MacBook Air in your hands - well almost perfect Mini MacBook Air because: (1) the default smbios.plist that gets installed makes your HP Mini 311 a "MacBook6,1" ergo not a MacBook Air of course; (2) it always boots up with -v flag or "verbose mode" or else you can't resume properly from sleep; (3) the Broadcom 4312 WiFi card doesn't work; and - I could be the target for death threats for noob stupidity for this - (4) there are some more tweaks - I dare not call them "improvements" else I be shot dead right this instant or this blog attacked - that can be done regarding some kexts and EFI.

Up next is how I think you get can get a perfect Mini MacBook Air - perfect, that is, according to my quite shallow nooby instincts. It's up to you if you wanna go with me. ;)